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

Epilogue

Epilogue What, then, do the lives of Samuel A. Stouffer and The American Soldier signify?— for books as well as men have lives, and often not the lives they intended. The previous chapters have suggested that the evolution of attitude research in the military , the mid-twentieth century apotheosis of which was The American Soldier, represented a fundamental shift in the way soldiers and the control of soldiers were viewed by society. Stouffer’s life ran concurrently with this sea change, the flow of which produced the volitional soldier—a being, and many of him, who had to be persuaded rather than flogged, considered rather than ignored, and managed by modern, scientific knowledge rather than led by intuition. By the end of the Second World War, American politicians and military officers were expected not only to acknowledge their soldiers, but also to ask them about their thoughts, attitudes, and feelings, and to make policy relative to the answers. One article of faith that had been extant for centuries—that soldiers were primarily physical beings devoid of intellect or morals and well suited as transportation and employment devices for weapons—had been replaced by another—that victory , though not guaranteed by good morale, would be more assured by having it; and, moreover, that good morale could be gained by taking into account the attitudes of one’s soldiers, which could only be done correctly by polling them scientifically.1 Myth, legend, impression, supposition, experience, tradition, and intuition as the total constituent parts of sociological knowledge would no longer do. The 156 Epilogue change was not confined to the military, but as applied to the American Army in World War II, the invitation to mutiny assumed to accompany the production of modern knowledge (polls and surveys), and the rejection of modern knowledge which accompanied that idea, transformed—ironically into polls and surveys to prevent mutiny—polls that were enumerated, analyzed, summarized, and to some extent sanctified by The American Soldier.2 Reluctance to survey became acquiescence and, finally, enthusiasm at the high rate of speed that attends change during wartime. As much as research on the atomic bomb, this enthusiasm indicated the lengths to which the US Government was willing to go to equip its soldiers to fight a modern war World War I had brought concerns to democracies regarding the brutalizing properties of war.3 One way to avoid brutalizing one’s soldiers was to show concern for their opinions and attitudes. Progressives such as Raymond B. Fosdick projected those opinions and attitudes onto American soldiers and, as we have seen, the superego of American society ended up stressing morals rather than morale. Still, by the end of the First World War, Fosdick had identified the traditional , authoritarian way of managing soldiers as hopelessly anachronistic— and as morale issue number one. Also, by the end of the war, measurement had become the way to produce sociological knowledge.4 Pronouncements by great men, such as that of Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, that “Men must live straight if they are to shoot straight,” were no longer sufficient.5 By the end of the Second World War, attitudes had changed so radically that a popular and successful American general was excoriated for slapping a soldier , and the execution of another soldier for cowardice and desertion—the first such execution in the United States since the Civil War—touched off a major controversy.6 Also by the end of World War II, the United States had amassed a huge bureaucracy to prosecute the war, part of which was the first ever branch of specialists to study soldier attitudes and to recommend policies based on their findings. Historian John Madge wrote in The Origins of Scientific Sociology, “With the United States precipitated into World War II, the full range of talents was inevitably mobilized.” While one may question the precipitation and the inevitability , one cannot argue the significance of Research Branch.7 A sea change had occurred. And then there was the issue of numbers. Fosdick had some help, both literally and figuratively, from The Masses, a socialist magazine that as early as 1916 was lampooning the old authoritarian view of soldiers. A political cartoon by Robert Minor entitled “At Last, the Perfect Soldier.” From The Masses, August 1916. 158 Epilogue While the government temporarily shut down The Masses in 1917 for undermining conscription, the masses themselves could not be denied. There...