¡Viva la Vida!: Reflecting on the U.S. Navy's Leadership Crisis: A Lesson from an Unusual WWII Case Study (Part 1)

Yesterday I came across a CNN story ("14 Navy commanders relieved of duty, prompting conduct memo") which began with this line: "The Navy has already relieved so many commanding officers of duty this year that the chief of naval operations has written an unusual memo to all potential commanders reminding them of their responsibilities. The four-page memo heavily emphasized professional ethics and personal accountability." It turns out that some officers have "been drunk and disorderly (including drunk driving), mistreated sailors, had inappropriate relationships, and in one case failed to properly handle a loaded weapon" (well, that last one's not too surprising as it's the Navy hehe...sorry, I couldn't resist). All violations, according to the admiral who wrote the memo, Admiral Gary Roughead, fall under what he calls the "loss of confidence in ability to command." In short, loss of effective leadership.

In thinking about leadership and organizational theory these days - especially as it applies to Christian missions - I try to draw as much as I can from every discipline. And, in my opinion, no discipline teaches me more than the discipline of History. So what can history teach us about current leadership challenges - challenges that not just the U.S. Navy but of course every other organization is dealing with? Plenty! Read on!

Just the other night, while reading Col. T.N. Dupuy's excellent tome Understanding War: History & Theory of Combat, I came across something pretty interesting that applies to the current crisis of leadership as illustrated by what's happening in the U.S. Navy. One of the focuses of Col. Dupuy's book was on the combat effectiveness of the best combat divisions of the Second World War and what made them so effective. The top ten combat divisions in WWII, according to the Colonel's calculations, were all German except for one: the 88th U.S. Infantry Division, the "Blue Devils." World War Two history buffs might find this strange. Why would a relatively unknown all-draftee infantry division occupy fifth place on Col. Dupuy's list? What about the elite 101st Airborne or the 82nd Airborne? And wait! Did the colonel not consider Gen. "Blood & Guts" Patton's German-smashing First Armored Division? Of course he did - the famous 1st Armored comes in at number 14. So, the question is what makes the 88th Infantry Division so effective at combat? The answer, it turns out, will have a lot to do bear on the current leadership crisis. Read on...

At first glance it does not seem reasonable that the relatively unknown U.S. 88th Infantry Division should have such a high combat effectiveness. The 88th was one of fourteen new all-draftee divisions, activated in mid-1942 after the mobilization of all Regular Army, Organized Reserved, and National Guard Divisions. It trained for a year at Camp Grueber, Oklahoma, and participated in the Louisiana maneuvers during the summer of 1943. The division got very high marks from inspectors during its training and during the maneuvers, and as a consequence was the first of the new green divisions to be shipped overseas in November 1943. It was the first of the new divisions to go into combat, being committed to defensive positions about 50 miles south of Rome, on 1 March 1944. Three months later, the division, having proven itself in continuous combat, was the first to enter Rome.

In the ensuinig months of combat, the 88th division was noted by the German Tenth Army as a force to be reckoned with and as such the German commanders classified the 88th as a "shock troops" division, meaning they believed it to be an elite unit. Captured German war documents revealed that the Germans shifted their reserves whenever the 88th was committed to the battle line. Obviously, the enemy believed that the 88th Infantry Division was something special.

And the Germans weren't the only ones to recognize the excellence of the division. During its 344 days of combat in the Italian Campaign, the division was awarded 3 distinguished unit citations and its soldiers could boast of winning a remarkable 2 Congressional Medals of Honor (the highest and rarest medal awarded in the U.S. Army), 40 Distinguished Service Crosses, 66 Legion of Merit medals, 522 Silver Stars, and 3,784 Brone Stars. Perhaps the medal count speaks for itself.

But the key question, with great significance for future U.S. military doctrine, was why was the division so good?

The most important factor appears to be pretty simple: leadership. Let's examine this more closely.

In all other respects the 88th Division was similar to the thirteen other new divisions. The 88th had no particular advantages in the officers and enlisted men assigned to it. The training programs were identical as they were standard for all new divisions. However, when one looks closely, there were differences in both leadership and training. These can be mainly attributed to one man: Major General John Emmit Sloan, Commanding General of the 88th.