During World War I, General John J. Pershing considered Douglas MacArthur his finest battlefield commander and George Marshall his finest staff officer. Pershing preferred Marshall to MacArthur but acknowledged that they were very different men. To Pershing, Marshall had a military mind, while MacArthur had a warrior mind. The military mind exists, according to Samuel P. Huntington, “in a world of grays.” In contrast, MacArthur’s warrior mind was “one of blacks and whites and loud and clashing colors.”

While both men would go on to have a very long, very consequential working relationship, some MacArthur biographers suggest that their World War I service sowed a seed of antagonism that had major consequences in the future. Is this true?? What happened between them in World War I?? To answer this question, Jim Zobel and Amanda Williams sat down to discuss the Marshall/MacArthur relationship during this period.

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