Jacob L. Devers

Jacob Loucks Devers, the four-star general who commanded the 6th Army Group from the beaches of southern France into Germany and Austria in the Second World War, died in Washington, D.C., on October 15, 1979. He was ninety-two. He was born on September 8, 1887, in York, Pennsylvania, the son of a watchmaker. He entered the United States Military Academy and graduated in 1909, in a class that included George S. Patton, William H. Simpson and Robert L. Eichelberger, and was commissioned in the field artillery. During the First World War he taught at the School of Fire at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Between the wars he became an outspoken advocate of mechanization when many officers still favored horses. In 1940 he was promoted over hundreds of senior colonels to brigadier general, then the youngest in the Army. He commanded the new 9th Infantry Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and in 1941 became chief of the Armored Force, which grew under him from four armored divisions to sixteen. He pushed American industry for more powerful tanks and championed the M4 Sherman and the heavier M26 Pershing, and he played a part in developing the DUKW amphibious truck and other equipment. He later commanded American forces in the European Theater and served as deputy commander in the Mediterranean. In 1944 he took command of the 6th Army Group, which landed in southern France and fought up through the Vosges, turned back the German Operation Northwind offensive, reduced the Colmar Pocket, and crossed the Rhine. On May 5, 1945, German General Hermann Foertsch surrendered Army Group G to him unconditionally. After the war he led the Army Ground Forces until his retirement in 1949. He then worked in traffic safety and aviation, and from 1960 to 1969 he chaired the American Battle Monuments Commission, which cares for the cemeteries and memorials of Americans who died overseas. His wife, Georgie, whom he married in 1911, died in 1967. Devers spent his last years at the couple's home in Georgetown, in Washington.