• Source: List of United States Army four-star generals

The rank of general (or full general, or four-star general) is the highest rank normally achievable in the United States Army. It ranks above lieutenant general (three-star general) and below general of the Army (five-star general).
There have been 259 four-star generals in the history of the U.S. Army. Of these, 245 achieved that rank while on active duty in the U.S. Army; eight were promoted after retirement; five were promoted posthumously; and one (George Washington) was appointed to that rank in the Continental Army, the U.S. Army's predecessor. Generals entered the Army via several paths: 162 were commissioned via the U.S. Military Academy (USMA), 54 via Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) at a civilian university, 15 via Officer Candidate School (OCS), 13 via direct commission (direct), 11 via ROTC at a senior military college, one via ROTC at a military junior college, one via direct commission in the Army National Guard (ARNG), one via the aviation cadet program, and one via battlefield commission.




List of generals


Entries in the following list of four-star generals are indexed by the numerical order in which each officer was promoted to that rank while on active duty, or by an asterisk (*) if the officer did not serve in that rank while on active duty in the U.S. Army. Each entry lists the general's name, date of rank, active-duty positions held while serving at four-star rank, number of years of active-duty service at four-star rank (Yrs), year commissioned and source of commission, number of years in commission when promoted to four-star rank (YC), and other biographical notes.




History






= Four-star positions

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= 1775–1799

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In June 1775, the Continental Congress appointed George Washington as general and commander in chief of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. At the war's end in 1783, Washington resigned his commission. As this occurred before the establishment of the United States Army in 1784, he is therefore considered never to have held the U.S. Army rank of general.
In May 1798, Washington was commissioned as a lieutenant general in the United States Army by his successor as president, John Adams, to command the provisional army being raised for the undeclared Quasi-War with France. In March 1799, the United States Congress elevated the lieutenant generalcy to the rank of "General of the Armies of the United States", but Adams thought the new rank infringed on his constitutional role as commander in chief and never made the appointment. Washington died later that year, and the rank lapsed when not mentioned in the Military Peace Establishment Act of 1802. He was promoted posthumously to the rank in 1978, after it was reestablished for him as part of the 1976 United States Bicentennial celebrations.




= 1866–1941

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Civil War and aftermath


The rank of General of the Armies was revived in 1866, with the name "General of the Army of the United States" to reward the Civil War achievements of Ulysses S. Grant, the commanding general of the United States Army (CGUSA). As with the prior rank and that of lieutenant general revived for Grant in 1864, the holder was authorized to command the armies of the United States, subject to presidential authority. Grant vacated his commission to become president in March 1869, and the lieutenant general of the Army, William Tecumseh Sherman, was promoted to succeed him as general. The grade was abolished after Sherman's retirement in February 1884, in accordance with legislation passed in 1870.
After Sherman's retirement, the ban on new appointments to the grade of general was relaxed twice. In March 1885, Grant was out of office, bankrupt, and dying, so Congress authorized the president to reappoint him to the rank and full pay of general on the retired list. Congress made a similar exception in June 1888 to promote the ailing lieutenant general of the Army, Philip Sheridan, by discontinuing the grade of lieutenant general and merging it with the grade of general until Sheridan's death two months later.
Since there was only one active duty four-star general in the Army during this period, the grade was interchangeably referred to as "general", "the General", and "the General of the Army", a title not to be confused with the five-star grade of general of the Army created in 1944.



World War I


In 1917, the rank of general was recreated in the National Army, a temporary force of conscripts and volunteers authorized for the duration of the World War I emergency. To give American commanders parity of rank with their Allied counterparts, Congress allowed the president to appoint two emergency generals in the National Army, specified to be the chief of staff of the Army (CSA), Tasker H. Bliss and later Peyton C. March; and the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces (CG AEF) in France, John J. Pershing. When Bliss reached the retirement age of 64 and stepped down as chief of staff, he was reappointed emergency general by brevet to serve alongside full generals from allied nations as the U.S. military representative to the Supreme War Council.
All emergency grades expired at the end of the war, so in July 1919, eight months after the armistice, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to reward March and Pershing by making them both permanent generals, with Pershing senior to March. Pershing's promotion was authorized on 3 September 1919, just in time for the secretary of war to hand him his new commission when he returned from Europe. Congress and Pershing both opposed March's promotion, having clashed with him during the war, so he reverted to major general alongside Bliss when their emergency grades expired on 30 June 1920. Both were restored to their wartime ranks of general on the retired list in 1930.



Interwar

Pershing succeeded March as Army chief of staff in the permanent grade of general, and served from 1921 to 1924. The grade lapsed with his retirement, leaving the rank of major general as the highest available grade in the peacetime Army, and his two-star successors, John L. Hines and Charles P. Summerall, outranked by their four-star Navy counterpart, the chief of naval operations. The temporary rank of general was reauthorized for the chief of staff in 1929, elevating Summerall. In 1940, special legislation advanced Hines to general on the retired list as the only living former chief of staff never to wear four stars.




= 1941–1991

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World War II and aftermath


The United States entered World War II on 7 December 1941 with one Army general, chief of staff George Marshall, authorized. Legislation enacted in 1933 and amended in 1940 allowed the president to appoint officers of the Regular Army, the Army's professional military component, to higher temporary grades in time of war or national emergency. As with the National Army emergency generals, these appointments expired after the end of the war, although postwar legislation allowed officers to retire in their highest active-duty rank. On 19 December 1941, the Senate confirmed Douglas MacArthur to be the first temporary general in the Army of the United States, the reconstituted draft force, as he fought the Japanese invasion of the Philippines.
Three new Army generals were appointed over the next two years. Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed temporary general in February 1943, to command Allied forces in North Africa and later Europe; Henry H. Arnold in March 1943, as commanding general of Army Air Forces and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Joseph W. Stilwell in August 1944, as commander of the China Burma India Theater and chief of staff to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Marshall, MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Arnold were further promoted to the temporary five-star grade of general of the Army in December 1944, made permanent in March 1946. Malin Craig, Marshall's predecessor as Army chief of staff, was recalled to active duty in his four-star grade to run the War Department's Personnel Board.
More temporary generals were appointed to command postwar occupation forces in Germany and Japan, as well as the stateside Army commands. Omar Bradley, who had commanded the Twelfth Army Group—the bulk of American forces on the Western Front—also received a permanent promotion to general as a one-time personal honor, with full active-duty pay for life. This was superseded by Bradley's promotion to general of the Army while serving as the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in 1950. By the official termination of the World War II national emergency in April 1952, the Army had eight four-star generals.



Cold War


The modern grade of general was established by the Officer Personnel Act (OPA) of 1947, which authorized the president to designate positions of importance and responsibility to carry the grade ex officio, to be filled by officers with the permanent or temporary grade of major general or higher. The total number of positions allowed to carry the grade was capped at 3.75 percent of the total number of general officers on active duty, which worked out initially to five generals for the Army. The four-star grade caps evolved into Section 525 of Title 10 of the United States Code, which was codified in 1956. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the office of which was created in 1949, was exempted from the caps.
Escalating global commitments during the Cold War created more generals, both at home and abroad; a majority were appointed under renewed national emergency authority in excess of grade caps. Besides the JCS chairman and Army chief of staff, the most prestigious Army-dominated positions of the era were the NATO supreme allied commander in Europe (SACEUR); the commander of multinational and U.S. forces in Korea (UNC/FECOM, later USFK); and until 1973, the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam (USMACV). At the height of the Vietnam War in 1971, the Army had 17 four-star generals.
The Defense Officer Personnel Management Act (DOPMA) of 1980 standardized four-star appointments across all services, replacing the previous service-specific mechanisms. Personal four-star grades held regardless of assignment, once the norm in the post-Civil War era, were abolished under DOPMA. In 1982, Richard E. Cavazos and Roscoe Robinson Jr. became the first Hispanic and first African-American four-star generals in the Army respectively.




= 1991–present

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The distribution of four-star Army generals remains broadly similar to that of 1947, with a statutory chief and vice chief of staff (CSA, VCSA); stateside commands for readiness, materiel, and training; overseas component commands; and joint duty positions that are exempted from grade caps. Among the latter are the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS); the NATO supreme allied commander in Europe (SACEUR); the unified combatant commanders, including the statutory Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) and Special Operations Command (USSOCOM); and during the War on Terror, the wartime theater commanders in Iraq (MNF-I, later USF-I) and Afghanistan (ISAF, later RSM).
The chief of the National Guard Bureau (CNGB) joined the joint pool after being raised to four-star grade in January 2008. In November of the same year, Ann E. Dunwoody became the first woman to achieve the rank of general in the Army, as well as in any armed service. Similarly, in 1997, Eric Shinseki became the first Asian-American four-star general in the Army. In September 2012, Frank J. Grass became the first Army National Guard officer to attain the rank of general, to relieve his Air Force predecessor as CNGB.
In 2009, Congress directly specified the maximum number of four-star officers in each service, replacing the OPA- and DOPMA-era percentage cap formulas. In 2021, the Army was authorized eight four-star generals for positions within the service by the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act: the CSA and VCSA; the commanding generals of Army Forces Command (FORSCOM), Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), Army Materiel Command (AMC), and Army Futures Command (AFC); and the Army component commanders in Europe/Africa (USAREUR-AF) and the Pacific (USARPAC).
By the end of 2020, the Army had 18 four-star generals on active duty, exceeding the 17 four-star generals it had at the height of the Vietnam War, its previous peak.




Legislation



The following list of Congressional legislation includes major acts of Congress pertaining to appointments to the grade of general in the United States Army.




See also


General (United States)
General officers in the United States
List of active duty United States four-star officers
List of lieutenant generals in the United States Army before 1960
List of United States Army lieutenant generals from 1990 to 1999
List of United States Army lieutenant generals from 2000 to 2009
List of United States Army lieutenant generals from 2010 to 2019
List of United States Army lieutenant generals since 2020
List of major generals in the United States Regular Army before July 1, 1920
List of brigadier generals in the United States Regular Army before February 2, 1901
List of United States Air Force four-star generals
List of United States Coast Guard four-star admirals
List of United States Marine Corps four-star generals
List of United States military leaders by rank
List of United States Navy four-star admirals
List of United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps four-star admirals
List of United States Space Force four-star generals
List of British Army full generals
Staff (military)




References






= Notes

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Bibliography






= Books and papers

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United States Department of the Army (1976) [1948], United States Army Register, Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office
"World Almanac Education Group, Inc.", World Almanac and Book of Facts, New York: World Almanac Education Group, Inc., 2024 [1946]
Bell, William Gardner (2013). Commanding Generals and Chiefs of Staff, 1775–2013: Portraits and Biographical Sketches of the United States Army's Senior Officer. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History. ISBN 978-0-16-072376-6.
Cline, Ray S. (1990) [1951]. "Appendix B: U.S. Army Commanders in Major Theater Commands, December 1941 - September 1945". United States Army in World War II - Washington Command Post: The Operations Division. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History. ISBN 978-1514870600. CMH Pub 1-2. Archived from the original on 17 April 2021. Retrieved 19 July 2010.
Cosmas, Graham A. (2006). MACV, the Joint Command in the Years of Withdrawal, 1968-1973 (PDF). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History. ISBN 978-0160771194.
Ford, Worthington Chauncey, ed. (1905). Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789. Vol. II. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Heaton, Dean R. (1995). Four Stars: The Super Stars of United States Military History. Baltimore, Maryland: Gateway Press, Inc. ISBN 9780970044709.
Meyer, Edward C.; Ancell, R. Manning; Mahaffey, Jane (30 March 1995). Who Will Lead? Senior Leadership in the United States Army. Westport: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 978-0275950415.
Rostker, Bernard; et al. (1993). The Defense Officer Personnel Management Act of 1980: A Retrospective Assessment (PDF). Santa Monica, California: RAND.
Warner, Ezra J. (1964). Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders. Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 978-0-80710-822-2.




= Journals and magazines

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Air Force Association (May 2006). "USAF Almanac 2006" (PDF). Air Force Magazine. Vol. 89, no. 5. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 July 2007.
Yoon, Taeyoung (Spring 2005). "The ROK-U.S. Combined Command and Control System and Crisis Management Procedures" (PDF). International Area Review. 8 (1): 149–172. doi:10.1177/223386590500800108. S2CID 167994949.
"International Area Review" (PDF). International Area Review. 8 (1). 1 March 2005.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)




= Online publications

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"Department of Defense Key Officials (September 1947 – August 2024)" (PDF). Office of the Secretary of Defense Historical Office. 2024. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 November 2024. Retrieved 30 October 2024.
Cole, Ronald H.; Poole, Walter S.; Schnabel, James F.; Watson, Robert J.; Webb, Willard J. (1995). "The History of the Unified Command Plan, 1946-1993" (PDF). Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 November 2007. Retrieved 9 May 2007.
Leubsdorf, Ben (10 July 2024). "Presidential Medal of Freedom" (PDF). Congressional Research Service. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 March 2024. Retrieved 1 November 2024.
Straus, Jacob (18 July 2024). "Congressional Gold Medals: Background, Legislative Process, and Issues for Congress" (PDF). Congressional Research Service. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 September 2024. Retrieved 1 November 2024.
"Senior officials in the NATO military structure, from 1949 to 2001" (PDF). North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 February 2009.
"USAREUR Commanders". U.S. Army Europe. Archived from the original on 28 April 2007.
"A brief history of U.S. Army Materiel Command and biographies of AMC's commanding generals". U.S. Army Materiel Command Historical Office. Archived from the original on 21 September 2003.
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Army.

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