General Lesley J. McNair: Little-Known Architect of the U.S. Army By [Copyright 2012] Mark T. Calhoun Submitted to the graduate degree program in History and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________ Dr. Theodore A. Wilson ________________________________ Dr. Robert F. Baumann ________________________________ Dr. Christopher R. Gabel ________________________________ Dr. Jeffrey P. Moran ________________________________ Dr. Brent J. Steele Date Defended: April 6, 2012 The Dissertation Committee for Mark T. Calhoun certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: General Lesley J. McNair: Little-Known Architect of the U.S. Army ________________________________ Dr. Theodore A. Wilson Date approved: April 6, 2012 ii ABSTRACT General Lesley J. McNair demonstrated an innovative spirit and exceptional intellectual capacity in his efforts to organize and train the U.S. Army for World War II. The influence he exerted on Army doctrine, training, equipment development, unit organization, and combined arms fighting methods placed him among the handful of generals most responsible for both the effectiveness and the flaws of the force that the United States sent to war in 1942. Through his strong views and aggressive leadership, McNair played a key role in guiding the Army’s interwar mechanization and doctrinal development efforts. Many studies of this period have described aspects of his participation in that process. However, no comprehensive study of McNair’s forty-year military career exists, largely because he did not survive the war, and he left behind no personal memoirs or diaries when he died of wounds inflicted by errant American bombs in Normandy on July 25, 1944. This study examines General McNair’s full career – from his graduation from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1904, through his death in Normandy forty years later. The analysis demonstrates how McNair’s ideas developed over four decades of service, culminating in their practical application during the pre-war mobilization period and his influence on U.S. Army effectiveness in World War II. Several themes recur throughout the period of McNair’s service as the General Headquarters’ (GHQ) chief of staff from 1940-42, and the commander of Army Ground Forces (AGF) from 1942-44. He placed significant emphasis on the value of officer education and held strong convictions regarding the qualities required in a competent commander and soldier, leading him to advocate tough, realistic training. He embraced military innovation and technological development and remained personally involved in tests and experiments throughout his career to modernize the Army. He strove to gain iii efficiencies in unit organization by streamlining and standardizing units and training, while advocating pooling of specialized equipment and units at corps level and above, thereby optimizing organizations for task organization. This study demonstrates that one can discern the conceptual roots of all these overarching ideas in McNair’s actions and experiences during the several decades of his lesser-known early career. This reevaluation of the career of General McNair also provides a lens through which to reconsider the question of U.S. Army effectiveness during World War II. While the “materiel superiority” narrative still dominates historical interpretations of America’s contribution to the war effort, several recent studies have begun to create a competing narrative that depicts a U.S. Army overcoming severe mobilization obstacles to develop into an excellent Army on par with all of the other major combatants during the war. The analysis offered in this study supports this emerging reinterpretation of America’s war effort by reevaluating the career of one of the U.S. Army’s most important but least understood architects – General Lesley J. McNair. iv Acknowledgements Many historians advised me against choosing this different dissertation topic, mostly due to the concern that insufficient archival records existed to support a detailed analysis of Lesley McNair’s career. I did receive encouragement from a few key individuals, but most reminded me that no single source of “McNair Papers” exists, and warned me that I would have to visit many different archives, all the while wondering whether I would find enough sources to support my thesis. These fair and well-intentioned warnings did not deter my stubborn determination to pursue my chosen topic, and a combination of luck, persistence, and mostly the help of many very talented archivists and historians enabled me to amass a large volume of research data – in the end, far more than I could use in this project. Regarding the supposed dearth of archival material on McNair’s career, I heard an often- repeated story, which soon took on the form of folk wisdom or mythology, about an unnamed graduate student who started work on a dissertation on McNair but failed to complete it due to lack of sources. Some even repeated the rumor that Clare McNair, Lesley’s wife of nearly forty years, might have burned his papers out of grief in 1944. I quickly learned, much to my relief, these myths contained little if any truth. Only one person could ever name the adviser of the mysterious graduate student who had tried but failed to write about Lesley McNair’s career. Well after I had embarked on the project, a historian recalled Dr. Edward “Mac” Coffman had once worked with a student interested in McNair. Upon contacting Dr. Coffman, I learned he did in fact have a student at one time who expressed an interest in writing a dissertation on McNair, but the student dropped out of the v graduate program in his first semester for personal reasons, before even beginning research for his dissertation. Later, on one of several research trips, I discovered a set of “McNair Papers” at the Library of Congress. A note Clare McNair included with the other materials in the set of boxes proved she donated the papers, which include items such as personal letters, original promotion “sheepskins,” and scrapbooks of photos and newspaper clippings Clare collected throughout her husband’s career. Interestingly, the letters in the collection of personal papers include none to or from Lesley – they consist entirely of Clare’s communications with friends of the family and Lesley’s professional acquaintances. However, no evidence exists that Clare selectively destroyed any of Lesley’s personal records or letters. The lack of any unofficial letters in the other archives where I found many excellent sources, both in McNair’s and in the records of officers he worked with during his career, indicate he simply did not devote time to personal correspondence. After McNair’s death in 1944, the official historians at Army Ground Forces found enough documents McNair had collected over the course of his career to fill several boxes, but these documents consist almost exclusively of official correspondence. McNair famously maintained an incredibly arduous work schedule throughout his career. He spent World War II in stateside assignments and therefore had no need to maintain a lengthy written correspondence with Clare, and he apparently kept track of his son Doug’s career through correspondence with officers he worked for, rather than by keeping in touch through personal letters. He generally lacked interest in media attention and exhibited no desire to establish a “legacy” for himself, although one can only speculate whether he might have produced a memoir had he survived the war. vi These factors taken together provide the most logical explanation for the lack of personal letters or diaries in those records that do exist in various archives across the country. McNair apparently concentrated on his official duties, leaving social matters for Clare to handle – a very traditional arrangement for the time, and an unsurprising one given McNair’s formal, businesslike demeanor. One historian I particularly respect strongly discouraged me from devoting my time to this project, questioning the value of an analysis of the career of a man who merely served as a staff officer during World War II. I hope that the following study will underscore the critical role that staff officers played during World War II in developing the organizations, training programs, and combined arms doctrine that U.S. Army unit commanders relied on for success in combat. Staff officers fulfilled a critical function various unit echelons, in the early-twentieth century just as they do today, despite the common view of the U.S. Army as “commander- centric.” The Army has long relied heavily on the capability of its staff officers in the performance of it day-to-day operations, but historians rarely produce studies of officers who spent the majority of their wartime duty in staff positions. By contrast, commanders play a key role given their unique authority and responsibility, and therefore they attract a great deal of attention from historians. Nevertheless, even the best commanders would find themselves severely hindered by the absence of the many skilled staff officers who serve throughout their organizations. Lesley McNair served in two high-level positions in the War Department during World War II, including his final role as Commander, Army Ground Forces – arguably a “staff” position based on the nature of his duties, but in reality command of a staggering number of troops serving at training posts across the continental United States. He also possessed a broad vii range of previous experience serving in command and staff positions, in peacetime and combat, spanning the period 1904-44. The profusion of histories of commanders like George Patton and Omar Bradley (and their counterparts in the Allied and Axis armies) illustrates the popularity of “great commander” history, but the military historiography would benefit from an increase in the number of studies of the hardworking yet underappreciated staff officers that helped translate their commanders’ vision into executable orders.