Senior Generals in Joe Steele

I have been considering who was what and when in the Joe Steele novel. On page 397 the Republicans tried to draft Eisenhower or Bradley as their candidate for President. Eisenhower is described as "the architect of victory in the Pacific" while Bradley is the "conqueror of Western Europe". This confirms what is implicit in the story namely that Eisenhower fills the role played by MacArthur in OTL and Bradley fills in for Eisenhower. Further, Eisenhower is the de facto military governor of Japan from the end of WW II to and probably including the Japanese War. Now Marshall attends the cabinet meeting when Hitler invades the USSR to brief Steele on the Soviet's chances. This suggest he was Chief of Staff of the Army as in OTL. However, when Steele dies, he is the Secretary of War so he obviously changed positions in the intervening years. It could have been just after the end of WW II as in OTL but it might have been after the Japanese War. The scene where Steele dies had his "Pain Trust" discussing James Van Fleet's complaint about lack of reserves in ammunition and Eisenhower's response that he was worrying about nothing. Van Fleet is clearly Eisenhower's subordinate but he commands only the troops at the DMZ so Eisenhower could still be in charge of all of South Japan or he could have replaced Marshall as Chief of Staff.

Any other thoughts? ML4E (talk) 18:35, June 7, 2015 (UTC)