America's School for War: Fort Leavenworth, Officer Education, and Victory in World War II

Abstract

The adage that armies prepare to fight the last war implies that they are therefore not prepared to fight the next one. Peter J. Schifferle argues that the United States Army did exactly that in the interwar years, but in this case the doctrine and the officers trained to implement it led to victory in World War II. In large measure that doctrine was developed and those officers were trained at the army's Command and General Staff School (CGSS), the predecessor to today's Command and General Staff College (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Schifferle, a retired army officer and a CGSC faculty member, is eminently qualified to examine the CGSS. He avoids too narrow a focus by placing the CGSS in the broader context of army education and doctrinal literature. He picks up the story by looking at the doctrine developed by the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I, highlighting the critical role of a handful of CGSS-trained commanders and staff officers. His work thus dovetails nicely with Timothy K. Nenninger's The Leavenworth Schools and the Old Army: Education, Professionalism, and the Officer Corps of the United States Army, 1881–1918 (1978), which discusses the establishment and evolution of army education at Fort Leavenworth.