In 1993, Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was strongly and publicly opposed to President Clinton’s plan to drop the DoD policy re: gays in the military. After Congress weighed in, we got “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Were any Pentagon brass equally opposed to President Truman’s decision to desegregate the U.S. military? What did MacArthur, Eisenhower, Bradley etc. say, either in public or privately, about the policy change?
The generals would have been prohibited from making public statements about the president’s policy. However, it was clear that General MacArthur actively resisted integration in Korea. Thurgood Marshall’s report to President Truman helped bring the problem to light, and this was just one of several examples of insubordination that led to Truman firing MacArthur as far east commander.
There’s a great book on this subject called “Integration of the Armed Forces 1940-1965”, and it’s available for free online from the Army’s center of military history. It’s a fairly objective account of the difficulties the military encountered in carrying out Truman’s executive order, with an unvarnished look at how the various generals reacted. (link) Chapter 17 specifically address the reactions of the generals.
Eisenhower was not directly affected, because he had left the Army to serve as President of Columbia University before Truman’s order was issued. I haven’t read any of the biographies of Eisenhower so I can’t speak to his reaction in 1948. However, I believe the general consensus is that Eisenhower was personally lukewarm on the subject of integration. However, he did complete the process of integrating the military after he was elected president in 1952, and there are numerous other examples of his being a strong advocate for civil rights (such as federalizing troops in 1957 to integrate public schools in Little Rock.)
Bradley was chief of staff for the Army in 1948. The day after Truman signed the executive order, Bradley dismissed the action by stating “desegregation will come to the Army only when it becomes a fact in the rest of American society.” Truman held a press conference the following day on which he clarified that the intent of his executive order was to end segregation in the armed forces. The Truman Presidential Library has some good source material on the subject, as well.