Monday

General George C. Marshall

To quote from the PBS Special:

As V-E Day drew to a close, Secretary of War Henry Stimson gathered a group of top generals and officials in his office and sent for Army Chief of Staff George Marshall. "I have never seen a task of such magnitude performed by a man," Stimson said to Marshall in front of everyone. "I have seen a great many soldiers in my lifetime and you, Sir, are the finest soldier I have ever known."

Such flattery usually sounds insincere or ridiculous, but not when applied to George Catlett Marshall. The only man to ever serve as both secretary of state and secretary of defense, his greatest achievement may have been devising the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt a devastated Europe after World War II.

Gen. George Marshall was the Time Man of the year in 1943 and again in 1947 for completely different jobs.

Before WWII, he was in charge of getting the US Army and Army Air Corps ready for war. From 1939-1945 he was Roosevelt's Army Chief of Staff, where he played a critical role in both the Pacific and European theaters of war, and was involved in every detail of conceiving and executing D-Day. From his Foundation's bio: "He was the most important member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and, according to Winston Churchill, the organizer of Allied victory." He retired from military service after the war to accolades like this one from British Chief of the Imperial General Staff Sir Alan Brooke quoted by his Nobel presenter: "As architect and builder of the finest and most powerful Army in American History, your name will be honoured among those of the greatest soldiers of your own or any other country."

But he was still needed and Truman immediately asked him to attempt to mediate a settlement between the Nationalists and Communists in China. In 1947 he was named Secretary of State where he devised the Marshall Plan, which he called "For The Common Defense". The plan was designed to contain Communism and rebuild our allies after the war. This policy was extremely successful in helping our friends and the disparity between the East and the West was what ultimately knocked down the Berlin Wall and led to the fall of the Soviet Union without a major war ever breaking out between the US and Russia. For this spectacular achievement, Marshall was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.

After stepping down in 1949, Marshall was soon named president of the American Red Cross. But he was still needed and Truman appointed him Secretary of Defense in 1951, three months after the outbreak of the Korean War. He held this position for a year, guiding the military in it's containment of the North Korean attack and preventing the spread of war there and around the world.

George Marshall was the ultimate soldier/statesman. Brilliant and successful at both jobs, his accomplishments saved the world... twice. Unparalleled achievements in fighting the Nazis coupled with with unparalleled achievements as an anti-Communist. With the flag-waving and soldier boosting going on now, I was curious as to why his name hadn't been invoked more often. Why isn't he held up higher than contemporaries such as Eisenhower or MacArthur?

The answer seems to be more right wing spin control. That is to say, lies.

One of America's darkest periods was the MacCarthy Era, full of false accusations thatdestroyed reputations and failed rather miserably to actually find many important Communists, and the trials of the ones they did find were witch hunts, eg the Rosenbergs. By concentrating on actors (why? oh yeah, Reagan was head of the Screen Actors Guild...) instead of people who were actually working for the Soviet Union (for example, the most important spy of all: Kim Philby), the House Unamerican Activities Committee played into Stalin's hand, showing wavering countries that the US was on a par with the Soviet Union when it came to running roughshod over the freedom of its citizens. In 1951, Sen. Joseph McCarthy attacked Marshall as the "instrument of a Soviet conspiracy" and "a conspiracy so immense and an infamy so black as to dwarf any previous venture in the history of man." From MacCarthy's June 14, 1951 speech, six years after the biggest military victory in history: "What can be made of this unbroken series of decisions and acts contributing to the strategy of defeat?" That anyone believed anything MacCarthy said is difficult to understand unless the media was dominated by conservatives even back then. That people who knew Marshall didn't rush to his aid is even harder. Eisenhower does nothing to defend his own boss, one of the most cowardly acts in US politics. Indeed, Ike campained for MacCarthy in 1952. Aware of McCarthy's huge base of support and not willing to risk losing votes in a crucial state, Eisenhower delivered his speech minus the defense of Marshall and the condemnation of McCarthy. As a newly minted Republican, he wanted to maintain his "political purity". (To be fair, the same article points out that not all the news media were quite as cowed as Ike. "But various news organizations, including the generally supportive Time magazine, criticized what they called the Eisenhower administration's 'disgraceful episodes of appeasement' of McCarthy and his anti-communist crusade.")

Substitute "George W. Bush" for "McCarthy" in this Alger Hiss comment and it could be said of today: "McCarthy had a knack for manipulating the press - but, to put it mildly, the press willingly took part in the process. They exploited the anxieties and fears of the public, by then easy prey for McCarthy's lurid hobgoblin horror tales."

Indeed, Marshall's own words on his resignation as chief of staff in 1945, after successfully beating the Axis powers could be said today. His Nobel presenter quotes from Marshall's book The Winning of the War in Europe and the Pacific:

"We must start, I think, with a correction of the tragic misunderstanding that a security policy is a war policy. War has been defined by a people who have thought a lot about it - the Germans. They have started most of the recent ones. The German soldier-philosopher Clausewitz described war as a special violent form of political action. Frederick of Prussia, who left Germany the belligerent legacy which has now destroyed her, viewed war as a device to enforce his will whether he was right or wrong. He held that with an invincible offensive military force he could win any political argument. It is the doctrine Hitler carried to the verge of complete success. This is the doctrine of Japan. It is a criminal doctrine, and like other forms of crime, it has cropped up again and again since man began to live with his neighbors in communities and nations. There has long been an effort to outlaw war for exactly the same reason that man has outlawed murder. But the law prohibiting murder does not of itself prevent murder. It must be enforced. The enforcing power, however, must be maintained on a strictly democratic basis. There must not be a large standing army subject to the behest of a group of schemers. The citizen-soldier is the guarantee against such a misuse of power."

He concludes by emphasizing:

"If this Nation is to remain great, it must bear in mind now and in the future that war is not the choice of those who wish passionately for peace. It is the choice of those who are willing to resort to violence for political advantage.

George Catlett Marshall stands tall as a leader of the Greatest Generation. His dedication and hard work led to victory in WWII and ultimately to victory over the Soviet Union. Yet he has been set aside because some of the mud from Joseph MacCarthy has stuck and the cowardly conservatives don't care about defeating America's enemies, they only care what hatemongers say. George Marshall should be honored and his words should weigh on leaders today.

from that Mad Cat, JD

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