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The 1970 U.S. Army War College Study on Military Professionalism concluded that officers were so obsessed with demonstrating loyalty, deference to authority, and promotion that they seemed to sacrifice their personal integrity. The findings shocked high-ranked Army officials. The detailed legislative history of Army officer administration from roughly 1900 to 1970 presented in this dissertation shows why and how these conditions came to exist. In nine chapters, the material revealed in magazines, periodicals, student research papers, statements at congressional debates, hearings and investigations, and various official and unofficial publications narrate the development of the post-World War II American officer governance and administration system as well as officer responses to that system.
The Officer Personnel Act of 1947 marked an inflection point in officer governance because it used selection for promotion to determine an individual’s eligibility for continued active military service, a fact that forced individual offices to concern themselves continually with matters of advancement. The officer administration system seemed to meet all institutional goals: the program recruited new individuals, offered orderly progress over the expanse of a career, and nearly guaranteed a continuous flow of vocationally prepared individuals through the ranks. The evidence shows that officers adapted their actions to perceived circumstances. However, the individual and collective officer response to any decision, policy, or practice might not conform entirely to the outcome desired or anticipated by decision-makers.
Some officer attitudes and practices uncovered in the evidence, such as those reported in the 1970 study, were unintended consequences of the 1947 reforms that did not become fully apparent until the 1960s. The overall argument in the dissertation is that Cold War era officer attitudes and behaviors were responses to a post-World War II officer governance and administration system, implemented in 1947, that required the individual to demonstrate apparent flawless and loyal execution of their duties to achieve promotion and thereby maintain their officer identity and career. The findings of the dissertation are significant because they demonstrate commissioned officers were not passive government assets subject to unlimited manipulation by outside authority but retained a degree of agency as they responded to their situation.