This Military Service Page was created/owned by
CW3 Richard Doty
to remember
Magruder, John, BG USA(Ret).
If you knew or served with this Soldier and have additional information or photos to support this Page, please leave a message for the Page Administrator(s) HERE.
Contact Info
Home Town Woodstock, Virginia
Last Address Unknown
Date of Passing Apr 30, 1958
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
John Magruder (June 3, 1887 - April 30, 1958) was a Brigadier general in the U.S. Army. Among his offices was that of Deputy Director for Intelligence for the Office of Strategic Services.
John Magruder was born on June 3, 1887 in Woodstock, Virginia. He attended the Virginia Military Institute and graduate in 1909. He was commissioned a Second lieutenant in Infantry in 1910. He was transferred to the Field Artillery branch of the Army in the next year.
During the World War I, Magruder served with the 112th Field Artillery within the American Expeditionary Forces in France. Magruder was transferred to China after war, where he was appointed an Assistant Military Attaché in Beijing. He served in this capacity until 1924, when he was assigned for study at Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
After his graduation, Magruder was transferred back to Beijing, now in the new capacity of Military Attaché.
During WWII Magruder served as Donovan's Deputy Director for Intelligence in the OSS.
In October 1945 the OSS was dissolved and its functions were split between the Departments of State and War. State received the Research and Analysis Branch of OSS which was renamed the Interim Research and Intelligence Service (IRIS) and headed by Alfred McCormack. The Department of War took over the Secret Intelligence (SI) and Counter-espionage (X-2) Branches of the OSS that were housed in a new office created for just this purpose - The Strategic Services Unit (SSU). The Secretary of War appointed Brigadier General John Magruder as director to oversee the liquidation, and more importantly the preservation of the OSS' clandestine intelligence capability.
Magruder received his assignment from John McCloy:
"This assignment of the OSS activities...is a method of carrying out the desire of the President, as indicated by representatives of the Bureau of the Budget, that these facilities of OSS be examined over the next three months with a view to determining their appropriate disposition. Obviously, this will demand close liaison with the Bureau of the Budget, the State Department, and other agencies of the War Department, to insure that the facilities and assets of OSS are preserved for any possible future use....The situation is one in which the facilities of an organization, normally shrinking in size as a result of the end of fighting, must be preserved so far as potentially of future usefulness to the country."
The following day, Robert P. Patterson, the new Secretary of War, confirmed this directive and endorsed McCloy's interpretation, formally ordering Magruder to "preserve as a unit such of these functions and facilities as are valuable for permanent peacetime purposes". With this order, Patterson postponed indefinitely any assimilation of OSS's records and personnel into the War Department's G-2.
General Magruder soon had to explain this unorthodox arrangement to sharp-eyed Congressmen and staff. Rep. Clarence Cannon, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, asked Magruder on 2 October about the OSS contingents sent to the State and War Departments and the plans for the OSS's unspent funds (ca. $4.5 million). Magruder explained that he did not quite know what the State Department would do with Research and Analysis (R&A). When Cannon asked about the War Department's contingent, the general read ou loud from the Secretary of War's order to preserve OSS's more valuable functions "as a unit."3 Two weeks later, staffers from the House Military Affairs Committee asked why the War Department suddenly needed both SSU and the G-2:
"General Magruder explained that he had no orders to liquidate OSS (other than, of course, those functions without any peacetime significance) and that only the Assistant Secretary of War (McCloy) could explain why OSS had been absorbed into the War Department on the basis indicated. He said he felt, however,...that the objective was to retain SSU intact until the Secretary of State had surveyed the intelligence field and made recommendations to the President.The committee Committee conceded with the arrangement but hinted that both SSU and the remnant of R&A in the State Department ought to be "considerably reduced in size."
"To keep morale high despite the thousands of dismissals, General Magruder told his lieutenants in autumn 1945 that SSU was quietly winning friends in high places, but repeatedly pointed out the need for discretion, noting that "some people" did not like SSU "and the less said about (the Unit) the better."
Instead of reducing the budget of both IRIS and SSU the Truman administration eventually convinced Congress to increase funding for both pieces of OSS.
http://operation-gladio.net/john-magruder
World War I
From Month/Year
April / 1917
To Month/Year
November / 1918
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.
