Mark Calhoun, General Lesley J. McNair: Unsung Architect of the U.S. Army : CSPAN3 : May 28, 2024 2:40am-3:41am EDT : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive (2024)

we've got a great conversation

to cap off productive and engaging day. and then you certainly are program this evening and we'll continue in that honor but we have here author and historian from the jenny craig institute, dr. mark calhoon neal discusses his book. general leslie mcnair unsung architect of the u.s. army. now, mark's book seeks to restore the general known as one of marshall's forgotten men, to his place in american military history. now with us on stage is dr. john mcmanus. he will lead the discussion john, as you know, had a great conversation yesterday with john

was, of course, watching army-navy game. now. well, the wonderful third volume of of john's trilogy, john's been a tremendous friend of the museum including leading tours overseas to battlefields and sites where we're always delighted to have him here and incredibly honored to have him for this afternoon session. so with john, with that over to you. great. yeah. thanks, mike i appreciate it. mark, it's an honor to be with you here today and to talk to some leslie mcnair. so, i mean, maybe the place to begin our conversation. it's a kind of ease into where he fits in this larger context of the world war two. we've been exploring is what explains us. the allied victory in world war two. and how does that lead us to to a discussion of mcnair, do you think? yeah. so so what john is telling is that there is a pop quiz. so we're going to start with i'm not doing the grading by the

way. that's right. we're not grading the quiz, though. so it's it's on your honor system. but take a quick look at these three brief statements and just think about which one would you choose as the best explanation for the us victory in world war two. so i drew these from a review essay that a fellow named christopher lamb wrote, an analyst at the national defense university and he began the review essay with these questions really to just kind of set up the purpose of the essay and to show that you know over time for one thing over time narratives and mythologies the way things happened in the past can change the predominant narrative shifts. but also that the study of mcnair and, you know, people like him can really help you see the differences in these different answers in which one you might want to choose. so just something to consider as we go forward, we might revisit

it in the q&a. anybody wants to approach it then? yeah. so who is mcnair? where does he come from and why did you end up writing entire book about him? what what led you to that. yeah. so, you know, i'll go ahead, i'll go and put this up so people can take a look at it. but so mcnair became became very interested in him because when i was at the i was active army. i retired in 2008 when i was a student at the general staff college, and there just kept coming up, you know, we would study pastoring past, for example, and, you know, mcnair's name always seemed to pop up these different historical examples when someone needed to explain why the us army did really badly at something and it was really intriguing to me at first. it was just, it just made him seem like, you know, okay, this is really an interesting character. but then as i started to hear more about him and read more about him, you find out things like, you know, marshall's really close affinity to mcnair, referring to him as the brains of the army and you see the

positions that he held. and, you know, i couldn't but wonder, why is somebody who is the explanation for so many with the world war two, u.s. army continue to elevated to more important positions and held in such high regard. so when i went into the project that's kind of what i wanted to figure out. and i originally initially had a lot of people discourage me from taking on this project for various reasons as you can see here on the on the slide. but one one of the ones that was most surprising to me is he didn't command in combat. he he not troops in th field. he's just just a staff officer. so why would he even be interesting to people to write about? you know, but what i found is his career really, really interesting and as i started to dig into it, i found way more references that people said that i would far more references and and i started to find out that actually, you know, the record shows that many of the criticisms of mcnair kind of come from a oversimplification or taking things that he wrote out of context.

many of the sources that i found in the course, my research i'd never seen referenced in any work anywhere. so i think some of the homework that might have opened up the aperture a little bit and help people understand him a little bit better, you know, just wasn't was there. yeah. and it seemed you really had to work harder and dig deeper to get to mcnair because they're not an extensive letters collection. you really couldn't kind of get to know him on a personal level. he doesn't have major papers. of course, his life is cut short sooner than it should have been. and in order to get the material you did, you really had to do more impressive research. and the rest of us would adore a normal biography because we had to dig around in all these various archives in something of the official sources, right? and so you begin to see him, you to paint this portrait of him in your book based on this really interesting blend of source material. but i think that the value, of course, is revising how. we view his role in world war two, and i think that's the army's. well, yeah, yeah. some of the sources for example, you know, there was a rumor that

a story that claire mcnair, general mcnair's burned his papers after his death in her grief. i was surprised when i went to the library of congress, checked to see if they had anything on mcnair. they had nine boxes in the first box. there's a letter from claire mcnair, you know, dedicating this collection and her donation to the library of congress which made me wonder, you know, again, i'd never seen any of this stuff referenced in any any book i'd read. i'm sure other people had looked at it, but for whatever reason, it had never seemed to influence the narrative about general mcnair. the other thing about him is he spent the war in dc. i mean, he was in the field a lot, you know observing and participating in training and all of that. but he didn't. he was at home. he didn't need to write to his wife regularly. like, you know, most of the people downrange would have done. and and the other thing is he had a really i mean, was he was kind of a workaholic, like lots of these officers were. he was he was at work all the time. and and claire kind of managed the family correspondence for him. so he didn't have a lot of personal correspondence with anyone. usually the letters i found on mcnair were all, you know, there

would be friendly introductions and conclusions and then it would mostly just be about business. so once his background, why does he choose a military and end up at west point? yeah, this so we're going to focus on on world war two here for obvious reasons, but this is just a summary of all the all the things that general mcnair did during his career. and i say the reason that he joined the army, general mcnair, a very talented student from, the very, very earliest years and his family lived with his family, was the second child. and and they lived in ferndale, minnesota, in a pretty rural area, a town of 500 people. and his father was in the lumber business. and he had these camps in, the woods that he loved. he loved to spend time in the woods. and mcnair got through ninth grade. leslie made it through ninth grade and was a phenomenal. and that was as far as he could go in ferndale. so his family actually moved to minneapolis to afford him the opportunity to go to a good high school and his dream was to get into the naval academy, which is really interesting.

but, you know, when you finish high school in minnesota applied to the naval academy and the waiting list was so long that he he took additional courses to try to you know college courses just to try to further educational is waiting to hear from the naval academy finally after a year and a half he gives up and applies to west point and they take him right away but he had he had wanted to be in the services his life. and then if you take a look at the the things that he did, i mean, it's a it's kind of a typical career in some ways for interwar officers that is kind of age and seniority, you know civilian conservation corps assignments, the princeton expedition. and in the punitive expedition lots of folks in his time period were involved those things. but one of the unique things about it is that very early on that that intellect of his, you know, at west point, he was one of the best students in math or, ordnance, design, drawing, you graduated 11th in his class. and those courses, those subjects were also very high around the top ten of his class.

and so his second assignment there is an ordinance assignment. he actually spent a year out west at fort douglas field artillery, but he applied for a branch detailed ordnance. so part of the reason might be because that branch detail took him to the east coast and claire was on the east coast. he hadn't married her yet. he married very quickly after he got out there. but that for your assignment, he spent a lot of time working on how ordnance did the kinds of tests and field studies that they used to develop equipment and any other huge talent for it. so that really kind of shaped his career thereafter. so you'll see assignments where it says he's a commander, for example, second brigade, 1937 and 1939, right on the eve of the war. he is the commander of, the second field artillery brigade, but he's also the chief of staff of the second division, which is the provisional infantry division and mcnair, basically the man responsible for designing the tests of the triangle or infantry division. so his responsible for the redesign of the entry division

and and and he's there, you know, doing that while he's command and you see the same kind of thing throughout his career where this skill and talent with ordnance and math and doing objective tests comparative studies it continued to kind of shape his career thereafter and then it you know i guess one of the big takeaways for me of all of that is each time i kind of looked into a specific area where mcnair had a big influence on something the army and i had read in the past that he wasn't really qualified to do those things. i would find these experience that you had that absolutely qualified to do them. for example, umpiring the the army maneuvers in louisiana, in the carolinas and tennessee you know, i'd read that he qualified to be an umpire in maneuvers. and then i found at the war college he was the lead umpire for his war college class. you know, when they did their their exercises, he was the lead umpire for the third army in 1938, i believe it was. so before the louisiana

maneuvers, even really got going, he had probably more experience umpiring maneuvers than most of the officers in the army. yeah. i mean, what stands out to me when you look at his career path and trajectory, you see this kind of pattern of exceptional competence and value. i mean, right from from his cadet days that he's acing math of the time when you when you look at, you know, the experiences of future, they're like, well, they had a tough time getting by in math or in chemistry or whatever is usually one of the stem fields. mcnair has no trouble with the academics, and then he's always seems to be kind of ahead of the curve. the example is, you know, you show in in world war one and he becomes really quite indispensable to general pershing is one of his influential proteges he's a one star general temporary course by by the end of the war. yeah there there he is getting decorated there are constantly relying on him. he gets coveted spots at the command and general staff college at the army war college. so these were things that were not happening for an everyday

officer. but when you look at like a lot of other biographies, you know, bradley or or patton or eisenhower or ridgway, whatever, they end up in command somewhere, you know, in a key spot in world war two. mcnair, a kind of different career path, although he's always ahead of the curve, like they are too. that's right. yeah, absolutely. and and he he make you know, this is a very small army, you know, the post world war one or army was very small army. he knew all of these people. he had known them for for a very long time. and and developed very close relationships with them. another thing you know from mcnair's world war one experience i drew another lesson from it. i've read before that general was trapped in a world war one mindset during his you know, his during world war two. and that really stunted his thinking and caused him to make some bad recommendations. but one of the things that mcnair clearly took from from world war one was that we absolutely to move forward, we need to modernize the army, we

need to do away with these giant square divisions. you know, after the after the war, there's a superior board that writes a report and they basically i mean, to oversimplify it a little bit, but they kind of come to the conclusion that we pretty much did everything about right. and we don't really need to change very much of what did in general pershing ends up writing a rapid endorsem*nt takes him six months so delays the issuance of the report for six months and then he puts the rapid endorsem*nt on it essentially just discredits what these folks had just written and their superior board report and he says, no, we need a smaller, lighter more powerful but more mobile divisions. we need modernized equipment. we need artillery that move forward with the infantry as it attacks so that the infantry doesn't just push forward little bit. and then we have to pause and laborious, fully bring everything forward. i mean these these were very kind of forward thinking ideas. and, you know, general pershing a lot about open warfare during world war one. and the reality was that we weren't really able to train open warfare effectively before the war as we're preparing for world war one. and we didn't really we weren't able to do it in the way it was

envisioned, but it became an aspiration. and, you know, as we move forward and we modernize, this is what we want to be able to do. and so you see in as late as 1939, general marshall with mcnair appointed to be the commandant of the command general staff school. right. simmons says, i'm really pleased that you're there because i know that you're going to build and imbue open warfare thinking onto this organization that's really of stuck in the past. so, you know, again, these kind of conflicting things, the narrative says he was stuck in a world war one mindset and kind of had this archaic way of looking at warfare. but the historical record says the exact opposite. now, he's really quite an innovator. i mean, there's absolutely no doubt, and i think your book shines a great light on that. and you another really interesting point. this is a small army. it's a place where everybody knows everybody in the officer corps to some extent. so he's had relationships that he's developed over time, none more productively, of course, than george marshall. and so i just want to throw a few names at marshall macarthur. what's the nature of his

relationship with these really influential then? yeah. so marshall, i think with eisenhower, i'll start with eisenhower. i think with eisenhower there was a there was a mutual respect, but i don't think they really got to know each other all that well. i mean they obviously interacted quite a bit, but they kind of ran a little bit different circles. you know, when eisenhower was with the war department, he was in the operations division, which was, you know, separate from the general headquarters and then the army ground forces later. so they knew each other, obviously, but they weren't very close. i think with marshall, the relationship was much closer. i think they they thought very alike and they they shared about how should we shape our force and how should we train personnel, how should we the force they really had a long standing exchange of ideas with macarthur. he's really kind of absent from the record in terms of the things that i found about general mcnair, you'd probably have insight, as is his relationship with macarthur than

i than i do. but i know that, you know, all of these folks, you know, one of the things that mcnair was responsible for was recommending which officers should command these units as we create divisions and we get reticent to the field. the same is true for corps commanders and even recommending commanders for field command. so he to all of these maneuvers and participated in training and he got to know all of these people, not just personally, but also in seeing their performance in these really stressful situations. and so he knew everyone and because he had been involved in sort of this intellectual development of the army for the past 20 years, over the interwar period, he had exchanged with all of these folks and they would continue to correspond with and share ideas with him and send him feedback. and, you know, that that's exactly i mean. you know, of course, what we know best for his being head of army ground forces. and in that capacity, this is just fascinating. think one of the things i found is how much correspondence there

was between field commanders and mcnair. two examples i'll give you off the top of my head robert eichelberger, who was in touch with him, the whole war and kind of relating to him. here's what's happening on the fighting. oscar griswald, who isn't very well known, but ought to be the commander of 14th corps in in the south pacific later on in the philippines. he too is sending some really descriptive correspondence to mcnair back and forth. all right. so that takes time and it takes trust, i think, because, you know, you're basically reporting to the guy, heads up the branch, you're sort of part of army ground forces, telling them exactly what up to. and so i have to assume from that is that they have a prior relationship that that is productive and and so, you know, to me, just kind of a microcosm of how in charge with these commanders. so what's nature of how he's sort of running this global war? and in that sense, being in touch with these guys and influencing them? yeah, i think i think it really comes down to mcnair.

mcnair was in this odd situation during the world war two where he he was the cheapest half of general headquarters. and then later the commander of army ground forces. but neither of those positions, they had a huge amount of responsibility, no command authority. you know, the agf's army ground forces, army air forces and army service forces were functional commands and know, you think about, for example, general arnold was on the combined chiefs of staff. general mcnair was even when he was the commander of army ground forces in many ways, his role was almost more of the chief of staff to general marshall, just by the nature of his responsibilities. i mean, when he was with general headquarters, he was supposed to be the commander of in theory, it was based on post-world war one thinking that the headquarters that would actually go forward and deploy the theater when it was time to send to a task force in the theater. but he was the chief of staff of that organization. so i, i think he had a huge amount influence, but it was indirect and it wasn't any kind of authoritative kind of ability

to make changes. so i think people knew that he was someone that they could share ideas with. and if they communicated with them about a challenge that they were facing or a question that they had something that they thought they needed support or a change in that he would be a who would be a really strong advocate them, even though he didn't necessarily have the authority to make a decision himself, did a heck of a spot to be in this role, that responsibility. but not that much accompanying authority that's. right and then to get blamed by history later for everything that goes wrong. it was extremely frustrating. it's really thankless in that sense. so just in case for anyone who doesn't know, like the basic structure of the army during the war and you have a really interesting slide about like the staff and all that, the army is basically the army air forces might have one foot out the door for independence. of course and hap arnold runs that basically as a peer of george marshall and ernie king you know as a member of the joint chiefs of staff you've got

service forces, which of course i have this vast responsibility all over the globe for all the logistical side of the war and whatever else, an army ground forces, which i hope this isn't a controversial statement, but i'm just telling you, it does. the vast majority, the fighting and dying for the united states in world war two. and yet what you've shown mark is just the sort of the paucity of human resources and authority that's invested it in army ground forces, which is carrying the load of this war effort on so many levels. and that falls on mcnair. that's right. yeah, that's right. yeah. and so these charts, i know they're eye charts, they're from the green books. you can take a look at them in if you want. but i, i have a a blue circle around general in a green circle around general mcnair, you know, and on this is the slide up to the march of 1942 reorganization. this one, i got a double click there. again, blue circle is marshall green is mcnair. so this when his chief of staff of the general headquarters. so you know when you're a chief

of staff of an organization that doesn't have a commander, it's really, really hard to get anything done. you know, planners don't make decisions of staff don't make decisions. they make recommendations, they run organizations. so so he was in a position at ghq and the other thing is, is theoretical combat role. he was completely on resource for it. so he was resourced to to train this newly mobilizing army that were putting together. and that was really all his headquarters was was resourced to do an the same and i've got a red circles there that's just to highlight a couple of notes that all procurement except aircraft falls under the under secretary of war. an aircraft vacuum, it falls in with the undersecretary of war for air. so the ghq, mcnair has no role in procurement. obviously a voice that is asked to make recommendations and opine on on a decisions that they're considering. but he doesn't have any. and here when we do the reorganization, as john described, you have, they're at

the bottom on the bottom right. the ag as and services is by which was later renamed army service forces. and again, the red circle shows the procurement line under secretary of war down to the commanding general of the services of supplier is so both the air force and itself managed to retain direct a direct role in the development of their own equipment. and this was something that was denied army ground forces. and yet as you said general mcnair is overseeing indirect and commanding the largest force in the forces suffering the most casualties at the front. and so these limitations on his ability to act on his limited authority were very frustrating. and this is just kind the frustrations really grew. now, this just an example of of all the different things that general mcnair has got going. and i know you probably can't read it, but you have you have a ground there just underneath the green circle. so he's got ag1 through g for

going to napoleonic staff is all the other functional headquarters in the war department do? he also has a huge special that's responsible for all these different aspects of what the army needs to be able to do, the ground forces. and then he has a whole bunch of commands down there in the bottom. so the armored command tank destroyers and all of these different organizations. but again, these are these are more oversight than direct control type situations that he's dealing with. and then over to the side, he's got statistical section historical section. and one of the really interesting things about this is how tiny his his staff actually was. let's go ahead and take a look at this. so just take a look at these numbers a little bit. in april 1942, look at the difference in the number of officers authorized to the three functional commands and then the total number of personnel authorized from 724 for the army ground forces do all of those things that i just described briefly on that previous chart. and the isf has over 37,000

people on its staff and that only grows by december 1943. i mean significantly so mcnair this was this is by choice. mcnair wasn't competing to have the same size staff as these other folks, and he was denied it. general mcnair was a huge opponent of overhead. and the overhead that you see reflected on these staffs also is in the forces in the field. so the bottom chart or table there shows the percentage of overhead, which is defined as folks who aren't in direct combat roles in the army ground forces. but 4.1% of the personnel were involved in some kind of combat role. and you can see the numbers there. army air forces third, a third of the army air force is in a is in a non-combat overhead type role. and 22% to the isf. and i've got a quote here. so mcnair actually wrote about this, american soldiers were sustaining avoidable casualties because their natural leaders or parentheses, of course, with exceptions, set at desks, tended

machines, while behind the lines. and we've all heard the phrase war machines, you know, and absolutely, technology was a huge, hugely important factor in world war two. but the idea that it's war of machines led to some pretty questionable decisions about who do we want to recruit. and of recruits, which recruits do we want to put in certain jobs? how much do we value the role of, say, the infantry as compared these other parts of the military? and mcnair was was in this really frustrating position where he was he was in charge this really hugely important part of the military. but every signal that was sent to him was kind of, saying, we don't really see it as all this at higher level. and to me, that's a microcosm of how the us tries to approach world war two. and really i would argue almost ever since saying, okay, well, war just aren't really going to be fought on the ground as much anymore. it's going to be all these other things do will expand our technology, our material all our sea power, our air power, all vitally, vitally, vitally

important things. but one of the lessons they learned in world war two, that in my view, we really haven't taken to heart ever since, is that when you really get to the core of it, of what a war is and what is what is required for winning in whatever our strategy, whatever our purpose is, it tends to be on the ground and we look at that staff number, that is an incredibly lean staff for army ground forces, which every and armored division, all the tank battalions, the tank destroyer battalions, the anti aircraft, all that is part of army ground forces that's all over the globe fighting this war. so think about all the human capital that's invested elsewhere and that's encompassed in this mcnair quote. and that's what he's kind of pushing back against through the whole war. and so i think when you see it in that context, you really start to kind of become impressed with what he's able to accomplish. you know? so what's the rhythm of his his work life as he goes through the war and how is he interacting with the staff and having kind

of influence that he does and working with marshall to all that same thing? right. well, so i as i mentioned, he was a workaholic. he he would generally type his own correspondence. he had his i think his typewriter was called daisy off and that was, you know, he was a very hard working, you know, by example, hard working kind of officer. he was death by world war two. he was stone death. i mean, he could he could make out conversation in a small setting, but he didn't like large meetings. you know, earlier in his career. you see him like at the after action review from a maneuver in one of the army level maneuvers. and he's sitting in a large theater with all of his peers, all the other, you know, the generals, colonels and ceos in these maneuvers. and they're they're laughing and have a good time. but later in his career, he really didn't enjoy those kind of large, large settings. i think he was he was a pretty formal person. i wouldn't say that i don't he was cold. i think he was warm. but but it was a warmness that was sort of completely embedded

within his professionalism. you know, i think he was he was the kind of officer that people would say is, you know, really be professional but a little bit distant by the end of the war. he's also extremely frustrated there's a there's a thing in the towards the end of my my book a meeting he has with his staff at the army ground forces after he's been ordered to go to the front and will we should probably talk about that next but he said he's going say farewell to his staff and at this point he he has written in a letter that i found to a colleague is mostly a letter about work. as i mentioned. but there was the personal element. and then one point place, he says this is in 1944. he says, you know, i don't know that we're winning this war. and sometimes it feels to me like we're doing we can to lose it. i mean, and so were times when he to his friends, he would he would be open and honest about these things and these frustrations that had. so but the story about him going to the front, i think is really interesting as well. mcnair was absolutely a

soldier's officer, loved training. he loved the field. he had absolutely no physical courage was not an issue, general mccaffrey. he had no fear, maybe to the point that it was a little bit naive. and you can see that kind of play out in what happens with him when he goes to the front. let's go forward a little bit. yeah. so he'd already been wounded in north africa. that's right. and so this. okay, this is really cool. this is something i to get to. as you can see, this is a tactical map. it says it's from north africa. i found this on my very first research trip i've been to the archives before. is it as a young major in the army? but i'd never. this was my first research trip looking into general mcnair something linenger if anybody knows. jim nemanja is a fixture at the national. i saw him when i was there, just a few months ago. it's unbelievable. he's still working there. he. he helped me prepare for this research trip. and when i got there, he said, mark you're going to you're you might see the greatest find i've ever had in the archives. i'm not going to tell you what it is or where is exactly, but

it's in the records as you've requested. so we'll see if you find it. so i hope it is record 337. the contents of general mcnair's office when he's killed at the front, they basically take all of his file cabinets and desk drawers. they put all the paperwork in boxes and send it off to be stored. and it made its way to the archives. the first box i opened, i got into a folder, opened the folder, and there's a manila kind of glued to the of this folder. so i open the envelope and i pull folded up paper and it's this map. so i unfold the map and as you can see, there are stains on it. so i saw right away there's general mcnair's name in pencil at the top. it's a one of 50,000 tactical map depicting a combat action, a low level tactical combat action. but there's this stain across it. and i felt it. and you can actually feel the tactile so it take me long to realize this is the map that general mcnair was holding when he was observing this attack. and germans spotted his body and and started engaging them with artillery. and general mcnair was wounded

in the head and arm while he was this map. and so he kept the map. somebody actually held on to it for him when they evacuated, they gave it to him and it was in his office and his records and the map is still folded up in this folder at the national archives. and when i was looking at it then, as you know, he came over and we're talking and next thing you know, there are four or five archivists, one with the museum background all around the table and arguing about whether this map should be in the archives so that historians like me could see it and touch, or if it should be under glass in the museums. it was a really interesting debate. i know how huge an impact it had on me. so i think i kind of lean to the it's where it belongs, the but yeah, i would do. yeah, exactly. i mean, selfishly, i guess that's right. yeah. but it probably is kind of selfish, but it is an amazing find. so he's combat wounded. he comes back claire meets him at the airport in d.c. and he works, you know, for the next year or so in the same kind of situation. but he also is drawn to the

front in some respects, and he's about to transition a new job there in the normandy campaign. so he's there in normandy in, july 1944. what's he you know? why is he there? what's he about do? and then how does this to his ultimate demise right, this one, this one's a really interesting one to me. the fact that most people are unaware that the reason general mcnair was the front was that he had been selected for field army command. and this is in general eisenhower's papers correspondence with general marshall. there were there were two field armies that might need a commander. the first was actually the first u.s. army group, the deception operation. patton is the commander of the first us army group. that's deception has worked far longer than we thought it would, to the point that that we're now at the point where general patton needs to bring his third army over the beach and into the war. but the deception is still working. and so it makes sense. keep the deception going into patton leaves no explanation, and obviously it gives it away the other opportunity for a field command. field army command was the army,

which didn't form until december, you know, quite a quite a bit later. and they mcnair right away to do the first u.s. army group job. so to make the deception work, they said, well, go to the front. and they set up this this tour so that he would get plenty of media attention. and one of the one of the interesting things to me is, they chose mcnair for this because knew he had a profile that could kind of match patterns if germans heard somebody of a much lower stature than patton had become, the first u.s. army group commander, then again, it's going to weaken the deception. mcnair was seen as one of the people who was qualified for field army command and and b that he had the sort of the gravitas to actually replace in this role. but then he goes forward for operation cobra. so ac so what was mcnair doing at lowe? well, operation cobra's, you know, this is this is a map that shows the i guess i could use

the laser pointer here. this is the engagement area where the strategic bomb drop that general bradley has planned with the air planners, that's where they plan to saturation bomb the germans before they attack from from north to south. right. so the u.s. forces are lined up here. they're going to attack to the south. so the bombers are going to come in. and one of the things that the general bradley did did so here's the here's the engagement area and here's the front lines. us troops here and they're going to attack to the south in general. bradley actually made a very bold decision as sure most of you know, to bring the the the edge of that box much closer to the front lines than they ever done before, 1200 meters, even initially wanted, 800 and other folks were so concerned about the danger that they convinced them to move it up to 1200 meters, which is still very close. the other, though, is at this at this planning meeting. this is this is purely general bradley and general collins

plan. i mean, they've they've come up with this and they've got the air planners in room with them. and they're talking about this preparatory bombardment. and one of the things that general marshall or bradley is convinced is going to help make it safe. i'm sorry. well, actually that's actually not a bad one. so here's a a blown up image of the engagement area. you see this road right here? this road runs from say hello to perry arrows and and it also runs parallel the long axis of the engagement area. and so the idea that bradley has is the airplanes can fly and follow road, which any of us aviators know is the easiest way to find out where you're going, figure out where you're going, and then they'll be able to to accurately locate the area and drop their bombs accurately. well, there's a real problem with this, and that is that if you think about it, if you try to bring in the bombers, this way, then you can put a whole bunch of bombers side by side simultaneously and you can get the whole flight of bombers over the engagement.

their bombs dropped and out of the area very quickly. if you try to bring them in this way along the long axis, you can only get maybe a third or a quarter as many bombers by side. so you're going to triple or quadruple amount of time it takes to do the bombing the weird thing about the planning meeting is they basically talk past each other and everybody leaves the room thinking that they've got the agreement that they wanted. bradley they've agreed to the parallel approach, and their air planners think that they've convinced bradley that they can't do it. so on the morning of the 24th, gentlemen ayres at the front, he's there's been a bunch of, you know, trying to make make it known that he's there. there's been enough attention that the germans should be aware that he's there if not right away soon. and he goes out to the front near the 30th division positions and occupies foxhole. predictably, the come in and the you know the bomb dropped because they're they're coming in from north to south and dust obscures the the ground there's bad weather, various things.

and then there's an accidental release of one of this stick leads. and so, you know, a whole stack of bombers, all their bombs and they, you know, they land on top of american troops. mcnair has kind of a close call on the 24th, but he's fine. not true for a lot of the soldiers, you know, were affected by this. the short drop. so he returns back to the headquarters. general bradley's despondent and angry. how how could this have happened? you know, how did the not understand what i want him to do? and and they decide to reschedule it for the next morning. general mcnair wasn't going to go back out the next. but after met with some folks there at headquarters, he went to get some some chaplain. he encountered some soldiers on the way and the soldiers told him, hey, sir, you have no idea how much it means to us to see you at the front. you know, it's great to have a general officer willing to accept some of this risk that we're, you know, facing. and so we've meant a lot to us that you were there so this changes his mind and decides to go back the next morning. he goes back next morning.

the same thing happens. the bombers, the bombs again. there's short drops. the casualties are actually much worse on the second day. and this time, general mcnair doesn't survive. you know, as we know, operation actually turned out really well. but the bradleys thought on the 25th, as this has been a failure. what are we going to do now? we have to go back, square one to figure out what we're going to do. general collins is actually initially just moving to try regain his start positions in case we reschedule the mission for the next day. he sees that the germans are even more devastated by the bombs, many of which did land the germans as we are and sees an opportunity and explodes. it. and within about 24 hours, bradley goes from thinking it's over in a failure to realizing, oh, this is actually working out. yeah. and the last i'll add just before we get to the audience questions to close the loop on the mcnair family. so he and claire had had one child, i think it was douglas, their 37 year old son, who was a colonel at.

this point was chief of staff the 77th infantry division, which is fighting in the battle of guam that late 1944. so a little less than two weeks after general mcnair was killed by friendly bombs, colonel douglas mcnair, whom you see in the in the image, was killed on august six, 1944, as he was as he was want to do, sort of like his father. he was no stranger to the danger. and he at the at the the front trying find a good spot for new division command post because the division was constantly the move at that point in the battle of guam he and two other soldiers end up encountering some bypass japanese soldiers who had who were holed up like in a like a or a small kind of small structure. they have this sort of brief firefight. and colonel douglas mcnair was shot right through the throat and and killed instantly. so in that two week period, claire loses husband and her only son. and so lest we think this is just a story about, you know,

high people in high places who don't pay the price or whatever, i mean, this is a very human story of what mcnair contributed. certainly organizationally, the army and everything else, but also to people who sacrifice their lives for for ultimate victory in world war two. i think it's really, really poignant. absolutely yeah. yeah. so, yeah. when claire finds out about general leslie husband dying she she was in a gym volunteering for the red rolling bandages. and somebody comes in and whispers in her and takes her away. and then, of course, you can imagine when she finds out about 12 days later, it was absolutely devastating. and the other thing is the army sought to suppress the news of mcnair's at the front because, again, the deception, we need to find another person to come in and fill in him first. the army group. so the continues to work so you know there was all of this and then one you know after the war, general mcnair it was it was a lieutenant general and was wasn't promoted to star until 1954 by an act of congress.

so after the war. claire only a $50 a month pension. and she went to for the department of state. and it wasn't until he was promoted to four star posthumously that she had enough of a pension to actually be able to make ends meet. yeah, and this is the wife of one of the highest ranking officers, the united states armed forces. yeah, yeah. amazing stuff. well, i think we ought to open up to some audience questions if you have a round of applause and. gentlemen, going to start to your right near the front and middle. thank you, mark. i think it's a terrific book and i think it's going to be a terrific read. i'm about the generals role in the development of the detached anti-tank battalions and this whole philosophy about, how to counter the german blitzkrieg.

you could comment on that. sure. this is this is one of the case studies that, you know, i think many people who've read anything about me, they're i've heard about the the whole anti tank idea. so there's mcnair's involved in in the idea of of gunnery whether it's field artillery or direct fire started very very early in his career, he was designing modifications to the mountain artillery, 2.95 inch howitzer in the twenties in the thirties. he's working on anti-tank i mean there was kind of an inform ml approach to war doctrine writing during the interwar period. there was a formal aspect to, but folks could also get involved in doctrine writing just because was something that they were interested in doing. and mcnair was involved in that for a long time. so he kind of his his his idea, you know, mcnair thought about the organization and equipping of the army as a system. and so rather than trying to have these boutique high pieces

everywhere. the focus was more on how do we make all these different parts of the military organization work as well as they can together? so one of the things that mcnair generally say, and he is reflective of a large percentage other army officers in his thinking that the the best gun on the battlefield is always going to defeat the best armor on the battlefield. you know you can strive to build a tank that can't be defeated by enemy tanks because. it's got so much armor, but just the science and engineering of it says these huge tanks are going to be hard to develop and so hard to deploy. and it's so much simpler to make really good gun that the guns are always going to be able to defeat the best tanks. so so let's focus on keeping the army light and mobile, being able to respond efficiently. you know, the old school way of using anti-tank weapons was just to put them in a stationary cordon in a defensive position or use them kind of to start an attack and. then they just kind of stay where they are or get brought forward slowly, later.

and his thinking is, now we need to have guns that can actually move and be mobile and and it also the same thinking applied to his ideas about tanks themselves you know the idea of of needing a heavy tank which became sort of the priority later in the war when start to see more panthers and tigers in germany again this whole idea of do you need a great tank to defeat enemy tank or do you need an effective system? all all of this stuff is driven largely by the huge shortage of shipping that we have at the beginning of the war, the first section of eisenhower's official papers is titled all i need is ships, because ships is number one concern. so rushing to a heavier tank, that kind of philosophy said, probably isn't an efficient use of our resources anyway would also drastically complicated our ability to deploy so the dna take guns you know the the tank destroyers these were attempts

at efficiency and all the other major powers had these same kinds of equipment. it wasn't anything all that unique, but the uniqueness for us was to try to find a way to have an offensive capability, a mobile, fast moving anti-tank capability that didn't just rely on these really hugely expensive and difficult to maintain tanks to defeat the enemy's tanks. what that answers your. i hope so. next question is going to be to your far left at the front. please. in a previous symposium, general fox connor was present in, what was the relationship between mcnair and general connor? so fox connor i think, again, i don't have i didn't come across much evidence that they had much direct interaction. fox connor obviously had a huge influence on general eisenhower and their allies. eisenhower his thinking and and through that, i think in an indirect even an officer that might not have worked closely with them and then director of influence on them as well.

one thing it's a little bit of a esoteric doctrinal issue, but but general mcnair was very aware of the relationship between politics and war, and he was very aware of the fact that you have to have a government and an economy and a procurement system and all of these different capabilities that could work together to to create effective military. and so in the 1939 field service regulations are drafted, he's the commandant of the commandos general staff school and. one of the things that he's promoting is kind of this idea of connecting operational doctrine to, achieving the political object of the war which you hadn't really seen an army doctrine. and that kind of thinking, i fox connor was one of the people who really helped bring to the senior officer corps. and in this period next questions your far right towards the front please please. one of the big discussions that was happening at the end of the thirties and into the beginning of the forties was how big

should the army be? and the result of that was the so-called 99 division compromise. how involved in that was mcnair? right. so that was primarily a outcome of albert. rita miers and rita miers research. you know, there was a period where the you know, the war department folks in the war department thought we would need as many as hundred and 50 or 300 divisions. we'd have irelands on a number, more around 200. and initially that's guiding our mobilization process that that victory plan and that number divisions. so, gentlemen isn't necessarily directly involved in developing the victory plan, but it absolutely has a huge influence over his job because he's the person for bringing these recruits in and forming them into divisions and getting trained and ready to go to the front. it's not that long after we're in the war in mid 42 where we had this huge manpower crisis, 330,000 personnel short of what we to meet our troop bases for that.

so already in 1944, we're we're looking at some somewhere around 20 to 25 divisions fewer production than we hoped we would be able to do. and so this this causes the shift, as you mentioned, to the 90 division gamble. we actually end up making, i think it's 89 divisions or 90 divisions and 88 of them actually make it to the front. so a drastic difference which kind of leads us into the replacement program as opposed to having two divisions for every one at the front so that you can keep replacing divisions as they get tired and so a big, big difference from the victory plan's original vision. but the replacement system, you it's been it's been criticized by a lot of historians, but there have also been some pretty good, really good historians who've been pretty supportive of it. you know, geoffrey rush wrote the the the way to have divisions is to sustain while they're at the front, not to let them worn down and then take them out and rebuild them and then move them back to the front again. so there were mismanagement in

the replacement process in the system that made it inefficient and problematic. but the concept, concept itself, once especially once they took it over in 1944, it actually works really well after that. yeah. i mean, the system sort of heartless in terms of individuals forward sometimes without knowing anybody and throwing them into combat. but really in the end, it worked in terms of sustainment and certainly firepower and the management of human resources, right right. next question is to your left, towards front. thank you very much. i currently live in watertown massachusetts. just just west of boston, mcnair spent three years early in his career at the arsenal there. what what did he do and how important was in terms of his overall career? sure. now, that's that's a great question. so that's where he had his four year branch detail in ordnance branch. he wasn't at watertown, the whole time. he spent a year or branch headquarters kind of doing administrative stuff.

and then he spent a lot of time at the arsenal. a couple of interesting things from that one is he got the only negative air officer evaluation reports he ever received in his whole career. he was a young lieutenant and he worked for a captain that they clearly just didn't didn't get along. i mean the comments were very petty, you know, sort of cheap shot type comments. but that aside, think he had a really positive experience he was immersed in this sort of objective analytic development process that his natural abilities with math and drawing and everything were really it had really it's in him for that. and so it was at this arsenal where mcnair developed the skills that used throughout the rest of his career and, you know, running boards that evaluated different of equipment. you know, he had developed, for example, early his career, the the pack settled at field, the mountain field artillery is not an artillery apparatus battle. was it injured the mules and you had to have civilian contractors to load and unload the packed

saddles because they were so complicated. so mcnair is a commander of one of these field artillery batteries, and he takes them on a several mile road march, and he's testing several different saddles, one of which he designed himself with his soldiers know they figured out how to make a saddle. that was an improvement over. so he learned how to do all this stuff. he was on this branch detail and it absolutely influences his thinking and the nature of his his work for the rest of his career. did they adopt saddle mark? no, no. and again, i mean, this was 1997, 19, i don't know very, early in his career. and this this is the first of many, many, many times where he's going to be asked to do something like this. and then ordnance or some other part. the army that he doesn't have any influence over is going to ignore his findings to your right halfway back, please to a terrific conversation here. i just have a question, several quick mortar question.

there was a picture of of mcnair and general pershing in the of your program. and i'm wondering if when that took place and whether he's getting a decoration or or whatever. and also like and what was his personal like? he wasn't was he like a patton or more like eisenhower or. and is it true that last party those are two that the only found his class ring after he was killed. okay so pershing worked so with pershing. yeah let's so that image was was a general mcnair receiving his so he received the dsmb and the call to go to. i didn't have the picture of of them that for patton but mcnair he was a the youngest brigadier general in the army during the first world war one. and he was on general pershing. he was the he was in charge of artillery training for the adf staff. so he worked very, very with general pershing and.

he and he really shared a lot of ideas with general. he, he a forward thinking person, he, he understood the, the idea behind the open warfare concept, even if the reality of it wasn't exactly what pershing other folks intended it to be. and he also had this kind of strict discipline that you see from general person. you know what? he didn't have, you know? pershing if he if he had a an issue with the commander, he was ruthless and removing that commander from his headquarters and you know, i think i think mcnair because he has his career had such an emphasis on training and development of leaders that i think he was a little more likely to to be understanding of things and try to help people along on the other hand, he was one of the people most responsible for saying that almost none of the national guard commanders should remain in command of their units when. they were formed and, you know, mobilize and act the divisions. so so he was it was extremely

disciplined. he could be kind of cold. he was driven by analysis. i don't think he was it wasn't a real emotional person. i mean, it was on a lot of ways. he was the of general patton, you know, just the discipline and the ability to control his emotions and the and the desire to remain objective and to be fair to everybody. i mean, it was just a very different approach. and again, i think in many ways, he looked an lot like general pershing in that respect. and then yeah as far as when he was killed at the front, it was pretty much a direct hit on his foxhole and immediately his aide and his pilot or two aides and his pilot went to try to find him and they couldn't find any evidence of where he had been. they went back to the headquarters or army headquarters and they you know, they said, here's what's happened. and after things settle down a little bit, they sent a search party out and some distance away where he had actually been. i've heard ridiculous of

hundreds of yards, but know some distance away they did find an and his west point class ring and i had the photo of the ring they have it at west point in the there that answer all your questions. well personality yeah yeah i think i got to the personality thing as well you know it it's i mean i hesitate to comment too on his personality because i think he could be a really warm, friendly, funny. but he was i think he was just more comfortable in a professional setting. i don't think he really knew. you know, if you read something like matt kauffman's, the regulars, you know, and and i should go ahead and say that this book is it's it's categorized as a biography. but you go where the research takes you. i mean, you tell you, you start a new project and you you have a vision of what it's going to be. and i envisioned kind of this standard, typical of the materials found didn't support that. and so what it ends up being is really an organizational history of the army from 1904 to 1944 through the lens of general

mcnair's career and that flavor. the book is a result of nature of the records i found, which are almost exclusively professional in nature, that very little kind of personal that i only found one letter he exchanged with the son, doug. and that letter had a short, warm ish introduction, and then it was a two page exposition on. the complex math for a field artillery problem that doug's working on at west point, and how can, you know, solve this problem? so he's coaching his son on mathematics, but not a super close, warm of interaction at all. but they a little bit maybe give you a little feel for who general mcnair was with his family to one of the letters i found that is pertinent to this is from major general andrew bruce, who doug mcnair, his boss, the commander of the 77th division. and so he's writing a consolation letter, condolence letter to to claire in the

aftermath of both their deaths and he he related the story of how he was the one who broke the news to douglas about what happened to his father. and one of the things that bruce commented on was just how deeply douglas loved his father and how he, as doug was his boss, picked up on that. and of course, bruce knew general mcnair fairly well. and all that. so you had a sense of here was a a very tight relationship in its own way through the professional ism, of course, too, but also as father to son and at that, that sort of brought him to life for me, a little bit as well for sure. and absolutely he loved his wife, claire. i mean, they were an absolute perfect. his daughter gentleman. going to take the last question. i know mark's answer, but i honestly don't. john's john, could you answer and then mark, follow up. what's next?

what are you working on right. speaking of generals and trying to get to know them and doing biographies. i'm doing a biography of general matthew ridgway and who i think outside of eisenhower, marshall, maybe macarthur is easily the most important american general. the 20th century on many levels, not just because he's an airborne pioneer, but because of all these other posts he's had in a very long career and is and i mean, i hate to even tell you this after the experience you just been through but the ridgway papers to about 134 boxes with all this and whatnot and that's just of that's just his personal stuff know much less what's in other people's collection. so that's what's on the horizon for me and i'll back up one. i love this photograph. so we already talked about gentlemen, there is class ring found after his the picture to the left. that's general william simpson.

so this is mcnair doing an inspection and general simpson is commander of the 12th corps. is that the tennessee maneuvers before simpson is elevated to the army command and this inspection is what resulted in mcnair deciding to recommend general simpson for field army command. simpson is given command of an army in the states deploys forward and is renamed ninth army when he gets to europe. so current project the first book that will come out is an operational history of the ninth u.s. army, which i think is just sorely lacking. it's been a long, long overdue. many of you might not know a whole lot about ninth army. part of the reason i think that's true for most people is the ninth army was part of the 21st army group working for general montgomery for most of the time that they were in northwest europe. and then at some point down the road, it also like to write an actual traditional of general simpson, because i plenty of personal papers and early career background and things to make that

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