Engineer Memoirs .
all engineers scheduled to go to graduate schools to pursue engineering studies. It
was General Norstad's idea that we should keep in touch with him and with one
another. In this way, we could continue to participate in his dream sessions.
However, the Army was opposed to sending us to school to pursue international
relations, saying it was not part of the Army's mission. They didn't have the
money and couldn't see how it could be done.
Yale University
Nevertheless, we all managed to go to graduate school on the Engineer Corps'
program. The plan was to pursue studies in engineering and piggyback additional
studies in international relations. In Andy Goodpaster's case, he finished his
studies in engineering and then pursued international relations under a Princeton
University grant. Colonel Stanley Dziuban was able to work out a similar scheme
with Columbia. Like Goodpaster, he stayed on for three years instead of two. In
my case, I could not get a separate grant from Yale, but I had to pursue both
courses of studies simultaneously. At the end of two years, I earned both a
master's degree in engineering and a master's degree in international relations.
In retrospect, I believe I was the most fortunate of those of us officer students at
that time. Yale had the country's largest collection of strategic thinkers. They
tried to design ways in which atomic weapons could advance our national
objectives. Our professors included Bernard Brodie, Klaus Knorr, William
Kaufman, Arnold Wolfers, and W. T. R. Fox. During the time I was there Brodie
was writing
Absolute Weapon. Among my classmates were Ray Garthoff,
Dixie Walker, Lucian Pye, and Roger Hilsman. Our class was a small one, only
about 15 in size. We critiqued the draft of Brodie's seminal book in our graduate
seminars. I like to think some of my ideas are contained in the book.
Q ..
Let me return to General Marshall. Why do you suppose he was interested in
moving U.S. troops out of Europe so fast? Would you say that he was opposed to
it himself and was ordered to do so by Roosevelt, or was this his own view?
A
I don't know what happened at the higher levels. But in our internal discussions
and in talking to people who were closely associated with General Marshall, I came
to the conclusion that this was his personal philosophy. I believe he considered that
military forces were to be used only for fighting wars and had limited value in
peacetime. I think he felt that a war should be terminated at the earliest possible
date and the troops immediately demobilized. I don't know how President
Roosevelt felt about it, but from Roosevelt's broader perspective and experience,
I would guess that he would have gone about demobilizing the Army more slowly.
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