What Marshall Really Thought of Eisenhower in 1942
High Command: WW2
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Get both copies of German Command Ebooks here:
https://highcommandww2.com/
Marshall didn't pick Eisenhower because he saw a battlefield genius. He picked him because he could write, negotiate, and survive a coalition without blowing it up.
Eisenhower reached Washington in December 1941 with no combat command on his record—twenty-six years of staff schools, assistant posts, and planning jobs, including four years under MacArthur in the Philippines. Marshall pulled him in to handle the Pacific desk, then gave him War Plans, then sent him to London in May 1942 to sell a cross-Channel invasion the British didn't want. When that plan died and North Africa replaced it, Eisenhower took the command anyway and ran an operation he thought was strategically wrong, on a three-week delay for a written directive, betting everything on French cooperation. The job specification Marshall wrote for that crisis—clear planning, steady temperament, coalition management—became the Army's permanent ladder, which meant the best staff officer available often outranked the best fighting general, and the promotion system never corrected for it.
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What Marshall Really Thought of Eisenhower in 1942
High Command: WW2
10,756 views
Get both copies of German Command Ebooks here:
https://highcommandww2.com/
Marshall didn't pick Eisenhower because he saw a battlefield genius. He picked him because he could write, negotiate, and survive a coalition without blowing it up.
Eisenhower reached Washington in December 1941 with no combat command on his record—twenty-six years of staff schools, assistant posts, and planning jobs, including four years under MacArthur in the Philippines. Marshall pulled him in to handle the Pacific desk, then gave him War Plans, then sent him to London in May 1942 to sell a cross-Channel invasion the British didn't want. When that plan died and North Africa replaced it, Eisenhower took the command anyway and ran an operation he thought was strategically wrong, on a three-week delay for a written directive, betting everything on French cooperation. The job specification Marshall wrote for that crisis—clear planning, steady temperament, coalition management—became the Army's permanent ladder, which meant the best staff officer available often outranked the best fighting general, and the promotion system never corrected for it.