In his 1932 memorandum, "The Probable Characteristics of the Next War and the Organization, Tactics, and Equipment Necessary to Meet Them," George Patton never mentioned the Palmer school of Army organization nor the Palmer/Wadsworth legislation that was in effect in 1932.The closest Patton came to engaging Palmer's key concepts was in these statements:
The outstanding characteristic of the World War was its bloody and costly indecisiveness. This result was due to the fact that on account of the quality and size of forces involved, maneuver was at first slow and then absent. [...] Mass Armies are built up by conscription, either before or subsequent to a declaration of war. In the latter case training is hurried and inadequate – in the former it must be abbreviated to avoid crushing the nation with taxes, while at the same time depriving it of its workers.Patton here misses Palmer's point of a mass army based on a large trained reserve.
Strength and size are not synonymous. The practice of making strength depend wholly on size is extravagant and bloody. It is the idea on which “Nations in Arms” are based. Large size and limited training make it immobile and, hence, not apt at maneuver.This comes close to engaging the reserves argument by opening the door to the question of how much training enables maneuverability? Patton makes a second argument against reserves, albeit indirectly:
Time is necessary in order to mobilize and deploy masses of men.It's as if Patton has obliviously backed into the March-Palmer controversies that produced the National Defense Act of 1920. On the other hand, his advocacy of a professional standing army plays into the reality of Congress not funding the reserve components called for in the NDA.
At this we leave this Patton and Palmer thread.
Note that in the quotes above, Patton blames static warfare on the competence and training of the troops ... NOT on the machine gun or modern weaponry. There is major Civil War relevance here, if the reader will pause to think.
Additionally, from Patton's framework, we can infer that Civil War armies were like those blighted "nations in Arms" of WWI boasting ill-trained masses ill-fitted for maneuver. Oh no, you say, There are so many examples of brilliant maneuver in the Civil War. I would disagree.
A new thread awaits as we apply more of Patton's ideas from this paper to the puzzling phenomena of Civil War maneuver (or the lack of it).
