Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation

-292- A Historical Analysis of Cadre
reservists were not organized into units. They were simply a pool of manpower that could be
drawn upon to fill out cadre units during wartime.
Upton admired the German cadre system based not only on its focus on a
professional army but also on its practical successes. 74 Upton wrote: “when Germany fought
France she put her army on a war-footing in eight days, and in eight days more she had four
hundred thousand men on French territory. It took us from April, 1861, to March, 1862, to
form an army of the same size.” 75 These successes led Upton to propose a military system
similar to Germany as his first alternative. In his writings, Upton avoided discussing how
cadre units in the United States would be filled out in wartime. He never mentioned
conscription, the basis of the German cadre system. Weigley argues that Upton “dared
approach that topic [conscription] only obliquely, by arguing that history proved the
necessity for conscription in wartime.” 76 Ambrose also argues that “he [Upton] dared not go
too far in copying the Europeans. He never advocated peacetime conscription … and his
‘National Volunteers’ did not constitute a true reserve, they were merely men who would
volunteer to serve under regular army personnel in an emergency.” 77 By avoiding the topic,
Upton failed to justify his belief that an adapted German cadre force was the best military
system for the United States.
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74 Weigley argues that Upton was especially receptive to the German cadre army due to his personality: “Upton
was temperamentally receptive to the German system: he was intense, humorless, single-mindedly devoted to
the military profession and to efficiency in it, a sober, even brooding, man sustained by an old-fashioned
Protestant piety- in short, a man not unlike several of the German military reformers themselves.” [Weigley
(1984), p. 276]
75 Michie (1885), p. 386-387
76 Weigley (1984), p. 279
77 Ambrose (1964), p. 102. However, Upton did eventually ask “for a declaration that every able-bodied male
citizen owed military service … This came close to advocating universal conscription, which Upton had
previously said he did not want, but which in fact he admired but never dared advocate.” [Ambrose (1964), p.
102]