About this ebook
“Pogue and Harrison show admirably how Marshall’s early life prepared him for his later responsibilities — his beginning as a second lieutenant in the Philippines, his service on Pershing’s staff in the First World War, three years in China in the Twenties, his exceptionally influential term at the Infantry Training School at Fort Benning, a period organizing CCC camps..., a time in exile when MacArthur sent him to the Illinois National Guard, thereby, as Marshall thought, ending his career, until Pershing’s insistent pressure brought him back to Washington and Harry Hopkins, impressed by his cool efficiency, urged him on Roosevelt. Education of a General is carefully researched, well composed and judiciously written. The portrait of Marshall is sympathetic but by no means worshipful.” — Arthur Schlesinger Jr., New York Review of Books
“A highly readable and thoroughly satisfactory biography that provides as full and definitive an account of the general’s career to 1939 as is likely to appear for a long time... The portrait that emerges from these pages is clearly that of an outstanding officer in both staff and command, with wide experience in a variety of posts and a record for performing the tasks assigned to him superlatively well... an outstanding work of scholarship and a definitive record of George Marshall’s early years.” — Louis Morton, The Journal of Modern History
“This [book] will be interesting to the professional historian for its insights into the early career of a great soldier, for much new material on the development of the military profession in the first half of the twentieth century, and also for its methodology... No effort was spared to make the work truly ‘definitive’... a well- written volume that is, and will likely remain, the best thing on Marshall’s formative year.” — Harry L. Coles, The Journal of American History
“Simplicity of tactics; training for the unexpected; regarding as more important knowing when to make a decision than what the decision should be — these, and the ability to command by obtaining assent rather than by exacting formal obedience, were qualities characteristic of Marshall’s own disposition. And they were tied up with the... conviction... that American Army officers must know how to command a citizen army... the present volume can help to explain why Marshall was a great war leader.” — Kent Roberts Greenfield, Political Science Quarterly
“The volume traces in a superb and detailed manner the progress of the General from childhood to the time he assumed the duties as Chief of Staff, U.S. Army in 1939... This book is a most scholarly account of the trials and tribulations of an exceptional Army officer during the period prior to 1939, and clearly demonstrates how the right man got to the right place at the right time.” — Naval War College Review
“A provocative history of the Army during the years of Marshall’s rise... Because this is a book rich in research and information it raises questions as well as answers them. It promises to be one of the few indispensable works on the modern American Army.” — Russell F. Weigley, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
“Pogue... presents logically the development of a junior officer... The annotations are bountiful and explicit, the bibliography of great value to historians, the persuasive rebuttal of widely circulated views of a decade ago most welcome. This well-organized and solidly written volume is good in itself and a welcome herald of the post-1939 volumes dealing with periods of great personal, national, and international controversy.” — Mark S. Watson, The American Historical Review
“A work very much worth attention... Mr. Pogue’s book... is a fascinating story; it gives a detailed account of the way in which this rather cold and self-contained person became a gifted leader and master of men...” — Bruce Catton, American Heritage
“This is a vastly thorough piece of research... a careful picture of the life and problems of an able American regular officer in the first third of the twentieth century.” — C. P. Stacey, International Journal
“A book which resembles its subject in simplicity, directness, and thoroughness... This is an excellent example of military-historical writing, and an important contribution to the history of our times.” — H. A. De Weerd, The Virginia Quarterly Review
About the author
Born in Eddyville, Kentucky, Forrest Carlisle Pogue Jr. (1912-1996) attended Murray State College in Oklahoma, received his master's degree from the University of Kentucky, and a doctorate from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1939. Pogue worked at Murray State, teaching history from June 1933 to May 1942, was drafted into the Army in 1942 and promoted to sergeant. After basic training, he was reassigned to a historical unit and made responsible for writing a history of the Second United States Army; in 1944 he was sent to England and to Normandy where he interviewed wounded soldiers over a period of eleven months; he was present at the Battle of the Bulge. For his work, he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal and Croix de Guerre. He was discharged in October 1945, and hired as a civilian, with the pay of a colonel.
Pogue was first assigned to write a history of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force from 1945 to 1946. In July he was assigned by Dwight D. Eisenhower to write an official history of the Supreme Command in Europe, for which he interviewed Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Charles de Gaulle, Alan Brooke and others. Pogue then spent seven years as a military historian, and two years conducting operations research at United States Army Garrison Heidelberg with the Operations Research Office at Johns Hopkins University. He contributed to The Meaning of Yalta among several other books, returning to Murray State in 1954.
In 1956, Pogue was hired by the George C. Marshall Foundation to write the official biography of George C. Marshall in four volumes on which he worked from 1963 to 1987. He became director of the Marshall Foundation in 1956, leaving in 1974 to become director of the Eisenhower Institute for Historical Research. Pogue retired in 1984. He served as a guest lecturer at George Washington University and the United States Army War College, held the Mary Moody Northen chair in Arts and Sciences at Virginia Military Institute in 1972. Pogue was on the Advisory boards for the Office of Naval History, the Naval Historical Office, the United States Army Center of Military History, the Air Force Historical Research Agency, president of the Oral History Association and the American Military Institute and other organizations. The Pogue Library at Murray State is named after him.
Born and raised in Missouri, Omar N. Bradley (1893-1981) worked as a boilermaker before entering the US Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 1915 alongside Dwight D. Eisenhower. During World War I, Bradley guarded copper mines in Montana. After the war, Bradley taught at West Point and served in other roles before taking a position at the War Department under General George Marshall who noticed him. In 1941, Bradley became commander of the US Army Infantry School.
After the US entered World War II, Bradley oversaw the transformation of the 82nd Infantry Division into the first American airborne division. He received his first front-line command in Operation Torch in North Africa, serving under General George S. Patton. After Patton was reassigned, Bradley commanded II Corps in the Tunisia Campaign and the Allied invasion of Sicily. He commanded the First US Army during the Invasion of Normandy, which landed at Utah and Omaha beaches. After the breakout from Normandy, he took command of the Twelfth US Army Group, which ultimately comprised 43 divisions and 1.3 million men, the largest body of American soldiers ever to serve under a single field commander: Bradley, the senior commander of American ground forces, linked up with Marshal Koniev of the Soviet Union on the banks of the Elbe River on April 25, 1945, sealing the defeat of Nazi forces. He was known as the “G.I.’s General” because of his concern for the ordinary soldier.
After the war, Bradley headed the Veterans Administration. He became Chief of Staff of the US Army in 1948 and the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1949. In 1950, Bradley was promoted to the rank of General of the Army, becoming the last of only nine people to be promoted to five-star rank in the US Armed Forces. Bradley was the senior military commander at the start of the Korean War, supported President Truman’s wartime policy of containment and was instrumental in persuading Truman to dismiss General Douglas MacArthur in 1951 after MacArthur resisted administration attempts to scale back the war’s strategic objectives.
Bradley left active duty in 1953 (though remaining on “active retirement” for the next 27 years as a five-star Army general), then continued to serve in public and business roles, including at the Bulova Watch Company, until his death.
