The only Army general ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
Winston Churchill called George Marshall the organiser of victory for running America's war effort. Marshall then did something rarer for a soldier: as Secretary of State he championed the plan to rebuild a wrecked Europe that still carries his name, and in 1953 he became the only Army general to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Marshall was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in 1880, the son of a coal and coke businessman; asked about his politics, he liked to joke that his father was a Democrat, his mother a Republican, and he an Episcopalian. His grades were too ordinary for West Point, so he went to the Virginia Military Institute, although his older brother warned he would disgrace the family. His mother sold land to pay the fees. There he ranked first in military discipline, rose to first captain, and graduated 15th of 34 in 1901.
After a commission in 1902 he served in the Philippines, then excelled at the Army's schools, finishing first in his 1908 Staff College class. As an instructor he even tutored his superior officer, Hunter Liggett, who chose to study under him. In 1917 he was reportedly the first American soldier off the first troopship to reach France, and on the staff of the American Expeditionary Forces he helped plan the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.
Between the wars he served as aide to General John J. Pershing, and as assistant commandant of the Infantry School from 1927 he modernised command and staff methods that paid off in the next war. He also oversaw 35 Civilian Conservation Corps camps in Oregon and Washington. Appointed Chief of Staff in 1939, he worked with Secretary of War Henry Stimson on the biggest military expansion in American history and coordinated Allied operations in Europe and the Pacific, earning five-star rank and Time's Man of the Year title for 1943.
Peace brought harder assignments. From late 1945 he tried and failed to broker a coalition in China between Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists and Mao Zedong's Communists. As Secretary of State from 1947 to 1949 he pushed the European recovery programme, and later, as Secretary of Defense during the Korean War, rebuilt a demobilised military's morale. He is the only person to have held both cabinet posts, and died in 1959.
Source: George C. Marshall
