Profiles in Leadership: George Marshall
George Marshall was one of many people who figured prominently in a graduate thesis that I wrote about the evolution of the Containment Doctrine. At first glance, it’s tempting to think that a man like George Marshall, whose career was mostly spent as a US Army Officer, would fit the classic “early Cold Warrior” mold, because his military career was just coming to an end when President Truman took office, and it would not be a huge leap to assume that Marshall saw the world through the eyes of a soldier, first and foremost. And yet, the later portion of this career took on a decidedly different trajectory.
When we we take a moment to consider how historians and other scholars and writers portray Marshall, what stands out more than anything else is the eponymous Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program (ERP). Showing what a humble person he was, Marshall made it clear that he strongly preferred to use the term ERP, rather than the Marshall Plan, and yet, the latter term is the one that most people use to refer to it to this day, which probably has a lot to do with Marshall being named as a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for this efforts.
What’s got me thinking about George Marshall right now is the portrayal of him in David Brooks’s book The Road to Character. Marshall is one of ten people that Brooks profiles in the book, where in Brooks’s eyes, Marshall stands out for his self-mastery and willingness to serve the greater good. To quote the title of Brook’s short TED Talk based on the book, Should you live for your resume, or your eulogy? — without giving too much away, Brooks suggests that we plumb the depths of our souls and evaluate our priorities, learning from the example of Marshall and the others that he chooses to focus individual chapters of the book on.
Marshall’s Early Life
As a possible lesson to all of us, there is absolutely nothing about Marshall’s childhood or adolescence to suggest future greatness. He was not a good student, and really did not care for school at all. And as often happens with students who find school to be not worthy of their time, he soon became known for acting out and being a discipline problem.
As he got a bit older, as recounted by his biographer Forrest Pogue, he wanted to follow in the footsteps of his older brother Stuart, who attended the Virginia Military Institute (VMI(. He overheard a conversation between Stuart and his mother, the gist of which was that Stuart discouraged his mother from sending him to VMI, since he thought he would be a disgrace to the family name.
Brooks goes on to recount what a huge impact this episode had on Marshall’s life:
“This is a common trait among modest people who achieve extraordinary success. It’s not that they were particularly brilliant or talented. The average collegiate GPA for a self-made millionaire is somewhere in the low B range. But at some crucial point in their lives, somebody told them they were too stupid to do something and they set out to prove the bastards wrong.”
Experiences at VMI
In what would be a reflection of his earlier academic career, Marshall did not excel as a student at VMI. But he had other qualities that were honed during his time there, like organization, precision, self-control, and leadership. As Brooks describes it, according to our modern aesthetic, there tends to be a great deal of interest in success as typically measured by job titles and income, and a fixation on appearances. In the world that Marshall came to know at VMI, “… great individuals are made, not born, and … they are made through training. Change happens from the outside in.”
In what was probably the greatest indication of how much Marshall changed over the course of his years at VMI, he was named first captain, VMI’s highest rank. Over the course of his time there, he never received a single demerit. (Recalling my time at USAF Officer Training School, I certainly cannot make that claim!). “He developed the austere commanding presence that would forever mark his personality. He excelled at anything to do with soldiering and was the unquestioned leader of his class.”
Military Career
In much the same way that his academic career had gone, there was little during most of the years of Marshall’s military career to suggest that he would emerge from the pack of his contemporaries. His military service started during the second decade of the 20th century, and he soon became known for excelling at “staff work,” including planning and logistics. It was in this capacity that he spent much of his time during World War I, where what stands out is his great interest in understanding what the soldiers in the trenches actually needed most, and doing his level best to get it for them.
He continued to demonstrate promise as a planner and and also as a tactician, which would lead to an appointment to lead the Infantry School program at Fort Benning. He served there for four years, which proved to be an important assignment in many ways, because he changed the way in which officers were trained, and ultimately, many of the most important officers that would serve during World War II passed through Fort Benning while he was there.
Brooks describes the nature of the innovations that he made:
“The lesson plans he inherited were built on the ridiculous premise that in battle, officers would have complete information about their troops’ positions, and the enemy’s. He sent them on maneuvers without maps or with outdated ones, telling them that in a real war, the maps would either be absent or worse than useless. He told them the crucial issue is usually when a decision should be made as much as what the decision should be. He told them that mediocre solutions undertaken in time were better than perfect solutions undertaken too late.”
(When working with teams and individuals, I have often found myself quoting Voltaire’s maxim “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Approaching decision-making with this mindset helps avoid “analysis paralysis” and also recognizes that we often don’t know how well a particular approach will work until we test it in the real world.)
Ultimately, as the United States became embroiled in War World II in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters, Marshall would rise rapidly in the ranks, attaining the rank of General. Roosevelt made him his Deputy Chief of Staff, and it would not be long before he was named Chief of Staff. In marked contrast to other US military leaders from the same period of time that are better known to us because they were larger than life and have been portrayed in numerous films and books, such as Patton and MacArthur, Marshall (and also Eisenhower) were cut from considerably different cloth. In the end, when a decision needed to made to name a commander for Operation Overlord, the bold landing at Normandy that would help change the course of the war, Marshall, in characteristic fashion, refused to advocate for himself, and Eisenhower was named commander.
The Post-War Years
In what would become a pattern, Marshall would repeatedly seek to retire from public life, only to be pulled back in. And thus, he would serve in numerous posts, including Ambassador to China, President of the American Red Cross, and Secretary of State. And it was in this latter capacity that Marshall had the opportunity to shape the sequence of events in postwar Europe like no one else.
In retrospect, the rollout of the ERP (Marshall Plan) almost seems like a no-brainer, but it was anything but. Marshall was not the only person involved in its formulation, by any stretch, however, his involvement had his fingerprints all over it. For example, in a significant departure from what happened at the end of World War I, which was a punitive peace imposed on Germany and other nations aligned with it, Marshall and others insisted that it would be critically important to rebuild the economies of Germany, and other European nations.
In its final formulation, aid began flowing via the Marshall Plan to Western and Southern Europe in mid-1948, and would continue until 1951. It was initially offered to almost all European countries, including those already under the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union. In a harbinger of what we now know as the Cold War, the Soviets declined to participate, as did the nations of Eastern Europe. Although historians and other scholars express differing views on the extent of the impact of the Marshall Plan, there is no question that it was one of the defining moments of the 20th century. And there is also little doubt that George Marshall will be remembered for the Marshall Plan more than for anything else that he did over decades of public service.
Conclusion
The way in which Brooks describes what happened shortly after Marshall’s death on October 16, 1959 is emblematic of the way in which he lived his life:
“At his express order, there was no state funeral. There was no lying in state in the Capitol rotunda. His body lay in state at the Bethlehem Chapel of the National Cathedral for twenty-four hours so friends could pay their respects. In attendance at the funeral were family, a few colleagues, and his old wartime barber, Nicholas J. Totalo, who had cut the general’s hair in Cairo, Teheran, Potsdam, and later at the Pentagon. Then there was a short, plain service at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia, using the Standard Order for the Burial of the Dead from the Book of Common Prayer, with no eulogy.”
There is much that we can learn from his example. In an era where CEOs and other leaders tend to do as much as possible to call attention to themselves, and to their accomplishments, he took a much different path. It seems appropriate to close by quoting one of his contemporaries, who approached life in much the same way (and who also figures prominently in Brook’s book), Dwight D. Eisenhower:
“The supreme quality of leadership is integrity.”
