General Marshall's post-war report remarked on one clear advantage that the German Army was privileged to exploit again and again throughout the war:
- from Amazon:
"The German ammunition was charged with smokeless, flashless powder which in both night and day fighting helped the enemy tremendously in concealing his fire positions." General Marshall listed a number of clear advantages that the American G.I. had over his German and Japanese counterpart: the M-1 Garand semi-automatic rifle, the jeep and the two-and-a-half ton truck ("Deuce and a half"):
"It is interesting to trace the planning and decisions that gave us the Garand rifle and the tremendous small arms fire-power that went with it, noting especially that the War Department was strenuously opposed." General Marshall recalled the decisions made concerning how many American men would be drafted and in what branches of service they would be needed. He recalled the number of divisions each Allied nation raised and how many divisions the Germans and Japanese put in the field. The article also remembers that two thirds of the German Army was deployed along the Eastern front and he wondered what might the Americans have done had Germany defeated the Reds. "It is remarkable how exactly the mobilization plan fitted the requirements for victory. When Admiral Doenitz surrendered the German Government, every American division was in operational theaters." For those of you out there who collect facts about American World War II medals, here is an article from the early post-war period involving the amount of gallantry medals that were awarded throughout the course of the U.S. involvement to U.S. Army personnel. Keep in mind that this is an immediate assessment from the fall of 1945 and that the Army would continue to distribute the decorations to the deserving G.I.s for many more years to come. The article discusses the amount of Medals of Honor that were awarded and the percentage of that number that were posthumously awarded. The number of Purple Hearts that were distributed is a topic that is not touched upon here.
Read what the U.S. Army psychologists had to say about courage. As he looked back on all that the U.S. military was able to accomplish during the last two years of World War Two, General George Marshall was full of praise for the War Department's General Staff; however, it was management of these "three major commands" that impressed him time and again:
*the collective efforts of the American Air Forces,
*the Army Ground Command and
*the Service Forces. The demobilization of 7,730,000 U.S. military personnel must have been a daunting task, but the policy makers in Washington knew well the dangers of that new world and they had no intention of completely demobilizing as they had done after the First World War. General Marshall remarked in these short paragraphs that many men would be needed for occupation duty.
More about General Marshall can be read here.
To read further about the demobilized military, click here | 
