George Marshall

The military staffs of both nations would have the opportunity to discuss how to make Lend-Lease aid effective, but in no way would they make joint war plans.

At the end of December, at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Washington, he criticized American schools for failing to teach military history and caught public attention by estimating that the army’s ability to fight stood at less than 25 percent

He pointed out to the Senate Military Affairs Committee, and later to the corresponding House panel, the inadequacies in past wars of a volunteer army; he reminded senators and representatives of Hitler’s recent victories; he assured them that a strong defense was the best insurance policy against war

For FDR, and for Marshall, a major lesson to be learned from the debacle was how French-British weakness at Munich derived from military unpreparedness

In October 1937, in a brief speech in Chicago, he reminded his audience that the world political situation had “of late . . . been growing progressively worse.” The “unjustified interference in the internal affairs of other nations” and “the invasion of alien territory in violation of treaties” had reached a “stage where the very foundations of civilization” were “seriously threatened

Japanese behavior in China probably offended more Americans in the 1930s than did the Nazi-Fascist aggression in Europe and Africa.

Generals and politics should not mix.

At this dangerous juncture the Allies chose a single officer, the French general Ferdinand Foch, as supreme commander of Allied forces in the West, though with limited powers over the Americans. It was under this unified command that the Boches would be finally defeated. Marshall would not forget in later years that command unity was a valuable military asset.