The Marines' Fight for Survival
War, Politics, and Institutional Crisis, 1945-1952
Format:Hardback
Publisher:University Press of Kansas
Publishing:20th Oct '25
£48.00
This title is due to be published on 20th October, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
The compelling history of how the US Marines and their allies fought to preserve the Corps and establish its role in national defense.
Only five years after Marines raised the American flag on Iwo Jima, the United States Marine Corps was close to becoming a hollow force. A parsimonious Truman administration and a hostile defense secretary, Louis Johnson, had reduced the Corps to a handful of understrength infantry battalions, assorted supporting artillery and tank units, and twelve aircraft squadrons. Its future hung in the balance.
In The Marines' Fight for Survival, historian and retired Marine Corps Colonel Rod Andrew Jr. guides readers through the dramatic twists and turns of the campaign waged by a handful of senior Marines, citizens, legislators, and journalists to defend the Corps and prevent its elimination or forced irrelevance. Through politicking, intrigue, deception, and extreme moral courage, the Corps' defenders waged a bitter battle of policy and publicity in the halls of power and the national media.
But while this campaign of persuasion moved the needle in some important ways, the final victory for the Marines' future was ultimately won on the battlefields of Korea. Andrew argues that it was the gritty performance of the frontline Marines and their supporting airmen in Korea that ultimately saved the Corps. The elite reputation that they created for themselves, and the affection they had garnered from the public throughout the twentieth century, would not have been possible without the valor and the victories of frontline Marines. The Corps' place in the national defense structure was sealed with the Douglas-Mansfield Act of 1952, in which Congress granted a legal voice to the USMC Commandant on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and made the Corps the only service branch to have a permanent minimal strength protected by law.
"In this meticulously researched and well-written book, Rod Andrew provides the definitive account of the Marine Corps's fight for institutional survival in the aftermath of World War II. Andrew takes the reader from Capitol Hill to Korean War battlefields as he explores how the Service made a case for its strategic relevance in the early years of the Cold War." — Nathan R. Packard, contributing author to Peace, War and Partnership: Congress and the Military since World War II
"For the Marine Corps to continue to provide its matchless operational capabilities in support of America's national security, the Corps' senior officers, members of Congress, and Defense Department leaders must know how Marines working with Congress helped enshrine those capabilities into law. There is no better description of the decades long battle to save and strengthen the Marine Corps through legislation than The Marines' Fight for Survival. It is without doubt the seminal account of those challenging years that every US Marine and supporter of Marines must read." — Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, US Marine Corps (Retired)
"Who would have thought, after the successes of the Marine Corps in WWII, that immediately after the war that same Corps would be fighting for its own existence within the Defense Department? In his book The Marines' Fight for Survival, Rod Andrew brought that multi-year fight to life in the most researched and well-documented book written to date. As a young lad who watched his father agonize over this battle, this remarkable book filled some blank spaces. I strongly recommend this brilliant account to any who believe that the 'Bended Knee' has never been a tradition of our Corps and never will be." — Charles C. Krulak, General, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.), 31st Commandant of the Marine Corps
"Colonel Rod Andrew, USMCR (ret.) has produced on a superb history on the post WWII struggle of Marine Corps to survive as an institution in early Cold War. In fact, Navy Cross recipient and Marine Commandant Clifton B. Cates was astounded to find out that the newly established Department of Defense and its second Secretary, Louis A. Johnson, was seriously considering doing away with the entire Marine Corps in the name of service unification. Pulling no punches, Andrew chronicled the years-long fight for institutional Corps survival and ultimately showed that it was the legendary combat prowess of the Marines in the Korean War that did more toward saving the Corps than all their herculean pre-war efforts in the halls of Congress and within the confined of the Department of Defense combined. Korea made it evident that the nation simply had to have its Marines for future Cold War contingencies." — C. P. Neimeyer, editor of On the Corps: USMC Wisdom from the Pages of Leatherneck, Marine Corps Gazette, and Proceedings
"Although the U.S. Marine Corps emerged from the Second World War riding high after many amphibious successes, the Marines faced serious institution threats from Congress, the executive branch, and the other armed services during the immediate post-war years. Rod Andrew skillfully dissects those threats during the military unification debates in the late 1940s in his book The Marines' Fight for Survival, and then he reveals how and why the Marines' hard-fought battles in the Korean War helped safeguard the Corps' survival in 1952." — David J. Ulbrich, author of Preparing for Victory: Thomas Holcomb and the Making of the Modern Marine Corps, 1935-1943
ISBN: 9780700640485
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
480 pages