Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Six-Star General (Redux)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey everyone, this is Gary. I'm off to a conference in New York this week, which is something I do once or twice a year. And rather than run a bunch of encore episodes, I thought I would do something just a little different. Most of my episodes are evergreen, which means they really don't need updating. However, I have done a few episodes where things have changed since I originally recorded it. So this week, I'll be running the full encore episode as it was originally released. And then at the end, where I normally read a review, I'll be providing an update to the episode. so make sure to stay tuned all the way to the end of the episode. This episode was originally released in July of 2020,

Starting point is 00:00:35 and it was the 20th episode that I ever recorded. And you may notice that the sound is a bit different as I was recording in a single room with hardwood floors and a running refrigerator just a few feet away from me. So with that, enjoy the story of the Six Star General. If you look at the list of officer ranks in the United States Armed Forces, there are 10 ranks listed which are held today. They go from second lieutenant all the way up to the rank of general, which is the four-star

Starting point is 00:01:04 variant of the rank. There is a rank above general, a five-star general, which hasn't been awarded in 70 years. Most people are familiar with these generals as having served in World War II. However, there is still one more rank above that of five-star general in the United States military. Find out about this rank and the two men who have been awarded it on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

Starting point is 00:01:45 ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. The upper ranks of the American military has changed over time and according to the military's needs. For most of the history of the United States, its military has been quite small compared to European countries, and there wasn't a need for a large and complicated system for organizing the top commanders in the armed forces. For example, the highest rank ever obtained by George Washington

Starting point is 00:02:28 during his lifetime was that of Lieutenant General, which today would be a three-star general. He never attained a higher rank because there wasn't any. In fact, after Washington, there were no lieutenant generals in the American Army until 1855 when Winfield Scott, the long longest serving soldier in American history was given a brevet promotion to the rank. After the Civil War, Congress authorized the newly created rank of General of the Army and awarded it to Ulysses S. Grant. And here's where I have to start splitting hairs and being nitpicky. There is a difference between rank and insignia. Today we can say the rank of a general by the number of stars they have, but stars are just the insignia of the rank. The reason I bring it up is that

Starting point is 00:03:12 Grant was the first person in U.S. history to hold the rank of General of the Army, and there was no established insignia for it. Grant used four Silver Stars to denote his rank. After Grant, there were three other men that held the rank of General of the Army in the 19th century. William DeCumseh Sherman was appointed to the rank after Grant, and he changed the insignia to two silver stars with an American Eagle between them. The final holder was Philip Sheridan, who held the rank briefly before his death. After the death of Sheridan in 1888, there were no more generals higher than the rank of Major General, aka a two-star general. At the start of World War I, the United States again created general ranks above two stars, and the system they created

Starting point is 00:03:57 is pretty much the one we have today. So let me give a quick overview as to how general officers in the U.S. military are ranked today. A brigadier general is a one-star general. A major general is a two-star, general. A lieutenant general is a three-star general, and a general is a four-star general. The rank is called just plain old general. There's nothing else to it. These are currently the only four ranks of general used in the United States military today, and the only four which were used in World War I. Tasker H. Bliss and John J. Pershing were both appointed to the four-star rank of general during World War 1. Here I have to make note that the World War I rank of general had an insignia of four stars, which was the same as the insignia used by General Grant after the Civil War. But his rank

Starting point is 00:04:47 wasn't that of general, but General of the Army. This is the distinction that's soon going to become important. Just because their insignia had the same number of stars does not mean that they held the same rank. This four-level system for general officers held until World War II when we suddenly had a problem. As the United States began working with other allied nations, there had to be a strict hierarchy in the alliance. The United States, providing most of the troops, equipment, and money led the alliance. However, allies like Britain had a rank in their military above that of four-star general, the rank of field marshal. This put the Americans in an awkward position of having commanders with a lower official rank than the people underneath them.

Starting point is 00:05:30 The solution to this was to create a new rank for the very top-level commanders which was on a par with the rank of field marshal. Their solution was to bring back the 19th century rank held by Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan, General of the Army. The biggest difference is that this time, the insignia of the rank would be five stars instead of four. Again, more hair splitting. The rank of General of the Army remained the same, albeit unfulfilled since 1888. What happened is that another rank, that of plain old general, was inserted between lieutenant general and general of the army. And the new rank, that of general, was given the insignia of four stars. The military also created an equivalent five-star rank for the Navy, creating the rank of fleet admiral.

Starting point is 00:06:17 During World War II, there were four men raised to the rank of General of the Army. They were George Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, and Henry Hap Arnold. There were also four admirals raised to the rank of Fleet Admiral. All eight admirals and generals were advanced in rank one day apart from each other between December 15th and December 21st, 1944. They were given their promotions one day apart, so there was a clear order of seniority between them. The only other person who was given the five-star rank of General of the Army was Omar Bradley in 1950.

Starting point is 00:06:53 Bradley's promotion to the rank was a political move because he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Korean War, and he would be in an awkward position of having had a higher-ranking Douglas MacArthur underneath him. Since then, no one has been advanced to the rank. So why didn't the United States just create the rank of Field Marshal to put it on the same level as other countries? The story which is told is that when the idea of creating a five-star rank was floated, field-martial was the original name. But then George Marshall would have been called Field Marshal Marshall, and that didn't sound dignified, so they just went with General of the Army. Arnold, it should be noted, carried his five-star rank with him after the war when the Air Force

Starting point is 00:07:32 was created, and he became the first and only five-star rank of General of the Air Force. The only real attempt since World War II to revive the rank occurred in the 1990s when Senator Robert Kasten of Wisconsin lobbied to have four-star generals Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell promoted during the Gulf War. The movement stalled and the promotions were never given. Likewise, there was an effort to automatically have the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff elevated to a five-star rank, but that too went nowhere. Now, the title of this episode is The Six-Star General, and you're probably wondering when the six-star is going to come into play. Well, here is where it gets interesting. In 1919, Congress

Starting point is 00:08:12 created a new rank called General of the Armies of the United States. Note that this is plural, as opposed to the five-star rank of General of the Army. This rank was given to then four-star General John Pershing. He created his own insignia, like General Grant in the 19th century, and he selected four gold stars to distinguish it from the four star rank of general, which had four silver stars. When the new five-star ranks were announced in 1944, the Secretary of War Henry Stimson was asked if these new ranks were the same or different than the rank which was given to General Pershing. He said, and I quote, It appears the intent of the army was to make the General of the Army's senior in grade to the General of the Army.

Starting point is 00:08:58 I have advised Congress that the War Department concurs in such proposed action. As Pershing was still alive when the five-star appointments were made, it wasn't a totally trivial issue. That means the United States does have a rank on the books, although almost never discussed, above that of the five-star General of the Army. This isn't unprecedented in the world. some countries which do have a rank above field marshal. The rank is usually called General Isamo or Grand Marshal. The rank is mostly given by dictators to themselves or as an honor to some great general. In 1976, Congress decided to posthumously promote George Washington to the rank of General of the Armies of the United States and declared by statute that no one else could ever be ranked higher

Starting point is 00:09:44 than Washington. The only other attempt to elevate someone living to the rank was Douglas MacArthur. In preparation for the invasion of Japan, MacArthur was going to be given Supreme Command. As there would be several five-star generals and admirals involved, the idea was floated of promoting MacArthur to the rank of General of the Armies, and explicitly making it a six-star rank with a six-star insignia. The idea was dropped a few weeks after Japan's surrender, and his service record notes that the promotion didn't occur due to the lack of necessity for such a rank. However, there was a movement to promote MacArthur to the six-star rank for the next 20 years,

Starting point is 00:10:20 up to, including and after his death, however nothing became of it. After he died, there was a movement for posthumous promotion. The Institute of Heraldry even mocked up a six-star insignia. In the end, the problems of advancing MacArthur above his World War II contemporaries, some of whom were still alive, were too complex and political, so the proposal was dropped. So yes, there is an equivalent of a six-star general rank on the books in the U.S. military, but it has only been given to two people in history, John J. Pershing and George Washington,

Starting point is 00:10:55 generals of the armies of the United States of America. So you might be wondering what sort of update could possibly exist for this episode. Well, in December of 2022, a bipartisan group of members of the United States Congress inserted language into the 2023 Defense Authorization Act, which posthumously promoted Ulysses S. Grant to the rank of General of the Army. The bill was signed by the President of the United States on December 23rd, making Grant the third person elevated to the rank of General of the Armies. In order of precedent, Grant would now be third behind George Washington, who by law is always ranked first, and John Pershing, who would be higher in precedent by the date he was promoted. With the elevation of Grant, the question probably needs to be asked.

Starting point is 00:11:47 Could someone else possibly, posthumously be promoted to the rank of a six-star general? The only person I could see who could possibly be considered would be Dwight Eisenhower. There is currently no movement that I know of to promote Eisenhower, but given that he was a two-term president, I could see something happening in about 20 years around the 100th anniversary of D-Day. So the odds are, this is the last update on the subject of six-star generals that you'll be hearing for a long time.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Six-Star General (Redux)

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