Vol. 1 : The formative years : 1947–1950

The first volume in an important new series that will provide a comprehensive history of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), The Formative Years traces the evolution of OSD from its establishment in September 1947 to the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950. As the title indicates, these were years of beginnings that ushered in the present-day era of service unification and saw the development of policies and programs that would have lasting impact on national security. A richly documented volume, it draws on a wide variety of primary and secondary sources to present a commanding account of the evolution of both defense organization and national security policy during the critical post-World War II years.

The book opens with the swearing-in of the first Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, who faced the dual challenge of effecting unification of the armed forces and of reconstituting U.S. defense policy to meet an increasing array of problems and threats abroad, the Cold War with the Soviet Union heading the list. As Forrestal discovered, to make unification work, he needed more authority and assistance than the 1947 National Security Act gave him. His successor, Louis Johnson, had the benefit of amendments in 1949 that enhanced the secretary's power. But like Forrestal, Johnson confronted fierce interservice competition for scarce funds and deeply divisive quarrels, especially between the Air Force and the Navy, over the assignment of roles and missions. A series of chapters on the making of the defense budgets for the period strikingly illuminates the intricate relationships among strategic policies, military programs, roles and missions, and money.

Problems abroad threatened to embroil the United States in conflicts for which it was largely unprepared. Students of foreign affairs will be especially interested in the chapters on assistance to Greece and Turkey under the Truman Doctrine, the partitioning of Palestine and the ensuing Arab-Israeli conflict, the civil war in China and its repercussions throughout the Far East, including the early stages of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and the Berlin crisis of 1948–49, which nearly led to a military showdown with the Soviet Union. Subsequent chapters examine the development of the atomic energy program and growing U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons, the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the origins of the worldwide Mutual Defense Assistance Program, and the drafting of NSC 68, the landmark policy paper that in 1950, on the eve of the Korean War, proposed an unprecedented program of peacetime rearmament.

Vol. 2 : The test of war : 1950–1953

The Test of War, the second volume in the planned comprehensive History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, follows the evolution of OSD from the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 to the end of the Truman presidency in January 1953. Like the first volume in the series (The Formative Years, 1947–1950), the present one focuses on the secretaries of defense, their staffs, and OSD's administration of the Pentagon and examines, beyond OSD and the Department of Defense, the larger framework of national security organization and policy that involved the White House, Congress, and other agencies of the government.

As the central event of this period, the Korean War tested the mettle of officials and institutions throughout the national security establishment, but nowhere more acutely than in the E-ring offices of the Pentagon leadership. The Korean-era secretaries of defense—Louis Johnson, George Marshall, and Robert Lovett—confronted a maze of problems relating to strategy, budgets, manpower, weapons development, and service roles and missions. Operating under wartime pressures while attempting to manage a department only recently created and still undergoing major adjustments, they faced a formidable agenda made even more difficult by domestic political and economic constraints that narrowed the options available to them.

In a narrative rich in both documentary detail and broad-brush perspective, The Test of War assesses how well the secretaries met these challenges. Success or failure depended not only on their effectiveness in managing the Pentagon bureaucracy, in particular their interaction with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the still parochial-minded military services, but also on their relationship with Truman, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and a contentious Congress unhappy over the firing of MacArthur, the pace of mobilization, and the progress of the war generally.

Korea, of course, was the flash point for a much wider struggle unfolding during this time, the effort by the United States to contain the expansionist activities of the Soviet Union and communism. As the conflict in the Far East dragged on seemingly indefinitely, officials in Washington turned their attention increasingly to Europe and the strengthening of the Western alliance. Much of the book deals with the shaping of NATO and the related subject of military assistance.

In a thoughtful conclusion, The Test of War observes that the precedents established in these seminal years—the beginnings of a military-industrial complex, the changing strategic formulations that allowed for reliance on nuclear as well as conventional weapons, the sharp debate over European vs. Asian priorities, and, above all, the staunch and expensive commitment to containment—would influence national security policy and the U.S. defense effort for the remainder of the century.