By Dr. Jerry Sanson, Staff member at LMMM in Training Center Pineville
George Catlett Marshall became Chief of Staff of the United States Army at one of the critical junctures of twentieth century American history. He took the oath of office just hours after German tanks rolled across the Polish border on 1 September 1939 starting European Theater combat in World War II. Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September, and the British Commonwealth joined the war within a week. The Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland on 17 September. Germans and Soviets divided Poland by the end of the month.
The American people, dismayed during the post-World War I era by investigations of greediness by businesses while soldiers risked their lives during the war, were determined that they would not be hoodwinked into engaging in the new war, but gradually decided that the Allies should win the conflict. They were willing to provide weapons and supplies to help them win, but were not willing to send their sons, husbands, brothers, friends into combat until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor changed public opinion overnight in December 1941. Army planners had to tread carefully before the Pearl Harbor attack as they prepared for the contingency of American involvement in the war.
Those officers began formulating plans for possible American involvement in the conflict even though public opinion and official policy established by the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s promoted non-involvement. General Marshall did not want American troops sent into battle with the inadequate training they received during World War I if they had to return to the battlefields of Europe. He shared a training philosophy with the man he appointed as his General Headquarters Chief of Staff, Major General Lesley McNair, who believed that “sweat shed in training was preferable to blood shed on the battlefield” in the words of historian Forrest Pogue. Marshall expressed essentially the same idea as he planned large-scale maneuvers to take place in the South: “I want the mistake in Louisiana, not over in Europe, and the only way to do this thing is to try it out, and if it doesn’t work, find what we need to make it work.”
Marshall was therefore a driving force behind the series of Louisiana Maneuvers beginning with two exercises in 1940. He visited Central Louisiana during the 1940 Spring Maneuvers to observe progress during the war games while on a five-day inspection tour to Kentucky, Texas, Oklahoma, and the Pelican State. He also visited later in the year as part of a tour that included Minnesota, Washington state, Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia. This visit included a day spent in the maneuver area of Central Louisiana watching the Fall 1940 training exercises.
The formal portrait of General Marshall displayed in the Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum commemorates his role as Army Chief of Staff and his support for the Louisiana Maneuvers even when members of Congress criticized them in his presence for costing too much money during World War II.
