General Leslie Groves -- First Lieutenant for Fifteen Years?

Factual Questions
1

I was looking at the Wikipedia page for General Leslie Groves, the man who oversaw the Manhattan Project for the United States.

Groves graduated from West Point early on Nov 1 1918 (World War I caused his class’s training to be accelerated) and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. He was promoted to First Lieutenant six months later on May 1 1919.

After that, he had various assignments, including command of various engineering units. Generally his work was very good, and he earned a commendation for his work as a company commander in Hawaii. He did have one blemish on his record, in 1927, when a pontoon bridge was washed away by flood waters. A critical report was filed against him, but a superior officer interceded.

In 1929, he went to Nicaragua to survey a site for a canal. After an earthquake in 1931, he took over responsibility for the local water supply, earning him a medal from Nicaragua.

He was eventually promoted to captain on October 20, 1934. This is just eleven days shy of the fifteenth anniversary of his promotion to First Lieutenant.

He earned promotions on a pretty steady basis after that, reaching Major in 1940, Colonel very shortly thereafter (alas, as a wartime rank in the AUS).

My question is, why was he a First Lieutenant for fifteen years? If I understand correctly, the usual amount of time in that rank is only two to three years. It seems that he undertook quite a number of assignments with command responsibility during those years, which (I would think although I’m certainly no military expert) would eventually result in a promotion sooner rather than later.

Even if you want to attribute his lack of advancement to the pontoon bridge incident, that happened when he was already about eight years into the rank.

So, why was General Groves a First Lieutenant for nearly fifteen years?

Zev Steinhardt

2

I’m sure there will be people with more expertise in this question along.

But the short version as I understand it. The army was starved for money in the years between the World Wars.

It was always understrength and promotion was agonisingly slow. There was no equivalent of the ‘Up or Out’ system you see in modern militaries. Eisenhower for example was a Major for 16 years.

The depression didn’t help here, both for the obvious money reason, but it made officers even more reluctant to leave thus further reducing any promotion gaps opening up.

3

Between the wars promotions were slow because the Army was small. You had to wait for people to retire or die to free up slots. If Groves wasn’t the best soldier anyone had ever seen (and he wasn’t) there would be no pressure to promote him. So I think his TIG wasn’t that unusual. I could be wrong, however.

4

AIUI it was also common for the interwar Army to put officers on leave, at low/no pay, for extended periods at their request, to pursue outside jobs while retaining their seniority. That let the Army call them back when needed, but in the meanwhile they weren’t impressing any promotion boards.

5

A cite from the US Army Center of Military History. It doesn’t directly address the promotion system but it gives a good look at related differences then.

The US Army started cuts a month after the armistice that ended WWI. That was just a couple months after 2LT Groves graduated from West Point and was commissioned. Within 9 months they cut 3,250,000 troops. By the end of 1919 end strength was about 19,000 officers and 205,000 enlisted. They weren’t done cutting. By the end of 1921 Congress limited the Army to 12,000 officers and 125,000 enlisted, excluding the Phillipines Scouts. Things settled at that level until 1936.

His duty positions probably look inflated. Also in the cite is the fact that many units were skeletonized with only limited manning. Additionally there were a lot of tiny posts during that period. That tended to inflate titles for officers as they pushed them up into higher jobs despite not holding the rank.

Beyond the end strength authorized there’s another issue. While Congress limited strength, at the time the bigger constraint was funding for personnel. Currently there’s quite a bit more law governing officer management and promotion. Congress now sets an authorized strength with those career management laws in place, funds it, and expects the Army to recruit to meet that goal. The US Army between the world wars had more freedom to cut costs by reducing promotions. By cutting costs they could recruit up to the maximum authorized strength. It was a different world.

Groves was allowed to keeping putting on the uniform and collecting pay. Most officers in uniform when he was commissioned became civilians. That’s a successful early career for the time.

6

Something similar happened before the Civil War. The Army had no one to fight. Most posts were in the West, protecting against Indians, that were so tough on families that few married men wanted the positions. Advancement was also so slow that would-be lifers like Ulysses Grant gave up and resigned his commission. The Civil War saw large number of non-professional soldiers leading troops.

The Founders were horrified by the idea of a standing army, since they were so often turned against the people in Europe. (A Navy was different, with real foreign enemies, and almost no ability to go after civilians.) The Army was deliberately starved for all of our history (outside war years) until after WWII.

7

You see these kinds of things happen before we had a large professional standing army.

A lot of Civil War, WWI, and WWII generals held temporary promotions that subsequently (or not) went permanent via Act of Congress.

So, if you read a biography of Grant or Eisenhower or Omar Bradley, you’ll occasionally see some comments about how they received their temporary promotions to various higher ranks while their permanent rank was typically lower.

For example, Eisenhower got as high as a temporary Lt Col in WWI before being bumped back down to his permanent rank of Major after the war. He didn’t get back to Lt Col until 1936. And for much of WWII he held that permanent rank of Lt Col while his temporary advancements past that did not become permanent until 1943 (despite serving as a high commander for the Allies for much of that time).

8

If anyone is interested in Groves, his background just before the Manhattan project and his role in it, I highly recommend the book: “Now It Can Be Told: The Story Of The Manhattan Project”.

Here are some quotes:

“For Groves, the Manhattan Project seemed a minor assignment, less significant than the construction of the Pentagon. He was deeply disappointed at being given the job of supervising the development of an atomic weapon since it deprived him of combat duty. He started with, and partially retained, thorough doubts about the feasibility of the project.”

“Though a big project, it was not expected to involve as much as $100 million altogether. While this was more than the cost of almost any single job under my jurisdiction, it was much less than our total over-all spending in a normal week.”

“Later that morning, I saw Styer at his office in the Pentagon. He confirmed my worst premonitions by telling me that I was to be placed in charge of the Army’s part of the atomic effort.”

“At first, I was responsible only for the engineering, construction and operation of the plants to produce bomb materials. Had our work been routine and clearly defined, my responsibility probably would have ended there.”

“Gradually, I had to take over other unforeseen responsibilities, such as security and counterintelligence. I also became responsible for military intelligence on atomic developments throughout the world, as well as for insuring that the postwar position of the United States in the field of atomic energy would not be unfavorable.”

“Thus I became responsible, particularly to General Marshall, Secretary Stimson and President Truman, for the over-all success of the use of the bomb against Japan. This assignment included selecting the target cities, subject to the approval of the Chief of Staff and the Secretary of War; preparing the orders and instructions for the bombing operations; and arranging for Army and Navy units to provide the necessary support to our overseas effort.”

9

Besides the already mentioned limits on army size and thus available promotions, Groves had most of his experience & expertise in engineering projects. But traditionally, the Army commanders look down on that area in comparison to combat commanders, who get more of the promotions.

10

Spain’s first female General just got promoted; she’s Engineers and the articles mentioned that our Corps of Engineers stops at a lower grade than the main Army body. I think this tends to apply to all “non-combat” branches in pretty much any Armed Forces: Engineering, Medical, Logistics… you need to get at least part of your career in positions officially labelled “combat”, even though it’s perfectly possible to have been building pontoons while under fire or to lead a shock unit that spends your whole tenure doing drills.

11

The blockage with promotions is a fairly major theme running through the early chapters of Racing for the Bomb, the definitive biography of Groves by Robert Norris.

12

There was a lot of concern that the same thing was going to happen post Cold-War, and to some degree, it did with the Clinton-era defense cuts.

Another consideration is that the military didn’t really have the whole up-or-out scheme or mentality until after WWII- it wasn’t uncommon for officers to top out at a certain rank, but continue to work in that role for the remainder of their careers.

(not incidentally, the military is starting to break away from that mentality, as they’ve found that they are kicking out perfectly good personnel who might otherwise be fine performers, but not promotable, and they’re already struggling with retention)

13

Great job there, Leslie. :dubious: