Robert Alexis McClure was born on March 4, 1897 at Mattoon, Illinois. He was the son of George Hurlbert McClure, a railroad manager, and Harriet Julia Rudy. His father died when Robert was small. After his mother remarried, the family moved to Madison, Indiana.
McClure attended public school in Madison, and in 1912 he entered the Kentucky Military Institute in Lyndon, Kentucky, from which he graduated in 1915. The next year he left home and enlisted in the Philippine Constabulary. In 1916 he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U. S. Army. In addition to his tour of duty in the Philippines, McClure also served in China and Japan. In 1923 he returned to the United States for further military training at the Army Infantry School (1923 - 1924) and the Army Cavalry School (1925 - 1926). He served as an instructor at the Infantry School for four years (1926 - 1930). His next assignment was to the Command and General Staff School (1930 - 1932), and later he studied at the Army War College (1935), where he remained as an instructor until 1940. He also had a tour of duty in this period as a personnel officer.
Soon after the outbreak of World War II in Europe, McClure was assigned to the American embassy in London as military attaché. His service there, beginning in 1941 and continuing into 1942, brought him the Legion of Merit. It also led to his advancement in 1942 to chief of intelligence for the American forces in the European theater of operations. As the G-2 (intelligence) officer on the staff of Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower, McClure was responsible for the security of the plans for the invasion of North Africa. This necessitated service in Africa and delicate relations with the French civil and military authorities. In Africa, McClure was in charge of military information for the press for Eisenhower and served as censor. These responsibilities brought him into frequent contact with war correspondents, for whom he generally favored as much freedom as combat plans and operations would allow.
Thus, by both training and experience, McClure was well equipped to take charge of psychological warfare when it was established as a constituent responsibility of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) early in 1944, before the invasion of France. At first McClure, then a brigadier general, was chief of a G-6 section which handled both public relations and psychological warfare. These responsibilities were separated in April 1944, with McClure at the head of the Psychological Warfare Division. His mission was twofold: to plan and conduct psychological warfare ventures during combat and to be ready to establish, under military authority, a new set of information control programs for the American zone in Germany after the war. McClure supervised activities ranging from radio reports on the course of the war beamed to enemy troops and civilians to the printing and circulation of counterfeit ration stamps inside Germany. Combat psychological warfare teams accompanied field troops for broadcasting and leaflet distribution. Printed appeals were dropped during bombing raids over Germany. After the war ended, McClure was made director of the Information Control Division in Germany. This placed him in charge of developing de-Nazified print media, theater, film, music, and other information and cultural facilities organizations. The publication of "clean" newspapers and the performances of purged theatrical companies were notable events in German cities, and McClure regularly attended the formal licensing ceremonies.
His Information Control Service commands encompassed Bavaria, Württemberg-Baden, and Hesse. To plan and execute this assignment, McClure assembled a staff of military and civilian personnel from both sides of the Atlantic. These specialists included linguists, lawyers, journalists, publishers, radio technicians and administrators, musicians, theatrical producers, psychologists, and academicians. The Americans, some with military rank and some civilians in uniforms, represented the Office of Strategic Services and the Office of War Information; their British counterparts came from the Political Warfare Executive, the Ministry of Information, and other wartime forces. Oxford, Cambridge, and leading American universities and colleges contributed scholars. McClure also allowed some women to advance to a degree not common to other SHAEF staffs. McClure's assignment, totally different from that of every other World War II general officer, was less than fully understood or appreciated by his superiors. He served through the entire war without a promotion to major general. He was still a brigadier general when, in 1950, he began a three-year tour of duty as chief of the Psychological Warfare Division in the Pentagon. After Eisenhower's election as president, McClure was sent in 1953 to Teheran as head of the American military mission. In 1955, while on this assignment, he was belatedly awarded the rank of major general. The following year he retired but died at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. , on the way to his retirement home in Carmel, Calif. At his instruction he was buried not in a military cemetery but in the family plot at Madison, Indiana.
On November 11, 1918, he married Marjory Leitch; they had two sons.
