Integration of the European Command proceeded without incident, but the administrative task was complicated and frequently delayed by the problem of black overstrength. Handy directed that Negroes be assigned as individuals in a 1 to 10 ratio in all units although he would tolerate a higher ratio in service and temporary duty units during the early stages of the program.[17-80] This figure was adjusted upward the following year to a maximum of 12 percent black for armor and infantry units, 15 percent for combat engineers and artillery, and 17.5 percent for all other units. During the process of integrating the units, a 25 percent black strength was authorized.[17-81]
The ratios were raised because the percentage of Negroes in the command continued to exceed the 1 to 10 ratio and was still increasing. In September 1953 the new commander, General Alfred M. Gruenther, tried to slow the rate of increase.[17-82] He got Washington to halt the shipment of black units, and he himself instituted stricter reenlistment standards in Europe. Finally, he warned that with fewer segregated units to which black troops might be assigned, the racial imbalance was becoming more critical, and he asked for a deferment of the program's completion.[17-83] The Army staff promised to try to alleviate the racial disproportions in the replacement stream, but asked Gruenther to proceed as quickly as possible with integration.[17-84]
There was little the Army staff could do. The continental commands had the same overstrength problem, and the staff considered the European Command an inappropriate place to raise black percentages. By mid-1953 Negroes accounted for some 16 percent of Army personnel in Europe and, more important to the command, the number of Negroes with combat occupation specialties continued to increase at the same rate. As an alternative to the untenable practice of reclassifying combat-trained men for noncombat assignments purely on account of race, Gruenther again raised the acceptable ratio of blacks in combat units. At the same time he directed the Seventh Army commander to treat ratios in the future merely as guidelines, to be adhered to as circumstances permitted.[17-85] The percentage of Negroes in the command leveled off at this time, but not before the black proportion of the command's transportation units reached 48.8 percent. Summing up his command's policy on integration, Gruenther concluded: "I cannot permit the assignment of large numbers of unqualified personnel, regardless of race, to prejudice the operation readiness of our units in an effort to attain 100 percent racial integration, however desirable that goal may be."[17-86] A heavy influx of white replacements with transportation specialties allowed the European Command to finish integrating the elements of the Seventh Army in July 1954.[17-87] The last black unit in the command, the 94th Engineer Battalion, was inactivated in November.
Integration of black troops in Europe proved successful on several counts, with the Army, in Assistant Secretary Fred Korth's words, "achieving benefits therefrom substantially greater than we had anticipated at its inception."[17-88] The command's combat readiness increased, he claimed, while its racial incidents and disciplinary problems declined. The reaction of the soldiers was, again in Korth's words, "generally good" with incidents stemming from integration "fewer and much farther between." Moreover, the program had been a definite advantage in counteracting Communist propaganda, with no evidence of problems with civilians arising from social integration. More eloquent testimony to the program's success appeared in the enthusiasm of the European Command's senior officials.[17-89] Their fears and uncertainties eased, they abruptly reversed their attitudes and some even moved from outright opposition to praise for the program as one of their principal achievements.
The smaller overseas commands also submitted plans to Army headquarters for the breakup of their segregated units in 1951, and integration of the Alaskan Command and the rest proceeded during 1952 without incident.[17-90] At the same time the continental Army commands, faced with similar manpower problems, began making exceptions, albeit considerably more timidly than the great overseas commands, to the assignment of Negroes to black units. As early as September 1951 the Army G-1 discovered instances of unauthorized integration in every Army area,[17-91] the result of either unrectified administrative errors or the need to find suitable assignments for black replacements. "The concern shown by you over the press reaction to integrating these men into white units," the Sixth Army commander, Lt. Gen. Joseph M. Swing, reported to the Army staff, "causes me to guess that your people may not realize the extent to which integration has already progressed—at least in the Sixth Army."[17-92] Swing concluded that gradual integration had to be the solution to the Army's race problems everywhere. McAuliffe agreed with Swing that the continental commands should be gradually integrated, but, as he put it, "the difficulty is that my superiors are not prepared to admit that we are already launched on a progressive integration program" in the United States. The whole problem was a very touchy one, McAuliffe added.[17-93]
The Army staff had agreed to halt the further integration of units in the United States until the results of the overseas changes had been carefully analyzed. Nevertheless, even while the integration of the Far East forces was proceeding, General McAuliffe's office prepared a comprehensive two-phase plan for the integration of the continental armies. It would consolidate all temporary units then separated into racial elements, redistributing all Negroes among the organized white units; then, Negroes assigned to black components of larger white units would be absorbed into similar white units through normal attrition or by concentrated levies on the black units. McAuliffe estimated that the whole process would take two years.[17-94]
Visit With the Commander.
Soldiers of the Ordnance Branch, Berlin Command, meet with Brig. Gen. Charles F. Craig.
McAuliffe's plan was put into effect when General Collins ordered worldwide integration in December 1952. The breakdown of the "10 percent Army" proceeded uneventfully, and the old black units disappeared. The 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments, now converted into the 509th and 510th Tank Battalions (Negro), received white replacements and dropped the racial designation. The 25th Infantry, now broken down into smaller units, was integrated in September 1952. On 12 October 1953 Assistant Secretary of Defense John Hannah announced that 95 percent of the Army's Negroes were serving in integrated units with the rest to be so assigned not later than June 1954.[17-95] His estimate was off by several months. The European Command's 94th Engineer Battalion, the last major all-black unit, was inactivated in November 1954, several weeks after the Secretary of Defense had announced the end of all segregated units.[17-96]