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It’s always enjoyable to read the stories and exploits of the men who fought WWII; and if not their personal stories, the stories of how that war was fought. One of the reasons for this is that the war was won. Unmistakably won. Unlike so many of America’s recent wars where either the reason for the war, the outcome, or the result has done little more than raise tons of questions as to what the whole exercise was all about, with WWII there is no doubt as to why the war was fought, what the outcome was, or what happened to all of the countries involved once the war was over.

On all fronts, from the reason as to why WWII was fought, to what happened to the countries that lost, reading of WWII brings a sense of accord and satisfaction to almost all who study this war. As a war, most of the countries that participated fought it with true integrity, the result of which is that today their reflected glory falls on many around the world, save those despicable rulers and commanders whose perfidy, cruelty, lack of humanity or absence of principles led to war crimes and transgressions against humanity. Still, if one sets aside the action of these people, the sadness of death and the many senseless losses that occur in war, not to mention the deceit of torture such as that suffered by scores, and too the numbing pain that comes to innocents who find themselves caught up in war, one can see WWII as a bright star amidst the burning embers of destruction.

How did this happen? How does it come to pass that a war… any war… can happen, where when it is over the world sighs with relief not just that it has ended, but for the fact that the better part of the world did the right thing in not just fighting it, but also managing how they fought it, and how, as victors, they handled the losers when the war was over?

Part of the answer lies in the means by which nations come to recognize that layered on top of an obligation to manage their own country wisely is one that says that they have obligations to help the world at large too. In this regard, how a country manages its global obligations towards war goes to the heart of its ability to do good or evil when fighting that war.

One can see this in the U.S. today, especially when one considers the criticism we have come under for sticking our  nose in everyone else's business.... or at least that's what Vladimir Putin thinks. 'Vlad the shirtless wonder' has been proclaiming to all who will listen that America is "collapsing under the burden of its global interests." His point is that America no longer knows what to do, where to do it, when to do it, or how to do it... and so needs to back off and put its own house in order rather than continue telling the world what to do. He says America's involvement has brought little benefit to the world. When asked, he offers his opinion that America is failing because it elects populist Presidents, instead of competent ones. He says that the media narcissists in our government, those who are constantly seeking attention and put their image and power above that of the country and people, have made America a third rate country that, while it may still have some power, is loosing it quickly. In Putin's mind, America is a misdirected, self centered, clumsy giant who is getting its due for having stuck its nose into the business of too many other countries. One need not ask what China thinks.

Regardless of whether you agree with Putin or not, his views do raise some important questions. Does a country like America have an obligation to help the world, or does it not? If not, then why did we join in the war against Germany? If so, then how does one decide which countries to help and which to avoid... or more to the point, which wars to fight and which to avoid? Is Syria one we should involve ourselves in?

And if a country decides to fight a war—be it today's Syria or yesterday's WWII Germany—what factors determine whether a country’s efforts will cause it to fight an effective war… effective from the standpoint that the war is fought for the right reasons, in the right way, with the right degree of concern for humanity, and in a manner so that the war is won?

For many of these questions, it is hard to know the answers. With this last question however, we think we know what the answer is. The answer is that three elements combine to determine the outcome of any war a powerful country decides to fight, especially a country that is a Superpower: 1) the basic principles that the people of that country believe in, 2) the willingness of the people of that country to send its manpower to help better the world, and 3) the willingness of the country’s governing body to prepare in advance of any future war those materials that will be required to assure a successful outcome... for without preparation there will be no successful outcome, and without a successful outcome the two previous points will prove of little value.

Let us look at these individually, and both see if we can learn some lessons and at the same time gain a hint about the unique job the Signal Corps did between WWI and WWII in not only preparing American for WWII, but preparing America for its rightful place in the club of nations that would inhabit the world when that war was over.

   Principles

Item 1: The basic principles that the people of a country believe in.

With regard to the basic principles that the people of a country believe in, being a military website, while we would love to offer our views on this topic, we feel it only proper that we pass here on evaluating the values, philosophy, morality, and ethics that pulse through America’s veins. The simple fact is, while we have some modicum of expertise when it comes to the subject of the military and war, we are poorly qualified to offer anything other than opinion on what makes one country’s value system better than any other’s. And in that regard, our opinion is no better than anyone else's. Even so, we can't resist the temptation to say here that if one were to look at America’s value system today, especially if done with some degree of scrutiny, they would likely see that while most elements of America's value system are noble, many of the better ones are under attack from ideologues and political hacks whose personal agendas override those of the American republic at large.

Be that the case, as arm-chair military historians not qualified to analyze whether America’s principles are in need of burnishing or not… we will pass here on the temptation to do so.

   Manpower

Item 2: The willingness of the people of a country to send its manpower to help better the world.

As to America’s willingness to send its manpower to help better the world, an analysis of this topic would be a non-discussion, as of all of the countries of the world everyone on earth knows that America is the first and the fastest to come to the aid of others. Or so it has been until we seemed to have forgotten how to care for our own in Benghazi, seem today to not be aware that tens of thousand of innocents are dying in Syria for lack of a strong resolve on America’s part to stand toe to toe against Russia and Iran, seem not to care that warlords are wielding crimes against humanity across the world, such as in Mali in Africa, or seem the least concerned that America's current administration has embarked on an isolationist, non-interventionist foreign policy that rivals that of Woodrow Wilson.

Notwithstanding this, the basic fact is that while the government we have today may not be inclined to broaden America’s involvement in many of the crises that face the world, Americans on the whole are a caring and generous people and generally willing to send their sons and daughters to help better the world, even at risk to their own family’s quietude.

From this standpoint then, with regard to the resolve of the people of America to help those of the world who need our help, the fact stands for itself: America is prepared to do more than its part to help those in need. On this issue, America leads the world.

   Preparing for War

Item 3: The willingness of a country’s governing body to prepare in advance of any future war those materials that will be required to assure a successful outcome.

Why just materials? Why not manpower too?

In many ways, the preparation of manpower to fight a new war can be done with some alacrity at the time a war commences. That is to say, when it comes to manpower, what is needed is more in the nature of a highly skilled core of men in the form of a modest sized standing army than a massive army of size sufficient to win a new war. Or put another way, if the right level of competence is maintained in a correctly sized standing army, whatever the size of the larger fighting force that is needed when war commences can by and large be built at that time. That is not the case however with war materials. If you don't prepare the war materials you need in advance of a war, those materials won't be there when they are needed. And while this can be a problem in terms of things like guns and bullets, it is an even greater problem if the level of technology being prepared for use in the next war does not keep pace with advancements in the technology itself right up to the start of and through the early stages of a war.

It's on this latter point that America stands apart today from other countries. What few of our readers will suspect however is that America began this tradition of not just using applied science to prepare for the next war, but of turning emerging technologies into applied science as a means to develop even more advanced forms of military hardware, between WWI and WWII.

Yes, amazingly, between these two wars America's military got about the task of trying to figure out how to truly leapfrog the rest of the world's war fighting capability by using emerging technologies to develop newer forms of armament than anything theretofore available—and it was the Signal Corps that set this precedent and led that effort.

In those early days the Signal Corps showed an uncanny ability to prepare the entire U.S. military for the needs of the next war, even prior to the onset of that war. We ask the question then, how is it that the Signal Corps was able to foretell future strategic and tactical needs and work to prepare military materials to meet those needs, even before the needs occurred?

We can find the answer to this if we take a retrospective look at the trials, travails, successes and failures the Signal Corps had in the period between WWI and WWII.

As most know by now, the U.S. government's normal reaction at the end of every war is a kneejerk one based on cutting back on military spending, downsizing the military, letting go the very cream of our fighting crop—presumably on the assumption that their warfighting skills and experience will by no means ever be needed again—and otherwise acting like war is a thing of the past that no country will ever revert to. Or so they act, until some malfeasant country takes it on itself to tweak America’s nose, at which time they then panic that they laid off the entire military and set all of its equipment to rust. At the end of WWI that’s just what happened. The U.S. Military was decimated beyond all measure. 

Continued at top of page, column at right

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However, what the Signal Corps also knew back then about this kind of "downsizing" was that—as we said earlier—while manpower requirements for a “next war” can (for the most part) be put on hold until the event occurs, that is not the case with respect to the materials needed to fight a future war—nor for that matter the technological systems that make war fighting possible. Because of this, forward thinking planners like Major General George Owen Squier, Chief Signal Officer at the end of WWI, and especially Major General Joseph Mauborgne (1881 - 1971), the Chief Signal Officer that presided over the Signal Corps between WWI and WWII, set in motion plans to assemble and prepare the kinds and types of warfighting  equipment and systems that would be needed when and if a “WWII” ever broke out. Considering that the world at that time felt that the suffering experienced in WWI was so great that the world had learned its lesson and would never again go to war, the resolve of these two Generals to think that rather than sit back and relax they had better get about preparing for the next world war, was quite something.[2]

More than just making plans to accumulate material to support the men, these Generals set about assuring that the Signal Corps worked hard to make better the types of materials and systems that would be available when and if another war came. More to the point, they went about this task with a sense of haste. Not haste as in panic, mind you, but as in ‘with a purposeful sense of urgency.’ In other words, under their leadership the Signal Corps took the attitude at the close of WWI that its task was not to sit back and enjoy having won the war, but get busy preparing for the next one, just as though it was surely just over the horizon.

In this regard, what set America apart from the early 1920s up until 1939 in terms of getting its house in order for the next war was the recognition on the part of the Signal Corps that preparing for war is as much a part of the art of war as fighting it is. When one considers that the Signal Corps is a branch whose general purpose is to serve the needs of other branches, and was clearly so back then, the importance of this attitude cannot be over emphasized. The fact that the Signal Corps anticipated the needs of the branches it served at that time and worked diligently between the wars to mentor those branches in terms of how technology could be brought to bear to improve their war fighting capabilities, and to make that technology available to them, is astonishing. In the late 1930s the men of the Signal Corps were world class thinkers, standing far in front of their peers. Almost singlehandedly, what the Signal Corps did was assure that when the next war came the sister branches it supported would be prepared for it… if not in training or manpower allocation, at least with respect to the equipment needed and the systems required to support better combat capabilities, armament, command, and control.

The secret to the Signal Corps’ success in doing this was that they met this dual task of developing more effective war fighting hardware, and integrating it into an improved command and control system, by using a three step approach:

First they mounted an aggressive research effort to find out the limits of what could and could not be done with the technology at hand and the state of science as it then stood.

Then they took the output of this research and used it to modify and improve the performance of off the shelf public market products… products which on their own might fall short of military needs but were nevertheless close enough in capabilities and performance so that concentrated engineering design changes might result in a truly breakthrough piece of war fighting equipment.

Finally, they only did this in those cases where effective command and control systems could be built up around the hardware to assure that the maximum benefit attainable out of the new technology or armament could be gained by those in the field.

A simple process, when one considers that the Signal Corps did all of this between the wars, without computers, in an analog capacity, when no one else cared, on a severely limited budget, and simply by dint of determination… well, it is astounding what was able to be done.

The reader should understand that this was not simply an exercise in sourcing and inventorying as many pieces of the equipment and systems that worked during WWI as possible, and storing them for the next war. This was an exercise in replacing WWI’s command and control systems, and in many cases armament too, with a form and type of technology that had yet to come to the world. It was an exercise in revolutionizing how America would fight its wars, the core technology that was used, and the hardware it would fight them with. On a macro level, what is clear now is that the Signal Corps set out in the 1930s to research what each and every service branch it supported might need in the next war, and get busy producing those systems so that its sister branches would be just as successful in the next war as they had been in the last.

Sitting here in the 21st Century it is easy to think that the Signal Corps was doing little more than it was supposed to do. But that is not the case. At that time the Signal Corps did not have a mandate to develop systems that pushed the bounds of war-fighting strategy. During the First World War the U.S. had a "National Army." This Army was specifically organized to fight WWI, and little more. Once the war was over, it was demobilized and was replaced by three new elements: the Regular Army, the Organized Reserve Corps and the “State Militias” (more correctly, Organized Reserves). Within this context war-fighting strategy was most definitely not set by the Signal Corps, nor was selection of the hardware and armament systems to be introduced into the strategic makeup of how wars were to be fought. It was the purview of the then called War Department. Yet the Generals in charge of the Signal Corps, seeing that little strategic thinking was being exercised in the War Department, stepped up to the plate and took their turn at bat. [3]