A Tale of Two Armies: The Origins and Warping of the Pentomic Division
Open AccessIn the wake of the Korean War and the shadow of President Eisenhower’s “New Look,” the Army fundamentally remade itself in less than five years. The entire saga of the new Pentomic Division lasted less than a decade, with actual implementation a mere five years. Most examinations the Pentomic division focus around two explanations: either the Army sought to find some approach to the nuclear battlefield and failed miserably, or the Army used the reorganization to gain money and maintain prestige in an environment of interservice rivalry. Even more generous accounts, which acknowledge the Army’s often lonely attempt to shape military policy away from the “New Look” and its reliance on “massive retaliation,” generally assume the Army had no overarching plan. These explanations seem to invert the causality relationship between the Pentomic Division and Eisenhower’s military policy. This paper seeks to recontextualize the Pentomic Division to illustrate how the organizational concept as fielded was a perversion, rather than an execution, of the Army’s intent. Army leaders, fundamentally disagreeing with Eisenhower’s assessment of the Cold War, attempted to build a force that could meet the President’s needs while forcing him to consider options less than general war. The organization was the product of experienced combat leaders and had a coherent equipping plan to address potential shortcomings and provide a more capable Army with fewer soldiers. Budgetary and personnel constraints, when combined with expensive strategic projects, prevented the implementation of the Pentomic Division in its intended form. When fielded, the new organizational concept failed and senior Army leaders quickly cast it aside once President Kennedy’s “Flexible Response” replaced the “New Look.” While the Army’s view of the world had won out, the irreparably warped Pentomic Division became a casualty of Army leaders newly freed to pursue their desired strategy.
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