Generals in the Making

After World War II, Winston Churchill wondered how the U.S. found and developed the generals who won the war. German commanders expressed similar amazement over the dynamic change in American military leadership from World War I to World War II. Despite the obstacles of the 1920s and 1930s, when a national preference for isolationism and eventually the Great Depression left the U.S. military diminished and impoverished, the interwar army was nevertheless the incubator of future leaders such as Marshall, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Bradley, and Patton. In a book of extraordinary insight, Benjamin Runkle shows how these men emerged ¿ in anything but predetermined fashion ¿ from the ashes of the interwar army to become the greatest generation of senior commanders in military history.Generals in the Making begins with World War I, in which, most notably, Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, and George Marshall served with distinction: Marshall on General Pershing¿s staff, MacArthur as a decorated