Evaluate How General John J. Pershing Influenced the "modern" Military Tri-Structure of the United States.

By the time America entered the war fully in 1917 Europeans had become fully vested in trench warfare. America faced a problem. The problem of having inexperienced Non-Commissioned Officers (NCO) and Officers leaving America with the probability of high casualties. A solution offered by the Europeans, was amalgamation. This involves inserting American troops with the British and French armies. This would in their mind take care of the lack of training within the Officer Corps. “President Wilson, like most other Americans, was initially aghast at the idea of amalgamation. Some Americans looked at the enormous casualty levels on the western front and recoiled against the thought of their young men being used as cannon fodder by European generals” (Neiberg, 2010). This was a straight no go.

General Pershing could see (I am assuming because he was outside looking in), that Europe has become too attached/tied to trench warfare and nobody was moving. Russia was on the verge of collapse from the inside out. Germany needed to be kept busy on two fronts to prevent them from concentrating their forces fully on the Western Front. General Pershing’s "open warfare" doctrine, he argued, would restore mobility to warfare by emphasizing American aggressiveness and marksmanship. With his big divisions Pershing felt he could push through keeping mobile and aggressive. Thus preventing more trench warfare stalemates. The Americans did not want to get bogged down as the French and British had and designed and trained their forces to break the stalemates prevalent on the Western Front. Maintaining the momentum of attacks through sustained firepower was placed at a premium (Kedzior, 2000).

Works Cited

Kedzior, R. W. (2000). Evolution and Edurance The U.S. Army Division int eh Twentieth Century. Arlington: Rand.

Neiberg, M. S. (2010, December 10). Pershing's Decision: How the

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