Most senior generals, admirals, and air officers in the Second World War had gained their first serious experience during the Great War. Douglas MacArthur illustrates how battlefield success in that conflict could create a durable public and institutional reputation. Many in the generation had also absorbed the hope that the Great War had been the last major conflict, an assumption that events quickly destroyed. Experience could help, but authority and habits of thought traveled together. The leadership class's strongest credentials could therefore make its inherited judgments harder to question.
Notable Point · 54:20-56:35
First World War veterans carried authority into the next war
Generals, admirals, and air officers entered the Second World War with authority and habits formed in the First, making earlier success both an asset and a source of inherited assumptions.