George C. Marshall

George Catlett Marshall Jr. was an American army officer and statesman who rose from a Pennsylvania-born Virginia Military Institute graduate to become Chief of Staff of the United States Army under Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. In that post during the Second World War he worked with the Secretary of War to organize the largest military expansion in American history and was promoted to the five-star rank of General of the Army, and Winston Churchill praised him as the organizer of victory. After the war he served as special envoy to China, trying without success to broker a coalition government between the Nationalists and the Communists. As Secretary of State from 1947 to 1949 he advocated American support for the economic and political recovery of Europe, the program known as the Marshall Plan, for which he received the 1953 Nobel Peace Prize, the only Army general to do so. He later led the American National Red Cross and the American Battle Monuments Commission and served as Secretary of Defense during the Korean War before retiring to Virginia. He died in 1959 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He is placed with diplomats because the Marshall Plan and his Nobel recognition rest on his statecraft rather than on any head of state office.