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Overview
Of the leaders of the American Army in World War II, Jacob Devers is undoubtedly the “forgotten four-star.” Plucked from relative obscurity in the Canal Zone, Devers was one of four generals selected by General of the Army George Marshall in 1941 to assist him in preparing the Army for war. He quickly became known in Army circles for his “can do” attitude and remarkable ability to cut through red tape. Among other duties, he was instrumental in transforming Ft. Bragg, then a small Army post, into a major training facility. As head of the armored force, Devers contributed to the development of a faster, more heavily armored tank, equipped with a higher velocity gun that could stand up to the more powerful German tanks, and helped to turn American armor into an effective fighting force. In spring 1943, Devers replaced Dwight Eisenhower as commander of the European Theater of Operations, then was given command of the 6th Army Group that invaded the south of France and fought its way through France and Germany to the Austrian border. In the European campaign to defeat Hitler, Eisenhower had three subordinate army group commanders: British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, Omar S. Bradley, and Jacob Devers. The first two are well-known; here the third receives the attention he properly deserves.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780253015266 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 456 |
| Sales rank: | 911,576 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
John A. Adams is author of The Battle for Western Europe, Fall 1944 (IUP, 2010) and If Mahan Ran the Great Pacific War (IUP, 2008).
Read an Excerpt
General Jacob Devers
World War II's Forgotten Four Star
By John A. Adams
Indiana University Press
Copyright © 2015 John A. AdamsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-01526-6
CHAPTER 1
Early Years
* * *
BORN ON SEPTEMBER 8, 1887, IN THE PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH town of York, Jacob Loucks Devers was the oldest of four children born to the very upright couple of Philip and Ella Kate Loucks. Philip Devers was a sturdy, good-natured Irishman, 5' 10" and 220 pounds or so, with a thick crop of curly hair, olive complexion, and a moustache. Oddly, the American who was to free Alsace descended on Ella Kate's side from stock that hailed from Strasbourg. A heavyset semi-invalid, she needed domestic help to raise her three sons and a daughter. Altogether they were a gregarious and friendly family–a touch of the Irish in Pennsylvania Dutch country.
Father worked his way up to become a highly skilled watchmaker and partner in the well-regarded jewelry store, Stevens and Devers. "My father had to put those damned watches together–he had to do everything right or it didn't work. That impressed me," his son later commented. Afterward, Philip became the only one in York who could repair the new "high tech" adding machines. As the junior partner in the jewelry business, he often had to work late hours. He was a Democrat active in civic affairs and a Thirty-Second Degree Mason. A boyhood friend remembered him as "one of the great fathers I knew. He was a real companion to the boys." Jacob's sister remembered him as "a man's man": "He had a horse and fancy pigeons which he trained. Father would come home from work for meals on the trolley car. For the boys he made the first skis in the area. He had a great deal of fun in him. Our childhood was happy and carefree." The children remembered spending a lot of time with their father. He helped them to build a coaster that the boys endlessly took down hills. In warm weather, they might all go to the Susquehanna River and picnic. Honesty, integrity, dependability, and hard work were family trademarks.
In the autumn of his life, Jacob remembered his family as close-knit, even as they grew older. Family life was a source of strength. "My mother always kept us well stuffed with food and made us toe the mark and be on time. Mom was active at St. Paul's Lutheran Church and remembered for her skill at baking." Another time, the general recalled, "While she was warm and loving, there was always a cat-o-nine tails over the ice box. My mother never had to use it after the first time." Ella Kate disliked braggarts and admonished her children to be "very reticent" about their accomplishments. The Devers kids learned punctuality the hard way; be late for supper and you got none. From his mother, Jamie, as Jacob was called as a boy, inherited "a dogged determination and self-reliance" that were hard to shake, and a marked reticence that he overcame only with difficulty. Birthdays were a big deal, and Christmas was something to look forward to. "We did have chores, but I knew we could not have had a happier life."
In those days before universal automotive transportation, many people walked. In the part of town where the Devers resided, the streets were lined with boardwalks. Late in the evening, some people returning from the downtown taverns would stagger by, smoking. Jacob's mother would say, "See that man smoking? Putting another nail in his coffin." "And if she said that once," Devers recalled, "she repeated it a thousand times. I have never forgotten it and never had any desire to smoke. Besides, to play sports I had to run fast and if I smoked, I couldn't breathe. She counsels you when you really don't appreciate it. But you need it. But she always had several cans filled with cookies which you could share with your friends."
Devers also remembered the family's "six mule teams that pulled great rock trucks used to fix the roads. The gravel came from quarries not too far from the house. We always seemed to meet our bills but sometimes they would pile up. In the jewelry business, most of your money came around Christmas, so we would catch up then. The farm provided much of our food including butter."
Jamie's two brothers, Frank and Philip, were close in age. The housekeeper remembered the three boys were so close together and active that it was like looking after triplets. Catherine ("Kit") was six years younger. Frank and Phil were such good students that they each skipped a grade. Frank's placement put him in Jamie's class. Phil was always the man of science and later became an inventor at GE Labs. He held a number of patents, including one for the ultraviolet lamp. Jamie was always the energetic, active one. Frank, a little less active, was the thoughtful one. He became a banker. The three boys were always competitive with each other. Kit would later run a small bookstore in York. Said Devers, "We had a wonderful family life." That happy, carefree childhood induced him to set deep roots into the rich Pennsylvania soil, and he maintained close relationships in York until the end of his life. His parents lived out their lives there. Frank died at an early age in 1947; Philip passed away in 1969.
At the turn of the century, York was a budding, bustling manufacturing center situated along the Susquehanna River among the neat, well-cared-for farms in the rolling green hills that lie a hundred miles due west of Philadelphia. Small city life at the end of the nineteenth century is barely recognizable to those of us who dwell in the twenty-first. For the Devers children, grade school was only a few blocks away. Few residents journeyed outside of the county. Horse-drawn buggies and trolley cars were the principal transportation. It was a time when upright residents instilled the values of hard work, honesty, and good manners in their young and, expected them to be well-behaved.
The Devers family had a nice "fairly new" three-story brick home on West York Street (now known as Roosevelt Avenue). As was common at the time, the structure housed two modest, hardworking families. They had a horse and barn but not a lot of money. But no Devers ever wanted for the basics. Like his neighbors, Jamie grew up learning good manners and the value of hard work. Grandfather Jacob Loucks, the young Devers's namesake, owned the York Machine Shop, which matured into the York Manufacturing Company, later a part of Borg Warner Company. After selling the machinery business, he bought a 191-acre farm on Bull Road. During harvest, Jamie would be pressed into service as a farm hand. "He used my Park Street Gang to help pick potatoes," Devers recalled. "He paid me one half what he paid his laborers, and I did twice as much work as any one of them and I always resented it. When I was much younger, he bribed us by taking us to Bierman's Ice Cream Parlor and giving us all the ice cream and cake we could eat, but we never were able to eat enough to pay for all the work we did picking those potatoes. ... He taught us economics in a realistic way." Grandfather Loucks was an active Republican. Jamie used to listen over the fence to the political discussions of the adults. Still, he noted, "I have ended up after all these years as a Republican but not because of my grandfather." Grandfather Devers was a kindly but upright man. He had a lively blacksmithing business and shoed a lot of the neighborhood horses. The general fondly remembered his paternal grandfather's sense of humor. "Grandfather Devers was a great man in his own right and influenced me greatly. He was six feet tall with a fine soldierly posture and the best blacksmith and horseshoer in town. He saw that I got to Sunday school every week by walking me a mile and a half. I always remember he had a keen sense of humor and that he was kindly and helpful to everybody in every sense of the word."
Nearby stone quarries would flood during spring runoff. "Mom thought those old quarries were too dangerous," so the boys had to sneak off when they wanted to swim there in the summer or ice skate in the winter. "We didn't have much money. I remember going down and getting some of the woodworkers to make our bats and getting a shoemaker to cover our baseballs. He was a lame man and had been a ball player and taught me how to pitch." Somewhere along the line, Jamie learned to cook. When not tending to chores or schoolwork, the boys often were down along the Susquehanna River swimming, sailing, or catching shad. Surprisingly, Jamie was not a hunter. Sometimes they would canoe a mile down river to pick up supplies. "All of this had a lot to do with building my physique. The discussions we heard by the river men were generally clean stories about the progress the country was making and of the tremendous advantages that the counties of York and Lancaster had because of the kind of soil and the kind of people who inhabited the area." When it was in season, the kids picked watercress and sold it for 10 cents a bunch. As they grew of age, his buddy recalled, "We all pretty much liked the girls and we managed to spend as much time as we could with them." Jamie was popular with the fairer sex. Throughout his life, people commented on his pleasant, optimistic disposition.
Unlike his father, Jamie was slight of build, but he was well coordinated and showed athletic ability. His real passion was sports; they dominated his teen years and his outlook on life. From as far back as anyone could remember, he always seemed to wind up as the leader. Despite his demure size, only 120 pounds, he quarterbacked his high school football team. What he lacked in size, he more than made up in quick thinking and hard running. On the baseball diamond, he showed great enthusiasm and a willingness to play at whatever position the team required. He showed promise on the baseball diamond. Others who batted against him gave respect to his curve ball. Jamie's house was the headquarters for the school team. They kept their equipment in the Devers's barn. Even field hockey was given a try. But Jamie's favorite was the basketball court, where he captained the team for both his junior and senior years. Today some might dub him an "alpha male" or "Type A" personality. He was always highly competitive, an attitude that colored his entire life. "I was a poor loser; I didn't like to lose." He looked to excel at almost anything he took on, including beating his brothers. But the competition remained good natured–at least most of the time:
I was the youngest of the group that played baseball. But I was first to be there and about the last to leave. I'd play whatever position the team needed, from catcher to pitcher. Broke my finger as catcher. I was captain of the basketball team and quarterbacked the football team. My father belonged to a club that gave him access to a cottage. Eleven miles down the river. We would go there for a couple of weeks and fish, the shad would come in a big run. Mr. Detweiler lived in a big house next door. He'd set out a net. I have seen hundreds of fish in the net on the beach. They would barrel them and haul them out with farm wagons to Columbia or Wrightsville.
Jamie was an earnest and serious student. Most everyone found him to be extremely intelligent though not bookish. His lessons were well prepared, and it was evident that he wanted to learn. Generally students of the period were respectful of their teachers. Jake described his student-teacher relationships as "good" and "friendly." The public high school Jake attended taught about four hundred students in four grades. While grade school was only a few blocks from home, the high school was several miles away. From the beginning, Jamie excelled, as did his brothers. Jamie finished third in his class; Frank, who skipped a grade, wound up in Jamie's class and finished second. In his own class, Philip also finished second. Jamie showed aptitude in mathematics, but languages, including English, were another matter. Later in life, Devers would come to feel that the Pennsylvania Dutch spoken around York limited his proficiency in English. Throughout his life, he was concerned that his writing might reveal this weakness so he avoided projects that required long, complex write-ups instead of short or verbal summaries. Overall, Jamie stood out as both popular and a leader among his peers. For three years he was voted class president, and from an early age, Jamie's social antenna seemed particularly attuned to interaction with others.
Jamie's father pushed him to be an engineer. In the Devers household, little thought was given to anything but doing one's best. At the turn of the twentieth century, engineers were big men in Pennsylvania. Mines, oil wells, and railroads were all created by these "can do" learned men, and joining their ranks promised a big future for an ambitious young man. He was going to study engineering at Penn State or Lehigh University.
Many famous men had to compete fiercely for West Point appointments. By contrast, Devers was sought out by his local congressman. The politician wanted a student who had good grades in math and science and could survive the tough engineering regimen for which "The Point" had a reputation. As with many new cadets, a free college education was just too valuable for Jamie to pass up. According to the general himself, he became interested in attending West Point as a high school junior, but he did not pursue the entrance process at the time. It was sports that eventually sparked the inclination. Jamie was enthralled at the exploits of the All-American Charlie Daly, who led Army's football team. "I had been reading about West Point graduates and the Indian Wars out there. Kit Carson was a hero to me."
Nevertheless, Jamie and one of his best friends applied and were accepted to Lehigh, a fine Pennsylvania engineering college, and the local Republican congressman appointed the son of a prominent family to West Point. Jamie's father, considered one of the town's more important Democrats, inquired about an Annapolis appointment, but Jamie did not think he would take to the sea. Then the other West Point candidate turned down the appointment. It was the third time that this congressman had had trouble with cadet appointments. Previously, one of his appointments had failed the entrance exam, and another had washed out academically. The congressmen was about to retire, and he was frustrated with the record of Republican protégés. Despite being pushed by two families to appoint their sons, the congressman decided to appoint the son of a prominent Democrat–Jamie. He accepted. Prior to this, Jamie had never shown any interest in a military career or even playing "army" with his childhood buddies, but in this serendipitous moment, the army gained a youth that would become one of its four-star combat commanders. Said the congressman, "One day when some historian writes a history book on what small hinges the doors of destiny open and shut on, the story of the accidental general may lead all the rest."
Jamie continued to worry that his Pennsylvania Dutch so interfered with his ability to communicate in clear English that he might have trouble with the entrance exam. Before entering the military academy, he engaged one of his former teachers as a tutor. After worrying about, and studying for, the entrance exam, Jamie was ultimately accepted on the basis of his good academic record compiled in York's public high school. After attending an Army football game, Jake informed Lehigh that he had settled on "The Point." His high school yearbook predicted "General Devers" would emerge from this decision.
Jamie was nervous about attending West Point. "I was the shy boy from York." His penmanship was atrocious, and he continued to worry that his reliance on the Pennsylvania Dutch of his youth would handicap him with better-spoken cadets who had been educated to express themselves in clear, proper English. Neither was he a gifted orator. When he arrived at the academy, he was so intimidated, he almost turned around and left. "I was scared to death. But I'd been coached a little by older people. They'd say 'Jake somebody else had done it, and if they did it, you can do it.' So I always plunged in, and it worked. I got a lot of confidence built up in me that way. I think the real thing my parents gave me was a sense of justice. I've never had any trouble about what was right and what was wrong. I just knew that at West Point, you don't fail. And if somebody else could get through that place, I had a good chance of doing it, provided I worked at it."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from General Jacob Devers by John A. Adams. Copyright © 2015 John A. Adams. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
List of Maps
Prologue
1. Early Years
2. The Interwar Years
3. Marshall Recognizes Devers
4. Chief of Armored Force
5. The Debate over Doctrine
6. Commander, ETO
7. Deputy Supreme Commander, Mediterranean Theater of Operations
8. The French and a Southern Front
9. Dragooned
10. Up the Rhône Valley
11. An End to Champagne
12. Into the Cold Vosges
13. Cross the Rhine?
14. Throw Down at Vittel and Its Aftermath
15. Nordwind Strikes Devers
16. The Colmar Pocket Finally Collapses
17. Undertone to Austria
18. Postwar
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
What People are Saying About This
As commander of the right wing of the allies in northwest Europe and one of Eisenhower's three Army Group commanders, though an outsider to the Supreme Commander's circle, General Jacob Devers has long deserved more attention by historians of the Second World War. This rich, balanced, and absorbing biography adds importantly to our understanding of this splendid soldier and his important contributions to victory in Europe.
The book fills a serious historical gap in the understanding of large unit command during World War II. Adams's use of the Griess interviews [with Devers] . . . is a significant contribution in itself.
As commander of the right wing of the allies in northwest Europe and one of Eisenhower's three Army Group commanders, though an outsider to the Supreme Commander's circle, General Jacob Devers has long deserved more attention by historians of the Second World War. This rich, balanced, and absorbing biography adds importantly to our understanding of this splendid soldier and his important contributions to victory in Europe.
The book fills a serious historical gap in the understanding of large unit command during World War II. Adams's use of the Griess interviews [with Devers] . . . is a significant contribution in itself.