Air University Review , July-August 1980

Individualism and Military Leadership

AMERICANS like to think of themselves as individualists. The image of the independent, self-confident nonconformist has long been part of our national tradition--seen both at home and abroad as characteristic, refreshing, and appropriate in a new and burgeoning society.

Likewise, American military leaders who have captured the public imagination have with few exceptions been cast in a mold of dramatic individualism. Each appeared to be his own master, confident in his superiority and strikingly independent or casual about such things as conformity, conventional means and methods, and the traditional rules for organizational success. This suggests a curious paradox. For the fact of the matter is that willful individualism and effective military leadership are not necessarily compatible. They may indeed be completely incongruous.

Individualism suggests an independence of thought or action, a peculiarity or egocentrism, pursued regardless of the common or collective interests of the group. Individualists may sometimes further group objectives; but in a highly structured organization or society, their behavior is generally frowned on as at least anomalous and at worst disruptive. Individualism is not normally a positive principle of social organization.

Leadership, on the other hand, is a thoroughly approved form of social behavior. While certain individualistic tendencies such as personal heroism or colorful identifying characteristics may be desirable in a leader, by and large leadership contributes positively to society by becoming a part of the whole rather than by following an alternative or independent course. It thus embodies the interests and objectives of the group as much as it acts to guide, focus, and advance them. The more tightly organized the society, the more this is normally the case.

Successful leadership depends to a large extent on the willingness of those who are led to regard the leader as one with themselves, with shared aims and desires, and as the expression of all that is good and true within the group. Whatever the individualistic tendencies that contribute to the success of leadership, its basis is the ability of the leader to epitomize and be accepted by the society being led.

Leadership, in sum, is a positive social value because it represents the social organization that it reflects. It thus stands in contradistinction to a less typical and frequently antisocial individualism. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the precisely structured, disciplined neatness of the military organization. The military emphasizes more than any other form of society the group over the individual, conformity over deviance, hierarchy and subordination over égalité and debate, the whole over its parts. Individualized values are a threat to the entire range of traditional military norms. The soldier's precise bureaucratic imperative is undermined by the self-assertiveness and free choice of the individual.

Despite this apparent incompatibility, we seem to prefer our military leaders as independent heroes--usually with picturesque or peculiar modes of behavior--with their success apparently based on singular habits of thought, speech, dress, or action. The military leader, in this romantic view, becomes less the epitome of the disciplined structure from which he springs than a strange aberration from that institution: esoteric, heterodoxical, egocentric. We accept as the very symbol of military leadership a form of individualism that emphasizes flamboyant personality, unconventional ways, and a willingness to disregard the accepted professional ethic. However incorrect this picture of military leadership may be, we remain more impressed with the regal grandiosity of a MacArthur or the calculated madness of a Patton than with the quiet but effective conventional skills of a Bradley or a Krueger. We thus conclude that for leaders, at least, the individual should ignore the system, independence may be more effective than discipline, nonconformity wins more battles than tradition.

The implications of this reasoning may be disturbing or reassuring, depending on your point of view. But two recent volumes of military biography, American Caesar and On to Berlin, provide case studies of contrasting styles of leadership and individualism, and each offers additional evidence with which to study the question at hand.

THE first, William Manchester's monumental and much publicized study of General Douglas MacArthur, describes a military leader whose individualism a outrance aroused conflicting passions and ended in tragedy. The second, an autobiographical essay by Lieutenant General James M. Gavin, provides an example of controlled individualism far more acceptable and effective in a military leader.

The image of MacArthur that emerges from Manchester's fascinating study is a complicated one.* MacArthur inherited his military skills and independent nature from his father, the brilliant and controversial General Arthur MacArthur; but he was dominated by his aggressive, politically minded mother, to whom he owed much for his success. Not surprisingly, with such a background, he led his class at West Point and wore a general's stars at the age of thirty-eight. The latter stemmed in part from his impressive and heroic record in World War I, when he also established the striking individual style, panache, and willful disregard for custom and authority that was to characterize him for the rest of his life. He was also developing a reputation for military genius and personal, almost foolhardy courage.

*William Manchester, American Caesar, Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1978, $15.00), 793 pages.

After the war, he served as a distinguished superintendent of the Military Academy; sat on the court-martial of the contentious General Billy Mitchell; married, divorced, and took a mistress (whom he hid from his mother); and apparently ended his career as Army Chief of Staff--not without a further controversial performance against the Bonus Marchers. Sent as military adviser to the Philippine Commonwealth, he retired from the Army and assumed the post of Field Marshal of the Philippine Armed Forces. The approach of World War II brought his recall to active duty, a second military career, and another dramatic decade of success, failure, and, above all, controversy.

Throughout his personal and professional life, MacArthur displayed an intense blend of contradictory talents and senses. Imaginative, energetic, and bold, he had a flair for drama and oratory and the capability to lead and inspire. But he also showed a consuming arrogance, a surprising willingness to fawn on superiors and, at times, to fall back on needlessly conservative tactics, a disturbing emotionalism, and a disruptive political ambition that in the end proved fatal to an already tarnished image.

Manchester's biography suits his subject. Like MacArthur, it is grand, brilliant, intensely literate, and high-flown--a remarkable tour de force. But it is also, like the general, unbalanced, unreliable, erratic, melodramatic, and self-serving. At first glance, Manchester's work appears objective, thoroughly researched, and fully documented. But it is basically pro-MacArthur, and the author has overlooked or ignored major archival sources as well as several important published works. He has admittedly leaned very heavily on D. Clayton James's scholarly and reliable volumes on MacArthur,¹ while nevertheless accepting uncritically other, less trustworthy sources. He has, in fact, added very little to James's earlier findings. Manchester's footnotes, finally, are confusing and misleading.

Manchester's errors or casual twistings of fact are numerous--from such tiny but needless slips as misdating the Bataan Death March and including in its ranks the Americans taken prisoner on Corregidor a month later to such major fallacies as repeating the old canards about the alleged MacArthur-Pershing or MacArthur-Marshall feuds. Nor does it help Manchester's pretense to balance when he accepts MacArthur's paranoid view of knaves or fools in Washington who supposedly, from the Philippines through Korea, consistently sought to undermine the general.

One of Manchester's most annoying faults is his misuse of comparative, and often selective, casualty figures to prove MacArthur's greatness. Manchester served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II and was seriously wounded on Okinawa. MacArthur's bypassing strategy, with its apparent lighter casualty toll, is thus far more attractive to him than the type of direct assault operation in which he himself was disabled. This is an understandable preference, but it is based on erroneous or misleading data and dubious interpretations.

MacArthur's casualties, writes Manchester, "from Australia to VJ Day were fewer than those in the Battle of the Bulge." (pp. 4, 691) The general lost fewer men "between his arrival in Australia and his return to. Philippine waters over two years later" than fell in the "single" battles of Anzio or Normandy. (p.339) Thousands of troops were "sacrificed" elsewhere in the Pacific and Europe because commanders refused to adopt "MacArthur's brilliant maneuvering [that] would provide the war's shortest casualty lists." (pp. 431, 328) Thus, the heavy American casualties on Okinawa constituted a needless loss, which MacArthur would have avoided by better strategy and more imaginative tactics. MacArthur, in short, could have won the war faster and cheaper, in Europe as well as in the Pacific.

There are many things wrong with this analysis. First of all, Manchester is not comparing like things. The total American and enemy forces involved in the Southwest Pacific were far less than the huge numbers engaged in Europe and Africa. Moreover, by ignoring MacArthur's losses in the first Philippine campaign (approximately 140,000 Filipino and American troops captured or killed)² as well as the general's large casualties after his "return to Philippine waters," in the comparison with Anzio or Normandy, Manchester selects a period in which MacArthur commanded relatively few forces. He also apparently overlooks Australian casualties incurred under MacArthur while fighting Japanese forces previously bypassed by the Americans.

Furthermore, the impact of MacArthur's advance--Manchester to the contrary--was not nearly as significant as that of the major offensives in Europe or the central Pacific. Operations in the Southwest Pacific, however punishing to the enemy, were clearly peripheral to the primary American thrust toward the heart of Japan. The decisive blows were struck in the central Pacific. There, once the availability of powerful carrier task forces made it possible, Admiral Chester Nimitz's forces moved faster and farther in more significant strategic jumps and maneuvers than MacArthur ever did. In the eight months from November 1943 to July 1944, the drive across the central Pacific made greater leaps over longer spaces than MacArthur achieved in the nearly three years it took him to go from Australia to Manila. Nimitz's advance, moreover, led to the direct strategic bombing of all Japan, which would end the war within little more than another year. MacArthur, despite his great, yet bloody victory in the Philippines, never could do as much.

It is also clear that when MacArthur attacked major objectives that could not be bypassed, his casualties were no lower than anyone else's. By Manchester's own admission, for example, the seizure of Papua cost the general three times as many killed and consideralby more wounded than Nimitz lost in capturing Guadalcanal during the same period. (p. 328) As for Okinawa, Manchester uses two sets of casualty figures, both misleading. The first, roughly 49,000 killed and wounded, actually includes nearly 10,000 naval losses that he neglects to mention; the second, 65,631, includes over 26,000 nonbattle casualties, also unmentioned. (pp. 431, 611) In fact, the approximately 39,000 actual American ground combat casualties on Okinawa were roughly equal to the nearly 38,000 MacArthur suffered on Luzon, where the general's 93,000 non battle casualties were almost four times more than those incurred on Okinawa.³

But why prolong the comparison? Capturing strongly defended, major objectives entails taking casualties. And sooner or later, bypassing or the indirect approach must give way to some sort of decisive battle. In the central Pacific, the aim was to seize bases from which to apply decisive air power against the heart of Japan. For MacArthur, the Philippines were the decisive point; and his stubborn opposition to allocating resources to any other strategy or effort revealed him to be less of a grand strategist than a prideful, designing self-server.

Not only does Manchester miss this point but he also fails to understand that MacArthur, in his disdain and contempt for both civil and military authority, symbolized the age-old struggle between military discipline and willful individualism. For all his brilliance and success, MacArthur ultimately failed as a soldier because his perverse ambitions and conceits led him to reject the professional values of the military system.

THE model of leadership that William Manchester offers in MacArthur, unfortunately, ignores the great majority of American military leaders whose effectiveness has depended less on flamboyance or idiosyncracy than on a firm foundation of purposeful force, disciplined action, and solid professionalism. James M. Gavin is more typical of the latter. He is more to be respected than MacArthur as a soldier, and his book is more honest than Manchester's.

Unlike MacArthur, but like many other American generals, Gavin sprang from relatively humble origins.* Son of a coal miner, he was graduated from West Point in 1929 and rose from the rank of captain in 1941 to become one of the youngest division commanders in World War II. In an equally distinguished postmilitary career, he served as Kennedy's ambassador to France and later became board chairman of Arthur D. Little. Soldier, intellect, manager, frequent lecturer, and author of six books, Gavin offers a keen, analytic view of any subject he addresses. On to Berlin is an exciting and clearly written narrative of his experience with the 82d Airborne Division from Sicily through the end of the war in Europe. He provides a colorful and illuminating view of airborne operations and of the tactics and strategy of the campaign against Germany and Italy. In the process he offers a valuable insight to his concept of military leadership.

*James M. Gavin, On to Berlin: Battles of an Airborne Commander, 1943-1946 (New York: Viking Press, 1978, $14.95), 336 pages.

Like MacArthur, Gavin displayed personal bravery, imagination, style, and the ability to elicit fierce loyalty and support from his men. He was probably more broadly successful in the latter capability, since he eschewed the aloofness and mystery so dear to the MacArthurian image. Gavin believed primarily in a personal form of leadership that saw him fully engaged in combat alongside his men, whatever his command position. This is reminiscent of the MacArthur of World War I; but, even then, one still has the feeling that Gavin would have been a far more personal and involved theater commander than MacArthur. Gavin, moreover, had no taste for the distinctive uniforms and symbols so important to MacArthur, but preferred instead the plain paratrooper jumpsuit and the sensible protection of a steel helmet. Not only did this serve to link him more closely with the men he led but, as he correctly observes, was less liable to attract attention and subject them to hostile fire.

Gavin's view that the commander should be as close as possible to the scene of action made him highly critical of General Eisenhower. Ike's "remoteness from the battle scene, when critical decisions had to be made," argues Gavin, was responsible for a number of important mistakes, from Sicily to Falaise and on through the final struggle for Germany. (p. 48) Historians may dispute this point (as they will decry some other gratuitous digs at Eisenhower in the book), but it clearly reflects Gavin's view of how battles should be fought and won, with the "commander if) the midst of things." (p. 43)

Gavin is even more critical of Eisenhower's failure to capture Berlin. His argument is the standard one: that American forces, led by an airborne assault, could have seized Berlin before the Russians did and that this would have significantly altered the course of the subsequent Cold War. However, Gavin fails to make clear how grabbing Berlin would have helped matters, since we would have had to evacuate most of it anyway under the Allied agreements on postwar occupation zones-just as the Russians did after they had captured the city. Nor is it obvious that we could have occupied Berlin ahead of the Russians, who had more troops considerably closer to the German capital. As it was, Soviet forces took" horrendous casualties in Berlin, and similar losses by American and British units would have been unacceptable at that stage of the war.

This point notwithstanding, General Gavin's book is still a first-rate account and a superb example of leadership in action. It should probably be read along with his earlier Airborne Warfare⁴ if the reader seeks a comprehensive, overall picture of airborne operations in World War II. And the official Air Force history⁵ will also have to be consulted for a proper view of the role of the Army Air Forces in transporting and supporting these operations. But for the smell of battle on the ground and the confusion and excitement of men, weapons, equipment, and vehicles dropped in disorder in the midst of combat, On to Berlin is excellent. Above all, it displays the individual leader at his best and demonstrates the character and strength of moral purpose that made Gavin an outstanding commander.

MANCHESTER'S biography of MacArthur and Gavin's personal memoir provide an excellent opportunity to compare two types of leaders. Both were individualists in their own way: MacArthur undisciplined and egocentric, Gavin controlled and dedicated. MacArthur's individualism was in the end destructive, Gavin's truly positive and professional.

Notes

1. D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur, Vol. I, 1880-1941: Vol. II, 1941-1945 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970 and 1975). Volume III is in preparation.

2. Louis Morton, The Fall of the Philippines (Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of Army, 1953), p. 583.

3. Samuel Eliot Morison, Victory in the Pacific, 1945 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), p. 282; Roy E. Appleman et al., Okinawa: The Last Battle (Washington: Historical Division, Department of Army, 1948), pp. 489-90; Robert Ross Smith, Triumph in the Philippines (Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1963), pp.652, 692.

4. James M. Gavin, Airborne Warfare (Washington, Infantry Journal Press, 1947).

5. Wesley F. Craven and James L. Cate, editors, The Army Air Forces in World War II, 7 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948-1958).

Stanley L. Falk (B.A., Bard College; M.A., Ph.D., Georgetown University) is Deputy Chief, Historian for Southeast Asia, U.S. Army Center of Military History, Washington, D.C. Prior to this position, he was Chief Historian, Office of Air Force History, and Professor of International Relations at Industrial College of the Armed Forces. Dr. Falk has published, taught, and lectured in the fields of military history and national security affairs and is the author of five books on World War II.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

Air & Space Power Home Page | Feedback? Email the Editor