In Every Citizen a Soldier: The Campaign for Universal Military Training after World War II, William A. Taylor illustrates how army leaders failed to adapt their strategy to the political realities of the day and underscores the delicate balance in American democracy between civilian and military control of strategy. This story is vital because of the ultimate outcome of the failure of the UMT initiative: the birth of the Cold War draft.
In Every Citizen a Soldier: The Campaign for Universal Military Training after World War II, William A. Taylor illustrates how army leaders failed to adapt their strategy to the political realities of the day and underscores the delicate balance in American democracy between civilian and military control of strategy. This story is vital because of the ultimate outcome of the failure of the UMT initiative: the birth of the Cold War draft.
Every Citizen a Soldier: The Campaign for Universal Military Training after World War II
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Overview
In Every Citizen a Soldier: The Campaign for Universal Military Training after World War II, William A. Taylor illustrates how army leaders failed to adapt their strategy to the political realities of the day and underscores the delicate balance in American democracy between civilian and military control of strategy. This story is vital because of the ultimate outcome of the failure of the UMT initiative: the birth of the Cold War draft.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781623491697 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Texas A&M University Press |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2014 |
| Series: | Williams-Ford Texas A&M University Military History Series , #146 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Every Citizen A Soldier
The Campaign for Universal Military Training After World War II
By William A. Taylor
Texas A&M University Press
Copyright © 2014 William A. TaylorAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62349-169-7
CHAPTER 1
A Grave Decision
This nation faces a grave decision—whether or not to continue in peacetime the drafting of its young men for military training. The proposal concerns not only every boy and parent, but every citizen of this country. It involves our national postwar security and the world's postwar peace.
Bills proposing universal training are before Congress now. Behind them are leading military and naval authorities. More than two thirds of the GIs, voting in secret polls, approve the idea. All polls show the general public approves it. But some important educational and religious bodies oppose it or at least favor postponing the decision until after the war. The Army and Navy want action now—while the people are alert to our defense needs and before we backslide into postwar apathy.
—Washington Post
The "grave decision" was determining the best method of securing America's national security immediately following World War II. One plan to do that was to make every eighteen-year-old male in America undergo one year of mandatory military training. The army called this plan universal military training, or UMT. Beginning in 1943, US Army leaders such as John M. Palmer, Walter L. Weible, George C. Marshall, and John J. McCloy mounted a sustained and vigorous campaign to establish a system of universal military training in America. Fearful of repeating the rapid demobilization and severe budget cuts that had accompanied peace following World War I, these army leaders saw UMT as the basis for their postwar plans. As a result, they marketed UMT extensively and aggressively. The core justification for UMT was its strategic rationale based on improving mobilization through the creation of a General Reserve. However, boosters of UMT found that their attempts to overcome the objections voiced by many educators, labor leaders, and clergy often had unintended consequences.
In 1945, the campaign became politicized as President Truman championed UMT for reasons that differed from the purely strategic concept that army leaders had created. President Truman portrayed UMT as improving national health, combating illiteracy, and inculcating citizenship. Army leaders focused their attention on establishing the UMT Experimental Unit at Fort Knox, Kentucky, to fine-tune implementation and to demonstrate the program's utility to the nation. President Truman established a President's Advisory Commission on Universal Training composed of well-known civilians who unanimously advocated UMT. Focus then shifted to the potential impact UMT would have on American society. One specific example was concern over the program's impact on race relations. Since army leaders proposed locating the majority of the training camps in the South, critics questioned whether UMT would promote segregation in a new and unprecedented way.
In 1948, the campaign for UMT climaxed as supporters attempted to seize on heightened international tensions as a rationale to pass UMT legislation without delay. Such appeals cut two ways. In the end, advocates had to admit that their primary goal contributed little to immediate national security. A weary but alarmed Congress approved selective service instead of UMT as the short-term answer for the army's manpower dilemma. This paradox resulted in the begrudging acceptance of selective service by advocates of UMT because it was the more efficient although less democratic option available.
Senior army planners envisioned UMT as the cornerstone of their postwar defense establishment. Because of its importance to their postwar vision, they actively sought its enactment. Two presidents, first Roosevelt and then Truman, approved of the concept and sought to influence its passage in Congress. Opinion polls consistently revealed that a majority of Americans favored the general idea. In spite of all of this, the plan did not come to fruition. For more than five crucial years, 1943–48, an intense public debate raged as various individuals and groups sought to influence the ultimate formation of the postwar defense establishment. To varying degrees, religious groups, labor organizations, and education leaders fought against the plan. Military authorities and veterans' organizations supported the proposal. What follows is the story of the military policy underlying the plan's initial formation, the supporters of the plan and their vision of the postwar environment, the marketing of the plan, the details of the plan, and the opposition to the plan. In addition, this book explores the acceptance of the plan by the Truman administration and the metamorphosis that ensued, the debate over the social impact of UMT that followed the politicization of UMT, especially regarding segregation, and the final push for UMT amidst international crisis using all the combined resources of the army and the presidency that failed in 1948. UMT's failure resulted in a paradox that vaultedselective service above UMT because of its value as a short-term fix to the nation's preparedness concerns.
As soon as World War II began, American military leaders began to plan for two related yet distinct missions. Most turned their attention to overcoming the daunting challenges that confronted American military forces on battlefields around the globe. Some, however, began to craft the American military establishment that would exist after the smoke of battle had dissipated. As the war raged on and Allied victory slowly became a distinct probability, additional leaders deliberated on the significant issues facing the American military machine as it transitioned from total war to an uncertain and tense peace.
One of the most immediate challenges for military planners was the issue of demobilization. The American public was clamoring for the speedy return of soldiers. In addition to that immediate challenge, finding the appropriate military manpower policy for postwar America became a crucial task. Military planners increasingly discussed the concept of UMT as the centerpiece for the postwar military manpower policy. Military thinkers crafted detailed plans for the training. Army leaders implemented a pilot program at Fort Knox, Kentucky, to test the concept. Starting in 1943 and continuing for more than five years, a contentious public debate raged over the plan and its potential impact on America. Even though there were high levels of support for the plan, it polarized American society in many unexpected ways. Finally, in 1948 Congress effectively killed the plan by burying it in the legislative process and instead chose to fill its military manpower needs through a peacetime selective service system.
The strategic origins of the plan for universal military training, the debate surrounding it, the metamorphosis the plan underwent, why it ultimately failed, and the impact of that failure on the postwar national security establishment are an integral and important part of US military history in the post–World War II period. From 1943 to 1948, supporters, detractors, and undecided observers of the UMT proposal not only debated it as a significant policy change, but also examined it as a major social issue with far-reaching implications for America. Military planners during the war envisioned universal military training as the primary means to transition from the wartime footing of World War II to the postwar security environment. The early but still palpable rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, along with the uncertainty created by huge advances in military capability such as long-range strategic bombing and the atomic bomb, characterized that security environment. The congressional defeat of the UMT proposal and the immediate aftermath of the legislative debacle in 1948 hold important implications for the history of postwar America.
UMT was a military policy that developed within the context of advancing military technology, the rise of strategic bombing, the destruction of a total war, the advent of the atomic age, and the introduction of the early Cold War. Within that context, US military planners contemplated heightened postwar military manpower requirements. This was a product not only of rapidly advancing military technology, but also of the changed postwar international political landscape. The United States was not completely at peace following World War II but rather was in a new and uncertain position of world leadership and an uneasy state of tension with the Soviet Union. Augmenting such an increased conventional threat was realization on the part of military planners that the advent of long-range strategic bombing and the atomic bomb significantly shortened parameters for mobilization planning. Prior to this development, American military planners felt confident that they could maintain a small professional army. If war erupted, the professional army could conduct a holding action while the military mobilized a much larger citizen army in six-, twelve-, eighteen-, and twenty-four-month increments. However, if an enemy possessed the striking power necessary to unleash a quick and devastating attack on the United States and intended to use such power, mobilization over such a long period became problematic in the minds of military planners. Many leading military thinkers argued that UMT was the best way to resolve the dilemma because it would create a pool of trained manpower prior to the outbreak of hostilities. Once fighting erupted, military leaders could call upon this General Reserve to go through a much-shortened refresher training phase before deployment, as these troops had already completed a year of military training. In this regard, UMT was one option envisioned to address the strategic realities of the postwar era.
Once military thinkers created, proposed, and marketed the policy, a coalition of supporters—including military leaders, veterans, the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the executive branch—pushed vigorously for some form of the plan. A coalition of opposition formed that included pacifists, religious leaders, academia, and organized labor. According to numerous public opinion polls, the majority of Americans consistently supported the concept of UMT throughout the debate, even if they disagreed over the best method of implementing it. Even so, UMT suffered defeat. This book will explore why.
In many ways, the origins of UMT as a military policy and the struggle over it that ensued reveal a great deal about the military in American democracy. National security can trump individual liberty in a democracy for a limited time, but only when leaders clearly articulate a direct and immediate threat. However, there is danger in such an approach. The story of UMT reveals a paradox. As proponents of the plan, both in the army and in the Truman administration, argued that the heightened tensions of international crisis in the spring of 1948 evidenced the need for UMT, they quickly became captive to their own rhetoric. Opponents countered that if the world was as immediately dangerous as they said, they could not afford the delay required to implement their preferred long-term solution of UMT. Instead, supporters of UMT had to concede that selective service was more useful in the existing crisis, and thus selective service vaulted over UMT as the more immediately productive option. In the end, the long-term military utility of UMT could not address the short-term crisis that erupted in the spring of 1948.
The story of UMT reveals that in American democracy, military training is secondary to the broader societal goals of economic development and educational achievement. Supporters and even some opponents of UMT ultimately saw military training as somewhat beneficial, but the consensus failed to support it at the perceived expense of these broader societal goals. Finally, the defeat of UMT suggests that military training is not considered a prerequisite for citizenship in American democracy. UMT had its highest chance of success when the debate centered on military utility. When discussions shifted to the broader benefits of military training to citizenship, the push for UMT lost momentum and eventually faltered. In the end, citizenship and military training existed as separate entities during this time in American history.
No other published book-length history has focused exclusively on UMT. The present book contributes to the existing literature in several unique ways. First, it highlights the broad support that the UMT proposal held all the way through 1948. A general consensus existed as to the value of UMT as an idea. It was not a long shot, as some portray it, but rather a seriously contemplated military policy that garnered widespread support throughout the military, the government, and American society in general. It was disagreement on the details of implementing any particular plan that fractured the accord.
Second, in this book I show that UMT was a significant change to American military thinking. UMT envisioned completely overturning traditional American military manpower policy and longstanding mobilization practices. The plan came close to doing just that.
Third, this book challenges the notion that UMT was an aberration. The reason that UMT appeared in the immediate postwar era was no accident. The dual context of military changes, such as the rise of longrange strategic bombing and the advent of atomic weapons, and political changes, such as the uncertainty of the postwar era and the ascendance of the United States to a position of world leadership, not only produced an environment that made the UMT proposal attractive, but also made it relevant to US military planners at the time. In this book, I examine in detail the origins of the UMT proposal as a military policy based on improving mobilization through the creation of a General Reserve. Of course, as debate ensued over the desirability of UMT, both advocates and opponents introduced a wide array of social, moral, legal, economic, and constitutional arguments either for or against it. This book explores those arguments but does not lose sight of the fact that UMT was at its origins a military policy even when it was being marketed as something else.
Fourth, this volume challenges the notion that UMT was simply a pet project of President Truman. It explores earlier support for the proposal among army leaders such as John M. Palmer and George C. Marshall, whose plans for UMT garnered wider and earlier support than did President Truman's. Most important, unlike previous works that deal with UMT tangentially, this book tells the complete story, which includes the details of the plan, the struggle over it, the political transformation of the plan, and its ultimate failure.
In this book, I broaden the analysis of UMT by examining the public debate over it that occurred in American society over the course of several years. I have researched government sources in depth, but I have also analyzed the significant amount of primary sources that depicted UMT as a broader social issue at that time. These primary sources included the records of various special interest groups, books, journals, magazines, and newspapers. Only by examining the government records in more depth in order to outline the specifics of the plan and the campaign for it and by examining the nongovernmental records in detail in order to summarize the public debate that swirled around UMT in American society can one hope to tell the complete story. This book is unique in that it does just that. In broader terms, such an exploration also illuminates the relationship of the military to American society during the mid-1940s.
I have three specific goals for this book. First, I examine the actual details of the plan for UMT. The core concept for UMT revolved around a strategic shift in American mobilization planning for a future war. In this volume, I consider the key mobilization calculations that in many ways gave birth to the UMT proposal. Specific military records at the National Archives outline relevant mobilization time frames and the total number of men available both with UMT implemented and without UMT implemented. I explore details such as who would be required to participate and who would be exempted. I analyze how many men would be trained, as well as where they would be trained. More important, I describe what training the men would actually receive under the UMT plan. The military records at the National Archives hold substantial details outlining the specifics of the training on a week-by-week basis. In addition, the army actually established an experimental UMT program at Fort Knox, Kentucky. The army collectively labeled this battalion of its youngest recruits the "beardless wonders" or the "one-shave-a-month boys." In this book, I inspect the experimental Fort Knox training program in order to ascertain its role in the broader campaign for UMT.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Every Citizen A Soldier by William A. Taylor. Copyright © 2014 William A. Taylor. Excerpted by permission of Texas A&M University Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations,Preface,
Acknowledgments,
1. A Grave Decision,
2. The Spirit of 1920,
3. The Basis for All Plans,
4. Target No. 1: USA,
5. Preaching the Gospel,
6. A Pig in a Poke,
7. A Matter of Broad Policy,
8. The Fort Knox Experiment,
9. A Program for National Security,
10. The Normal Way of Life,
11. A Shock throughout the Civilized World,
12. The Paradox of Preparedness,
Appendix A. Key Personalities,
Appendix B. Timeline,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,
About the Author,