Taylor, Maxwell Davenport

(1901-1987)

   Born in Missouri, Maxwell Taylor graduated from West Point in 1922 and joined the Army Corps of Engineers. He held several minor positions during the interwar years and attended the Army War College in 1939. As commander of the 101st Airborne Division during World War II, Taylor took part in the campaign in Sicily and, operating behind the lines in Rome, successfully prevented a parachute drop into areas covered by German troops. He was the first general to land in France when he parachuted into Normandy on D-Day on 6 June 1944. After the war, he was superintendent of West Point until 1949, when he took command of the Allied forces in Berlin, a position he held until 1951. In 1953, he took command of the Eight Army in the Korean War and was involved in the last major battle of the war. From 1955 to 1959, Taylor was army chief of staff. However, he disagreed with President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “New Look” defense policy with its reliance on nuclear power and massive retaliation and retired in 1959. He outlined his views in The Uncertain Trumpet published in 1960. In 1961, Taylor became President John F. Kennedy’s personal military adviser and from 1962 to 1964 chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Having gone to Vietnam on a fact-finding tour, Taylor initially recommended the use of U.S. ground troops in Vietnam but later argued in favor of bombing the North and key targets rather than a further escalation of the war. He became a special consultant to the president and chair of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and later president of the Institute for Defense Analyses. His autobiography, Swords and Plowshares, was published in 1972.