Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr.
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Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf (August 28, 1895 – November 25, 1958) was the first superintendent of the New Jersey State Police. He is best known for his involvement in the Lindbergh kidnapping case and for being the father of General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of all coalition forces for Operation Desert Shield/Storm.
Schwarzkopf was born in Newark, New Jersey to Julius George Schwarzkopf and Agnes Sarah Schmidt of Germany. He attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and graduated in March of 1917. After receiving a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the cavalry, Schwarzkopf was sent to Europe as part of the American Expeditionary Forces. He was gassed with mustard gas, making him susceptible to respiratory illnesses for the rest of his life. During the occupation he served as a provost marshal, partially due to his organizational skills and partially due to his fluency in German.
After returning to the United States with the rank of colonel, Schwarzkopf was appointed in 1921 by New Jersey Governor Edward I. Edwards to head the newly formed New Jersey State Police. He personally trained the first 25 State Police Troopers and organized the State Police department into two troops: a northern troop, utilizing motorcycles, to patrol the Mafia-controlled narcotics, whiskey, rum-running, and gambling rings in the New York City area; and a southern troop, with troopers on horseback, to crack down on moonshiners. He left the force in 1936 after being relieved of his duty by a governor with whom he frequently clashed.
He narrated the radio program Gang Busters for a short period of time, then re-entered the army in 1940. [1]
Scwarzkopf was posted to Iran in 1942, due to the efforts of Mohammad Vali Mirza Farman Farmaian, and was tasked with organizing the Iranian police after the UK-Soviet intervention that made Iran an Allied protectorate. His recruits, the Gendarmerie, were active in suppressing the Soviet-inspired People's Republic of Azerbaijan (the so-called Marshabad Soviet) in 1946.
After World War II, he was promoted to brigadier general, and in the late 1940s was sent to occupied Germany to serve as Deputy Provost Marshal for the entire U.S. Sector.
Before retiring from the Army in 1953 with the rank of major general, Schwarzkopf was sent by the Central Intelligence Agency as part of Operation Ajax to convince the exiled Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to return and seize power. Schwarzkopf went so far as to organize the security forces he had trained to support the Shah. He died in 1958 from complications of lung cancer and is buried at the U.S. Military Academy cemetery.
He was married to Ruth Bowman (1900-1977), a registered nurse from West Virginia who struggled with alcoholism from the time Schwarzkopf left for Iran until her death.
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