This volume is the first in a new series, SPECIAL STUDIES, which will deal with special topics of interest to the Army. The series is designed to treat selected Army activities on and off the battlefield and to provide accurate and timely accounts of neglected aspects as well as more familiar fields of military history. It will serve as a vehicle for publication of worthy monographs prepared within the Army Historical Program and of such outside scholarly works as may be deemed appropriate for publication and circulation to interested staffs, schools, and other agencies of the Army for ready reference and use. While military history abounds in the dramatic fare of battles and campaigns, definitive analysis of the evolution of the organization and administration of the departmental headquarters in the capitals has been a relatively neglected field. Yet upon the efficiency and effectiveness of the administrative apparatus needed to build, train, equip, and supply armed forces depends much of the success in the test of battle. The present study grew out of a monograph originally designed to provide a simple guide to the principal changes in Army departmental organization since 1942. Expanded later to cover the period beginning with 1900, the era of reform introduced by Secretary of War Elihu Root, and to provide a larger measure of analysis, this study traces changes relating to Army management in the central headquarters down to the early 1960s when new and dramatic reforms in Army organization were carried out during the regime of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. The account focuses on a single but important theme-the management of the Army administrative and logistical structure in the era of America's rise to global power. It fills a gap in the literature and is presented as a contribution to the field of organizational and administrative history.

While the author's focus is on the Army headquarters staff, he indicates parallel trends in organization in industry and government and relates his theme to historic conflicts over centralization of control. The volume presents a useful survey in a field of continuing importance that should be of interest to administrators and managers both in and out of the Army as well as to students of military history and public administration.

JAMES L. COLLINS, JR 
Brigadier General, USA 
Chief of Military History
Washington, D. C. 
15 January 1974

The Author

James E. Hewes, Jr., received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Yale University. His principal field of study was international relations. During World War II, after serving as an enlisted man, he became a 2d lieutenant in the Field Artillery. He joined the staff of the Office, Chief of Military History, in August 1962, specializing since that time in administrative history. The manuscript he is now working on, Army Organization and Administration, 1963-1974, continues the analysis undertaken in the present volume.

Preface

The principal issue in the development of the organization and administration of the War Department/Department of the Army from 1900 to 1963 was executive control over the men, money, and other resources required to raise, train, equip, and supply the United States Army. The question was not whether there should be any centralized management of departmental operations. Tight control had existed throughout most of the nineteenth century within the headquarters of each of a series of autonomous bureaus, which largely governed themselves under the detailed scrutiny of Congress. The question was whether tight authority should be imposed on the bureaus at the level of the Secretary of War. Except during the Mexican and Civil Wars there had been little effective authority over the bureaus before 1900. By 1963 the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Army, and the Chief of Staff were able to rule departmental operations more effectively, while the once powerful chiefs of the bureaus had disappeared, except for the Chief of Engineers and the Surgeon General. The purpose of the present account is to trace the development of this central theme of executive control historically. It does not attempt to treat all aspects of Department of the Army organization. Nor does it deal with the usual substance of military history, military operations in the field. As administrative history it has less in common with operational military history, as such, than with similar historical treatment of American public administration and industrial management. Failure to recognize the distinction between the way in which the Department of the Army operates and the standing operating procedures of military organizations in the field has frustrated generations of field soldiers, who have taken for granted the necessity for tight management at the top, known to them as unity of command.This struggle for executive control within the Army has

taken place during a period of increasingly centralized authority over individual and corporate activities throughout American life. This development has been a natural consequence of the increasing industrialization and urbanization of a once predominantly rural society. The bureaus, traditionally the basic administrative units of the federal government, had developed in the context of a rural America which distrusted centralized authority and held that government best which governed least. The War Department bureau chiefs, like their colleagues elsewhere in the federal government, were as zealous as any Americans in defending this tradition. They based their careers upon it. In this account they and their supporters are called traditionalists. Opposed to the traditionalists were those individuals and groups who believed, as a result of their own experiences, that increasing industrialization and urbanization required the abandonment or at least the modification of American rural traditions, values, and institutions. They foresaw only chaos and anarchy without greater centralized authority as urban industry and population expanded. Urban political bosses sought to impose order on a chaotic welter of independent, competing municipal agencies. Industrialists and bankers sought to impose order in major industries where unfettered competition, in their view, was leading to mutual destruction. Industrial technology was changing the character of modern warfare, demanding greater efficiency and control not only over armies in the field but over agencies responsible for their supply and equipment. Centralized control meant the substitution of rational order and regulation from the top down for previously unregulated activities. In industry the process became known in the United States and western Europe as rationalization. Those who sought similarly to rationalize the organization and structure of the War Department are called in this account rationalists. A more common term among American historians generally for such reformers is modernists. Among my colleagues at the Center of Military History, Dr. Robert W. Coakley should be singled out for his advice and detailed knowledge of Army logistics during World War II and after. He also prepared other helpful studies on Army military personnel management during and after World War

II, on the development of CONARC, and on the background and events leading to the establishment in 1962 of the Defense Supply Agency. Without Dr. Coakley's guidance and assistance it would have been almost impossible to prepare this volume. Dr. Stetson Conn, Chief Historian during most of the period the undersigned was writing this work, assisted by providing information on the organization of the War Department before and during World War II. Miss Hannah M. Zeidlik, Deputy Chief of the General Reference Branch, was most helpful in locating historical manuscripts on file in that branch, particularly those relating to the General and Special Staffs, AGF, and ASF during World War II. Mrs. Hazel Ward, head of the Military Records Branch of the National Archives until her retirement in 1978, provided the source material employed in those sections dealing with departmental administration from 1945 to 1955. In tracing the growth of the Army's research and development programs after World War II the author has relied heavily upon an excellent and detailed draft manuscript by Mr. L. Van Loan Naisawald of the Office of the Chief of Research and Development. Mr. Maxey O. Stewart, now retired, guided the writer through the files of Project 80 on the 1962 reorganization of the Army along with Col. Edward McGregor, U.S. Army, retired, Col. Lewis J. Ashley, Maj. Gen. Donnelly P. Bolton, and Lt. Gen. John A. Kjellstrom, now Comptroller of the Army, all of whom were members of the Project 80 team. Mr. Stewart's personal files, now in CMH, contain important material concerning departmental administration and management from 1950 to the mid-1960s. Miss Annie Seely of the Reference Branch in the Photographic Library of the Army's Audio-Visual Agency located all but one of the photographs, that of Secretary Stimson in 1911, which came from the National Archives. Maj. Edward M. Kaprielian, Chief of CMH's Graphics Branch, and his staff prepared the charts for this book. Mr. Roger D. Clinton also prepared two special organization charts illustrating personnel management and research and development during World War II. The author is much obliged to the people who assisted in providing the data for Appendix B: Miss Esther D. Byrne, now retired, who prepared the list of Secretaries, Under Secretaries, and Assistant Secretaries of the Army; Mr. Detmar H. Finke, Chief of the General Reference Branch, CMH, and his staff;

and Mrs. Sylvia A. Crabtree, a personal friend who gave generously of her free time to the project. In addition to Dr. Coakley who read and criticized several drafts, Professor Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.; Col. John E. Jessup, Jr., Chief of the Histories Division; Dr. Maurice Matloff, Chief Historian; Dr. Walter G. Hermes, Chief of the Staff Support Branch; Lt. Col. Heath Twitchell; Mr. Alfred M. Beck; and my colleague, Dr. Vincent C. Jones, read and commented on the manuscript. Mr. David Jaffe, senior editor, and Mrs. Barbara H. Gilbert, copy editor, worked on the final draft. Mrs. Dorothy B. Speight patiently labored to decipher the author's handwriting and mangled copy in typing the several drafts through which this manuscript has gone. The index was compiled by Miss Margaret L. Emerson. The responsibility for the final product, of course, is the author's alone.

JAMES E. HEWES, JR.
Washington, D. C.  15 January 1974

Illustrations

All illustrations are from Department of Defense files, with the exception of the photograph of Henry L Stimson on page 16, courtesy of the National Archives