Leadership

The difference between an armed mob and an army is its leadership. An army is led by men who have authority to command their subordinates and who thus can be held responsible for their actions. Because there is a limit to the number of subordinates that even the best leader can direct in battle, there is a hierarchy of leadership, with each rank in the hierarchy commanding those in the lower ranks and answering to those at higher ranks. It was unusual for a leader to directly command more than three or four subordinates, except possibly at the lowest levels.

The rank structure differed slightly between armies. The discussion which follows is based on the rank structure and organization of the U.S. Army.

Noncommissioned Officers (NCOs). At the lowest level of the Army, ordinary enlisted soldiers (holding the rank of private or private first class) were directed by noncommissioned officers. The latter were enlisted soldiers selected for their perceived leadership qualities. Soldiers were organized into squads or sections of eight to twelve soldiers led by a corporal or sergeant, who was typically assisted by the senior private first class or by a corporal. Every army had several sergeant ranks, with the higher ranks often serving as assistants to officers rather than as squad leaders.

In the U.S. and British armies, the selection and training of NCOs was the responsibility of the commissioned officers in each unit. There were no uniform standards, although on-the-job training was the accepted approach. Bergerud (1996) interviewed Bill Crooks, an Australian platoon sergeant, who said:

The section leaders were special men with special attributes. Yet outside some technical literature there was only one military textbook dealing with leading a section. Just think of it. Only one book about a man holding that position. G-d, to become a section leader for a Digger was the next best thing to becoming prime minister or a fighter pilot or a university professor.

By contrast, the Japanese Army instituted the NCO Preparatory School in 1927. This accepted volunteers, who were typically second or third sons of poor rural farmers. The prospective NCOs were required to train as  private soldiers with their parent units for a year before being admitted to the school. If they successfully graduated from the one-year course, they then assumed NCO duties. While this likely improved the professionalism of Japanese NCOs, it is also likely that it created a yawning social gulf between NCOs and ordinary private soldiers.

A squad leader had to have courage, but in jungle fighting it was at least as important that he have excellent situational awareness. His squad was likely to be spread out in dense cover, and he could easily lose track of his men when a fire fight broke out. If that happened, his shining example and all his shouted words of encouragement were likely to be useless.

Company Officers. The next rung in the leadership ladder was the platoon leader, who was a commissioned officer holding the rank of first or second lieutenant. While it was not unknown for outstanding noncommissioned officers to receive a battlefield commission, most platoon leaders were recent graduates of a military academy, a reserve officer program at a civilian university, or an officer candidate school.

A platoon typically consisted of three or four squads, supplemented by specialist elements such as a medium machine gun crew or a mortar or bazooka team. The platoon leader was assisted by a sergeant first class. In Western armies, the platoon sergeant often had considerably more combat experience than the platoon leader and was expected to be a steadying influence. In the Japanese Army, the social gulf between commissioned officers and NCOs meant that such an influence was inconceivable.

Three or four platoons were organized into a company led by a captain. Ideally, the captain was significantly more experienced than his platoon leaders and was expected to be their mentor in the profession of combat leadership. He usually had a first lieutenant as executive officer and was assisted by a first sergeant.

Field Officers. Three or four companies were organized into a battalion led by a lieutenant colonel. In addition to its rifle companies, a battalion also typically had a heavy weapons company equipped with heavy machine guns, heavy mortars, or a section of infantry or antitank guns. In addition to a major as executive officer, a battalion was large enough to have a small staff.

Three or four battalions were organized into a regiment led by a colonel. A regiment often had an artillery battery or tank battalion attached for specific operations. Regiments were large enough formations to have a unique identifying number.

General Officers. Three or four regiments were organized into a division, which was led by a major general with the assistance of a brigadier general. In addition to its infantry regiments, the division typically had an artillery regiment or brigade, a battalion of engineers, a reconnaissance company, and other supporting elements. The division was usually the largest permanent formation in an army.

Higher echelons were organized as needed for various operations and usually did not have a fixed structure. Two to four divisions were organized into a corps, which was usually led by a major general or lieutenant general. Two to four corps were organized into an army led by a lieutenant general, and two to four armies were organized into an army group led by a lieutenant general or general. The commander of an entire theater, if he was an Army officer, was a general or general of the Army. Only four American officers were appointed as generals of the Army during the war: Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff; MacArthur, who commanded the Southwest Pacific Area; Arnold, commander of the Army Air Forces; and Eisenhower, commander of the European Theater.

Other Armies and Services. The U.S. Marines had essentially the same organization and rank structure as the Army (differing only in the names of some of the enlisted ranks.) The British Army had brigades in place of regiments. These were commanded by brigadiers, who were not considered general officers.

There was no equivalent of a corps in the Japanese Army, where two to four divisions were organized into an army led by a lieutenant general and two to four armies were organized into an area army led by a general or field marshal.  Divisions in the Japanese Army were commanded by a lieutenant general assisted by a major general. This major general also commanded the infantry group of the division, which consisted of its infantry regiments. There was no rank of brigadier general in the Japanese Army.

Both the British and Japanese armies had field marshals as their top rank, in place of general of the Army.

The Chinese Army organized two to four divisions into units whose Chinese name has been variously translated as corps or army (the latter probably being the better translation) and two to four armies were organized into an army group. Army groups were organized into war areas. The Chinese title equivalent to field marshal or general of the army was generalissimo, held only by Chiang Kai-shek. This was as much a political as a military title.

Naval Leadership

Naval noncommissioned officers were known as petty officers. Like their Army counterparts, they were selected from the enlisted sailors, but they were also typically required to complete a prescribed course of shipboard training and pass an examination to qualify for their new rank. This reflected the specialized technical knowledge required to operate modern warships.

Because ships' complements vary greatly in size, the duties of naval officers are much less fixed than those of army officers. At the time of the Second World War, the most junior officers were ensigns who, like Army second lieutenants, were often fresh out of school and green as grass (especially in a beam sea.) On larger warships, these inexperienced officers were assigned as assistant division commanders, a Navy division being a group of ten to thirty sailors. The naval equivalent of a first lieutenant was a lieutenant junior grade, while the naval equivalent of an army captain was a lieutenant. A lieutenant might command a division on a larger warship, or he might command a small craft, such as a PT boat.

The naval equivalent of a major was a lieutenant commander, who might command a small destroyer or submarine or serve as a department head on a large warship (cruiser, battleship, or carrier.) A commander, the naval equivalent of a lieutenant colonel, might command a large destroyer or submarine or serve as executive officer on a large warship, while a naval captain, equivalent to an army colonel, typically commanded a division of small warships or a single large warship.

The naval equivalent of generals were admirals. Since there were only four grades of admiral in the U.S. Navy, versus five grades of general in the U.S. Army, those rear admirals who were in the lower half of seniority were considered equivalent to brigadier generals. They typically commanded a squadron of many small warships or a division of two to four large warships. Those rear admirals in the upper half of seniority were considered equivalent to a major general, and might command a task group of several large warships with their escorts. A vice admiral was equivalent to a lieutenant general and typically commanded a task force. A vice admiral might also command a naval district in home waters. Admirals were equivalent to generals and typically commanded a fleet, while the naval equivalent of a general of the army was a fleet admiral. Only four American officers were appointed as fleet admirals during the war:  Leahy, President Roosevelt's personal military advisor and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; King, the top Navy commander; Nimitz, the Pacific Ocean Areas commander; and Halsey, the popular commander of Third Fleet. Spruance, Halsey's counterpart commanding Fifth Fleet, was denied his fifth star but was granted special status by Congress, including the right to continue drawing his full pay as an admiral after retirement.

Civilian leadership

It is a curious fact that, with the exception of China and possibly Japan, the ultimate command of the armed forces of the Second World War rested with civilian leaders. While the king of Britain was theoretically the sovereign commander-in-chief of all Commonwealth armed forces, in practice the ultimate command rested with the civilian cabinet led by a prime minister. Winston Churchill, the British prime minister during most of the war, had to lead by persuasion when he first was appointed to office, but as his prestige increased, his political power also increased. In the United States, the Constitution names the President as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. President Roosevelt exercised this command with the assistance of the Secretaries of War and the Navy and of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Both Churchill and Roosevelt had to be sensitive to public opinion and to the prerogatives of the legislative branches of their governments. Churchill was answerable to Parliament, which could compel his resignation with a motion of no confidence, while the U.S. Congress was constitutionally required to reauthorize the Army's budget every two years and had the power to pass laws regulating the armed forces.

Japan was theoretically led by the Emperor, but his actual role remains cloudy to this day. It is clear that the Army and (to a lesser extent) the Navy had accumulated considerable power, enough to virtually ignore the civilian elements of the government, but it is less clear how much effective command the Emperor had over the armed services. Hirohito was regularly briefed on military operations, and while he exercised little formal control, there is some reason to believe his informal influence was greater than portrayed by historians writing in the immediate postwar era.

Qualities of effective leaders

It has already been pointed out that effective company officers needed to combine courage with situational awareness, including the ability to correctly read the terrain. In addition, the most outstanding officers showed an ability to take the initiative. This was carefully cultivated in the German Army, but neglected in the Commonwealth and U.S. armies, and actively discouraged in the Japanese Army. During the battle of Hong Kong, a Japanese battalion commander who seized the crucial Shing Mun redoubt on his own initiative was furiously bawled out by his superior for acting without orders, and told to pull his men back! The order to withdraw was eventually canceled, but the incident illustrates a crucial weakness in the leadership of the Japanese Army, which put almost all its leadership training emphasis on raw physical courage and rigid obedience to orders.

As an officer advanced further up the rank ladder, the ability to master details and to plan effective operations became increasingly important. While a general officer who took time to visit the front line could sometimes boost morale, it was more important that he have whatever intangible quality it is that allows a leader to foresee the likely outcome of decisions and be willing to accept their consequences -- a quality sometimes described as moral courage, in contrast with the physical courage required of junior officers.

Naval officers at all levels needed the constellation of skills that made up excellent seamanship. Physical courage was required of naval officers even in peacetime, since sailing the oceans was an intrinsically hazardous calling. Ship's captains, of whatever formal rank, carried an immense responsibility both in wartime and peace, and it is remarkable that the various navies were able to find as many competent officers to command warships as they did.

An illustrative case history of the problems of leadership is that of Lieutenant Colonel William E. Maxwell, commander of 1 Battalion, 5 Marine Regiment on Guadalcanal. Large numbers of his company officers had been transferred out to provide cadre for 7 Marine Regiment and most of his men were recent enlistees. They had not had much opportunity to train together because of constant movement since deploying from the States. Maxwell concluded that he had no choice but to insist on rigid obedience to orders, which he enforced with stinging critiques for errors. In effect, he traded off initiative for discipline. Faced with a difficult tactical problem in the ridges west of Henderson Field, communications broke down, and the battalion became paralyzed. Maxwell was relieved of command by his regimental commander, a decision most of his fellow officers supported.

All the major powers had special training colleges to groom those officers who showed particular promise for high command. In the United States Army, the most prestigious of these was the Army War College in Pennsylvania, which prepared field officers for high command. The Command and General Staff School, at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, trained younger officers for staff responsibilities and field command and was generally a prerequisite for the Army War College. The naval counterpart to the Army War College was the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island. The Japanese and British had similar institutions.

Leadership selection and training. Armies are notoriously poor at selecting effective leaders. During the Second World War, only the German Army, which placed tremendous emphasis on leadership selection and training, came anywhere close to making this a science. The Japanese Army selected its officer candidates at a very young age (15 or even younger) and subjected them to a brutal regimen designed to produce extreme physical and mental toughness. So physically demanding was the training course that Japanese Army officers were significantly shorter in average height than the average enlisted man.  The U.S. service academies of the prewar years were steeped in tradition and notorious for a lack of academic rigor, but the tremendous expansion in the officer corps early in the war led both services to apply scientific methods to officer candidate selection. Aptitude tests and psychological profiling, the latter in its infancy, were applied, with mixed success.

In the U.S. Army, reserve officers were typically either university students who joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) or graduates of an officer candidate school. The officer candidate course took just three months, and its products were known derisively as "ninety-day wonders." The Japanese did not establish reserve officer schools until 1944, but the five reserve officer schools managed to turn out 20,000 graduates before the war ended. The schools took selected high school graduates and trained them for a year before awarding them reserve commissions. Regular officers and veteran enlisted men referred to these reserve officers as "dummy rounds".

The inability of most armies to predict who would make a good leader left them with the problem of how to get rid of officers who fell short.  A professional officer corps where careers were constantly hanging on the evaluations of superiors bred sycophants. Yet an army cannot afford incompetent leadership in combat. This dilemma will probably never be completely resolved, but military organizations found various creative solutions. One was to proliferate non-line officer positions. An officer who was unfit for combat leadership might prove perfectly adequate, even talented, in a support position, and these were also vital to military success. Another creative solution was to clean house when a call came for cadre. When Vandegrift was asked to transfer some of his senior officers back to the States to help create new Marine units, he took the opportunity to get rid of officers he felt had not measured up. One of these officers was eventually promoted to full general, suggesting that successful leadership is sometimes a matter of the right chemistry, and a change in environment can transform a dud into a dynamo.

References

Army War College (accessed 2008-5-19)

Bergerud (1996)

Command and General Staff College (accessed 2008-5-19)

Drea (2009)

Frank (1990)

Naval War College (accessed 2008-5-19)

Sledge (1981)

The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia © 2008-2009 by Kent G. Budge.  Index

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