Origins of the Army Industrial College: Military Business Tensions After World War I

Abstract

In founding the Army Industrial College in the 1920s, activist U.S. Army logistical officers were not wholeheartedly embracing closer relations with the business sector. World War I had demonstrated to them the need for the military to school itself in mobilizing for industrial-based war. But the war also had presented businessmen as rivals for control of procurement functions. With the knowledge acquired in their planned industrial college, the logistical officers hoped to gain an advantage over civilian dollara-year men in any future mobilization. They wanted to improve the Army's performance and simultaneously to achieve for themselves increased professional status and recognition in comparison with the combat arms officers who habitually reaped the lion's share of wartime glory. Seen from this perspective, pre-World War II military-industrial relations appear less close than generally thought and require fresh study.