H. Norman Schwarzkopf

Born August 22, 1934

Trenton, New Jersey

American General who commanded victorious Allied forces in the Persian Gulf War

"Any soldier worth his salt should be antiwar. And still there are things worth fighting for."

H. Norman Schwarzkopf in U.S. News and World Report.

General H. Norman Schwarzkopf led U.S. military forces through the Persian Gulf War. Iraq's swift and decisive defeat at the hands of the U.S.-led Allied forces, combined with Schwarzkopf's charismatic personality and fierce loyalty to his troops, made him an American military hero.

Son of a famous military father

Norman Schwarzkopf was born in Trenton, New Jersey, on August 22, 1934. His parents were Ruth (Bowman) Schwarzkopf and Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, a World War I general who went on to become the founding commander of the New Jersey State Police. Schwarzkopf was his parents' only son, but they also had two daughters.

Throughout his childhood, Schwarzkopf idolized his father. "My father was a very honorable man," he told Insight on the News. "He epitomized [represented] the best West Point graduate of his day that's totally committed to a sense of duty, totally committed to a sense of honor, totally dedicated to his country, and a selfless servant."

Schwarzkopf's father returned to active duty in the U.S. Army in 1942, when the United States entered World War II (1939–45). His absence left young Schwarzkopf the only male in a house full of females. Looking back, he believes that this period of his life as he recalled in Insight on the News:

I wasn't your normal, tough, macho young boy. Maybe it was the influence of my mother and my sisters, the fact that I had this responsibility on my shoulders. I can remember being pushed around a lot. I can't really say why. I learned to hate the bully. I learned to hate the playground group that went around pushing other people around. I never ran with that bunch as a young boy.

After World War II ended in 1945, Schwarzkopf's father remained in the military. He served at a variety of posts all across the Middle East and Europe, including Iran, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland, before returning to the United States in 1951. His son accompanied him on many of these assignments. This exposure to different cultures taught Schwarzkopf "that you judge a person as an individual," he told Insight on the News. "I also learned that the American way is great, but it's not the only way. There are a lot of other ways things are done that are just as good, and some of them are better."

Following in his father's footsteps

Schwarzkopf earned his high school diploma at Trenton's Bordentown Military Institute in 1952. He then entered the U.S. Army's West Point Military Academy, from which he graduated in 1956. After leaving West Point, he joined the army as a second lieutenant in the infantry. He spent the next nine years serving the country in positions all around the United States and Germany. He also continued his education, graduating from a master's program in guided missile engineering in June 1964.

Served in Vietnam

In June 1965 Schwarzkopf entered the Vietnam War (1954–75), a bloody conflict that pitted North Vietnam against troops from South Vietnam and the United States. During this first tour of duty, he served as an advisor to a South Vietnamese Airborne brigade. "When they slept on the ground, I slept on the ground; what they ate, I ate. It was truly serving a cause I believed in," he recalled in U.S. News and World Report. When Schwarzkopf completed his tour in 1966 he returned to the United States and spent the next three years working in Washington, D.C. From there he returned to West Point, where he worked as an instructor.

In December 1969 Schwarzkopf shipped over to Vietnam for a second tour of duty as a battalion commander. When he arrived, he was stunned by the battalion's poor morale and leadership. "When I took over the battalion it was totally unprepared for battle yet it had been in battle; all they were doing was taking casualties, [not] inflicting them," he told U.S. News and World Report. "It was a nightmare."

Schwarzkopf labored mightily to improve the battalion's performance, and he repeatedly showed his bravery in combat. He earned three Silver Stars for Heroism and two Purple Heart medals for wounds suffered in battle during this tour. But most of his memories from this period of his life are of dying soldiers and ineffective military strategies. When he returned home in late 1970, he was angry and frustrated about the war. "We all carry scars from Vietnam, and those scars will never go away," he wrote in his autobiography It Doesn't Take a Hero.

After returning to the United States, Schwarzkopf worked in Washington, D.C., until October 1974, when he was made deputy commander of the 172nd infantry brigade in Fort Richardson, Alaska. This proved to be one of his favorite assignments, as he was able to spend much of his time outdoors with his troops. In addition, the wilds of Alaska gave him many opportunities to pursue his love for hunting and fishing. In 1975 he was promoted to full colonel and reassigned to Fort Lewis, Washington, where he stayed for about two years before taking a post in Hawaii. His family accompanied him on each of these new postings, and Schwarzkopf later estimated that his military career required at least sixteen different relocations for his wife and children.

In 1980 Schwarzkopf was made a general. He spent most of the next decade in various posts in Europe and the United States, including a two-year stint (1985–87) as commanding general of the Fort Lewis army base in Georgia. In 1987 he returned to Washington, D.C., and a year later he was appointed a full general and given the reins of the U.S. Central Command. Thirty-one years after first joining the U.S. military, Schwarzkopf had become the leader of the entire U.S. Army.

Preparing for a Persian Gulf showdown

As commander of U.S. Central Command, Schwarzkopf paid special attention to the Middle East, an unstable region of the world that simmered with the potential for violence. In fact, he began planning a variety of U.S. military strategies just in case American forces were ordered into the region.

Schwarzkopf received a chance to use some of his plans when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (see entry) had ordered his military forces to invade the neighboring country of Kuwait on August 2, 2001. Hussein argued that Iraq had a historical claim to Kuwait's territory. He also wanted to control Kuwait's oil reserves and to gain access to Kuwait's port on the Persian Gulf. Countries around the world criticized the invasion and demanded that Hussein withdraw his troops from Kuwait. When he refused, many of these countries sent military forces to the Persian Gulf region to join a U.S.-led coalition against Iraq. Schwarzkopf supervised this military buildup, which eventually grew to include more than four hundred thousand U.S. troops and thousands of soldiers from other nations. During this period, he gained an international reputation for blunt talk (he once described Hussein and his generals as nothing more than "a bunch of thugs") and fierce devotion to the men and women under his command. Indeed, Schwarzkopf's obvious concern for his soldiers and his warm personality made him enormously popular with the troops. "He's a legend over here," one air force sergeant told People magazine. "All the guys in the field love him."

Meanwhile, men and women who had worked with Schwarzkopf over the years assured the American people that he was a great choice to lead the coalition forces. For example, one former West Point classmate noted in U.S. News and World Report that he had a son in the military who could be ordered any day to go to the Persian Gulf. "I feel really good that if he goes, Schwarzkopf is running things," the father said. "They'll fight like hell, but lives aren't going to be wasted. I just know that, as a father."

For his part, Schwarzkopf told U.S News and World Report that he hated war, but knew that it was sometimes necessary.

A professional soldier understands that war means killing people, war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and mothers.... All you have to do is hold your first soldier who is dying in your arms, and have that terribly futile feeling that I can't do anything about it; that the life is literally flowing out of this young man and I can't do anything about it. Then you understand the horror of war. Any soldier worth his salt should be antiwar. And still there are things worth fighting for.

Operation Desert Storm

In November 1990, the United Nations (UN) Security Council established a deadline of January 15, 1991, for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait or face attack by the U.S.-led forces. When Iraq failed to withdraw its troops from Kuwait by the UN deadline, the coalition forces launched a campaign of air strikes against Iraqi troops and military positions, including some in the capital city of Baghdad. These air strikes, known as Operation Desert Storm, blasted Iraqi military targets for thirty-eight days, leaving Iraqi forces stunned and battered. Schwarzkopf then ordered a massive ground offensive against Iraqi positions in Kuwait and southern Iraq on February 24, 1991.

As U.S. and coalition military forces poured into Kuwait and southern Iraq, many Iraqi military units surrendered or fled. Other Iraqi troops resisted, but they were quickly crushed. In the space of only one hundred hours, Schwarzkopf's forces freed Kuwait and chased the tattered remains of Hussein's army nearly to Iraq's capital city of Baghdad. At that point, President George H. W. Bush (see entry) called off the attack.

The triumph of coalition forces in the 1991 Persian Gulf War has been described by some military historians as one of the most brilliant and decisive in history. Schwarzkopf was delighted by the success of the mission, and he took particular pride in the fact that U.S. and allied forces suffered only light casualties in the war. He also heaped scorn on Hussein, who had led his country into the disastrous confrontation. In one news conference, cited in Richard Pyle's book Schwarzkopf: In His Own Words, the general declared that Hussein was "neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational art, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general , nor is he a soldier." He then paused and added sarcastically, "Other than that he is a great military man." But Schwarzkopf had little time to bask in the glow of victory, for the next several weeks required him to oversee countless postwar issues, from securing the release of prisoners of war (POWs) to helping Kuwait return to a more normal existence.

In March 1991 U.S. forces began to return home. Schwarzkopf personally addressed many of these troops before their departure to express his appreciation for their performance. As recalled in Schwarzkopf: In His Own Words, on March 8, 1991, he told departing troops:

It's a great day to be a soldier! Big Red One, First Team, Old Ironsides, Spear Head, Hell on Wheels platoon, Jay Hawk patrol, today you're going home. You're going home to Fort Riley, Kansas, you're going home to Fort Hood, Texas, you're going home to locations all over Germany. Your country, your countrymen, your wives, your children, and your loved ones are all there waiting for you.... It's hard for me to put into words how proud I am of you. How proud I have been to be the commander of this war. I'm proud of you, your countries are proud of you, and the world's proud of you. God bless you, God's speed for your trip home, and God bless America.

After the war

Schwarzkopf retired from active military service in July 1991, five months after the greatest triumph of his long and distinguished career. In honor of his role in the Persian Gulf War, he received numerous prestigious awards in the months and years following his retirement, including the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Order of Kuwait with Sash of Most Excellent Order. In 1992 he joined with writer Peter Petre to publish his autobiography, It Doesn't Take a Hero. The book covered his entire life, from childhood through the Vietnam War to the Persian Gulf War. It was widely praised by reviewers as a candid and fascinating account of the life of America's newest military hero.

Since that time, Schwarzkopf has remained interested in military issues. For example, he has followed research into "Gulf War Syndrome," a term used to describe a variety of mysterious illnesses suffered by many U.S. Gulf War veterans, with great interest. But he has spent most of his retirement with his family, wife Brenda (Holsinger) Schwarzkopf, whom he married in 1968, and their three children, Jessica, Christian, and Cynthia, and pursuing his love for outdoor activities such as fishing and hunting.

Where to Learn More

Eisenhower, John. "It Doesn't Take a Hero." New York Times Book Review, October 18, 1992.

Galloway, Joseph L. "The Bear: General H. Norman Schwarzkopf Knows Soldiers and Loves Them, Knows War and Hates It." U.S. News and World Report, February 11, 1991.

Mackenzie, Richard. "Fierce Loyalty and Affection for His Troops." Insight on the News, March 18, 1991.

Pyle, Richard. Schwarzkopf: In His Own Words. New York: Penguin Books, 1991.

Schwarzkopf, H. Norman, with Peter Petre. It Doesn't Take a Hero. New York: Bantam, 1992.

"Stormin' Norman: Born to Win." People, March 11, 1991.