War time and pace time military rank?

Post Reply New Topic

I watched movie about American General Gorge S. Patton, than i learned that he play major role in WW1 too, the Wikipedia stated that he get Lieutenant colonel during WW1 and colonel shortly after but he get demoted to major in 1920.
At first I thought the guy deserved, because it appears that historical films he was quick tempered and quarrelsome, may have ADHD, but for the military guy, it is rather an advantage than to defect

But latter i found it was standard practice in British and American Army, that have permanent peacetime rank and war time rank with can be reduced after why, but why?

I would guess that the reason would be that the man's responsibilities change, and expand during war, and contract again when the war is over. So his rank would also rise and fall with that.

The size of a peacetime army is tiny compared to the size of the same nation's army at the height of an all out total war. And this disparity in size was even greater in the US army than for the British, and for European armies for most of history.

In 1859 the US army had 11 thousand men (smaller than a single US army division today). Then in 1861 the southern half of the country broke away and tried to become separate country- causing the civil war. Not sure of the figures - but my guess is that by the 1863 the South alone probably had around a million men under arm trying to fight off the two million invaders from the north. So the one army of 11K became two armies with three million between them. So any pre war career officer in either the north or the south would have had at least a hundred times as many men under his command than he would have had in peacetime. So his rank would have to be a notch or two higher.

When that war ended the defeated Confederate army was dissolved, and the Union army quickly shrank back in size. And many of the military heroes of the war who remained in uniform dropped down to a "peacetime rank" (even though many of them -like Sheridan and Custer- were still employed to fight wars- but this time with the Plains Indians on the frontier).

The US armed forces repeated that ballooning thing in the First World War, and then again in the Second World War.

The US army was only a quarter million in 1940, it grew to like ten million during WWII, and shrank back to 600 thousand in 1947.

So I can see why the US armed forces would promote and then demote career guys just because of the change in the nation's status of being at war or not.

On the continent of Europe nations were traditionally more militaristic than the US because they have to guard their borders from strong close neighbors. Britain was kinda intermediate between the rest of Europe on one hand, and the US on the other in degree of militarism. The British navy was more important than its army in peace time.

So European armies in the 19th and 20th centuries did not expand and contract quite as dramatically as the US army-because even in peacetime their armies were large (the pre pearl harbor US army was the same size as the standing army of Sweden even though Sweden has less than five percent the US population size).

However after about 1948 this all changed. The Cold War forced the USA to become more militaristic in peacetime. More like Europe always was. But parodoxically European countries became less militaristic in peacetime. Also when the US did get involved in hot wars during the cold war (Korea, and Vietnam)-they were smaller wars than the world wars. So in the cold war and during the current war on terrorism the differential in size between the peacetime and wartime US army has not been as huge.

Maybe it is cruel, and dangerous to give rank, and then take it away like that. But It seems to have been the accepted thing. And if it isnt done- you get the situation in which you're top heavy with "too many chiefs, and not enough Indians" (as we say in the USA). And that can be dangerous as well.

My understanding is that certain ranks only really serve a purpose during wartime (stratification of leadership). A guy with 4 stars may be the top dog, but there are lots of 4-star generals. The 5-star general (IIRC) only is in play during a war, and it goes to the top dog.

I think the main reason is something like this: a commander must have a higher rank than the people he commands, so if someone is given an army group/division to command, he will get a higher rank so that he can actually give those people orders.