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Contact Info
Home Town Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Last Address Unknown
Date of Passing Jan 07, 1964
Location of Interment U.S. Military Academy West Point Post Cemetery (VLM) - West Point, New York
John Stewart Bragdon (May 21, 1893 â?? January 7, 1964), a Major General in the United States Army, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and earned a B.S. from the United States Military Academy in 1915. In 1919 he graduated from the United States Engineering School and went on to earn a M.S. from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1923.
Following his graduation, Bragdon embarked on a career in the military. He served as an instructor at the U.S. Military Academy from 1923 to 1924. From 1924 to 1927, he was an instructor at the U.S. Engineering School. In 1928 he graduated from the Command and General Staff College and the following year found him on the Army General Staff in the Philippine Islands where he remained until 1931. From 1931 to 1935, Bragdon was a contract officer in the Engineering Department for the United States Department of War. From 1935 to 1937, Bragdon was Assistant Division Engineer of the North Atlantic Division of the War Department's Engineering Department. Bragdon then served as the U.S. District Engineer in Providence, Rhode Island until he started work as a division engineer for the South Atlantic Division within the War Department. From 1944 to 1949, he served as the Director of Military Construction for the U.S. Army. By 1948, Bragdon was serving as the Assistant of Engineers for the U.S. Army. He served in that position until 1951.
Following his departure from the Army, Bragdon returned to private life. From 1951 to 1953, Bragdon was a construction engineer for the Vermilya-Brown Construction Company until his promotion to vice-president of the company in 1954. He returned to public life in 1954 when he served on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisors. He remained in that role until 1955. From 1955 to 1960, Bragdon served as Special Assistant to President Dwight D. Eisenhower for Public Works Planning. From 1960 to 1961, Bragdon was a member of the Civil Aeronautics Board and from 1961 to 1962 he was the consultant for the House Committee on Public Works.
In his various advisory roles on public works, within both the executive and legislative branches, Bragdon was concerned primarily with four subjects: the achievement of effective state and local public works planning and its coordination with federal public works planning, the provision for a â??shelfâ?? of public works that could be undertaken as a contracyclical measure during economic recessions, implementation of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, and the development of a systematic approach to water resources development.
Bragdon encountered many difficulties in pursuing these objectives, inasmuch as his role was merely advisory. During the Eisenhower Administration, his efforts to create a statutory office of public works planning were met with resistance from the agencies and departments jealous of their prerogatives. His attempt to create a public works contingency plan for economic recessions was defeated, in part, by United States Department of the Treasury and U.S. Bureau of the Budget officials who felt that public works acceleration would not be effective as a short-run measure and that the mere existence of such a contingency plan would be mistaken from a psychological standpoint in that it might aggravate fears of an economic downturn and precipitate a crisis.
Bragdon also encountered agency opposition in his proposal to finance a portion of the expanding federal highway system through the use of tolls. Finally, his effort to establish a coordinated water resources policy ran afoul of agencies unwilling to relinquish authority over projects under construction and those planned for the future, and a Congress that spoke for particular groups and represented the viewpoint of the state in the complex constitutional dispute over federal versus state control of water rights.
During his tenure as consultant to the U.S. House Committee on Public Works and Transportation, chaired by Congressman John Blatnik of Minnesota, Bragdon again attempted to implement several of his ideas that had been frustrated during the Eisenhower Administration. With Blatnik, he drafted in 1962 a â??Public Works Planning Actâ?? that would have provided for a statutory coordinator of public works, readiness public works plans to be implemented during economic recessions, assistance to state and local governments in public works planning, and comprehensive water resources planning. Again he failed to see his vision of comprehensive, coordinated public works and water resources planning become a reality, as Congress passed instead and omnibus appropriation bill for a list of specific public works.
Apparently, Bragdonâ??s frustrations in dealing with the White House staff during his service as advisor in the executive branch prompted his attempt in 1961 to write and expose detailing the roadblocks he encountered while serving as advisor on public works. Bragdon believed that the Bureau of the Budget, in making substantive policy proposals, overstepped its functions, which should have been purely budgetary. The congressional liaison staff, in Bragdonâ??s view, subordinated ideas to political considerations. He concluded that the net effect of the obstructionism of the Budget Bureau and the liaison staff was to block the presentation of innovative ideas to decision makers. Bragdon believed that a complete reorganization of the White House Staff was necessary to solve the problem. To counter-act the narrow perspective of the Bureau of the Budget and the congressional liaison staff, he proposed the creation of a â??substantive staffâ?? of expert in specific functional areas that would have screened ideas, shaped those that were worthwhile into sound proposals, and forward them to the chief executive.
Description The United States of America declared war on the German Empire on April 6, 1917. The U.S. was an independent power and did not officially join the Allies. It closely cooperated with them militarily but acted alone in diplomacy. The U.S. made its major contributions in terms of supplies, raw material and money, starting in 1917. American soldiers under General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), arrived in large numbers on the Western Front in the summer of 1918. They played a major role until victory was achieved on November 11, 1918. Before entering the war, the U.S had remained neutral, though it had been an important supplier to Great Britain and the other Allied powers. During the war, the U.S mobilized over 4 million military personnel and suffered 110,000 deaths, including 43,000 due to the influenza pandemic. The war saw a dramatic expansion of the United States government in an effort to harness the war effort and a significant increase in the size of the U.S. military. After a slow start in mobilising the economy and labour force, by spring 1918 the nation was poised to play a role in the conflict. Under the leadership of President Woodrow Wilson, the war represented the climax of the Progressive Era as it sought to bring reform and democracy to the world,[citation needed] although there was substantial public opposition to United States entry into the war.
Although the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, it did not initially declare war on the other Central Powers, a state of affairs that Woodrow Wilson described as an "embarrassing obstacle" in his State of the Union speech.[26] Congress declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire on December 17, 1917, but never made declarations of war against the other Central Powers, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire or the various Co-belligerents allied with the central powers, thus the United States remained uninvolved in the military campaigns in central, eastern and southern Europe, the Middle East, the Caucasus, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Pacific.
The United States as late as 1917 maintained only a small army, smaller than thirteen of the nations and empires already active in the war. After the passage of the Selective Service Act in 1917, it drafted 2.8 million men into military service. By the summer of 1918 about a million U.S. soldiers had arrived in France, about half of whom eventually saw front-line service; by the Armistice of November 11 approximately 10,000 fresh soldiers were arriving in France daily. In 1917 Congress gave U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans when they were drafted to participate in World War I, as part of the Jones Act. In the end Germany miscalculated the United States' influence on the outcome of the conflict, believing it would be many more months before U.S. troops would arrive and overestimating the effectiveness of U-boats in slowing the American buildup.
The United States Navy sent a battleship group to Scapa Flow to join with the British Grand Fleet, destroyers to Queenstown, Ireland and submarines to help guard convoys. Several regiments of Marines were also dispatched to France. The British and French wanted U.S. units used to reinforce their troops already on the battle lines and not to waste scarce shipping on bringing over supplies. The U.S. rejected the first proposition and accepted the second. General John J. Pershing, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) commander, refused to break up U.S. units to serve as mere reinforcements for British Empire and French units. As an exception, he did allow African-American combat regiments to fight in French divisions. The Harlem Hellfighters fought as part of the French 16th Division, earning a unit Croix de Guerre for their actions at Château-Thierry, Belleau Wood, and Séchault.
Impact of US forces on the war
On the battlefields of France in spring 1918, the war-weary Allied armies enthusiastically welcomed the fresh American troops. They arrived at the rate of 10,000 a day, at a time when the Germans were unable to replace their losses. After British Empire, French and Portuguese forces had defeated and turned back the powerful final German offensive (Spring Offensive of March to July, 1918), the Americans played a role in the Allied final offensive (Hundred Days Offensive of August to November). However, many American commanders used the same flawed tactics which the British, French, Germans and others had abandoned early in the war, and so many American offensives were not particularly effective. Pershing continued to commit troops to these full- frontal attacks, resulting in high casualties against experienced veteran German and Austrian-Hungarian units. Nevertheless, the infusion of new and fresh U.S. troops greatly strengthened the Allies' strategic position and boosted morale. The Allies achieved victory over Germany on November 11, 1918 after German morale had collapsed both at home and on the battlefield.
