Military intelligence sheds its historical branch

Courtesy Photo | The Papuan Campaign was the second in a fourteen-volume American Forces in Action series published by the Historical Branch to tell wounded soldiers about the campaigns and battles in which they served (courtesy graphic).  

FORT HUACHUCA, AZ, UNITED STATES

11.16.2022

Courtesy Story

U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence

by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian

On November 17, 1945, the Secretary of War created a Historical Division on the War Department Special Staff (WDSS) to assume responsibility for producing a history of Army operations during World War II. This relieved the Military Intelligence Division (MID) of an extra duty it had struggled to accomplish over the previous two and a half years.

In April 1943, the War Department’s assistant chief of staff (ACoS), G-2, Maj. Gen. George V. Strong, found himself saddled with the supervision and coordination of the Army’s historical work. Assignment of this duty to the top intelligence organization had precedent going back to 1903, when the Second Division (Military Information) of the War Department General Staff (WDGS) had been tasked with preparing “analytical and critical histories of important campaigns” for use by the War Department itself. This responsibility later transferred to the Army War College’s Historical Section. Through World War I and the interwar period, it capably handled the more archival tasks of preserving documents, preparing unit histories, determining battle credits, and handling historical inquiries.

By World War II, however, the status of the historical program, in comparison to the British and even the U.S. Navy, was unsatisfactory. In particular, the Army lacked a robust writing program to cover current military operations. Consequently, on 30 April 1943, Deputy Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Joseph T. McNarney directed a reluctant General Strong to establish a Historical Branch in the MID “to plan and supervise the compilation of the military history of the Second World War.” Strong put his assistant executive officer, Lt. Col. (later Col.) John M. Kemper, a 1935 West Point graduate with a history master’s degree from Columbia University, in charge of the branch.

For the next two years, Kemper’s lightly staffed branch struggled to maintain direct control over a historical effort that spanned the world. It was overwhelmed trying to obtain and train historical officers for overseas assignments and continually implored fielded historical teams to provide adequate information on their activities. General Strong’s lack of support for the activities of the branch contributed to its problems.

At war’s end, Col. (later Brig. Gen.) Allen F. Clark, Jr., who had become chief in late February, outlined the branch’s ambitious postwar plan: complete and review 800 first draft narratives of operations; write administrative histories about postwar demobilizations; oversee the preservation of tons of documents flowing in from the field; and establish a reference section to answer historical questions. While the demands on the Historical Branch intensified, it absorbed a disproportionate number of the MID’s mandatory postwar personnel cuts. Clark described the branch as “a weak struggling subordinate agency appended to the colossus which was G-2 … [it was] too far down the hierarchy.” Believing further neglect would “put the Historical [Branch] completely out of commission,” Colonel Clark began efforts to extricate it from the MID.

Clark was surprised to find that, while General Strong had resisted adding the historical function to his portfolio in 1943, his replacement, Maj. Gen. Clayton Bissell, vehemently resisted any plans to remove it. Fearing Bissell’s reaction if he continued to push for the transfer of the branch out of MID, Clark delayed his efforts until the G-2 embarked on an inspection trip to South America. Then he and other proponents of a stronger historical program sent a recommendation to Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson to create a separate division either within his own office or on the WDGS. Patterson concurred with the transfer but felt the organization more properly belonged on the Special Staff.

Consequently, a formal memo dated November 17, 1945, announced the establishment of the Historical Division on the WDSS and the transfer of all MID Historical Branch functions, records, personnel, office space, and equipment to the new division effective that date. A relieved Colonel Clark later remarked the directive was “just in time to save my neck on Bissell’s return from South America.” The Historical Branch endures today as the Center of Military History.

• Date Taken: 11.16.2022
• Date Posted: 11.15.2022 09:57
• Story ID: 433275
• Location: FORT HUACHUCA, AZ, US