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Gen. George Marshall’s life is rich with examples of leadership, but you won’t get any insights into his decision-making by reading Marshall’s autobiography.
He never wrote one, not even when Marshall was offered $1 million to pen his memoirs.
That shows some of the characteristics that made the former Vancouver soldier an outstanding leader, said Gerald M. Pops.
Pops is the author of “Ethical Leadership in Turbulent Times: Modeling the Public Career of George C. Marshall.” He visited Vancouver a few years ago while researching the book and returned Thursday to the Marshall House to talk about its most illustrious occupant.
Pops was a professor of public administration at West Virginia University when he wrote the book. Pops, now retired, found a lot of things to like about Marshall. There was a local link, because Marshall was born about 25 miles from the WVU campus.
But Marshall also provided something that Pops found invaluable in the classroom where he taught public administration. Marshall was a bureaucrat hero.
“I use the term ‘great bureaucrat,’ and people ask me if that isn’t a contradiction in terms,” Pops said during his presentation in the Marshall House. “During days of distrust of government leaders, it’s important that a cynical public is made aware of great civic leaders.”
It was his job as a professor, Pops said, “to prepare young men and women to manage public enterprises.”
What he had to work with were some very dull books about leadership, Pops said, so he wrote his own book.
“Marshall is a template for public leadership,” Pops said.
Not only did he embody the traits of a leader, Marshall put them in play over the span of five decades to influence key moments in history. When Marshall’s 18 months in Vancouver are recalled, it’s often in connection with Soviet pilot Valeri Chkalov’s landing at Pearson Field in 1937, ending the first nonstop transpolar flight.
But that was 35 years into an Army career that started in 1902, during a campaign in the Philippines. Marshall was an innovative military leader in 1917-18 during World War I, when he was called a logistical genius.
In 1949, President Harry Truman tapped him for another role, and Marshall served as U.S. secretary of defense during the Korean War.
“Over a period of 50 years, he was an outstanding achiever,” Pops said. “He never had a bad year — or a slow year.”
Marshall approached each assignment with courage, fairness and integrity, Pops said. And in there somewhere are a couple of reasons Marshall never wrote an autobiography.
“He turned down $1 million for his memoirs after World War II,” Pops said. “He said he’d been adequately compensated for his service.”
There were other reasons that reflected his work ethic. Writing a detailed autobiography would have required looking back at a diary, and Marshall never kept a daily journal. It would have taken time away from his job, and he didn’t want to have his personal thoughts and reflections analyzed by historians. And, if Marshall wrote an honest account of history, he would have to assess and criticize other people.
“He didn’t want to do that,” Pops said.
Marshall found talented people and supported them. He was able to look ahead, establishing a series of goals. Marshall had a long-term plan for the end of WWII, which included occupying Germany and Japan, preparing civil governments and administrations for liberated cities and regions.
“He was doing that in the fall of 1942,” Pops said. “Disasters were happening all over the world, and he was planning for the end of the war.”
Marshall approached his challenges with a sense of public service, not personal glory, Pops said. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in rebuilding Europe, but it was President Truman — not Marshall — who dubbed it the Marshall Plan.
In 1952, Marshall represented the U.S. at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. As Marshall and another American walked through Westminster Abbey toward their seats, people on both sides of the aisle rose, Pops said.
Marshall asked, “Who are they staring at?”
His companion replied: “You, general.”
