The Marines' Fight for Survival: War, Politics, and Institutional Crisis, 1945-1952

The compelling history of how the US Marines and their allies fought to preserve the Corps and establish its role in national defense.

Only five years after Marines raised the American flag on Iwo Jima, the United States Marine Corps was close to becoming a hollow force. A parsimonious Truman administration and a hostile defense secretary, Louis Johnson, had reduced the Corps to a handful of understrength infantry battalions, assorted supporting artillery and tank units, and twelve aircraft ...