A Mighty Quiet American
RODMAN, SELDEN
A Mighty Quiet American Marshall: Hero for Our Times By Leonard Mosley Hearst Books. 570pp. $18.50. Reviewed by Selden Rodman Author, "Tongues of Fallen Angels. " "Artists in Tune with Their...
...Preceding this was Marshall's most resounding failure, the attempt to get Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao Zedong to cooperate...
...Mos-ley has not discovered any daring or imaginative strategic decisions by his subject that shortened the War or insured victory...
...Or was it because Marshall was the single military man capable of controlling so many top brass prima donnas and misfits...
...Marshall did not condone Patton's slapping a distraught GI in Sicily, but he was willing to look the other way rather than sacrifice General Dwight D. Eisenhower's ablest lieutenant—especially because doing so might have handed the ball to that other arrogant peacock, Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery, when it was already clear that the inept English commander was a millstone around Ike's neck...
...The author examines these flaws frankly, yet without much feeling for what they contributed to Marshall's personality...
...Indeed, except for portraying Marshal...
...Leonard Mosley goes on to question Marshall's talent for selecting subordinates, since all along the line senior members of his staff let him down...
...failure to check that the islands' defenses were in order...
...Was that because FDR did not want to bear personal responsibility for failures...
...failure to make sure that his warning messages had got through...
...as an even-handed arbiter and an officer who maintained an Olympian calm amid the infighting in various headquarters and cloakrooms, Mosley does little to endear his protagonist to the reader...
...Later on, his eschewing the publicity that kept other generals in the spotlight contributed to his steady rise...
...But George Catlett Marshall, the newly appointed Chief of Staff of the United States Army, was out riding his sorrel named Prepared, accompanied by his Dalmatian called Fleet, and could not be disturbed...
...So complex are the operations and so many are the policy makers involved in even the most insignificant episodes that the contribution of any one man to the outcome seems miniscule...
...In addition, though, he was politically naive, lacking in compassion, essentially humorless, and had a weakness for titled gentility...
...Marshall does deserve credit for his consistent support of the two American generals with undeniable genius for command in the field, George S. Pat-ton and MacArthur, despite their maniacal vanity...
...The character of Marshall, however, remains as it always has been?gray and inscrutable...
...For a decade of unwavering support, it should be added, MacArthur repaid Marshall with nothing save scornful vituperation...
...If "hero" is defined, with one dictionary, as "a man admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities," or, according to another definition, as a man of "godlike qualities" and "genius," then Marshall was no hero...
...Too much is known, or becomes known, about the top dogs' private lives and undercover logrolling to allow much residue of glory...
...Marshall alone saved MacArthur after the Manila debacle in December 1941: Roosevelt, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and Eisenhower were ready to let him sway in the breeze on Corre-gidor...
...He was trusted by Presidents as different as FDR and Ike, for he spoke seldom and seemed to be above the jockeying for position, impervious to personalities or ambitious vanity...
...His was not "a face made for smiling easily," Mosley adds...
...Leonard Mosley is on the whole fair and he is entertaining...
...Artists in Tune with Their World" While the Japanese bombers were flying toward Oahu on December 7, 1941, there was still time to alert Pearl Harbor and General Douglas Mac-Arthur in Manila...
...His declaration, the genesis of the Marshall Plan, seems a fairly obvious requirement...
...His biographer justly castigates him: "He was guilty of failure: failure to send a competent commander to Hawaii...
...Anecdotes galore, welltold, make good reading when added to an overall scenario (World War II and its aftermath) that by its nature is fascinating no matter how many times retold...
...The general's platonic friendships and voluminous correspondence with the likes of Queen Frederika of Greece and Lady Burghley reveal a lighter side of his nature, but throw no light on his deeper motivation...
...As was true of Roosevelt, Marshall was too impressed by Soviet military contributions to the "War effort" to have any clear perception of "Uncle Joe" Stalin's real nature or of the consequences of conceding to his ruthless demands...
...Probably no better biography of the wartime Chief of Staff and postwar Secretary of State and Defense will be written until the materials for a more penetrating analysis become available...
...What he really thought of the master politicians he served is unrevealed: He left no memoirs...
...Nevertheless, Marshall was repeatedly promoted until he had more power among the Allies than anyone except President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself...
...Unending toil, ceaseless application, a lack of rebelliousness coupled with a capacity to endure punishment without complaint?all molded that icy expression...
...Although Mosley is at great pains to excuse the mission, its most lasting result was Marshall's rage at General Albert Wedemeyer, then our commander in China, for telling theun-pleasant truth...
...For their part, they stood by him because they needed a man of incorruptible integrity...
...When you really tried to find out what he was like," observed a fellow officer during Marshall's shavetail stint in the Philippines, "he clammed up...
...Was he, as this book's subtitle has it, Hero for Our Times...
...it was the overweening hubris and duplicity of MacArthur himself that finally led his advocate to yield reluctantly...
...Perhaps the truth about heroism in our times is that modern warfare and political life can produce no authentic giants...
...Thereafter Wedemeyer was hounded by Marshall for the honesty he always maintained he expected from those under him, and this diminishes Mosley's "hero" still more...
...Nor was it genius for Harry S. Truman's first Secretary of State to say in a doctoral address at Harvard that the victors and the vanquished in Western Europe would have to pull together to qualify for the massive aid we were about to give them...
...Not in the free world, anyway...
...And during the Korean War, Marshall single-handedly defended the brilliant victor of Inchon when Truman and the rest of his staff were for sacking him...
Vol. 65 • November 1982 • No. 20
