CHAPTER I

A Difficult Birth

A School of Military Government Is Established

"The American army of occupation lacked both training and organization to guide the destinies of the nearly one million civilians whom the fortunes of war had placed under its temporary sovereignty." So stated Col. Irwin L. Hunt, Officer in Charge of Civil Affairs, Third Army, in his report on U.S. military government in Germany after World War I.1  Military government, the administration by military officers of civil government in occupied enemy territory, is a virtually inevitable concomitant of modern warfare. The US Army conducted military government in Mexico in 1847 and 1848; in the Confederate states during and after the Civil War; in the Philippines, Porto (Puerto) Rico, and Cuba after the Spanish American War; and in the German Rhineland after World War I. In each instance, neither the Army nor the 'government accepted it as a legitimate military function. Consequently, its imposition invariably came as a somewhat disquieting experience for both, and the means devised for accomplishing it ranged from inadequate to near disastrous. The Hunt Report, as it affectionately came to be known by the World War II generation of military Government officers, for the first time in the Army's experience looked on administration of occupied territory as something more than a minor incidental of war. Colonel Hunt realized that to exercise governmental authority, even over a defeated enemy, required preparation. The Army, he urged, should not again wait until the responsibility was thrust upon it but should develop competence in civil administration among its officers during peacetime.

In the aftermath of World War I, when almost nothing appeared more remote than the possibility of the Army's again occupying foreign territory, The Hunt Report nearly -- but not quite-disappeared. Because it was the only substantial document on the subject, War College committees working in civil affairs periodically brought it out of the files. But the tendency of the War College in the 1920s was to look at civil affairs and military government entirely as they related to military law, the assumption being that they were not much more than the functions of observing and enforcing law.2  A broader interpretation began to emerge only after the 1934-1935

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GENERAL GULLION

GENERAL GULLION

G-1 (personnel) committee at the War College prepared a draft military government manual, and a committee in the 1939-1940 class produced a manuscript on administration of occupied territory.3

Over the years, War College committees had also recommended several times that the Army prepare a field manual on military government. Because of the presumed close relationship between this function and military law, the job seemed to fall logically to the judge Advocate General (JAG). In October 1939, the Judge Advocate General, Maj. Gen. Allen W. Gullion, turned down one such recommendation on the ground that his office had recently published FM 27-10, The Rules of Land Warfare, which contained a substantial section on civil administration. By then, however, war had broken out in Europe, and the work of the recent War College committees had put military government in a new light. Early the next year, at the urging of G-3 (operations and training) and G-1 and with the War College materials and The Hunt Report to work from, Gullion's office began writing a manual.4  The result, published on 30 July 1940, was FM 27-5, Military Government, a statement of purposes, policies, and procedures. The two field manuals, The Rules of Lard Warfare and Military Government, would eventually be regarded as the Old and New Testaments of American military government; but in the summer of 1940 the country was not at war, and of everything it then lacked, the Army undoubtedly missed a military government manual least.

Another year passed, and the Axis Powers had occupied all of Europe except Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and Switzerland and were driving deep into the Soviet Union and across North Africa toward Egypt. In World War I, military government had not been needed until after the armistice, because the war had been fought mainly in France, and the French authorities had handled civil affairs for all the armies. World War II was clearly going to be different; governments had disappeared, gone into exile, or become collaborating puppets. Whenever the anti-Axis forces challenged the Germans on land, they would almost certainly have to deal with civilian populations from the outset. The British had already had some experience in late 1940 in the Italian African colonies, Eritrea, Cyrenaica, and Italian Somaliland.

In early 1941 the Intelligence Training

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 Centre of the British War Office inaugurated politico-military courses at St. John's College, Cambridge. Their purpose was "to train officers in postwar reconstruction and other missions incident to military operations in foreign countries." 5  Two US Army officers, Maj. Henry H. Cumming and Lt. Charles A. H. Thomson, attended the third course, which began in October 1941, and thereby became the first American officers to receive military government training. The politico-military courses dealt with history, geography, economics, and politics and aimed at giving the officer-students background knowledge rather than specific instruction in military government.

Later, it became customary-and even fashionable during the period of combined operations in Europe- -to trace the origins of Army military government training through Cumming's and Thomson's reports--submitted on their return in January 1942-to the Cambridge courses. The British program, along with deepening US involvement in the war in the late summer of 1941, did in fact probably give the first impetus to proposals for instruction in the Army; lout beyond this connection the American development was collateral, not derivative. The foundation had actually been laid earlier in FM 27-5.  Army field manuals, even those in as little demand as FM 27-5 was in 1940 and 1941, have stature, for unless superseded, declared obsolete, or rescinded they represent the Army's intent to do something in a specified way. FM 27-5, harking hack to Colonel Hunt's plea for military government training, established in paragraphs 7 and 8 requirements for timely procurement and training of military government personnel. On 5 September 1941, General Gullion, as judge Advocate General, had called these paragraphs to G-1's attention and recommended that the training be given.6

FM 27-5 had accomplished something else as well; namely, it had assigned responsibility for military government personnel, training, and planning to G-1. G-1, the personnel division of the General Staff, seemed at the time a logical choice. The work on military government in the interwar years had been done by the G-1 committees in the War College, and the primary General Staff concern with military government appeared to be the procurement of specialized personnel. On 15 September, G-1 proposed to begin training officers for assignment to task force staffs and to create a nucleus of officers for military government and reconstruction.7  G-2 (military intelligence), G-3, and the War Plans Division objected. Any possible missions seemed to them too remote and too vague to justify diverting officers who were needed to train the expanding Army. When G-1 refused to accept the nonconcurrences and the Chief of Staff referred the proposal lack for further study, G-3 conceded that the proposal was appropriate but wanted nothing more done than some planning for courses which could lie given on short notice when a need arose.8  Enthusiasm outside the JAG office and G-1 was obviously slight.

In the fall of 1941, General Gullion briefly acquired an additional assignment;

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GENERAL WICKERSHAM

GENERAL WICKERSHAM

besides being the judge Advocate General, he became Provost Marshal General (PMG), which was shortly to become his sole assignment. One of his first tasks as Provost Marshal General was to create a military police branch. The Army had never before had a military police corps. In the past, military police, like military government, had been organized in the field when needed. For the new branch, General Gullion was organizing a military police school, and on 19 November 1941, he offered to include military government instruction. G-1, strictly a staff agency, was pleased to have a place to put the training function; but G-3 objected, insisting that military government, according to FM 27-5, was so different from military police that no advantage could result from combining the two types of instruction. Maj. Gen. Myron C. Cramer, who had succeeded Gullion as judge Advocate General, agreed that, strictly speaking, military government did not belong in a school for military police but argued that strong objections could be found as well against assigning it to any other existing Army agency. Gullion, Cramer argued, was willing to do the job; moreover, as a law school graduate, former National Recovery Act administrator in Hawaii, and Judge Advocate General when FM 27-10 and FM 27-5 were written, he was as qualified to supervise the training as any officer in the Army.9  On 3 December, over the G-3 objection, Brig. Gen. Wade H. Haislip, G-1, asked the Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, to authorize military government training in a school to be operated "for other purposes" by the Provost Marshal General." 10  General Marshall concurred on 6 January 1942.11

After Pearl Harbor, as the Japanese overran the Pacific islands, military government seemed less essential than ever to the Army at large. On the other hand, the internment of enemy aliens, the declaration of martial law in Hawaii, and the projected resettlement of the west coast Japanese imposed significant civil affairs responsibilities on the Army, particularly on the Provost Marshal General's Office. In January 1942, having by then decided that military government training ought to be given separately, Gullion made Jesse I. Miller his adviser on the subject and asked him to

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determine what ends such training should serve. 12 Miller, later (November 1942 ) placed on active duty as a colonel, was working at the time without pay as an adviser on the internment of enemy aliens. He had served in World War I in the JAG branch and had practiced law in Washington, D.C., in the years between the wars.13 Nobody had given thought to the content of military government courses, and all Miller had available to him were FM 27-5 and the Cumming and Thomson reports which, originally submitted to G-2, had found their way to G-1 and finally to the PMG's office. Although Miller acquired from the Cambridge courses the concept of broad area orientation, he added the idea of a program directed at developing skills in handling practical problems of civil government. The American program, therefore, although to a lesser degree than some later thought it should have, undertook to train officers in technique and practice, as well as to give them a certain area expertise.

In early February, General Gullion was authorized to set up a separate school.14  The Cambridge courses had given military government instruction an academic aspect, and a university seemed the natural site for the Army school. Hardy C. Dillard (later a colonel), who like Miller was working at the time for the PMG as a civilian, suggested the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, little more than two hours from Washington by car or train.15 Gullion accepted Charlottesville as the site after the university offered to furnish all the necessary facilities at a rent of $75 per month. It had many advantages, he said, including economy.16 Economy was to lie a strong feature of the school. The largest item of expense, professional personnel, was $11,000 in 1942, and the total budget for 1943 was $98,680, 17  increased somewhat by expansion during the year.

An order of the Secretary of War, on 2 April 1942, established the school "to be known as the School of Military Government" at the University of Virginia, and Brig. Gen. Cornelius W. Wickersham was appointed its commandant and director.18  General Wickersham, chosen for his experience as a lawyer, had been G-2, First Army. Miller had done much of the work in organizing the school, and when he accepted a civil service appointment in May, Gullion named him associate director. Col. Frank H. Hastings, former executive officer of the Army Industrial College, became assistant commandant. By April, Wickersham had visited various universities looking for faculty and had canvassed other government departments for lecturers. He had hired three civilian experts, one each for Germany (Arnold Wolfers, Yale), Italy (Henry Powell, Johns Hopkins), and Japan

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(Hugh Borton, Harvard). Col. Cuthbert P. Stearns headed the four-officer military part of the faculty.19  All told, the staff numbered twelve officer and civilian instructors, twenty-five other civilians, and one enlisted man.20

With so modest a structure, the school could not hope to handle more than a hundred students at a time and, in fact, intended to enroll only about half that number. The courses were scheduled to run four months. Because some students were commissioned directly from civilian life, Army organization and regulations also had to be taught. The specialized instruction was given in three forms: by lectures and seminars, by the War College committee-syndicate system of working on broad problems, and by the Command and General Staff School (Leavenworth) system under which the students worked out specific assigned problems. Since many of the students were senior field-grade officers and others possessed pertinent civilian skills, the War College system in particular enabled the school to research and solve problems, as well as to instruct. The first course, with fifty officers attending, opened on 11 May 1942.

The Army Takes the Lead

The School of Military Government had been conceived before Pearl Harbor to remedy a potential deficiency by providing the Army with a nucleus of trained military government officers. However, the country was then plunged into a global war, and long before the first class assembled at Charlottesville, the Army's eventual engagement in military government was inevitable. What had been a contingency was soon to become a reality and a vital one. How large, though far from certain, was fast becoming awesomely apparent. The reports on the Cambridge courses had added another dimension by raising a question of posthostilities reconstruction, the likelihood that the Army would have to assume worldwide relief obligations as well as govern occupied enemy territory. Such a situation could mean that at some time all the forces in the field would have substantial civil affairs or military government responsibilities. One of the first studies made at Charlottesville tried to determine how many officers the Army might need. The Rhineland occupation after World War I, which only involved a population of about one million, required 213 military government officers, or .l percent of the occupation force. On this basis, the study showed, an Army of four million men, without any allowance for the larger civilian population to lie governed, would need 4,000 officers, as many as the School of Military Government could produce in ten years.21

Gullion's venture into military government training had only exposed the Army's problem, not solved it. Charlottesville could not train the requisite number of officers, and even if it could, enough candidates with the desired skills and talents could not lie found within the Army. On the other hand, the Army had either to find and train the officers and assert its predominance, at least as long as hostilities lasted, or let some other agency do so. If another agency assumed the responsibility, theater commanders would find themselves having to

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contend not only with the enemy but also with highly placed American civilians in a separate chain of command. In any case, the Army would have to maneuver carefully among several important and numerous lesser governmental agencies already entitled to a voice in the administration of occupied liberated territory.

The most powerful of these agencies, and for the incipient Army program probably the most important, was the Board of Economic Warfare. It operated directly under the President, advising him on all economic affairs related to the war or to the postwar period, particularly in the international sphere. All departments, including the War Department, were required to comply with the board's policies and to secure the board's approval for any activities with economic effects or implications. No Army activity fell more completely under the board's aegis than military government. Consequently, Miller reported with considerable satisfaction, after three Board of Economic Warfare representatives visited Charlottesville on 20 May 1942, that they had seemed to agree that the War Department should control planning, administration, and training in military government. The board representatives had talked about finding areas of co-operation, and Miller had proposed that they might help the Army find specialists who could lie trained to make up a personnel reservoir.22

The time when military government might be needed still appeared very remote in the early half of 1942. The Army first had the war to fight and win; this priority was the very reason that Gullion and his associates were becoming uneasy. Civilian agencies, such as the Board of Economic Warfare, with mandates to look ahead to the end of hostilities and with plenty of time to do so, could in the meantime develop plans that would infringe on army control. In June, Gullion declared his intention to set up a division in his office to assert Army leadership in military government and to enlist the services of other governmental agencies. Since the primary responsibility for military government rested with the Army, he stated, it should logically take the initiative in preparing policies and plans.23

On 28 June, Gullion made the first move toward securing clear-cut Army predominance. He requested authority to enlarge the training program and to reconcile any conflicting views between the military and civilian establishments. The latter authority, he stated, would be used to establish the Army's right to absolute control over occupied areas during the period of military necessity and to make certain that adequate preparations were made to fulfill occupation missions.24

Shortly thereafter, Gullion received an unexpected, and not entirely welcome, assist from another quarter. On 17 July, President Franklin D. Roosevelt forwarded to Under Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson a memorandum submitted by Arthur C. Ringland of the War Relief Control Board, another civilian agency with a built-in concern with occupational questions. Ringland had heard about the Charlottesville school and about a school that the Navy was opening in the summer at Co-

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lumbia University, but he did not believe the two together could turn out enough trained men. Private groups and other interested government agencies, he suggested, could help, and he proposed that the President appoint a committee to explore the personnel problem and make suggestions on administration.25   The Ringland memorandum immediately accomplished what Gullion, working through several staff levels, might have needed months to do; it made civilian involvement a War Department concern. It secured, moreover, potent support for Gullion from Secretary Patterson. In his reply Patterson agreed with Ringland on most points, including the need for studies on personnel and administration, but proposed they be carried "informally and with no publicity whatsoever," in other words, without a committee and at least without calling on private groups.26

While Patterson did not attempt to exclude Ringland's and other government agencies, his backing made such interference easier to avert than might have been expected. On the night of 29 July, Wickersham, apparently at Patterson's behest, met informally with five US senators and several Board of Economic Warfare representatives. He outlined the Army program, including the projected War Department leadership of all interested agencies, and reported that all present were "highly pleased." The next morning the President's office called Patterson's office to request the return of the Ringland memorandum. The caller implied that the President was satisfied with the War Department program.27

Two weeks later, on 14 August, Gullion received authority to set up a military government division in the Provost Marshal General's Office "to engage in broad planning. " 28  Miller organized the division and became its director when he was restored to active duty in November. The PMG proposals had duty recommended giving the division the supervision of operations in the field when they materialized; but to have done so would have abridged the theater commanders' authority to conduct all operations in their theaters, including military government, as they saw fit. 29  In fact, the term "broad planning" was meant to be restrictive, excluding planning for specific operations.

In the meantime the G-1 section, without being specifically relieved of the responsibilities assigned under FM 27-5, had all but disappeared from the scene. G-1 had considered military government a somewhat incongruous assignment from the first and found it an impossible one after the General Staff reorganization of March 1942. In the reorganization G-1 had shrunk from seventy-three officers to thirteen and from one hundred civilians to twenty. Military government had passed to the "Miscellaneous Branch," where it was lumped together with six other vaguely related activities.30

The Military Government Division, PMG, received its first and, in the end, most portentous mission before it officially

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opened for business.31  On the morning of 4 September, Secretary Patterson met with Secretary of the Treasury Henry J. Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, and several State Department and the Board of Economic Warfare officials. Patterson had thought the subject was to lie currency for use in North Africa. He was surprised to learn that Morgenthau had included the entire question of occupation planning on the agenda, that he knew about what had been done so far, and that he was apparently having some work done in his own department. Patterson was also somewhat startled when Knox reported having talked about the subject with the President, who had told him that he thought military government ought to lie put under the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). After the meeting, Patterson told Gullion that the time had come to get the War Department views set down on paper and to head off for good freewheeling discussions like the one Morgenthau had engineered that morning. Gullion summoned Wickersham and Miller from Charlottesville, and before the day's end they had drafted a document entitled "Synopsis of the War Department Pro-ram for Military Government."

The Synopsis projected a national program within a framework of War Department doctrine. The first paragraph asserted initial Army predominance. Any occupation of hostile or Axis-held territory, it stated, could be divided into two phases: a period of military necessity and a later period when military necessity would no longer exist. During the first phase the armed forces would lie obligated to set up and maintain military government. In the second phase a civilian authority would probably supplant the military, but until the second phase began, the government of any occupied territory would be in Army hands. The subsequent paragraphs outlined the program. Basic policies to lie administered by the Army in occupied territory would lie developed, when needed, by the appropriate government agencies, the State Department, the Board of Economic Warfare, the Treasury Department, and others. The Army, meanwhile, would recruit and train specialists to execute its mission. For the present the Army particularly needed the cooperation of other agencies in finding specialists. It also proposed to call on certain agencies for special studies and for materials and lecturers for the School of Military Government. 32 Later, the Military Government Division gave the gist of the Synopsis as being "to assert and maintain War Department leadership in military government and at the same time invite and employ a wide cooperation with other departments and agencies of the government." 33

The Military Government Division sent out thirty-four copies of the Synopsis, nine to the members of the cabinet, with an accompanying letter signed by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, and twenty-five to a variety of other government agencies and semipublic organizations ranging from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Office of Price Administration (OPA) to the Rockefeller Foundation and the American Library Association.34  The recipients

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SECRETARY  STIMSON

SECRETARY  STIMSON

were asked "to designate some person . . . to establish and maintain liaison . . . with Maj. Gen. Allen W. Gullion, the Provost Marshal General, who is directly in charge of the military government program." 35

The Program Under Attack

In World War II the Army assumed many new and unusual responsibilities. Among these duties, military government was distinguished above all others by its capacity for generating early and durable controversy. The term alone sounded vaguely unconstitutional and seemed to imply a sternness that probably ought not to be visited even on US enemies. Although the United States had conducted military government in nearly all of its past wars, it had always done so as a kind of reluctant afterthought. Deliberate planning seemed to suggest cold-bloodedness, disregard for the traditional civil-military relationship, and disdain for the presumed natural superiority of civilians in the art of government. The Army learned this lesson early and painfully. The opening Of the school in Charlottesville in May 1942 brought a rash of newspaper stories describing the Army's "school for Gauleiters." When the War Department clamped a tight prohibition on news from Charlottesville, the volume of press discussion subsided, but the school became a more attractive target for speculation and sensational journalism. Born with a lead public image, which it would never quite overcome, the program was soon fighting for its life against a flood of official criticism and suspicion.

The tide began to roll on 29 October, when the Synopsis was brought before a full cabinet meeting. Several members, who apparently would have liked larger roles for themselves and their departments, voiced suspicions; and Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes expressed outright alarm at what he saw as a germ of imperialism. The President seemed to think the school was a good idea but had doubts about the quality of the faculty. After the meeting, Secretary Stimson concluded that the composite picture his fellow cabinet members had drawn was one of incipient grandiose War Department plans on the one hand and mediocre Army effort on the other.36

Later in the day, the President's opinion changed. In a memo to Stimson he said he understood that the Provost Marshal

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General was training officers "to assume the duties of Military Governor or civilian advisors to Military Governors." He asked for a complete explanation and lists of all the personnel, military and civilian, undergoing such training. The matter, he said, was something which should have been taken up with him in the first instance. Governing civilian territory was predominantly a civilian task and required "absolutely first class men." 37

In a few sentences the President's memo converted an interdepartmental squabble into a monumental misunderstanding and a dire threat to the principle of unity of command. Obviously he had assumed that the Army was attempting to train a species of proconsuls at Charlottesville and he was convinced that such posts should go to high-powered civilians and not to the military at all. The Army doctrine that made the theater commander the military governor at least until hostilities ended not only was apparently unknown to him lout could not even lie fitted into his concept of military government. The President, like the public, was thinking in terms of domestic government; lie considered civil administration, no matter where it was conducted, a civilian responsibility and was totally unimpressed by the argument of military necessity.

Stimson dictated two letters explaining the War Department concept, particularly the need to have military operations and civil administration under a single authority in the war zone. Neither letter was sent. Most likely Stimson wanted to avoid, if he could, precipitating a decision that could in one stroke force the Army out of military government and create incalculable command problems for the future. Instead, he made an oral report at the cabinet meeting of 6 November, in which he described the objectives of' the school at Charlottesville and disclaimed any Army desire to control occupied areas after the war ended. He let this report stand as the answer to the President's question.38

In November, attacks came from all directions. Within the War Department the questions raised a year earlier were brought forth again. Was the training worthwhile when the times and places of future occupations were unknown? Should the Army create a large pool of officers for whom it had no assignments? 39  Early in the month the criticisms from outside centered on the alleged second-rate quality of the faculty at Charlottesville and on the content of the courses.40  Later the charges became more diversified, and Gullion surmised that several civilian departments were becoming jealous of each other, although they were still somewhat united in their attack on the Army. The new attacks concentrated mostly on Gullion's supposed personal ambition, on the political composition of the Charlottesville faculty and students, and on the caliber of the students. Gullion, a Democrat, was accused of having packed the school with anti-New Dealers and Republicans. Toward the end of the month, the President sent Ambassador William  C. Bullitt and Jonathan Daniels to Charlottesville to investigate separately the quality of the students, the courses, and the plans

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being made there.41  The dismal month ended with some cheer when Bullitt advised the President to "cease worrying about the school" and reported that the charges against it were without foundation.42

The most ominous charge leveled against the program, because it was the most valid, was the one alleging the low quality of students at Charlottesville. No one knew this better than Gullion, who in November grimly predicted that unless the student body improved materially and rapidly in quality, there was a real danger that the commanding general in each theater would have a "commissar" by his side, or a civil governor with power deriving directly from the President and authority to act independently of the commanding general.43

The school might be capable of raising storms in high places, but within the Army the priority of its claim on officer talent was low. In November, Gullion secured authority to commission 2,500 specialists from civilian life, lout these people would have to lie found first.44  In the meantime all the students would have to he officers already in the Army, and in the long run they would still make up the majority of the trainees. The trouble was that the students had to lie selected from lists submitted by the armies and service commands, and they were not likely to volunteer to relinquish their best officers. Wickersham complained that of some two hundred and fifty officers on the lists for the third course at Charlottesville only thirty-eight would make suitable students, and these were "nothing to brag about." 45  The service commands, in Wickersham's opinion, were largely composed of culls anyway, and Charlottesville was thus getting the culls of the culls. Gullion tried to get approval for direct application by individual officers, only to have his proposal sidetracked and then buried in G-1. 46

The Civil Affairs Division

While the War Department was engaged in defending its fledgling program against attacks from the cabinet and White House, it began to discover that, far from having fallen victim to an inordinate ambition, it had in fact sorely underestimated the potential role of civil affairs and military government in the war. On 8 November 1942 US and British forces landed in Algiers and Morocco. French North Africa was assumed, in spite of some doubts, to be friendly territory in which civil administration could be left entirely to local authorities; the President assigned policy formulation and execution to the State Department and the provision of relief supplies to the Lend-Lease Administration. He saw in North Africa the beginning of an eventually worldwide program to fulfill the promises of the Atlantic Charter and the United Nations Declaration.

The War Department acceded to the delegation of control over civil matters in North Africa to the State Department, except when such matters directly affected

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or were affected by military operations.47  The solution was logical enough except that it, like the President's decision from which it derived, ignored the main issue, namely, that for the time being at least the Americans had only one reason for being in North Africa-to fight the war. The theater commander, Lt. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, protested that until North Africa including Tunisia, then still in Axis hands, was secure, everything done there directly affected the military situation. His chief civil administrator, Minister Robert D. Murphy, Eisenhower added, could not be a member of the theater staff and at the same time be independently responsible to the State Department. The Chief of Staff, General Marshall, agreed and on 28 November informed Eisenhower that Murphy would not function independently and the State Department would not assume control of civil matters until the military situation permitted. The Secretary of State, Marshall said, was in complete agreement, though he had proposed an earlier transition period in which Eisenhower would be able to divest himself of some civil authority.48

Although Marshall had rescued the principle of military necessity, the North African campaign, in its first weeks, had set a pattern for civil affairs and military government that would persist throughout the war. The two concepts were established as civilian functions in the thinking of the highest civilian circles of government. The Army might and in fact would throughout the war actually control both, but it would do so always as a stand-in. The role itself was a proper enough one and was essentially what had been proposed in the Synopsis; but what the Army had claimed in the Synopsis as a matter of right, it received after North Africa only on sufferance.

While civilian boards and committees proliferated in Washington, operations on the scene in North Africa limped ahead. In early December, Eisenhower called attention to the adverse political effects that would result from a failure to meet civilian needs after public assurances had been given in the United States. Thirty thousand tons of civilian supplies were needed every month, but the Lend-Lease Administration was hard put to get them together in time to meet the convoys leaving for North Africa. On arrival in the theater the supplies had to be unloaded and moved by the Army, since the North African Economic Board did not have the staff even to supervise the work; and both the military and the civilian agencies agreed that on the drive into Tunisia the Army would have to assume complete responsibility for civilian relief.

Simply stated, the United States could not simultaneously fight the war and launch into essentially postwar relief and rehabilitation programs. On the other hand, the War Department realized that it had taken too narrow a view and in January expanded its policy on planning for future operations to include preparations for food, health, housing, and security of civilian populations. It proposed in the initial period to handle all aspects of civil affairs as part of the military operation and to include civilian supplies with the military stores.49  Colonel Jesse I. Miller had pointed out a month earlier that the long-view

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GENERAL HILLDRING

GENERAL HILLDRING

policy ought to be left to the civilian departments but implementation in the period of military necessity should be in the hands of the military command. 50 Some indirect support for the War Department was also coming from civilians. In early February, James Webb, Director of the Bureau of the Budget, warned the President that US global operations were approaching a breakdown on their first trial, in North Africa. The Board of Economic Warfare, he stated, was planning, hoped to direct, and might engage in development; the Lend-Lease Administration was planning, purchasing, financing, and distributing; the State Department planned and attempted to direct; and the Army planned, administered, and directed-all with respect to the same area.51 Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who had been considered a possible coordinator of all civilian activities in North Africa, had already proposed that, in the future, civil affairs be handled entirely by the military commands. But the President had remarked that he would delay any such decision "for a long time." 52

Although the President's decision would in f act be a long time coming and never be entirely definitive, the Army was engaged in North Africa in civil affairs on a scale it had not contemplated. Decisions had to be made, problems solved, and liaison maintained with the civilian agencies; the War Department discovered that it had no organization capable of doing all three. Technically, responsibility for civil affairs was still vested in G-1, which had never exercised it. The Military Government Division of the PMG office stood far down in the chain of command; in the 1942 reorganization the PMG had dropped out of the General Staff and become a subordinate office in the Services of Supply. Besides, the Military Government Division had no operational authority, only a planning mission, and only eight officers, mostly junior, and fourteen civilians. Owing to the inferior position of the Military Government Division, most civil affairs matters were being routed through the Operations Division of the General Staff and being decided in offices scattered all over the Pentagon.

Eisenhower added a further complication when, on 9 February 1943, he asked for guidance on policy relating to Operation HUSKY, the projected invasion of Sicily. It would be the first United States occupation of enemy territory and would set the pattern for subsequent operations

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in Europe. What concerned him most were the relationships between civil and military authorities, the handling of the civilian population, and the arrangements with respect to both which would have to be made with the British.53

By mid-February 1943 it was clear that if the War Department proposed to control civil affairs operations in the future or even if it desired no more than to manage the problems that inevitably would come its way, it would have to establish an appropriate organization at a high level. The absence of such an organization was already being acutely felt in the department. Gullion pointed out that Gov. Herbert H. Lehman, director of the State Department's Office of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation, had remarked on the lack of any single War Department agency to deal with all phases of civil affairs. Marshall discussed the problem with the ranking officers in the Services of Supply and the Operations Division and with the Secretary of War. Before the end of the month, the conferences resulted in a verbal directive to Lt. Gen. John F,. Hull, Chief of the Theater Group, Operations Division, to set up a civil affairs division in the General Staff. 54

The Civil Affairs Division (CAD) was established on 1 March 1043, and Maj. Gen. John H. Hilldring became its director a month later. In assigning the division's mission, the War Department reasserted its claim to leadership in civil affairs and military government. The division was to report directly to the Secretary of War on "all matters except those of a military nature" and to represent the Secretary of War to outside agencies. On matters relating to military operations it would act for the Chief of Staff, and it would co-ordinate for the War Department all actions of civilian agencies in theaters of operations. For the future, War Department officials contemplated placing full responsibility for civil affairs in the staff of the theater commander "until such time as the military situation will allow other arrangements," and the Civil Affairs Division was charged with making certain that all plans to occupy enemy or enemy-controlled territory included detailed planning for civil affairs.55  On 10 April, the Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed the Civil Affairs Division as "the logical staff to handle civil affairs in nearly all occupied territory." 56

Military Government Training Expands

Not the least of the problems besetting the military government program in its infancy were the need to develop a pool of officers to fill a demand that did not vet exist and the requirement to give these officers highly specialized training in duties which they might have no opportunity to perform for years. The Military Government Division, revising the Charlottesville estimates upward, concluded in September 1942 that 6,000 trained officers would be needed worldwide, another 6,000 being recruited from tactical units as areas were occupied.57 Since Charlottesville could not then graduate more than 450 per year, the

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Military Government Division proposed to establish a second school at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, to train another 1,200 junior officers annually.58

Although hit by the storm of criticism in October and November, Gullion and the Military Government Division remained convinced that their estimates were valid. Thereafter, however, they knew that the program would be under persistent, powerful, and by no means benign scrutiny. Henceforth, until, as Gullion put it, "the need had become more apparent to those concerned," seeing the program through would require determination, circumspection, and a touch of guile as well.59  In January 1943 the need was not apparent anywhere. Gullion had eighty-five Charlottesville graduates lout no assignments for them. Sixty graduates had been scheduled to go to North Africa, but the requisitions were canceled after the decision to leave civil affairs there to civilian agencies.60

The program, as Gullion and Wickersham knew better than their critics, was most vulnerable on the score of the quality of the officers nominated for training. The authority to commission 2,500 specialists from civilian life received in November seemed to lie the most practical way to improve the quality, and in early January 1943 on Gullion's advice Stimson requested Assistant Secretary of the Interior Oscar Chapman to head a committee, composed mainly of non-War Department civilians, to select candidates for commissions in military government.61  The committee was a useful device for forestalling criticism from the civilian agencies, but through no fault of its own, it was less than an immediate success at locating talent. The recruitment authority restricted the commissions to be granted to captains and lieutenants only and set the minimum age at thirty-five. Practically all good candidates over age thirty-five were well established in civilian jobs and carrying more prestige and authority than captains in the Army.62

While awaiting the flow of high quality trainees, which in the winter of 1942-1943 seemed all but unattainable from among either the military or civilians, the Military Government Division revised the school plan. Another exclusively Army-run school of the kind projected at Fort Oglethorpe might have drawn the same fire to which the Charlottesville school had been subjected. Furthermore, the uncertainties of recruitment and of the Army's future in military government combined with the certainty, as Gullion and his officers saw it, that before the war ended the Army would need trained officers by the thousands, necessitated a training system for the time being that was unobtrusive but capable of rapid expansion. The result was the Civil Affairs Training Program (CATP).

The training program, which was expected to draw its students mostly from civilian life, was divided into two phases. The first consisted of a month's military and basic military government training at the Provost Marshal General's School at Fort Custer, Michigan. In the second phase the students would receive three months' training at one of a number of universi-

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ties.63 The universities provided the means for rapid expansion. Their faculties could provide courses in many fields on short notice, and when training demands increased, additional universities could be brought into the program.

The CATP schools offered substantially different training from the kind given at Charlottesville. Although the students eventually ranged in rank from second lieutenant to lieutenant colonel, most held junior grades and all were expected to be given assignments as specialists and technicians in the field instead of staff assignments for which Charlottesville provided training. Consequently, in the training program the emphasis was on information, not on problem-solving as at Charlottesville. The student spent half his time studying a foreign language and most of the other half in foreign area studies. The CATP graduate was expected to deal directly with the people in occupied areas, the Charlottesville graduate primarily with his own and allied staffs.64

At its inception, CATP's most attractive aspect was its ultimate expandability, since for the time being military government officers seemed to be both unwanted and unobtainable. Charlottesville, meanwhile, had completed its second course at the end of December 1942, having graduated a total of 130 officers in the two courses.65 The school's enrollment capacity had been raised to 150 officers, but the prospects of securing that many qualified candidates were slight. Consequently, Wickersham recommended also commissioning at least half the Charlottesville students from civilian life.66

In March 1943 the recruitment problem eased somewhat when the War Department authorized commissioning some civilians in the field grades. In April, Gullion again requested permission also to accept individual applications from officers already commissioned.67  The first 100 CATP trainees entered Fort Custer at the beginning of June. By then the military government training program was a year old but had produced fewer than three hundred trained officers.

The invasion of Sicily in July 1943 and the consequent flow of requisitions for military government officers finally broke the recruiting jam. In June, Hilldring had ordered the training program to draw on already commissioned officers to the maximum and only fill the deficit with civilians. In July, he withdrew the order and instructed the Military Government Division to accelerate its civilian recruitment to the originally authorized limit, 300 per month.68 In July, too, Gullion received permission to select students within the Army both from unit lists and through individual applications at a rate as high as 400 officers per month.69

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The value of the readily expandable program was proved sooner than anyone expected. In August, the impending Italian surrender brought more requisitions, and by September the planning for the invasion of France plus the possibility that the German defeat might come sooner than previously anticipated raised the prospect of vastly increased demands in the near future. At Charlottesville the classes were increased to 175 students and the course reduced to twelve weeks. The CATP took in 450 students per month, and the number of participating universities was increased to ten.70 In the last four months of 1943, Charlottesville and the CATP schools together turned out more than two thousand graduates, thereby nearly filling the estimated wartime European requirements. Recruitment for the European training program ended in December, and the last European courses at the schools were completed in April 1944.

One problem, the accumulation of thousands of unassigned military government officers in the United States, never materialized. The demand from overseas always more than kept pace with the output from the schools, the largest shipments going to England in January and February 1944. The Military Government Division could also claim at least to have made a monumental effort to overcome the early deficiency in student quality. The 2,000 officers selected for training in the last quarter of 1943 were drawn from 25,000 nominees. Selectivity was even more stringent in the civilian recruitment with only 960 having been accepted out of 50,000 applicants up to the time civilian procurement stopped in October 1943.71

The Army Is Given Control

In creating the Civil Affairs Division, the War Department had given itself the means for directing and co-ordinating US military government operations. Whether it would lie able to carry out this mission still remained to be seen. North Africa, while it had hardly demonstrated the superiority of civilian control, had brought powerful civilian agencies onto the scene. In March 1943, the President gave Governor Lehman's Office of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation the mission of planning and administering US relief for victims of war in liberated areas.72 At the same time, an interdepartmental committee of civilian representatives under State Department chairmanship undertook to secure personnel for overseas service and provide for training. The President had directed the committee also to determine the relationship between the civilian administration and military government, which it would supersede as soon as civil government could lie restored.73

The big question was how much time, if any, would 1>e allotted to the military commander before he was required to relinquish his supremacy. On the basis of the President's directive, Governor Lehman attempted to set ninety days as the limit of

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military control.74  The dictum that there should not lie two independent commanders on the same battlefield had never carried much weight in civilian circles, and in 1943 the prevailing view, both civilian and military, of civil affairs operations hardly seemed to necessitate an extended period of tight military control. Civil affairs still seemed almost entirely separable from military operations. Civilian populations, friendly or enemy, were regarded as victims of the war, not participants in it, and their administration was seen as a humanitarian, not a punitive or even precautionary, obligation. In Army doctrine as well as US civilian thinking, the war ended for civilians almost as soon as they passed under American occupation. FM 27-5 prescribed a military government that was "just, humane, and as mild as practicable," the object being to obtain an enduring peace and convert former enemies into friends.75 The directive for Operation HUSKY, issued in early 1943, established "benevolence," to the extent consistent with strict military requirements, as the watchword in civil affairs for the invasion of Sicily.76 Hence, the welfare of the civilian populations appeared to be the predominant purpose of civil affairs whether administered by civilians or by the military. The one point at issue between them was — aside from the military concern over a divided comand — who could do the better job.

The President remained convinced that the job was a civilian one, and in June 1943 he undertook to put policy-making and direction clearly in civilian hands. He proposed to establish an interdepartmental policy committee, chaired by an assistant secretary of state, to give central direction to all U.S. economic operations in liberated areas. For each area, a director would lie appointed who would occupy a similar central position in his own area. He would be subordinate to the military commander; but he would also receive orders directly from the assistant secretary of state, would have wide latitude and authority to act on his own responsibility, and would function as the major channel of contact for civilian agencies with the US military and with the allies.77 Civil affairs seemed, after all, to have slipped out of the War Department's hands in the worst imaginable manner, namely, with the establishment of a second separate and complete command channel. Secretary Stimson protested the danger and "the real unwisdom" of moving too quickly from military to civilian authority in occupied areas; but the most the War Department managed to achieve was a redefinition that placed the area director nominally in the theater command channel.78

By the summer of 1943, however, political preferences, even those of the President, could not long resist the course of the war. Military governments would have to be established. They would require men and resources and the means to deploy them when and where they were needed. The Army had this ability. The civilian agencies did not, and as the summer progressed they became increasingly doubtful of their own ability to meet the needs. Moreover, in September, when the President created the Foreign Economic Administration to con-

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solidate the civilian effort, these agencies objected as much to a unified civilian direction as they had to War Department leadership.79 In the interval, the Army had instituted military government in Sicily and parts of Italy.

It had not been proved that in the long run civilians would not perform better, but at the moment they could not perform at all. On 10 November the President acknowledged this state of affairs in a letter to Stimson in which he stated, "Although other agencies are preparing themselves for the work that must be done in connection with relief and rehabilitation of liberated areas, it is quite apparent that if prompt results are to be obtained the Army will have to assume the initial burden." Continuing, he assigned to the Army the planning and execution of civil relief and rehabilitation "until civilian agencies are prepared to carry out the longer range program." 80 After nearly a year of uncertainty, the Army at last had a clear, if temporary, mandate.

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Endnotes

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