The leadership team behind the Ninth U.S. Army, described as “uncommonly normal” in their time, contributed to Allied success in World War II and offers lessons about today’s military command structure, a military history expert said.

“The Ninth Army … met the trifecta,” retired Lt. Col. William Nance said July 16 during an Association of the U.S. Army Noon Report webinar. “Their bosses liked having them in their organization, their peers liked working with them and their subordinates liked being in their organization. As a leader, you don't do better than that.”

A retired armor officer and civilian associate professor of history at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Nance has written several books on military history. After commissioning from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, Nance served in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He joined the Department of Military History at the Command and General Staff College in 2018 and retired from the Army in 2022.

In his book, Commanding Professionalism: Simpson, Moore, and the Ninth US Army, part of AUSA’s Book Program, Nance highlights the leadership of Lt. Gen. William Simpson, commander of Ninth U.S. Army, and his chief of staff, Brig. Gen. James Moore, and analyzes how their understanding of command and staff relationships contributed to the 1940s war effort and to military command structure today.

From the start, Simpson and Moore hit it off, Nance said. “They … both [have] kind of the same personality. ... They both like discipline, they both like procedure [and] they both like doing things by the book,” Nance said. “They just kept finding ways to work with each other.” 

Simpson recognized that doctrine was becoming “increasingly important” during World War II, Nance said.

“The Army, particularly in times of war, where [there are] large influxes of people, we need a good enough, repeatable process that can be executed by almost everybody, and that's what doctrine gives us,” Nance said. “That’s what Simpson and Moore [understood] from the get-go.”

Their approach was incredibly effective. Under Simpson’s command, Ninth Army captured more than 750,000 German prisoners of war and liberated nearly 600,000 Allied POWs and over 1.2 million displaced people between September 1944 and May 1945, according to a National World War II Museum webpage.

Soldiers today can learn from the “absolute and utter trust” that Simpson and Moore placed in one another. “Simpson trusted Moore to run things as he asked him to be ran, and Moore trusted his superior, Simpson, to have his back at all times,” Nance said. “And, to my knowledge, they never broke that.”