McNair Paper Number 50, Chapter 3, August 1996

When the Planning Branch was formed in 1921 and the Board in 1922, however, there was no formal schooling for the people who joined the staffs of each organization. That was rectified in 1924 with the establishment of the Army Industrial College. Staff officers in the Assistant Secretary of War Office recognized from the start that formal education was needed if those who worked in the Planning Branch were to be effective. In 1924 the War Department issued a general order establishing the College: "A college to be known as the Army Industrial College . . . for the purpose of training Army officers in the useful knowledge pertaining to the supervision of all military supplies in time of war and to the assurance of adequate provisions for the mobilization of materiel and industrial organizations essential to war time needs." The College was assigned to the Assistant Secretary for supervision rather than the General Staff, which supervised all other general service schools. The first course lasted 5 months and had only 9 officers in its student complement, but soon after the College was established a small number of Navy and Marine officers began attending. From the beginning, the focus was on general logistics and not just on procurement. In the 1920s the prestige of the school was low, but over time it improved, although probably no officer-and certainly no combat arms officer-saw it equal in importance to the Army War College. (Note 1) The motivations of the school's founders-field grade officers in the Planning Branch-went beyond just understanding the mechanics of procurement and industrial mobilization. They hoped to educate military officers about industry to the point that such educated people could control industrial mobilization and in fact direct the war industries. These officers believed it had been a mistake to leave control of war industries in the hands of financiers and industrialists like Bernard Baruch during World War I and thought that military control would yield efficiency. The officers in the Planning Branch who conceived of the Army Industrial College thought their "professional interests diverged from the ambitions of businessmen" in conducting industrial mobilization. "Neither side viewed the other primarily as a partner in a mutually beneficial endeavor." The two sides were in competition with each other. (Note 2)

The staff officer most involved in fostering the creation of the College, James H. Burns, wrote: "While actual production was essentially the task of industry, planning and control-in the broad sense-of the production of War Department supplies . . . were primarily military responsibilities." He argued that the "authority" to plan and control "should not be surrendered" to agencies outside of the War Department, and that the Army "should organize" to supervise industry. He believed that the War Department "should not only have a plan worked out, but that military men should be thoroughly trained in the plan so that they could man key positions in time of war." Once war production was started "these men could be replaced by 'Captains of Industry' working as part of the War Department organization." Thus the Army Industrial College was to provide logistical officers with the expertise to ensure their dominance over civilians in mobilization. The Assistant Secretary of War in 1924, Dwight F. Davis, shared this view and saw the Army Industrial College as a school to "fit officers for the mobilization and direction of the industrial power of this country." (Note 3)

The notion of the Army directing industry in the United States strikes one as naive at best, but it is most symbolic of the attitude of soldiers and their view of businessmen-the former dedicated to their mission and to victory for which they would sacrifice their lives if necessary, and the latter dedicated to improving the bottom line. The notion that somehow soldiers (sailors and marines, too, since they became Industrial College students soon after the school opened) could master industry after a 5-month and later a 10-month program is, of course, preposterous, and General Hugh Johnson, a World War I manpower and industrial mobilization authority, wrote so in 1938 and again in 1939:

The Army Industrial College is a get-rich-quick course in which professional Army officers are taught, in a few months, all about running the industries of this country by military instructors, most of whom never even ran a peanut stand. I am not knocking its purpose or its personnel in the least. It is highly necessary to have some officers in the Army who have at least a bowing acquaintance with our economic and industrial problems. The average officer lives a life as remote from our day-to-day business struggle as a cloistered monk.

The executive assistant to the Assistant Secretary of War is quoted . . . as having said: 'An Army Industrial College is now training about 60 Army and Navy officers each year to direct the mobilization of industry.' No cramming course in 'industry' and nothing he can read out of any books can make the average officer fit for business administration-much less to 'direct the mobilization of industry.' The War Department itself has no business whatever 'directing' industry in war. That is a mammoth and vital task-as great and vital as fighting a war. The Army already has the latter task. It should not jimmy up the works by taking on another just as big the moment the guns begin to roar . . . it would be just as absurd and disastrous to use them on this job as it would be to elbow all the generals aside and put industrial leaders in command of armies. Put armies under soldiers and industrial mobilizers under industrialists and let all shoemakers stick to their lasts. (Note 4)

By December 1941, the College had trained about 1,000 officers of whom 15 percent were from the Navy and Marine Corps. Many of these Army graduates worked in the Planning Branch and Army and Navy Munitions Board. During World War II there were about 25,000 officers in Army procurement, and no more than 2 percent of these could have been Industrial College graduates.(Note 5) The students of the Industrial College studied industry intensely, examined the activities of the War Industries Board and other World War I mobilization agencies, and analyzed mobilization problems from that war. They also provided analytical support to the Planning Branch and to the Army and Navy Munitions Board when these organizations wrote the various Industrial Mobilization Plans. (Note 6)