The American Who Turned Down the Rank of Field Marshal

Get both copies of German Command Ebooks here: https://highcommandww2.com/ George Marshall became Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army the day Germany invaded Poland, turning a 174,000-man constabulary into an eight-million-man force that fought on two continents. Congress created the five-star rank for him in December 1944, but Marshall never campaigned for it and reportedly did not want it. The widely repeated story that he refused it because "Field Marshal Marshall" sounded ridiculous does not appear in the documentary record. The actual reasons were harder: he had served five years as aide to John Pershing, the only living officer to hold an equivalent rank, and could not in good conscience be raised above him. He had also spent his career dismantling seniority-based promotion and saw the contradiction in accepting a brand-new grade voted by Congress for four men. Most importantly, he had already refused to lobby for the one thing he wanted most—command of Operation Overlord. When Roosevelt asked him directly in December 1943 whether he wanted the job, Marshall would not answer, and the command went to Eisenhower. Marshall spent the entire war at a desk in Washington, never leading troops in combat, but every American division that fought was commanded by an officer he selected, trained, or promoted.