George Marshall: A Biography
Language: English
Pages: 576
ISBN: 0062385798
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
“Elegant and iconoclastic . . . refreshing . . . persuasive.”—NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
Here is the first biography to offer a complete picture of the life of George C. Marshall, chief of staff of the U.S. Army from 1939 to 1945 and the military leader who actually ran World War II for America as he oversaw all personnel and logistics.
Following Marshall from his childhood in western Pennsylvania and his training at the Virginia Military Institute to his role during and after World War II and his death in 1959 at the age of seventy-eight, this biography casts light on the inspiration he took from historical role models, such as George Washington and Robert E. Lee, and his relationships with military brass, the Washington political establishment, and world leaders, from Harry Truman to Chiang Kai-shek. It also explores Marshall’s triumphs and defeats during World War II, and his contributions through two critical years of the emerging Cold War—including the transformative Marshall Plan, which saved Western Europe from Soviet domination, and his failed attempt to unite China’s Nationalists and Communists.
Based on exhaustive research and filled with rich detail, George Marshall is sure to be hailed as the definitive work on one of the most influential figures in American history.
“A grand but judicious biography of a fascinating man.”—Evan Thomas, author of Ike’s Bluff
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term. The board ascribed the “Pearl Harbor disaster . . . primarily to two causes.” First, as Marshall had attested, was General Short’s failure “adequately to alert his command for war.” But second was the War Department’s failure to keep Short “adequately informed as to the developments of the US-Japanese negotiations,” information that “might have caused him to change from the inadequate alert to the adequate one.”68 Marshall himself came out bruised. He was not branded a conspirator or a
Russians but hoped that after the war these frictions would not endanger a lasting peace. He also feared jeopardizing the Russian pledge to join the war in the Pacific. It must therefore be assumed that he was not likely to endorse snatching the city from under the Russians’ noses. Moreover he was reluctant to incur further American casualties. As he wrote to Ike on April 28 regarding suggestions that advancing Allied forces push into Czechoslovakia, he was “loath to hazard American lives for
over as UN combat commander. In February, Ridgway launched a counterattack that checked the enemy’s advance and soon forced them to retreat. In early March UN and ROK forces retook Seoul once more. At this point, in defiance of the president’s gag order of December 6, MacArthur told the head of United Press that the U.S. Eighth Army must be allowed to push north of the thirty-eighth parallel again to destroy the Communist menace. Truman reprimanded MacArthur for violating the recent directive and
106, 160, 167, 172, 285, 302, 316, 322, 338, 408, 448 AEF troops in, 37–38, 41, 47, 83, 105 aid to, 78 Allies in, 307, 318, 319, 488 on Berlin, 443–44 colonies of, 113 empire of, 93 German conquest of, 92, 93, 94, 97, 101, 102, 105, 116, 170 German fortifications in, 292 and Hitler’s aggression, 80–82 invasion of, 218 Jews in, 416 landing in, 170, 176 Marshall Plan and, 414 military operations by, 91 at Moscow foreign ministers’ council meeting, 397–98 in NATO, 446, 447 Norway
of the army historians Palmer, Wiley, and Keast, “The experience of replacement . . . tended to destroy their morale and undo the effects of their training.”37 It was also inhumane and wasteful of manpower. When they arrived in their new divisions these men were strangers to the veterans, who often refused to treat them as comrades worthy of friendship and help. Lacking experience and combat savvy, they frequently became little more than cannon fodder. Both the British and German armies created
