The prototype of the modern American officer development system arose in the early-20th century under Elihu Root, Secretary of War from 1899 to 1904.
Root’s formula for officer development was loosely based on the Prussian model, which had been the first to adapt fully the modern industrial management tech-niques to the conduct of warfare. This model entailed, among other things, the rotation of duty assignments and intermittent periods of professional schooling.
The professional education schema envisaged by Root necessitated an extensive makeover of the Army school network. The Secretary of War purposed to transform the existing system of isolated and discon-nected military training institutions into an integrated network of schools designed to prepare officers for service as they progressed up the ranks. His was a progressive and sequential model that taught subjects and techniques targeted at specific command levels.
Under this concept of professional military education, officers would attend post schools, branch schools, the staff school, and then the war college—with the stints at these schools being interspersed with periods of reg-ular duty. At each level of education, selection based on previous achievements would reduce the number of officers attending each course. This supposedly en-sured that only the most qualified and capable officers reached the apex of the educational system. With this arrangement, Root hoped to fill in many of the obvi-ous gaps in the officer professional education system that had so hobbled the development of officers in the 19th century and that had proven so defective during the recent war with Spain.1
With his new educational system, Root also hoped to address the needs of the hundreds of men that had been issued emergency commissions during the war—
men taken directly from civil life, promoted from the ranks, or accessed into the Officer Corps from the vol-unteers. These incompletely trained officers needed systematic instruction not only to fit them for service in the grades to which they had been appointed, but also to develop the capacity of each with a view to service in the higher ranks.2
At the base of the professional education edifice constructed by Root was the garrison school. Previ-ously, the post lyceum, or local study organization, was used as the chief pedagogical means for instruct-ing junior officers in leadership and basic professional military skills. Under Root, this system of local lec-tures and classes was upgraded and expanded into garrison schools at all posts with at least four com-panies assigned. The instruction presented at these garrison schools was controlled by the War Depart-ment and was intended to prepare the junior officer for attendance at the various branch schools then being erected.
Branch schools, which formed the next rung of the educational pyramid, underwent a significant expan-sion and upgrade under Root. In the decade after 1901, schools for the ordnance and quartermaster corps were created, while the schools for the engineers, signal corps, artillery, and infantry were extensively overhauled and, in some cases, expanded. Technolog-ical innovation also drove the expansion of the school system. Probably the best example of this is the School for Submarine Defense opened at Fort Totten, NY, in 1901.3
In 1902, the former “School of Application for Infantry and Cavalry” re-emerged in Root’s system as the “General Service and Staff School.” The Fort Leavenworth, KS, school was designed as a com-bined staff school at an educational level above the branch schools. Its focus was on preparing its charges for high level command and staff responsibilities. In fact, the school’s declared purpose was to prepare its students for effective service at divisional, corps, and army headquarters.4
Students who attended the course were gener-ally captains who had completed their branch school.
Merit selection rather than competitive examinations determined attendance eligibility. Then, as today, per-formance on the job counted for more that intellectual accomplishment in determining who would reap the benefits of professional military education.5
At the top of the Army school pyramid constructed by Root stood the U.S. Army War College (USAWC).
Founded in 1901, this postgraduate military school was intended to prevent another fiasco like the one attending the Army’s preparations for the Spanish-American War. Although the Officer Corps had gener-ally performed well at the tactical level in that conflict, senior officers had proven themselves to be “almost completely unprepared to handle the problems of sudden mobilization, training, and the widespread deployment of military forces.”6
The college was intended to provide advanced study for senior Army officers. Initially, however, it functioned as the War Department’s General Staff.
USAWC students would, under faculty supervision, work on projects assigned by the War Department. In 1903, Congress approved the formation of a General Staff, precipitating a shift of the staff function away
from the USAWC. In the ensuing years, the USAWC gradually morphed into a true military educational institution.7
The Army closed the schools at Leavenworth and the USAWC when the United States entered World War I in 1917 and assigned their instructors to posi-tions supporting the war effort. Leavenworth gradu-ates in particular played a noteworthy role in the pros-ecution of the war in France. A “Leavenworth Clique,”
in fact, held a near monopoly on the very highest level staff appointments in the American Expeditionary Force (AEF). Nine of the 12 principals on General John Pershing’s staff, both of the Army chiefs of staff, and nine out of 10 of the corps’ chiefs of staff had attended the staff college. The operational skill and knowledge of these graduates was greatly needed and greatly ap-preciated. Their worth was particularly evident when their performance was held up against that of non-graduates. Pershing set up a school for staff officers at Langres, France, in the hope of raising the quality of staff work throughout the AEF, which he felt left much to be desired, up to something approaching Leavenworth standards. The performance of staff col-lege graduates in World War I ensured the school of a significant future role in Army education and, as one AEF veteran noted, “put Leavenworth on the map.”8
The basic system of officer development instituted by Secretary Root remained in place after World War I, albeit enlarged and refined. At the junior officer level, the Army revamped and extended its network of branch schools to keep pace with technological in-novations and organizational changes. By the eve of World War II, there were 19 such schools in operation.
The Command and General Staff College (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth, KS, grew in stature and prestige
during the interwar years. Attendance at the college, in fact, became a mark of professional distinction and a virtual prerequisite for high rank. An important ad-dition to senior officer professional education during this era came with the creation of the Army Industrial College, Washington, DC, in 1924. This institution was part of a more comprehensive scheme elaborated in the aftermath of World War I to enable the Army to meet more effectively the demands of modern indus-trialized warfare.9
The post-World War I school system concentrated on preparing the Regular Army’s (RA) small Officer Corps to lead a vastly expanded citizen Army in the event of a national emergency. Officers had to be ready to lead and manage organizations many times larger than any the War Department could cobble together in peacetime. Accordingly, the orientation of this sys-tem, from branch schools all the way up to the war college, tended to be narrowly military.
Even at the USAWC, where military affairs were taught alongside national policy matters, the empha-sis was on preparing officers for future command and staff responsibilities rather than on acquainting them with the broader political and economic aspects of national strategy. While these broader considerations were not neglected entirely, of course, they were large-ly overshadowed by what seemed to be more pressing and immediate priorities.10
THE ARMY SCHOOL SYSTEM