"West Point Bicentennial"
A Pictorial History of the First Two Hundred Years of the United States Military Academy
Preface | 1776-1817 | 1817-1833 | 1833-1848 | 1848-1865 | 1865-1890 | 1890-1919 | 1919-1939 | 1939-1950 | 1950-1970 | 1970-1980 | 1980-2002 | Bicentennial and Beyond

"World War II and a Modern Academy"

1939-1950

As war clouds gathered in Europe, the nation began to pay more attention to defense issues. To produce additional officers for national defense, Congress expanded the Corps of Cadets to 2,496 in 1942, and the academy reverted to a three-year course of study. The Class of 1943 was redesignated the Class of January 1943 and graduated six months early. Subsequent classes, from June 1943 through 1947, graduated in three years. The range of language offerings also expanded during the war with the addition of German, Portuguese and Russian. In subsequent decades, Mandarin Chinese and Arabic also were added. To accommodate the larger Corps, Congress authorized an expansion of the faculty.

The war years brought a greater emphasis on military training. In 1943, summer training was formally moved from the Plain to the new area recently acquired southwest of main post. Flight training was conducted at Stewart Field in Newburgh, and the academy graduated more than 1,000 commissioned pilots between 1943 and 1946. In the words of historian Stephen Ambrose, "during World War II the academy was much more alive to the changing nature of war and to its responsibility to prepare cadets for modern combat than it had been in 1917."

Military Academy graduates figured prominently in World War II. West Point graduates represented only 41 percent of the Regular Army officers but held 89 division and higher commands during the war -- nearly 60 percent of the total. Douglas MacArthur, Class of 1903, led the war effort in the Pacific and achieved the rank of General of the Army. Henry "Hap" Arnold, Class of 1907, commanded the Army Air Forces in World War II, became the first Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and remains the only officer promoted to General of the Air Force. Matthew Ridgway, Class of 1917, commanded the 82nd Airborne Division during the Normandy Invasion, later went on to replace MacArthur as commander of United Nations forces in Korea and eventually became Chief of Staff of the Army. Dwight Eisenhower, of the remarkable Class of 1915, became the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, achieved the rank of General of the Army, and went on to become the 34th President of the United States. His class included many other formidable graduates: 59 of the 164 members of Eisenhower’s class of 1915 became generals. Among them were Hubert Harmon, the first superintendent of the Air Force Academy, and Omar Bradley, the second member of the class to wear five stars and become Chief of Staff of the Army. Nearly 500 academy graduates gave their lives in World War II.

When the war ended, West Point returned to the traditional four-year program and liberalized its curriculum further. In 1945, Maxwell Taylor became superintendent, ushering in the beginnings of the modern Military Academy. Taylor, Class of 1922, commanded the 101st Airborne Division in World War II and was a dynamic leader who had the benefit of a somewhat more sympathetic Academic Board than MacArthur had faced. Their support, and the profoundly new situation the nation and Army faced after the Second World War, allowed him to innovate and modernize to an unprecedented degree. There was wider agreement that junior officers and their soldiers would be called upon to execute an ever more diverse range of missions and needed to be educated accordingly. To keep pace, West Point would have to train leaders who were more analytical, flexible and capable of maintaining their composure and their integrity in an increasingly complex operating environment.

To achieve these objectives, Taylor expanded the size of departments, added several new professors, abolished antiquated courses in fencing and horsemanship, inserted the study of amphibious operations into the military curriculum, and added courses in nuclear physics, electronics and communications. In response to Eisenhower’s belief that American leaders needed to understand the psychology of the citizen soldier, courses were added in leadership and applied psychology. These changes provided graduates with a better understanding of how to motivate and lead the soldiers of a free society. Coursework in the humanities and social sciences increased to 40 percent of a cadet’s total workload. Taylor and the Academic Board recognized the demands that modern war placed on young officers and modified the preparation of cadets accordingly. Taylor summed up his mission by saying that "West Point is essentially a school for leaders. What it teaches its graduates from books is important, but it is not everything. There is no academic department at West Point which is not excelled in size or scope by some other civilian school...We err if we measure West Point only by the yardstick of curriculum. West Point succeeds or fails in the future to the degree in which it continues to produce broad men of character, capable of leading men to victory in battle."

The Military Academy had gradually changed and grown in its first century and a half but consistently managed to produce leaders of character for the United States Army and nation. The post war years promised to bring even more evolution, as the academy, like the nation, came to grips with a Cold War and a vastly more complicated global environment.