"Complete aside, but is it true that George Marshall was given the special title 'General of the Army' because otherwise he would have been called Marshal Marshall?"
-- Figserello
"I always heard that that was true - that he basically begged Roosevelt not to make him 'Field Marshal Marshall'. I'm open to correction, of course."
-- the Baron
You guys knew that I couldn’t address those questions without giving you chapter and verse, right? Well, sit back and get comfortable, because you’re about to learn more about five-star generals in the U.S. Army than you probably ever wanted to know. The upside is---when I’m done, you’ll know more about them than a large majority of U.S. military personnel do.
Before I talk about five-star ranks overall (I was about to say “in general”, then realised that would either be confusing, or you would think I was going for a pun), let me expound on the history of officers wearing stars in the U.S. military.
By the way, under the Department of Military Nomenclature, the term “general officer” refers to any officer in the Army, Air Force, or Marine Corps who wears a star---brigadier general, major general, lieutenant general, or general. The term “flag officer” refers to any officer in the Navy or Coast Guard who wears a star---rear admiral, vice admiral, or admiral. Collectively, they are referred to as “GO/FO’s”, for “general officers/flag officers”.
Now, early in our nation’s history, Congress was reluctant to appoint too many GO/FO’s, out of fear of creating a de facto aristocracy, as was the case in England. Certainly, the Continental Army needed to have some generals, so the Continental Congress appointed some, but even the commander-in-chief, George Washington, was appointed as only a lieutenant general (three stars). It took even longer for the Navy; no flag officers were established until 1862.
The military exigencies of the Civil War expanded the number of general officers in the Army. The Navy argued that it had to have parity in rank with its Army brethren, so now we had rear admirals, too. But Army-wise, lieutenant general was still as high as one could go. There were no four-star general officers during the Civil War.
In the immediate post-bellum period, however, Congress decided to recognise General Ulysses Grant by conferring upon him the rank of “General of the Army of the United States”, and Grant signified this by wearing a four-star insignia. After Grant was elected President, he was succeeded as General of the Army of the United States by William Sherman, who opted to wear an insignia bearing two stars bisected by the coat of arms of the United States. In 1888, Civil War general Phillip Sheridan was in ill health and near death; thus, Congress passed a special act also making him General of the Army of the United States. But Sheridan didn’t live long enough to wear any special insignia.
That opened the door to the military services having a four-star rank, and Congress was sparing in its promotion of men to this rank. Then, in 1919, in recognition of his distinguished performance in World War I, Congress passed a special act promoting General John J. Pershing to the rank of "General of the Armies [note the plural] of the United States", thus making him the highest ranking officer in the history of the U.S. Army. Pershing was permitted to design his own rank insignia, and he chose to wear four stars, only gold in colour, as opposed to the standard silver.
Now, we get to World War II. Pershing had retired from active duty and in the active military forces, the rank structure for GO/FO’s was exactly what it is now, with no officer wearing more than four silver stars.
Here, let’s go into the history of the five-star rank in the U.S. military. It is important to understand that the existence of the five-star rank is shrouded in political motivations Only nine men in the U.S. military were ever authorised to wear the five-star rank and the last of these, Omar Bradley, was appointed to that rank in 1950. There has not been an officer holding the five-star rank in any branch of the U.S. military in thirty years.
As I mentioned, the origination of the five-star rank in the U.S. military had nothing to do with superior performance. It was a political convenience.
During World War II, the United States was placed at the head of Allied operations against the Nazis and the Japanese and, specifically, this was vested in the person of General Dwight Eisenhower, named as the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe. While relations between the top echelons of the U.S. and British militaries were generally excellent, having the United States as the overall commander created a circumstance that rankled both sides, for essentially the same reason---or from the same cause, anyway.
In 1942, the chiefs of staff of the American military services and their British counterparts formed the Combined Chiefs of Staff.* And this is where the rankling occurred. While the top guys in the American Army and Navy wore four stars, their British counterparts wore five, since the military of Great Britain did have a five-star rank. You had the curious inversion of the United States military being in charge of the war, yet all of Britain’s top commanders outranked America’s.
It may not sound like a big deal to you, but we’re talking about GO/FO’s, and in most cases, that meant huge egos. But it wasn’t entirely that petty. By dint of his training and cultural inculcation, any military officer’s first instinct is to defer to a higher ranking officer, and it was difficult for America’s GO/FO’s to act from a superior positional authority when they were junior in rank. In other words, it wasn’t all ego; there were some legitimate strategic concerns, as well.
To address this, President Roosevelt, in early 1944, proposed to ask Congress to create two new ranks---certain top military commanders would be promoted to a five-star rank (General of the Army/Fleet Admiral) and the top man in each service would be promoted to a six-star rank (General of the Armies/Admiral of the Navy). (And, yes, I’ll be getting to General George Marshall and the term “Field Marshal” presently; just hang on.)
FDR had instituted his plan for the new ranks without consulting his Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. When Stimson found out about it, he approached the President strongly arguing against it. Especially against the six-star rank. Stimson argued that establishing a six-star rank would make America look silly and insult our British allies, since it would be obvious that the six-star rank was being created simply to have our guys outrank theirs.
Roosevelt agreed to drop the idea of a six-star rank, but he stuck to his guns in establishing the five-star rank, insisting that American commanders should have parity with their British opposite numbers. Even so, Congress dragged its heels on the matter for most of 1944. Then, in September of that year, British general, Sir Bernard Montgomery, was promoted to field marshal. Since Montgomery was the number two man on General Eisenhower’s staff, you had the situation of Montgomery taking orders from a lower-ranking officer. This being a case involving officers well known and popular with the public, Congress finally acted and granted the authorisation for five-star officers.
In December, 1944, eight men---four from the Navy and four from the Army---were promoted to five-star rank: Fleet Admirals King, Leahy, Nimitz, and Halsey; and Generals of the Army Marshall, Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Arnold. ("Hap" Arnold was chosen as he was the top commander in the U.S. Army Air Forces; four years later, when the Air Force became a separate service, the title of Arnold’s rank was changed to “General of the Air Force”.)
Only once post-World War II was a man in the U.S. military promoted to five-star rank, and that was for a political purpose, too. In 1949, General Omar Bradley was appointed as chairman of the newly formed Joint Chiefs of Staff (established by the National Security Act of 1947, which also established the Air Force as a separate service from the Army). This created another rank-inversion problem. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Bradley was, positionally, the most senior officer of all of the U.S. armed forces. However, General of the Army MacArthur was still actively serving, in Korea; technically, he was subordinate to Bradley, but outranked him.
To handle that problem, Congress appointed Bradley to five-star rank in 1950. Bradley was the last military officer to be promoted to five stars.
Now, for a few last details about the five-star rank, which have a bearing on George Marshall. When Congress established the five-star rank, it provided that officers attaining the five-star rank would be on considered on active-duty, with all of the commensurate pay, privileges, and fringe benefits, for life. Now, certainly, a five-star officer could retire in the sense that he wasn’t going to work for the military anymore, but technically, he was listed as active duty until he died.
When the last surviving holder of the five-star rank, Omar Bradley, died in 1981, there were no more five-star officers in the United States military. However, the rank is still listed in U.S. military rank and pay structures.
Finally, we get to the matter of General George C. Marshall, the Army’s Chief of Staff during World War II. I, too, had always heard the story that the reason America didn’t title the rank of its five-star Army officers as “field marshal” was to avoid the unfortunate consequence of having to address Marshall as “Field Marshal Marshall”. But in order to address the Baron and Figserello’s comments about it, I wanted to research the facts.
On line, I was able to find nothing which absolutely supports or decries the notion of wanting to avoid “Field Marshal Marshall”. I’ve seen it phrased in slightly different tones---that Marshall refused to permit it; that FDR and/or Secretary Stimson realised it would sound undignified. One source stated that Marshall had no influence on the title given to the Army’s five-star rank, that sometime post-WW II he had joked that he was glad that Congress had not used the title of “field marshal” since that would have made him “Field Marshal Marshall”.
Given how events get warped in the retellings, I can easily envision a situation where Marshall’s joke would get perverted through constant “I heard that . . . “ retellings into “Marshall refused to permit it” or “Marshall begged FDR not to let it happen.”
I also found another bit of information to consider. The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission has extensive information on Ike and it covers his advancement to five-star rank with specific detail. By way of background, the Commission discusses FDR’s initial proposal of the five-star rank and it makes mention of General Marshall’s reaction to it.
Marshall opposed FDR’s idea of establishing five-star ranks, for three reasons. First, he didn’t think he or his fellow military commanders needed the increased rank to deal with their British counterparts. Second, he felt that such honours should be reserved for after their successful completion of the war, just as they had been in the cases of Grant and Sherman and Sheridan. Last, there was the matter of General of the Armies Pershing, who was old and infirm and four years from death. Marshall was afraid the elevated rank would diminish Pershing’s achievements. (The matter of Pershing was handled when FDR agreed to forgo the six-star “General of the Armies” rank; thus, Pershing remained the only Army officer to hold the title of “General of the Armies”.)**
According to the Ike Memorial Commission’s information, a Washington, D.C. columnist, reporting on Marshall’s objections, humorously suggested that Marshall’s real reason for opposing the five-star promotion was because it meant he would called “Field Marshal Marshall”. This, too, could be a source of the popular notion.
I’m not settled on the matter, though. In the Wikipedia entry on General Marshall, the “Field Marshal Marshall” account has four books cited as sources. Without being able to reference those books and determine the accuracy of their information, I really can’t say.
One last thing, with regard to Marshall. As I mentioned, U.S. military officers of the five-star rank were listed as being on active-duty for life. At the time President Truman wanted to appoint Marshall as his Secretary of State, Marshall had retired from Army service, but since he was still technically on active duty, Congress had to pass a special act to exempt him from the federal law barring active-duty military members from serving on the Cabinet.***
Other than that, I don't know too much about it.
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* Again under the Department of Military Nomenclature, the term “joint” refers to operations in which two or more branches of the U.S. armed forces take a part, as in “Joint Chiefs of Staff”. The term “combined” refers to operations in which the U.S. works with one or more other nation’s military, as in “Combined Chiefs of Staff”. Impress your friends!
** Pershing remained the only General of the Armies in U.S. Army history until 1976, when Congress, in recognition of George Washington’s contributions to the nation, passed Public Law 94-479, promoting him to “General of the Armies of the United States” and stipulating that Washington would always be the most senior U.S. military officer, forever outranking all other military officers.
*** It is also illegal under federal law for any active-duty military officer to hold an elected office. In order to adhere to the law, General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower resigned his commission in order to run for the Presidency. Resignation is the only exception to the active-duty-for-life provision of the five-star rank.
After Ike completed his eight years as President, his successor, President Kennedy, signed Public Law 87-3 in 1961; this restored Ike’s commission as a General of the Army, backdated to 1944.
Replies
Indeed, thank you very much, sir.
Most informative and entertaining, Commander!
Now I know why it was such a joke when in sitcoms, cartoons and movies when someone impersonated a five-star general. Any officier would know exactly who such a man was!
Glad to hear about the rank restored to both Washington (who, alas, would never enjoy it) and Eisenhower (JFK liked Ike, too).
Was Grant's rank restored after his Presidency? Just wondering?
No, Ulysses Grant's rank as General of the Army of the United States was not restored after the conclusion of his Presidency.
There really wasn't a snowball's chance in Hell of it.
Eisenhower presided over America during a period of economic prosperity and his two terms in office were viewed as being largely successful. He left the Oval Office still popular and admired.
Grant would have killed for that. His two terms, particularly his second, were riddled with scandal. At least eleven instances of corruption and misuse of power by significant figures in his administration were exposed. While viewed as an honest man personally, Grant was considered careless and incompetent in his oversight of the officials serving on his Cabinet and in the Executive Branch. He was taken to task for his appointment of cronies and family members to key government positions.
Even worse for Grant's standing as President was "the Panic of 1873", a world-wide economic depression that began when various stock markets in Europe failed and, domino-like, caused the New York stock market to suffer a major drop in September of that year. The American economy entered a five-year period of depression, marked by a twenty-five per cent drop in daily wages, an unemployment rate of fourteen per cent, and the collapse of thousands of businesses.
Grant left the White House in March of 1877 under a cloud of derision and blame. His status as the great Civil War hero was severely tarnished. For Congress to restore his military rank would not have been viewed positively by the public, nor would it have been politically sagacious.
Interesting. Eisenhower and MacArthur enjoyed the same rank during WWII. Given the animosity between the two that followed during Eisenhower's presidency, if the two had come to blows during WWII, who would have the final say in a crisis situation (Barring FDR or Truman)?
John DeRubbo said:
Practically speaking, any conflict between two such heavy-hitters would have been resolved by the President, but technically, the military provides for that. Officers of the same rank aren't "equal". Among officers of the same rank, seniority is established by the relative dates the officers achieved their rank. The officer with the oldest date of rank (i.e., was promoted to that rank first) is the senior officer.
When the United States military established the five-star rank and appointed the first seven men to that rank, it didn't promote them all on the same date for that very reason. There was the intention to create a level of seniority within the five-star stratum. (There was also a desire to maintain parity between the Army and the Navy, so the promotions were made in order to distribute the seniority between the two services as equal as possible; but that doesn't pertain to your question.)
Between the two men, MacArthur and Eisenhower, MacArthur was promoted to general-of-the-army on 18 December 1944; Ike got his fifth star two days later, on 20 December. That made MacArthur the senior of the two generals-of-the-army. But, if there was a conflict and Ike wanted to take the problem "upstairs", the next stop would have been the Army Chief of Staff, George Marshall, who outranked both of them---having gotten his fifth star on 16 December 1944.