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NWC History
ON OCTOBER 6, 1884, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY William E. Chandler signed General Order
325, which began by simply stating: "A college is hereby established for an advanced
course of professional study for naval officers, to be known as the Naval War College."
The order went on to assign "the principal building on Coaster's Harbor Island,
Newport, R.I."—the Newport Asylum for the Poor, built in 1820—to its use and "Commodore
Stephen B. Luce . . . to duty as president of the college." Such were the humble
beginnings of what is now the oldest continuing institution of its kind in the world.
NWC Past Presidents
Stephen B. Luce
As its first president, Luce set a course for the Naval War College which endures
to this day. Displaying an appreciation for the interrelationship of naval power,
technology, and international politics uncommon in naval officers of his time, he
mused, "Fancy a university man aspiring to the honors of the legal profession and
ignoring the law school and the science of law. . . . It must strike anyone who
thinks about it as extraordinary that we members of the profession of arms should
never have undertaken the study of our real business."
Thus it was that Luce organized the Naval War College as "a place of original research
on all questions relating to war, and to statesmanship connected with war, or the
prevention of war." In expanding a one-month course for a handful of junior officers
into a full-year program integral to a naval officer's career pattern by the beginning
of World War I, Luce initiated a schedule of lectures, readings, and seminars, and
he established precedents for faculty composition—recruiting not only talented naval
officers, but officers from other services and civilian scholars—which are still
the hallmarks of the College's unique curriculum and faculty programs. Believing
as he did that "it is only by a philosophical study of military and naval history
that we can discover those truths upon which we are to generalize and build a science
of naval warfare," Luce founded the Naval War College's study of strategy, tactics,
and operations upon a core of history. The man he chose to develop the College's
initial naval history course was Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan. Of all the men who
were to influence the institution in its early years, no one else was to have such
a profound effect.
Alfred Thayer Mahan
Upon reporting for duty as one of the new college's four original faculty members,
Mahan, who soon succeeded Rear Admiral Luce as president, proceeded to write and
deliver a series of lectures describing the geopolitical factors upon which maritime
power was based, the role of the capital ship fleet in expanding that power, and
the relationship between sea power in all its forms and national greatness. Mahan's
analysis not only epitomized the sophisticated thinking on naval warfare advocated
by Luce but coincided with important trends in domestic and international affairs
and provided a timely rationale for both the emerging navalism and expanding global
role of the United States in the late nineteenth century. Mahan's lectures were
published in 1890 as The Influence of Seapower upon History, 1660-1783. Almost overnight
the book made Mahan the best known U.S. naval officer of the day and the Naval War
College an internationally respected institution. His views would greatly influence
the thinking of leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, and through
them and others, help shape America's destiny at the turn of the century. Nor was
his fame confined to the United States. Oxford and Cambridge conferred honorary
degrees upon the American chronicler of sea power; Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II used
Mahan's thesis to justify his challenge to British naval supremacy in World War
I; and the book and Mahan's later works became required readings in Japanese naval
circles, thus fueling Japan's dreams of expansion in the Pacific prior to World
War II.
Into the 20th Century
Despite wide acceptance of Mahan's views, the early years of the Naval War College
were not without difficulties. Luce, Mahan, and their successors had to ward off
repeated efforts by various secretaries of the navy to disestablish the institution—challenges
fed in large part by the ingrained skepticism of many U.S. Navy officers who still
believed that everything one needed to know about the naval profession could be
learned aboard ship. To still the criticisms of these traditionalists, the College
set out to demonstrate practical, relevant applications of the newly defined discipline
called naval science. Building upon the foundations of Luce and Mahan, a systematic
method of tactical analysis borrowed from the German General Staff was introduced
to acquaint officers with procedures for estimating military situations, determining
action, drafting appropriate implementing orders, and evaluating results. This was
accompanied by an elaborate program of war gaming, first introduced in 1887, which
also was adapted—ironically, as it would turn out—from German military models.
Naval War College war games quickly captured the imagination of professionals and
laymen alike. Wrote Theodore Roosevelt prior to a visit to the Naval War College,
"I want to time my visit so as to see one of your big strategic games." By August
1917, through these techniques the College had become both a laboratory and a war-planning
agency for the Navy Department: tactical, operational, and even technical problems
were routinely submitted to the College for solution, and almost every war plan
adopted between 1890 and 1917 was prepared by Naval War College officers, alone
or in cooperation with the Office of Naval Intelligence.
World War I
Although activities at the Naval War College were interrupted by World War I, that
global conflict provided a testing ground for both the concept of the Naval War
College and for its graduates. The war and its aftermath confronted the U.S. Navy
with problems of unprecedented size in the areas of command and control, planning,
and staff work. Throughout the war graduates proved themselves up to these new challenges
in positions of responsibility at sea and ashore, including service on Rear Admiral
William S. Sims's staff in London and on the Naval Advisory Staff at the Paris Peace
Conference.
The Interwar Years
Sims, who had served as Naval War College president for the two months immediately
preceding America's entry into the war, returned to those duties in 1919. He found
himself at not only a school enjoying a greatly enhanced reputation but, more importantly,
at an institution whose future was no longer in doubt. Firm in his belief that the
Naval War College's prewar courses were relevant, and secure in the knowledge that
the College's value to the Navy and the nation had been proven once and for all,
Sims confidently directed that the curriculum should concentrate even more heavily
on the practical and immediate aspects of naval education. Drawing heavily upon
the wealth of new data gleaned from the recently concluded conflict to devise plans
which would complement the nation's expanded naval role, the program included four
major subjects—command, strategy, tactics, and policy. During the mid-1920s another
of the College's presidents, Rear Admiral William V. Pratt, would further add to
the basic teachings of Mahan lessons on the importance of logistics and joint Army-Navy
operations in naval warfare.
World War II
When the United States was dragged into World War II on December 7, 1941, Naval
War College graduates once again were called upon to put into practice lessons which
had been learned during peacetime in the classrooms and war gaming rooms of Newport.
So thoroughly had succeeding classes at the College between the world wars drafted,
examined, tested, and criticized contingency plans for just such a war that after
it ended the commander in chief of the Pacific Forces, Fleet Admiral Chester W.
Nimitz, class of 1923, would write:
"The war with Japan had been reenacted in the game rooms at the Naval War College
by so many people, and in so many different ways, that nothing that happened during
the war was a surprise . . . absolutely nothing except the kamikaze tactics toward
the end of the war; we had not visualized these."
The Postwar Years
Unlike in World War I, the Naval War College kept its doors open during the Second
World War, and one of its most distinguished alumni and former staff members returned
to become president of the College in 1946: Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, class of
1927, wartime commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in the Pacific. As had Sims after
the First World War, Spruance and his faculty quickly set out to incorporate into
the curriculum insights gained in combat. The curriculum was reoriented around two
basic courses—strategy and tactics, and strategy and logistics—and was built around
war games, further augmented in the early 1950s by newly introduced analog computers.
At the same time, the College specifically sought to educate its officers in the
greater problems of national affairs. The broader aspects of professional education
were dealt with in a wide variety of lectures on current domestic or foreign policy,
international law, economics, and specific geographical regions. Meanwhile, during
the late 1940s, the College first published the forerunner to the current Naval
War College Review and held the first session of what would later become the annual
Current Strategy Forum.
A Return to Luce and Mahan
By the early 1950s, the new environment and responsibilities facing the naval profession—overseas
presence, joint and combined operations, increased policy-making responsibilities—promoted
a reevaluation of the Naval War College's educational role. As a result of this
effort a series of innovations were undertaken which returned the program to the
educational concepts of Luce and Mahan. The first such attempt actually expanded
the program to two years: the first to study organizational and managerial techniques
of other disciplines, the second to apply these ideas to the formulation of a theory
of naval warfare. The two-year curriculum was abandoned, however, due to the Navy's
heavy operational commitments.
In 1956, the Naval Command College, a course of study for senior international naval
officers, was founded. In the 1960s two separate programs for U.S. officers were
established as a workable solution to the problem of combining operational and theoretical
education. The College of Naval Command and Staff, enrolling mid-grade officers,
emphasized the operational and tactical elements of command; while the College of
Naval Warfare for senior officers stressed larger policy, administrative, and strategic
questions. Both programs included an introductory core of nine weeks study on international
relations, international law, military management, economics, and comparative cultures.
This was followed by a tactical planning and naval warfare study for the Command
and Staff students, and a seapower and national planning study for the Naval Warfare
students—involving war games, which by the late 1960s were supported by digital
computers.
Hayward, Colbert, Turner, and Stockdale
The return to the educational ideals of Luce and Mahan which began in the 1950s
and accelerated through the early 1960s was paralleled toward the end of the latter
decade by a building program begun under Vice Admiral John T. Hayward that added
three new buildings to the College. This doubling of the College's academic complex
helped pave the way for even further curriculum change under the presidency of Vice
Admiral Stansfield Turner. Redefining the College's mission in terms of developing
"the professional capabilities of its students to make sound decisions in both command
and management," Turner expanded the College's faculty in 1972 and revamped the
academic program around faculty-led seminars in three courses, which still form
the basis of the College's current curriculum: strategy and policy, defense economics
and decision making, and naval operations. Also in 1972 a second international program,
the Naval Staff College, was inaugurated for middle-grade international naval officers.
The new program was based on the ideas of Vice Admiral Richard G. Colbert, a former
president of the College who also had served as the first director of the Naval
Command College.
In 1975 this continued emphasis on higher education led to the establishment of
a Center for Advanced Research, wherein student, faculty, and civilian scholars
could undertake original inquiries into problems associated with the naval profession.
Concurrently, the Secretary of the Navy modified the College's mission statement
to include research. In an effort to supplement the prescribed course of study,
during the presidency of Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale an Electives Program was
established, wherein students were given freedom to choose elective courses from
a wide range of disciplines. Exemplifying the spirit of the program was a course
entitled "Foundations of Moral Obligation," inspired by Admiral Stockdale's experiences
as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for seven and one-half years. For his response
to that imprisonment he had been awarded the Medal of Honor.
Center for Naval Warfare Studies
In 1981, the Center for Naval Warfare Studies was established as a focal point,
stimulus, and major source of strategic thinking within the U.S. Navy. The Center
was designed to bring together under one organization the related research programs
of the Advanced Research Program for students, the War Gaming Department, and the
Naval War College Press, thus fulfilling Luce's original vision of the Naval War
College as "a place of original research on all questions relating to war . . .
or the prevention of war." Also, since 1981 the Naval War College and its Center
for Naval Warfare Studies has hosted the Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Studies
Group. Each year a distinguished group of senior Navy and Marine Corps officers
is selected by the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps
to conduct original research in Newport concerning strategic options for the future.
The Strategic Studies Group reports directly to the Chief of Naval Operations.
Centennial Milestones
Since celebrating its Centennial with a year-long program of events in 1984, the
College has passed a number of other historic milestones: in 1987, the War Gaming
Department marked the hundredth anniversary of war gaming at the Naval War College;
in 1989, the College of Continuing Education completed its seventy-fifth year of
offering Naval War College courses by correspondence; also in 1989, the Naval Command
College, founded in 1956, graduated its thousandth international officer. In 1990
the College observed the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Mahan's The
Influence of Seapower upon History, 1660-1783, with a number of special events.
In 1991 the College was accredited by the New England Association of Schools and
Colleges to award a master of arts degree in national security and strategic studies.
Into the 21st Century
Now in its second century of service to the U.S. Navy and the nation, the Naval
War College continues to prepare its students not for their next assignments but
for the remainder of their careers, by providing them with a professional military
education second to none—one that is based on intellectual flexibility and flows
from a clear understanding of the fundamental principles which have governed national
security affairs in peace and in war throughout history.
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