Samuel Stouffer and the GI Survey: Sociologists and Soldiers during the Second World War

Foreword

Foreword The American GI in World War II has been widely celebrated in American culture . He has been the subject of innumerable Hollywood films and widely lauded by politicians. In 1998, Tom Brokaw coined the term the “Greatest Generation” in speaking about the valor and sacrifice of those who served in this war, and the phrase soon entered the popular lexicon. Brokaw, a baby boomer, was not the first journalist to celebrate the common soldier of the Second World War. Ernie Pyle, one of the most widely read combat journalists of the war years, focused his columns not on generals and admirals but on the rank and file soldier. Pyle listed the GIs’ hometowns in his columns to emphasize the civilian character of those who served in a vast army mobilized for the war’s duration. While Pyle frequently wrote about the hardships and frustrations of the GI, he also made clear their grim determination to get the job done. Few journalists ever got as close to the American GI, and Pyle paid the price in 1945 when he was killed covering a battle in the Pacific. There is, however, another story to be told about the American GI; that is the story of the citizen soldier who had trouble adjusting to military life. American men drafted into the military beginning in 1940 were not a happy lot. Prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, many GIs grumbled about their situation and even threatened to go over the hill in 1942. Army Chief of Staff George Marshall became so concerned about morale in 1941 that he embarked on some radical solutions. Over the objections of many military leaders, x Foreword he enlisted the services of social scientists to conduct interviews and surveys of American GIs to find out what they thought about the army. Samuel Stouffer, a University of Chicago sociology professor, was selected to head up this effort. He assembled a team of sociologists, psychologists, and statisticians who sought to understand the American GI in order to solve a range of problems that afflicted the US Army. Stouffer and his team investigated such weighty issues as why men fought, what sustained them in battle, what they thought of their allies and enemies , and why so many became psychiatric casualties. Additionally, this team’s research on racial attitudes undermined the intellectual basis for segregation and showed that integration diminished prejudice between white and black soldiers . Stouffer’s team also studied the mundane, including whether American GIs preferred Coca Cola or Pepsi Cola in post exchanges. Samuel Stouffer and his work may have been largely forgotten but for his decision to make public the most important research findings after the war. Published by Princeton University Press in 1949, The American Soldier garnered widespread attention from scholars, policymakers, and military leaders. It is still consulted by most military historians who seek to understand the social history of the American GI in World War II. For instance, it would be Stouffer and his team of researchers who stressed the notion that comradeship was crucial to sustaining small unit cohesion among American troops in World War II. Subsequently , comradeship is a theme not only stressed by countless historians but is also reflected in Hollywood motion pictures such as Stephen Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and his HBO mini-series Band of Brothers inspired by Stephen Ambrose’s novel of the same name. The humorist Russell Baker once observed that most American historians love to quote Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, but few have read the entire magisterial work. This pattern applies to many military historians and their relationship with Samuel Stouffer’s The American Soldier. Few have delved the entire breadth of this study and know little about the decisive role Stouffer played in leading the Army’s Research Branch in World War II and his intellectual influence in shaping The American Soldier. Joseph Ryan’s contribution to the Legacies of War series addresses this oversight and offers us the first intellectual biography of Samuel Stouffer focusing on his pivotal role in the social science research project that evolved into The American Soldier. G. Kurt Piehler Florida State University ...