General Lesley J. McNair: Little-Known Architect of the U.S. Army

Abstract

General Lesley J. McNair demonstrated an innovative spirit and exceptional intellectual capacity in his efforts to organize and train the U.S. Army for World War II. The influence he exerted on Army doctrine, training, equipment development, unit organization, and combined arms fighting methods placed him among the handful of generals most responsible for both the effectiveness and the flaws of the force that the United States sent to war in 1942. Through his strong views and aggressive leadership, McNair played a key role in guiding the Army's interwar mechanization and doctrinal development efforts. Many studies of this period have described aspects of his participation in that process. However, no comprehensive study of McNair's forty-year military career exists, largely because he did not survive the war, and he left behind no personal memoirs or diaries when he died of wounds inflicted by errant American bombs in Normandy on July 25, 1944. This study examines General McNair's full career - from his graduation from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1904, through his death in Normandy forty years later. The analysis demonstrates how McNair's ideas developed over four decades of service, culminating in their practical application during the pre-war mobilization period and his influence on U.S. Army effectiveness in World War II. Several themes recur throughout the period of McNair's service as the General Headquarters' (GHQ) chief of staff from 1940-42, and the commander of Army Ground Forces (AGF) from 1942-44. He placed significant emphasis on the value of officer education and held strong convictions regarding the qualities required in a competent commander and soldier, leading him to advocate tough, realistic training. He embraced military innovation and technological development and remained personally involved in tests and experiments throughout his career to modernize the Army. He strove to gain efficiencies in unit organization by streamlining and standardizing units and training, while advocating pooling of specialized equipment and units at corps level and above, thereby optimizing organizations for task organization. This study demonstrates that one can discern the conceptual roots of all these overarching ideas in McNair's actions and experiences during the several decades of his lesser-known early career. This reevaluation of the career of General McNair also provides a lens through which to reconsider the question of U.S. Army effectiveness during World War II. While the "materiel superiority" narrative still dominates historical interpretations of America's contribution to the war effort, several recent studies have begun to create a competing narrative that depicts a U.S. Army overcoming severe mobilization obstacles to develop into an excellent Army on par with all of the other major combatants during the war. The analysis offered in this study supports this emerging reinterpretation of America's war effort by reevaluating the career of one of the U.S. Army's most important but least understood architects - General Lesley J. McNair.