In previous articles, I discussed two of the problems generated by too many generals in the U.S. Army, being micromanagement and creating unnecessary work.
But in many ways, the most egregious problem of excess generals is the third issue: they push out competent officers. While we also have a bloat in colonels and lieutenant colonels, I can say with confidence that the competent officers I knew, with perhaps one or two exceptions, never got past those two ranks. Has anyone wondered why the principal people criticizing the U.S. and NATO engagement in the Russo-Ukraine War are a major, a few lieutenant colonels, and a few colonels? I mean, where are the generals? Why… they are the most shameless cheerleaders for our support for the war. Heia Safari![1]
In March 1945, Patton was upset with the performance of the commander of the 10th Armored Division, Maj. Gen. William Morris. During the crossing of the Saar River, Morris had lost track of his bridging equipment, and had demonstrated indecisiveness in other actions. Both Patton and Morris’s corps commander, Maj. Gen. Walton Walker wanted to relieve Morris, but Patton had nobody on hand he considered qualified to run an armored division. As a consequence, Morris stayed on until the end of the war, simply because there were not enough generals available to move up.
Fast forward to today… Morris would have been relieved in a cold second. Indeed, Walker and Patton would have been relieved as well, for the simple fact that there are loads of general officers, all of them with their tickets punched, chocked full with schools and assignments, and just waiting in the wings to move up. Patton’s seniors, both Eisenhower and Bradley, would have relieved him if they could, because officers like Patton made them look bad.
At one point, after the infamous “Knutsford Incident,”[2] Eisenhower wanted to relieve Patton, but tried to manipulate Gen. Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff, to do so. Through a series of secret cables, the two generals sparred for several days until Marshall laid down the law and told Eisenhower that it was his job to make the decision. The rest is history, as Eisenhower, his eye already on the White House, didn’t want to be blamed for sacking Patton, who was popular at home and considered by many to be one of the most competent field commanders in the U.S. Army.
Before taking over as the Command Historian for USAREUR, I had the opportunity to tag along on a staff ride for captains and majors regarding the World War I battle of Caporetto, the same action where the soon to be famous Erwin Rommel received his Poure le Merite, the German equivalent of our Medal of Honor. Most were American, but we had a small contingent of Slovenian tank officers.
While in Longorone, Italy,[3] the 3-star hosting the staff ride asked the junior officers, by a show of hands, if Rommel, with just 10 men, had made a correct decision to try and stop a large Italian force from retreating southward along the Piave River. The vote was evenly split at one-third each, one group believing he made the right choice, another the wrong choice, and the last undecided.
And then the 3-star revealed his opinion. That was when the real fun began, for after doing that, not one U.S. Army officer voiced opinions that contradicted the general. The only ones who did so were the Slovenian officers… because they were not under U.S. Army authority and didn’t care if they offended the general. Even the 3-star noticed this problem. Sadly, he failed to solve it.[4]
In the eyes of today’s military elite, generals are now qualified because they attend “elite” schools and get key assignments. In contrast, Patton would consider a general qualified more on his personal qualities… the “moral factor” in war and his ability to think critically. What Patton wanted were commanders who could lead men in battle, not asphalt school Soldiers. Competent officers usually speak their minds. Mediocre senior officers don’t like this much, and weed out dissenters. This is easy enough to do with a glut of officers hanging around, chomping at the bit.
An army with a bloat of officers, especially generals, will lead to the suppression of dissenting opinions, driving out good officers and encouraging groupthink. Disasters typically follow.
Russ Rodgers has several books published on Amazon.
If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN. If you’d like to become a citizen contributor for AFNN, contact us at managingeditor@afnn.us Help keep us ad-free by donating here.
Substack: American Free News Network Substack
Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA
[1] German for “Hooray, Safari!” as troops headed off to fight on an “adventure” in Africa in World War I. Of course, these generals won’t get into the fight. That takes real courage, which they lack. Instead, they hang out in “Green Zones” when deployed overseas.
[2] The papers in the U.S. left out the fact that Patton included the Russians in “ruling the postwar world.” British newspapers quoted Patton accurately.
[3] Longorone is the site of one of the worst man-made disasters in modern history, when the Vajont Dam, a brainchild of Mussolini’s fascist government and completed with Italian government support over the protest of local communities and landscape engineers who argued that the surrounding mountainsides were unstable. Journalists who attempted to report on these problems were silenced by the Italian government. On the night of 9 Oct. 1963, a slab of a mountainside collapsed into reservoir, sending an 800-foot wave over the top of the dam. The water cascaded into the valley and slammed into Longorone, virtually destroying the town and killing over 2,000 people.
[4] This 3-star could have easily solved this problem… by presenting the issue, and then walking away to let the junior officers discuss it among themselves. But he didn’t do this, obviously to stay in control of the discourse. Which, of course, the junior officers understood to be the case, and why they remained quiet.