When successful WWI leaders faced a different war

A major institutional problem was deciding when to retain proven commanders and when to promote untested successors. Many senior officers had learned war in a slower, more geographically concentrated conflict and carried those timelines into a mechanized global war. Churchill sometimes removed commanders before they could stabilize their organizations, contributing to disruptive turnover in North Africa. The opposite danger appears in Douglas MacArthur, whose First World War prestige survived serious problems in the Philippines and later Korea. Equipment procurement could hedge uncertainty by funding two systems at once, but only one officer could exercise a command at a given moment. The underlying warning is that prestige earned in one war may not translate cleanly into another.