During World War II, General Dwight D. Eisenhower became
convinced that the era of separate land, sea, and air operations
was over and that future military operations would involve all
three elements acting in concert. He foresaw that, once peace had
been restored, the waste and duplication of effort which
characterized America's military operations during the war would
not be tolerated by an economy-minded Congress. A fiscal
conservative, Eisenhower saw national security as dependent upon
maintaining a healthy economy and a strong military. His goal,
therefore, was the achievement of an efficient, properly balanced
military establishment within the context of a healthy economy
through the unification of the services into a single Cabinet level
department.
As Army Chief of Staff, adviser to Secretaries of National
Defense James Forrestal and Louis Johnson, and then as president,
Eisenhower was a leader in the effort to achieve unification. The
final result of these efforts, the Military Reorganization Act of
1958, did not encompass all of the changes that Eisenhower
originally sought. However, he had been instrumental in
transforming the unorganized military establishment of pre-war
America into a highly centralized organization led by a powerful
secretary of defense. This structure would remain unchanged for
twenty-eight years.
General
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