5-minute read
In CATR #28, we introduced the discussion of civil affairs (CA) in large-scale combat operations (LSCO) by providing examples from my observations in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) I; a training event at Fort Leavenworth, KS; Operation Enduring Freedom Rotation 10 (OEF X) in Afghanistan; and Army- and USASOC-led experiments over the last decade. In this and the next six posts, we examine the preparation for and examples of CA and military government (MG) operations in offense, defense, and stabilization, drawing from the longest and most complex LSCO of the last 100 years: World War II (WWII).
At the beginning, there was no CA!
Bottom line: By the time the U.S. entered WWII in December 1941, the Army had a field manual on military government, but it lacked formal training programs and designated forces to carry it out.
In the Origins section of CATR #4, we said, “The Hunt Report outlined numerous lessons learned during the occupation [of the Rhineland following WWI] and compared how the allied nations involved in the occupation of Germany organized for military government. Studies conducted by students at the War College during the interwar years convinced Army senior leaders that the Army required permanent and professional CA staff and formations for future conflicts.”
According to U.S. Army in World War II Special Studies publication, Civil Affairs: Soldiers Become Governors (SBG), the War College student committee’s report included a recommendation that the War Department draft a manual titled “Military Law, The Administration of Civil Affairs in Occupied Alien Territory.” As late as October 1939, the position of the Army’s Judge Advocate General (JAG) was that FM 27‑10 (Laws of War) sufficiently covered that topic, so no new manual was needed. “But this manual did not enter into questions of policy and organization, with which specialists in military government had to be familiar. Although the nonlegal phases of military government were touched upon in a number of Army field manuals, at the beginning of 1940 no manual existed which dealt with them systematically and exclusively” (SBG, p. 7). In January 1940, the Army G-1 forwarded the War College study to the G-3 to justify the creation of a formal field manual. On 30 July 1940, the Office of the Judge Advocate General officially published FM 27-5, Military Government, with policies and procedures modeled “almost entirely on the Rhineland experience” (SBG, p. 7, footnote 2).
FM 27-5 left the issue of training personnel for military government duties to the theater commander “so far as …[military government] may be carried on in that theater” (SBG, p. 8). However, fourteen months later, as the likelihood of U.S. entry into the war increased, the Army recognized that addressing civilian issues in WWII would be more comprehensive and complex than in past wars and that “civil affairs required more specialization than ever before” (SBG, p. VIII). In September 1941, a colonel in the Judge Advocate General Department (JAGD) wrote to the Assistant Chief of Staff (ACofS), G-1:
“1. American forces are now serving in a number of bases in foreign countries, which service involves difficult and delicate questions arising from relations with the local government; and there is a possibility of future service involving the administration of military government by the United States Army. These facts indicate the need of competent personnel for such duties. Their detail from combatant units will deplete the officer strength of such units, and officers so detailed will in most cases be inexperienced and untrained in such duties. …
2. It is therefore recommended that commissioned personnel be selected and trained in a school or course of instruction for duty on the staff of the commander of any force which may have a mission involving military government or liaison with an existing government. …It is further recommended that personnel be selected with a view to their future detail as Officers in Charge of Civil Affairs or Chief Liaison Officers, and for heads of the departments mentioned in paragraph 13, FM 27-5, to-wit: Public Works and Utilities, Fiscal, Public Health, Education, Public Safety, Legal, Communications, Public Welfare, and Economics”(SBG, p. 8; bold font added for emphasis).
The Army prepares to train civil affairs officers.
Within a week of receiving the JAGD colonel’s letter, the ACofS, G-1, began “a plan to provide preliminary training for officers to fill key positions in Civil Affairs Sections on staffs of certain Task Force commanders. Such training will be confined to those staffs which may reasonably be expected to operate a military government” (SBG, p. 8; bold font added for emphasis). On 7 January 1942, the Secretary of War approved a G‑1 recommendation to assign CA training responsibility to the Provost Marshal General (PMG). On 10 January 1942, the PMG outlined a plan to establish a School of Military Government “at a place easily accessible to the War College where alone can be found the bulk of essential reading materials” (SBG, p. 10). On 11 May 1942, the School of Military Government opened at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA, with 49 student officers prepared for sixteen weeks of instruction (SBG, p. 11).
The Army would have its first trained CA/MG officers by September 1942, just in time for the first U.S. ground combat operations of the war.
As we will see in the upcoming posts, President Roosevelt initially intended for civilian – not military – agencies to manage civil affairs in liberated and occupied countries as soon as military conditions permitted. But civilian agencies were not ready for such an overwhelming task while hostilities were ongoing, and “as matters developed the Army had on its hands for the duration a twofold task which required the soldier to serve military expediency on the one hand and politico-social directives on the other” (SBG, p. IX). This required the Army to accept long‑term responsibility and build the necessary CA structure “to extirpate totalitarian governmental and economic systems [in enemy countries], in liberated countries they were as soon as possible to aid in restoring indigenous systems and authorities, and in both types of countries they were to make an all-out effort to effect gradual transition toward the envisaged postwar national and international order” (ibid.).
Questions for our teammates: Do you have any observations of CA in LSCO from your experience in named operations, training events, or exercises you’d like to share?
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