History of civil affairs in the United States Armed Forces

United States Department of Defense, and associated, civil affairs are civil-military operations (CMO) use of military force to control areas seized from the enemy (or a third party), minimize insurgency or civil interference with military operations, and maximize civil support for military operations. CMO is conducted in conjunction with combat operations during wartime and becomes a central part of a military campaign in counter-insurgencies. CMO operations have been in frequent use since 1775 by the United States Army, as well as more recently by the Navy and Marine Corps.

Early history They became major activities for the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Civil-military operations conducted by the U.S. Army were common in the colonial era in dealing with hostile Indians. During that war, all sides employed civil affairs in every colony/state. Military authorities managed activities that civilians had managed prior to the war. The invasion of Canada in 1775 was an early example, The American invaders won considerable support from the locals, but failed to capture Quebec City and were forced to retreat in disarray.

In the U.S.-Mexican War, Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott could be considered the "Father of Civil Affairs." He displayed a deep respect for the Mexican people and their culture. Scott enjoyed great success in keeping civilian problems from interfering with military operations by issuing General Order No. 20 and ensuring the Provost Marshals office enforced it. The United States Army considers this to be where Civil Affairs (CA) originated.

Civil War and reconstruction The Army had large-scale CMO roles during the American Civil War, and for much of the Reconstruction Era until the last units were withdrawn in 1877.

1877–1934 At the end of the 19th century, and well into the 20th U.S. Army and Marine Corps were involved in numerous military interventions in several of the Caribbean and Latin American nations before and after World War I. After the Spanish–American War ended in 1898, Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood restored order in Cuba with CA forces. The Army returned to Cuba in 1905, again in 1912, and starting in 1917, was there for a period of many years. The Marine Corps was called upon to protect American interests by military intervention in the Dominican Republic (1916–1924), Haiti (1915–1934), and Nicaragua (1926–1934). The Army was also called to Panama in 1903 to ensure the birth of that nation when it broke away from Colombia to become independent.

According to the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center & School located at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, at worst, the CMO performance was highhanded and overbearing, while at best, the Army and Marine Corps restored more stable economic and political situations in those areas.

Showing "Uncle Sam with a schoolbook in one hand and a Krag rifle in the other" best summarized the civil-military policy in the Philippines, which was also acquired by the United States as a result of the Spanish–American War. While Cuba became independent in 1902, the Philippines was granted the status of a territory, with the promise of independence. It became independent in 1946. The payoff of an enlightened military government policy was the Filipinos were the only Pacific colonized peoples to resist the Japanese on any scale.

World War I

World War I saw few, if any, civil affairs activities; however, during post-Armistice weeks, the U.S. Army administered the government of an overseas enemy population in the German Rhineland and in Luxembourg where no stable government existed after Germany's defeat and exit of the region. The army's Polar Bear Expedition occupied Arkhangelsk on the shore of the White Sea through the winter of 1918–1919 in a failed attempt to establish a stable anti-Bolshevik government in northern Europe. The American Expeditionary Force Siberia occupation of Vladivostok from 1918 to 1920 was similarly unsuccessful in stabilizing an anti-Bolshevik government on the Pacific coast. Between World War I and World War II, the U.S. Army was involved in a surprising number of civic action projects such as the Civilian Conservation Corps.

"The American army of occupation lacked both training and organization to guide the destinies of the nearly one million civilians whom the fortunes of war had placed under its temporary sovereignty", stated Col. Irwin L. Hunt, Officer in Charge of Civil Affairs, Third Army, in his report on U.S. military government in Germany after World War I.

He wrote further, "Military government, the administration by military officers of civil government in occupied enemy territory, is a virtually inevitable concomitant of modern warfare. The US Army conducted military government in Mexico in 1847 and 1848; in the Confederate States during and after the Civil War; in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba after the Spanish–American War; and in the German Rhineland after World War I. In each instance, neither the Army nor the government accepted it as a legitimate military function. Consequently, its imposition invariably came as a somewhat disquieting experience for both, and the means devised for accomplishing it ranged from inadequate to near disastrous."

The Hunt Report, as it affectionately came to be known by the World War II generation of military Government officers, for the first time in the Army's experience looked on administration of occupied territory as something more than a minor incidental of war. Colonel Hunt realized that to exercise governmental authority, even over a defeated enemy, required preparation. The Army, he urged, should not again wait until the responsibility was thrust upon it but should develop competence in civil administration among its officers during peacetime.

In the aftermath of World War I, when almost nothing appeared more remote than the possibility of the Army's again occupying foreign territory, The Hunt Report nearly – but not quite-disappeared. Because it was the only substantial document on the subject, War College committees working in civil affairs periodically brought it out of the files. But the tendency of the War College in the 1920s was to look at civil affairs and military government entirely as they related to military law, the assumption being that they were not much more than the functions of observing and enforcing law. A broader interpretation began to emerge only after the 1934-1935 G-1 (personnel) committee at the War College prepared a draft military government manual, and a committee in the 1939-1940 class produced a manuscript on administration of occupied territory.

Over the years, War College committees had also recommended several times that the Army prepare a field manual on military government. Because of the presumed close relationship between this function and military law, the job seemed to fall logically to the Judge Advocate General. In October 1939, the Judge Advocate General, Maj. Gen. Allen W. Gullion, turned down one such recommendation on the ground that his office had recently published U.S. Army Field Manual FM 27–10, The Rules of Land Warfare, which contained a substantial section on civil administration. By then, however, war had broken out in Europe, and the work of the recent War College committees had put military government in a new light. Early the next year, at the urging of G-3 (operations and training) and G-1 and with the War College materials and The Hunt Report to work from, Gullion's office began writing a manual. The result, published on 30 July 1940, was FM 27–5, Military Government, a statement of purposes, policies, and procedures. The two field manuals, The Rules of Land Warfare and Military Government, would eventually be regarded as the Old and New Testaments of American military government; but in the summer of 1940 the country was not at war, and of everything it then lacked, the Army undoubtedly missed a military government manual least.

World War II By 1942 Nazi Germany controlled most of Europe and was driving deep into the Soviet Union and across North Africa toward Egypt. In World War I, military government had not been needed until after the armistice, because the war had been fought mainly in France, and the French authorities had handled civil affairs for all the armies. World War II was clearly going to be different; governments had disappeared, gone into exile, or become collaborating puppets. Whenever the anti-Axis forces challenged the Germans on land, they would almost certainly have to deal with civilian populations from the outset. The British had already had some experience in late 1940 in the Italian African colonies, Eritrea, Cyrenaica, and Italian Somaliland.

In early 1941 the Intelligence Training Centre of the British War Office inaugurated politico-military courses at St. John's College, Cambridge. Their purpose was "to train officers in postwar reconstruction and other missions incident to military operations in foreign countries." Two US Army officers, Maj. Henry H. Cumming and Lt. Charles A. H. Thomson, attended the third course, which began in October 1941, and thereby became the first American officers to receive military government training. The politico-military courses dealt with history, geography, economics, and politics and aimed at giving the officer-students background knowledge rather than specific instruction in military government.

World War II saw the U.S. Army receive its Civil Affairs "charter." The Pentagon in 1943 activated the U.S. Army Civil Affairs Division (CAD) on the recommendation of Provost Marshal General of the Army, Allen W. Gullion. The major problem faced by the CAD was heavy destruction of the infrastructure. Never before or since has U.S. Army Civil Affairs been so extensively involved in nation rebuilding for so long. The CAD was responsible for 80 million European civilians; yet no documented case of overt opposition has ever come to light. Post-war military government proved extremely successful in our former enemies’ nations. The CAD also returned untold millions of dollars' worth of national treasures to their country of origin. The post-war period was the first planned use of Civil Affairs by the modern United States Army, and the greatest use of CA assets to date.Harry L. Coles and Albert K. Weinberg, Civil Affairs: Soldiers Become Governors (1992)

In 1942, General Dwight D. Eisenhower called attention to the adverse political effects that would result from a failure to meet civilian needs after public assurances had been given in the United States. Thirty thousand tons of civilian supplies were needed every month, but the Lend-Lease Administration was hard put to get them together in time to meet the convoys leaving for North Africa. On arrival in the theater the supplies had to be unloaded and moved by the Army, since the North African Economic Board did not have the staff even to supervise the work; and both the military and the civilian agencies agreed that on the drive into Tunisia the Army would have to assume complete responsibility for civilian relief.

Simply stated, the United States could not simultaneously fight the war and launch into essentially postwar relief and rehabilitation programs. On the other hand, the War Department realized that it had taken too narrow a view and expanded its policy on planning for future operations to include preparations for food, health, housing, and security of civilian populations. It proposed in the initial period to handle all aspects of civil affairs as part of the military operation and to include civilian supplies with the military stores.