#5-232
To Harry S. Truman from Henry L Stimson
September 18, 1945 [Washington, D.C.]
Dear Mr. President:
Two or three weeks ago I spoke to you of the importance of properly recognizing the services of General Marshall. He is the outstanding man among the English speaking soldiers of this war, bar none. He has dominated the global strategy of the war in a way that no other general has. By his character and influence he has also dominated the Combined Chiefs of Staff. He has won the complete confidence of the heads of the allied governments, notably Winston Churchill. All have recognized his intellectual power, his selfless integrity, and his inflexible habit of considering only the general interest and never his own.
His mind has guided the grand strategy of our campaigns. He held to the proper line towards Germany’s heart when others were seeking diversions. It was his mind and character that carried through the trans-Channel campaign against Germany in spite of constant and powerful attempts to divert and defeat it. Similarly the south of France plan. Similarly his views have controlled the Pacific campaign although there he has been most modest and careful in recognizing the role of the Navy. His views guided Mr. Roosevelt throughout.
The construction of the American Army has been entirely the fruit of his initiative and supervision. Likewise its training. As a result, we have had an army unparalleled in our history with a high command of supreme and uniform excellence; an army able to go directly from the American training camps and maneuver grounds and successfully meet the best which the Germans could put forward.
With this Army we have won a most difficult dual war with practically no serious setbacks and astonishingly “according to plan”. The estimate of our forces required has been adequate and yet not excessive. For instance, Marshall estimated against the larger estimates of others that eighty-nine American divisions would suffice. On the successful close of the war, all but two of these divisions had been committed to action in the field. His timetables of the successive operations have been accurate and the close of the war has been ultimately achieved far sooner than most of us had anticipated.
Show me any war in history which has produced a general with such a surprisingly perfect record as this greatest and most difficult war of all history. I cannot leave my office without putting on record my view that General Marshall should receive the highest possible American decoration, bar none. The ideally fitting method would be for Congress to vote him a special supreme medal such as they did to General Ulysses Grant. Certainly a DSM would be insufficient. He already has one from the last war.
I have written this hasty sketch of my view of a man with whom I have been in daily contact for five years. Never under all the strain and pressure of those times has he revealed to me a departure in speech or conduct from the uniformly high standard which I have tried to depict.1
Faithfully yours,
Document Copy Text Source: George C. Marshall Papers, Pentagon Office Collection, Selected Materials, George C. Marshall Research Library, Lexington, Virginia.
Document Format: Typed letter.
1. Secretary of War Stimson submitted his resignation to the president on September 18; it was to be effective in three days on his seventy-eighth birthday. He handed the statement printed here to the president at the close of the Cabinet meeting that day, and all present were enthusiastic about doing something special for Marshall. Truman agreed that he should recommend a special medal to Congress. (See Yale/H. L. Stimson Papers [Diary, 52: 141–42].) Marshall, however, received his second Distinguished Service Medal upon his retirement. (See Marshall Statement upon Receiving the Distinguished Service Medal, November 26, 1945, Papers of George Catlett Marshall, #5-281 [5: 366–67].)
At his last press conference on the morning of September 19, about half of Stimson’s farewell statement was praise for Marshall; it concluded: “During the course of a long lifetime, much of it spent in position of public trust, I have had considerable experience with men in government. General Marshall has given me a new gauge of what such service should be. The destiny of America at the most critical time of its national existence has been in the hands of a great and good citizen. Let no man forget it.” (New York Times, September 20, 1945, p. 12.)
Recommended Citation: ThePapers of George Catlett Marshall, ed.Larry I. Bland and Sharon Ritenour Stevens (Lexington, Va.: The George C. Marshall Foundation, 1981– ). Electronic version based on The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, vol. 5, “The Finest Soldier,” January 1, 1945–January 7, 1947 (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), pp. 303–304.