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By Risa Brooks
THE RISE OF THE G.I. ARMY, 1940-1941 The Forgotten Story of How America A Powerful Army Before Pearl Harbor through Paul Dickson
“The rise of the G.I.” through Paul Dickson Army, 1940-1941″tells the remarkable story of how the United States built its army from scratch before World War II. In 1939, there were fewer than 200,000 poorly trained and ill-equipped soldiers and infantry officers in the army. October 1941, the country’s newly renovated army had more than 1.5 million uniformed infantry soldiers and was led by a revitalized officer corps. Dickson’s purpose is how this feat was completed, before the Americans knew they were going to war.
Dickson’s e-book shows a little-known history of the American military and society in the 1930s and early 1940s. Some readers might be surprised to learn that a New Deal program, the Civilian Conservation Corps, known as the Tree Army, runs in the War Department. Men recruited for the C.C.C. never gained military training, however, army officers monitored their camps, which they led well militarily. The Army has been informed of valuable classes from this experience, adding how to handle a giant influx of recruits. Many Tree Army leaders have become ncos in service. Experience has also shown the Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, the virtues and prospects of a citizen force.
The drafting of a bill in peacetime in September 1940 was also very important in the creation of the new army. Defenders. This political fight was re-examined a year later, when it was time to extend the original 12-month mandate of the assignment. In Dickson’s account, the task of peace was essential to prepare the army for war. Without it, the delight of the United States and its allies in World War II would have been radically different, with many more lives lost.
The main sections of the e-book deal with a series of “maneuvers” in the southern United States in 1940 and 1941, adding Louisiana’s primary maneuvers of 1941. With the participation of thousands of men, training has allowed the army to verify new education and apparatus and to disclose its infantrymen to the heavy and demanding physical situations of deploying in difficult conditions. Among the maximum life classes learned through army leaders was how to move and replenish a large number of infantrymen. After observing one of the maneuvers of 1941, prominent columnist Walter Lippmann joked that last year the army had “remembered the unoccupied garages,” but now had the character of a serious fighting force.
Marshall played a pivotal role in Dickson’s story as a user who understood and accepted the effort to expand the army through recruits. Under his leadership, the army established fundamental education for all new infantrymen. Marshall also lobbied for the creation of cadet schools, allowing the army’s most productive infantrymen to be officers. During the war, schools generated more than 150,000 civil servants a year. Marshall’s strong appreciation for the welfare of his infantrymen also encouraged the creation of the Moral Division to provide men with entertainment and non-secular sustenance. Under Marshall’s surveillance, the U.S.O. It was created in February 1941 and brought movie stars such as Bob Hope to military audiences across the country.
This is an American story in many ways. Dickson, the writer of more than 50 nonfiction books, recounts how the impetus for the task of peace came here from the military, but from a personal citizen named Grenville Clark, a wealthy New York lawyer who waved through the assignment with his many contacts. in the business and congressional world. President Franklin Roosevelt and Marshall did not sign up for the effort until they made a smart commitment. Several pro and anti-isolationist teams have maneuvered to influence legislation, in a dynamic that evokes American politics in its most productive and worst form.
Meritocracy is also a persistent issue, namely Marshall’s tactics to ensure that only worthy officers would lead the troops. During the maneuvers, more than 1,000 staff were dismissed or reassigned. The first vital officer to leave a primary general who is the leading commander of the army department. Of the 42 corps and department commanders involved in the Louisiana maneuvers, 31 were retired.
The press also contributed to the structure of the new army, not by accident. Journalists were much-loved visitors to the maneuvers. In one, the army provided an area with tables and typewriters that stretched over three-quarters of a block. Marshall and others hoped to write stories that would make the new military proud and inspire Americans to spend more to help him. A lot of hounds have.
Marshall also relied on popular culture to attract audiences, as well as to foster camaraderie in the ranks. He enlisted Hollywood’s help in making films about the wishes of the military that will be screened in theaters across the country. In early 1941, the service launched a new cash manual that included an army jargon glossary, adding access to G.I. or government problem. The story even includes a little celebrity. In July 1941, General George S. Patton gave the impression on the canopy of Life magazine, offering, as Dickson says, a face for the new army.
The history of discrimination against African-Americans is also deeply American. In scattered segments of the e-book that reflect the segregated ensembles then served by black Americans, Dickson recounts the efforts of civil rights leaders, members of the African-American press, and the infantrymen themselves to do some equivalent treatment. Dickson has a long history of Jim Crow to build on those passages.
In a particularly moving vignette, he recounts the joy of Charles Young, who in June 1917 was such a talented officer that he was forced to resign as a colonel to avoid threatening the hierarchy of white officials if he was promoted. Dickson also writes about an incident in 1941 in which a department of African-American infantrymen led by a black officer, rather than the standard white officer, was not invited to participate in a maneuver. Army chiefs were uncomfortable with the junior white officers and the enlisted workers’ corps who had to greet a black superior. Not all of the progress made in the army charter included the opposed fight against racism endemic within it.
At all times, the e-book evokes the philosophy of the World War II era, with sophisticated notes of positive attitude and bellicose spirit. It also reinforces to some extent the mythology surrounding the “largest generation” of World War II. Many Americans concluded that there was something inherently valuable in the generation that fought the Germans and the Japanese. Dickson’s account is not disappointed that these men were indeed more American.
Dickson also approaches history with an excess of religion that will end well. It points to many obstacles in the structure of the army, but at no time does the narrative go too far from what the reader knows is a satisfied ending. The e-book might have been dealing a little more with unresolved disorders and character disorders that affected the effort along the way.
However, reading about the birth of the country’s citizen army before World War II is a deeply encouraging experience. With everything they have to face today, Americans want Dickson to remember this important achievement.
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