Sherman Miles
Encyclopedia
Sherman Miles was a General
of the U.S. Army. He was Chief of the Military Intelligence Division
in 1941, when the attack on Pearl Harbor
happened.
and Mary Hoyt Sherman Miles (niece to Civil War General William T. Sherman). In 1901, he enrolled at the United States Military Academy
at West Point, where he was graduated in 1905. In 1909, he married Yulee Noble; they had two children.
During his military career, he held various posts as military attaché in Europe. In 1940, he became the head of the Military Intelligence Division
of the U.S. Army in George C. Marshall's General Staff. Two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, he was re-assigned from that position to that of Commanding General of the First Service Command in Boston.
After his retirement from the Army in 1946, Miles was a Republican
member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives
from 1947 to 1952. In 1948, he wrote the article "Pearl Harbor in Retrospect" in the July 1948 issue of The Atlantic, in which he gave his perspective on the events just prior to the attack. After the death of his wife Yulee in 1953, he married Edith Lawrence Coolidge in 1954. He died at the Hospital in Beverly, Massachusetts
after long illness and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery
in the Miles Mausoleum
on October 12, 1966.
on June 11, 1901, from where he was graduated on June 13, 1905 and was commissioned as Second Lieutenant
, 11th Cavalry. With the 11th Cavalry, he was sent in 1906 to Cuba by then Secretary of War
William Howard Taft
. Upon his return, he was transferred to the 3rd Field Artillery and promoted to First Lieutenant
in 1907.
From 1912 to 1914, he was military attaché
on the Balkans
. During World War I
, he served as military observer in Russia until 1916. He returned to the U.S. and was detailed to the General Staff Corps. In 1918, he was as an observer at the Argonne Offensive
. As a General Staff member, he was temporarily promoted first to Major in 1917, then to Lieutenant Colonel in 1918, and in 1919 to Colonel.
Immediately after the war, he was assigned to the U.S. peace negotiation team. As a field member of the "Coolidge Mission" led by Archibald Cary Coolidge
, he traveled through former Austria-Hungary
to assess the situation and to make demarcation recommendations for the benefit of the U.S. negotiators at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919
. On January 27, 1919 Miles led the delegation of the Coolidge Mission which, on the way to Carinthia, visited the city of Marburg (today Maribor
in Slovenia
). Prior to the First World War, Marburg had a population comprising 80% Austrian Germans
and 20% Slovenes. During Mile's visit thousands of citizens of German ethnic origin gathered on the main city square, waving German Austria
flags, many of which also decorated nearby buildings. Slovenian military units commanded by Rudolf Maister
killed between 11 and 13 German civilian protesters in a central Maribor square, during event known as Marburg's Bloody Sunday
.
Regarding Carinthia
, the Coolidge Mission focused on where to draw the future border between the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
and Austria
. The U.S. position before the Paris conference favored, like the British and French, a separation along enthnographic lines, i.e., a border along the river Drava
(German: Drau), which would have split the economic and geographic region of the Klagenfurt
basin. The Yugoslavs also favored this solution. Miles became instrumental in reversing this position. In his field travels, he learned that many of the Slovene speakers in the region actually preferred to belong to Austria and had closer economic ties to the Klagenfurt area than to Slovenia. He proposed instead a border along the Karavanke mountains further south. Through his reports, he was able to convince his superiors that the best way to settle the question was through self-determination. The U.S. team eventually convinced the British and French delegations in Paris, and finally it was decided that the area should remain undivided, and that the question of whether it should henceforth belong to Austria or to Yugoslavia was to be decided by a vote among the population of the area. In the plebiscite held on October 10, 1920
, the population voted for Miles' border proposal.
These post-war assignments terminated, he returned to the U.S. and was returned to the grade of Major in 1920. In the 1920s, he attended various military schools (Army War College 1921/22, Coast Artillery School 1925/26, General Staff School 1926/27) and was posted to various units in the Coast Artillery
and in the Field Artillery until the late 1930s. From 1922 to 1925 he was military attaché at Constantinople in Turkey, and was sent in 1924 to Teheran to investigate the murder of U.S. vice consul Robert Whitney Imbrie there. Miles was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel (this time regularly) in 1929 and to Colonel in 1935. From September 1, 1938 on, he was commanding school troops at the United States Army Field Artillery School
at Fort Sill
, Oklahoma.
On September 1, 1939, he was promoted to Brigadier General
and served as military attaché in London
for half a year before returning to the U.S., where he became a senior member of George C. Marshall's general staff. In the General Staff, Miles was "Assistant Chief of Staff G-2", i.e., the head of the Military Intelligence Division
(MID).
The MID greatly expanded during his time as G-2, but, as Miles put it, "always in a piecemeal manner". Qualified cryptography personnel was scarce, and Japanese-speaking personnel was hard to come by. Miles' suggestions to set up an espionage
service were ignored until June 1941, when U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
appointed William J. Donovan as Coordinator of Information
. Donovan's unit would eventually become the OSS
, but it was independent from the MID and needed time to mature, which made for a difficult collaboration (if not to say a rivalry) between the MID and the OSS from the beginning and continuing throughout the war.
The attack on Pearl Harbor ended Miles' career in the General Staff. MID very much relied on intercepted Japanese radio messages. The decoded "Magic
" messages were top-secret and circulated only in a very select circle of ten people comprising the General Staffs of the Army and the Navy, the Secretary of War, and the President. No coherent analysis of these messages was done. The warnings that the General Staff sent to Hawaii failed to stress the urgency because MID themselves did not consider the contents of the "Magic" intercepts received prior to the attack as particularly significant at that time. In addition, communication channels in the U.S. military were convoluted due to the split commands of Army and Navy, each with their own intelligence branch, and the last message to Hawaii before the attack was delayed and was decoded at Hawaii only after the attack had already begun.
Ten days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Miles was sent on an inspection tour through South America to survey installations there and to make recommendations for military assistance to the Latin American countries; Acting Assistant Chief of Staff G-2 became Brigadier General Raymond E. Lee. On January 28, 1942, Miles was promoted to Major General
and then reassigned from the General Staff to the First Service Command in Boston as Commanding General, a post he held until his retirement from the Army on February 28, 1946. The Service Commands, sub-entities of the Army Service Forces
, were supporting services for the fighting forces.
General
A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....
of the U.S. Army. He was Chief of the Military Intelligence Division
Military Intelligence Division
The Military Intelligence Division was a military intelligence branch of the United States Army, established in 1885. It was the first standing intelligence agency of the Army; the Union Army had had a Bureau of Military Information, but that had reported to the Commanding General for less than a...
in 1941, when the attack on Pearl Harbor
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
happened.
Life
Miles' parents were General Nelson A. MilesNelson A. Miles
Nelson Appleton Miles was a United States soldier who served in the American Civil War, Indian Wars, and the Spanish-American War.-Early life:Miles was born in Westminster, Massachusetts, on his family's farm...
and Mary Hoyt Sherman Miles (niece to Civil War General William T. Sherman). In 1901, he enrolled at the United States Military Academy
United States Military Academy
The United States Military Academy at West Point is a four-year coeducational federal service academy located at West Point, New York. The academy sits on scenic high ground overlooking the Hudson River, north of New York City...
at West Point, where he was graduated in 1905. In 1909, he married Yulee Noble; they had two children.
During his military career, he held various posts as military attaché in Europe. In 1940, he became the head of the Military Intelligence Division
Military Intelligence Division
The Military Intelligence Division was a military intelligence branch of the United States Army, established in 1885. It was the first standing intelligence agency of the Army; the Union Army had had a Bureau of Military Information, but that had reported to the Commanding General for less than a...
of the U.S. Army in George C. Marshall's General Staff. Two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, he was re-assigned from that position to that of Commanding General of the First Service Command in Boston.
After his retirement from the Army in 1946, Miles was a Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives
Massachusetts House of Representatives
The Massachusetts House of Representatives is the lower house of the Massachusetts General Court, the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is composed of 160 members elected from single-member electoral districts across the Commonwealth. Representatives serve two-year terms...
from 1947 to 1952. In 1948, he wrote the article "Pearl Harbor in Retrospect" in the July 1948 issue of The Atlantic, in which he gave his perspective on the events just prior to the attack. After the death of his wife Yulee in 1953, he married Edith Lawrence Coolidge in 1954. He died at the Hospital in Beverly, Massachusetts
Beverly, Massachusetts
Beverly is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 39,343 on , which differs by no more than several hundred from the 39,862 obtained in the 2000 census. A resort, residential and manufacturing community on the North Shore, Beverly includes Beverly Farms and Prides...
after long illness and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia, is a military cemetery in the United States of America, established during the American Civil War on the grounds of Arlington House, formerly the estate of the family of Confederate general Robert E. Lee's wife Mary Anna Lee, a great...
in the Miles Mausoleum
Miles Mausoleum
There are two mausolea known as Miles Mausoleum.-Miles Mausoleum in Arlington National Cemetery:The Miles Mausoleum is located in Section 3 of the Arlington National Cemetery....
on October 12, 1966.
Military career
Miles entered West PointUnited States Military Academy
The United States Military Academy at West Point is a four-year coeducational federal service academy located at West Point, New York. The academy sits on scenic high ground overlooking the Hudson River, north of New York City...
on June 11, 1901, from where he was graduated on June 13, 1905 and was commissioned as Second Lieutenant
Second Lieutenant
Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces.- United Kingdom and Commonwealth :The rank second lieutenant was introduced throughout the British Army in 1871 to replace the rank of ensign , although it had long been used in the Royal Artillery, Royal...
, 11th Cavalry. With the 11th Cavalry, he was sent in 1906 to Cuba by then Secretary of War
United States Secretary of War
The Secretary of War was a member of the United States President's Cabinet, beginning with George Washington's administration. A similar position, called either "Secretary at War" or "Secretary of War," was appointed to serve the Congress of the Confederation under the Articles of Confederation...
William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft was the 27th President of the United States and later the tenth Chief Justice of the United States...
. Upon his return, he was transferred to the 3rd Field Artillery and promoted to First Lieutenant
First Lieutenant
First lieutenant is a military rank and, in some forces, an appointment.The rank of lieutenant has different meanings in different military formations , but the majority of cases it is common for it to be sub-divided into a senior and junior rank...
in 1907.
From 1912 to 1914, he was military attaché
Military attaché
A military attaché is a military expert who is attached to a diplomatic mission . This post is normally filled by a high-ranking military officer who retains the commission while serving in an embassy...
on the Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
. During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, he served as military observer in Russia until 1916. He returned to the U.S. and was detailed to the General Staff Corps. In 1918, he was as an observer at the Argonne Offensive
Meuse-Argonne Offensive
The Meuse-Argonne Offensive, or Maas-Argonne Offensive, also called the Battle of the Argonne Forest, was a part of the final Allied offensive of World War I that stretched along the entire western front.-Overview:...
. As a General Staff member, he was temporarily promoted first to Major in 1917, then to Lieutenant Colonel in 1918, and in 1919 to Colonel.
Immediately after the war, he was assigned to the U.S. peace negotiation team. As a field member of the "Coolidge Mission" led by Archibald Cary Coolidge
Archibald Cary Coolidge
Archibald Cary Coolidge was an American educator. He was a Professor of History at Harvard College from 1908 and the first Director of the Harvard University Library from 1910 until his death...
, he traveled through former Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
to assess the situation and to make demarcation recommendations for the benefit of the U.S. negotiators at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919
Paris Peace Conference, 1919
The Paris Peace Conference was the meeting of the Allied victors following the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers following the armistices of 1918. It took place in Paris in 1919 and involved diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities...
. On January 27, 1919 Miles led the delegation of the Coolidge Mission which, on the way to Carinthia, visited the city of Marburg (today Maribor
Maribor
Maribor is the second largest city in Slovenia with 157,947 inhabitants . Maribor is also the largest and the capital city of Slovenian region Lower Styria and the seat of the Municipality of Maribor....
in Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
). Prior to the First World War, Marburg had a population comprising 80% Austrian Germans
Ethnic German
Ethnic Germans historically also ), also collectively referred to as the German diaspora, refers to people who are of German ethnicity. Many are not born in Europe or in the modern-day state of Germany or hold German citizenship...
and 20% Slovenes. During Mile's visit thousands of citizens of German ethnic origin gathered on the main city square, waving German Austria
German Austria
Republic of German Austria was created following World War I as the initial rump state for areas with a predominantly German-speaking population within what had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire, without the Kingdom of Hungary, which in 1918 had become the Hungarian Democratic Republic.German...
flags, many of which also decorated nearby buildings. Slovenian military units commanded by Rudolf Maister
Rudolf Maister
Rudolf Maister was a Slovene military officer, poet and political activist. The soldiers who fought under Maister's command in northern Slovenia became known as "Maister's fighters"...
killed between 11 and 13 German civilian protesters in a central Maribor square, during event known as Marburg's Bloody Sunday
Marburg's Bloody Sunday
Marburg's Bloody Sunday is the name of a massacre that took place on Monday, January 27, 1919 at Maribor in Slovenia...
.
Regarding Carinthia
Carinthia (state)
Carinthia is the southernmost Austrian state or Land. Situated within the Eastern Alps it is chiefly noted for its mountains and lakes.The main language is German. Its regional dialects belong to the Southern Austro-Bavarian group...
, the Coolidge Mission focused on where to draw the future border between the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...
and Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
. The U.S. position before the Paris conference favored, like the British and French, a separation along enthnographic lines, i.e., a border along the river Drava
Drava
Drava or Drave is a river in southern Central Europe, a tributary of the Danube. It sources in Toblach/Dobbiaco, Italy, and flows east through East Tirol and Carinthia in Austria, into Slovenia , and then southeast, passing through Croatia and forming most of the border between Croatia and...
(German: Drau), which would have split the economic and geographic region of the Klagenfurt
Klagenfurt
-Name:Carinthia's eminent linguists Primus Lessiak and Eberhard Kranzmayer assumed that the city's name, which literally translates as "ford of lament" or "ford of complaints", had something to do with the superstitious thought that fateful fairies or demons tend to live around treacherous waters...
basin. The Yugoslavs also favored this solution. Miles became instrumental in reversing this position. In his field travels, he learned that many of the Slovene speakers in the region actually preferred to belong to Austria and had closer economic ties to the Klagenfurt area than to Slovenia. He proposed instead a border along the Karavanke mountains further south. Through his reports, he was able to convince his superiors that the best way to settle the question was through self-determination. The U.S. team eventually convinced the British and French delegations in Paris, and finally it was decided that the area should remain undivided, and that the question of whether it should henceforth belong to Austria or to Yugoslavia was to be decided by a vote among the population of the area. In the plebiscite held on October 10, 1920
Carinthian Plebiscite
The Carinthian Plebiscite on 10 October 1920 determined the final southern border between the Republic of Austria and the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes after World War I.- History :...
, the population voted for Miles' border proposal.
These post-war assignments terminated, he returned to the U.S. and was returned to the grade of Major in 1920. In the 1920s, he attended various military schools (Army War College 1921/22, Coast Artillery School 1925/26, General Staff School 1926/27) and was posted to various units in the Coast Artillery
U.S. Army Coast Artillery Corps
The U.S. Army Coast Artillery Corps was a Corps level organization responsible for coastal and harbor defense of the United States between 1901 and 1950.-History:...
and in the Field Artillery until the late 1930s. From 1922 to 1925 he was military attaché at Constantinople in Turkey, and was sent in 1924 to Teheran to investigate the murder of U.S. vice consul Robert Whitney Imbrie there. Miles was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel (this time regularly) in 1929 and to Colonel in 1935. From September 1, 1938 on, he was commanding school troops at the United States Army Field Artillery School
United States Army Field Artillery School
The United States Army Field Artillery School trains Field Artillery Soldiers and Marines in tactics, techniques, and procedures for the employment of fire support systems in support of the maneuver commander...
at Fort Sill
Fort Sill
Fort Sill is a United States Army post near Lawton, Oklahoma, about 85 miles southwest of Oklahoma City.Today, Fort Sill remains the only active Army installation of all the forts on the South Plains built during the Indian Wars...
, Oklahoma.
On September 1, 1939, he was promoted to Brigadier General
Brigadier general (United States)
A brigadier general in the United States Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps, is a one-star general officer, with the pay grade of O-7. Brigadier general ranks above a colonel and below major general. Brigadier general is equivalent to the rank of rear admiral in the other uniformed...
and served as military attaché in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
for half a year before returning to the U.S., where he became a senior member of George C. Marshall's general staff. In the General Staff, Miles was "Assistant Chief of Staff G-2", i.e., the head of the Military Intelligence Division
Military Intelligence Division
The Military Intelligence Division was a military intelligence branch of the United States Army, established in 1885. It was the first standing intelligence agency of the Army; the Union Army had had a Bureau of Military Information, but that had reported to the Commanding General for less than a...
(MID).
The MID greatly expanded during his time as G-2, but, as Miles put it, "always in a piecemeal manner". Qualified cryptography personnel was scarce, and Japanese-speaking personnel was hard to come by. Miles' suggestions to set up an espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
service were ignored until June 1941, when U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
appointed William J. Donovan as Coordinator of Information
Office of the Coordinator of Information
The Office of the Coordinator of Information was an intelligence and propaganda agency of the United States Government, founded on July 11, 1941 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, prior to U.S. involvement in the Second World War...
. Donovan's unit would eventually become the OSS
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
, but it was independent from the MID and needed time to mature, which made for a difficult collaboration (if not to say a rivalry) between the MID and the OSS from the beginning and continuing throughout the war.
The attack on Pearl Harbor ended Miles' career in the General Staff. MID very much relied on intercepted Japanese radio messages. The decoded "Magic
Magic (cryptography)
Magic was an Allied cryptanalysis project during World War II. It involved the United States Army's Signals Intelligence Section and the United States Navy's Communication Special Unit. -Codebreaking:...
" messages were top-secret and circulated only in a very select circle of ten people comprising the General Staffs of the Army and the Navy, the Secretary of War, and the President. No coherent analysis of these messages was done. The warnings that the General Staff sent to Hawaii failed to stress the urgency because MID themselves did not consider the contents of the "Magic" intercepts received prior to the attack as particularly significant at that time. In addition, communication channels in the U.S. military were convoluted due to the split commands of Army and Navy, each with their own intelligence branch, and the last message to Hawaii before the attack was delayed and was decoded at Hawaii only after the attack had already begun.
Ten days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Miles was sent on an inspection tour through South America to survey installations there and to make recommendations for military assistance to the Latin American countries; Acting Assistant Chief of Staff G-2 became Brigadier General Raymond E. Lee. On January 28, 1942, Miles was promoted to Major General
Major General
Major general or major-general is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the older rank of sergeant major general. A major general is a high-ranking officer, normally subordinate to the rank of lieutenant general and senior to the ranks of brigadier and brigadier general...
and then reassigned from the General Staff to the First Service Command in Boston as Commanding General, a post he held until his retirement from the Army on February 28, 1946. The Service Commands, sub-entities of the Army Service Forces
Army Service Forces
The Army Service Forces were one of the three autonomous components of the Army of the United States during World War II, the others being the Army Air Forces and Army Ground Forces. They were created on February 28, 1942 by Executive Order Number 9082 "Reorganizing the Army and the War Department"...
, were supporting services for the fighting forces.