Crisis at the War Department: How Do You Manage a Global War on the Fly?

On 19 January 1918,  Chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee Senator George E. Chamberlain dramatically announced: 

The military establishment of America has fallen down!

Production line for 3-inch shells, Bethlehem Steel, PA

The one area where the War Department was supremely lacking was in its own ability to manage the war. In the spring of 1917 the Army’s General Staff was a small war-planning agency rather than a coordinating staff for the War Department and its bureaus. The National Defense Act of 1916 had limited the number of General Staff officers that could be stationed in Washington to fewer than twenty, less than a tenth of England’s staff in August 1914. Once the United States joined the conflict many talented officers left Washington for overseas or commands, even as the staff needed to undergo a massive expansion. Without a strong coordination agency to provide oversight, the staff bureaus ran amok. By July more than 150 War Department purchasing committees competed against each other, often cornering the market for scarce items and making them unavailable for the Army at large. While the General Staff at least established troop movement and training schedules, no one set up industrial and transportation priorities. 

To a large degree the problem was that Baker did not have a strong chief of staff to control the General Staff and manage the bureaus. Both General Scott and his successor, General Bliss, were near retirement and distracted by special assignments. Baker did little to alleviate these problems until late 1917. By then the situation had become a crisis. 

Major General George Goethals at the Panama Canal

Responding to pressure from Congress and recommendations from the General Staff, Baker took action to centralize and streamline the supply activities. First, in November, he appointed industrialist Benedict Crowell, a firm believer in centralized control, as the assistant secretary of war; later Crowell would also assume duties as director of munitions. On the military side, Baker called back from retirement Maj. Gen. George W. Goethals, who had coordinated the construction of the Panama Canal. First appointed acting quartermaster general in December, Goethals quickly assumed the mantle of the Army’s chief supply officer. Eliminating red tape and consolidating supply functions, especially the purchasing agencies, he also brought in talented administrators from both the military and the civilian sector to run the supply system. 

In the meantime, the secretary of war was beginning to reorganize the General Staff. Congress had increased the size of the staff, but it wasn’t until Maj. Gen. Peyton C. March became the chief of staff in March of 1918 that the General Staff gained a firm, guiding hand. Over his thirty years of service, the 53-year-old March had gained an experience well balanced between line and staff. He had been cited for gallantry as a junior officer in the War with Spain and in the Philippine Insurrection. He also served tours of duty with the Office of the Adjutant General and  most recently had been Pershing’s artillery chief in France. Forceful and brilliant, March was unafraid of making decisions.

March’s overarching goal was to get as many men as possible to the AEF in Europe to win the war. To achieve this, he set about making the General Staff and the War Department more effective and efficient, quickly clearing bureaucratic logjams, streamlining operations, and ousting ineffective officers. In May 1918 he was aided immeasurably by the Overman Act, which granted the president authority to reorganize executive agencies during the war. Moreover, he received the additional authority of the rank of four-star general. March quickly decreed that the powerful bureau chiefs were subordinate to the General Staff and were to report to the secretary of war only through the chief of staff.

A Revealing Photo of General Peyton C. March

In August 1918 March drastically reorganized the General Staff, creating four main divisions: Operations; Military Intelligence; Purchase, Storage, and Traffic; and War Plans. The divisions’ titles fairly well explained their functions. Notably, with the creation of the Purchase, Storage, and Traffic Division, for the first time the Army had centralized control over logistics. Under this reorganization, the total military and civilian  strength of the General Staff increased to just over 1,000 and took on a much more active role. [Secretary Baker summed up March's role: "The war was won by days. Your energy and drive supplied the days necessary for our side to win."]

By the end of the summer of 1918, Generals March and Goethals and their talented military and civilian subordinates had engineered a managerial revolution in the War Department.  Inefficiency, pigeonholes, and snarled actions were replaced by centralized control and decentralized operations.

Source: The U.S. Army in the World War I Era,  Center of Military History, United States Army