Military Review English Edition November December 2016 | Page 127
REVIEW ESSAY
REVIEW ESSAY
Jacob L. Devers
A General’s Life
James Scott Wheeler, University Press of Kentucky,
Lexington, Kentucky, 2015, 589 pages
Dr. John T. Kuehn
T
he guiding theme for Scott Wheeler’s study on U.S.
Army Gen. Jacob “Jake” L. Devers appears on the
first page of this long overdue biography: “So, why
is Jacob Devers a forgotten general?” Why, indeed? Devers
finished World War II as a four-star general, like George
Patton. He commanded one of only three Allied army groups
in Europe, the Sixth Army Group, composed of one U.S. army
and one French army. These facts alone should cause one to
ask why he is not more widely remembered, especially since he
was not relieved of command, nor did he suffer any defeats at
the hands of the German forces he faced while in command.
Wheeler’s book, therefore, follows the trend of revising
the established scholarship about World War II—in this
case, the scholarship on high command. The method is that
of a traditional biography—birth to death. Devers’s early
years are covered in the traditional manner of tracing family roots and discussing those that influenced him most. For
example, one of Devers’s
Dr. John T. Kuehn is the
early character traits is his
Major General William Stofft
“puritanical” and counChair of Historical Research
tercultural aversion to alat the U.S. Army Command
cohol and tobacco, which
and General Staff College
could be attributed to
in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
his mother Ella, and was
He retired after twennoted “by his classmates at
ty-three years as a naval
West Point.”
aviator with the rank of
Devers entered the
commander in 2004.
artillery branch after
MILITARY REVIEW November-December 2016
graduation from West Point, serving in the pre-World
War I Army in various postings. He was lucky enough to
command three different types of artillery units: mountain
artillery (using mules), regular horse-drawn artillery, and
one of the first motorized artillery battalions. He missed a
posting to France during World War I, having been deemed
more important to the training effort of the many artillery
officers at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, who were needed for the
massive expansion of that combat arm during the war. Like
Dwight Eisenhower, however, missing the “big show” in
Europe did not seem to hurt his subsequent career, despite
his concern that it would do just that.
The bulk of Wheeler’s book concentrates on the critical
period before and during World War II, and Devers’s role
as one of Gen. George C. Marshall’s “go to guys.” Devers’s
career was also helped by his long association and friendship
with fellow artilleryman Gen. Leslie McNair, another one
of Marshall’s protégés and troubleshooters. McNair became
the American Ground Forces commander and Devers’s boss
when he assumed overall command of the new Armored
Force of the U.S. Army. In this section the reader learns of
the numerous occasions in which Devers conflicted with
Eisenhower, especially during Devers’s 1943 trip to Africa,
when Eisenhower probably believed Devers had been sent
to relieve him. And, the section on Devers’s command of
the Sixth Army Group and the challenges of commanding a
French unit is especially enlightening for anyone interested in
high command in coalition warfare.
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