United States Department of War - Organization

Organization

The United States Secretary of War, a member of the United States Cabinet, headed the War Department.

The National Security Act of 1947 merged the Department of War and the Department of the Navy into the National Military Establishment, later the United States Department of Defense. On the same day this act was signed, Executive Order 9877 assigned primary military functions and responsibilities with the former War Department functions divided between the new Army and Air Force departments.

In the aftermath of World War II, the American government (among others around the world) decided to abandon the word 'War' when referring to the civilian leadership of their military. One vestige of the former nomenclature is the War College, which still trains military officers of the United States in battlefield tactics and the strategy of war fighting.

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Famous quotes containing the word organization:

    One of the many reasons for the bewildering and tragic character of human existence is the fact that social organization is at once necessary and fatal. Men are forever creating such organizations for their own convenience and forever finding themselves the victims of their home-made monsters.
    Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)

    Unless a group of workers know their work is under surveillance, that they are being rated as fairly as human beings, with the fallibility that goes with human judgment, can rate them, and that at least an attempt is made to measure their worth to an organization in relative terms, they are likely to sink back on length of service as the sole reason for retention and promotion.
    Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)

    In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
    John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)