Notes on American Military History 1914-1953

[Excepted fromThe MQSI Training Support Package: U.S. Military History, No. MQS I S1-9017.01-0018 TSP/H0 9004 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: U. S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1990), pp. 43-70]

LINK TO MORE HISTORICAL MATERIAL FROM THE U.S. ARMY COMMAND AND GENERAL STAFF COLLEGE

LESSON 19: STUDENT LESSON SUMMARY

World War I: The Period of Neutrality and Mobilization

• 1. The outbreak of World War I, in the summer of 1914, surprised the American public and military.
  • a. President Woodrow Wilson had little expertise in foreign affairs.
  • b. His secretary of state was also inexperienced in foreign relations and was a leading pacifist.
  • c. Almost all Americans espoused the traditional U.S. isolationist point of view.
• 2. Most American politicans were much more concerned about the possible domestic impact of the war than its strategic implications.
  • a. The government feared divided loyalties on the part of millions of recent immigrants.
  • b. Some people feared social disruption, as the public divided into violently hostile groups favoring one belligerent or the other.
  • c. Initially, both government and business leaders feared the economic impact of the war on American trade and business.
  • d. The government grew increasingly concerned about foreign propaganda and espionage activities in the United States.
• 3. As the war continued, it posed increasing problems for the United States.
  • a. What was the status of neutral rights in the twentieth century, when changes in technology made many of the old rules obsolete?
    • (1) What constituted a blockade after steam-powered, armored warships with artillery that reached twenty-five miles replaced wooden sailing vessels whose cannon had a range of only three miles?
    • (2) What was contraband in a world in which belligerents mobilized their entire industrial systems for war production?
    • (3) What rules did governments provide to submarines and airplanes engaged in the raiding of commerce?
    • (4) What were the rules governing extending credit and making loans to the warring states?
  • b. The complex attempts of the United States to stay out of war, while still defending its neutral rights, ultimately failed.
    • (1) The secretary of state resigned and attacked the administration.
    • (2) The United States complained about British violations of neutral rights regarding both contraband and blockades.
    • (3) The United States complained much more bitterly about German submarine attacks that killed U.S. civilians.
• 4. U.S. Entry into the War.
  • a. Some Americans advocated U.S. entry into the war shortly after it began. Former President Theodore Roosevelt was among the best known and most vocal of these citizens.
  • b. The contending powers issued considerable amounts of propaganda, but the exact effect of their efforts is difficult to judge.
  • c. The U.S. economy became tied to and partly dependent on exports to the warring nations.
  • d. The German foreign office made repeated blunders; the most important being its offer to support Mexico's reincorporation of the territory it lost to the United States in 1848 if Mexico allied with Germany in a future war against the United States.
  • e. Some Americans became concerned about the possible consequences of a German victory.
  • f. There is still disagreement about the reasons for U.S. entry into the war.
    • (1) A theory popular in the 1930s, when big business was unpopular, was that bankers and munitions makers, in search of war profits, led the United States into the war. This theory never explained how these businessmen forced the President and Congress to declare war.
    • (2) Another popular theory was that Allied wartime propaganda, particularly atrocity stories, tricked the United States into war. How the Allied propagandists convinced the President and the Congress has never been explaineD.
    • (3) The late Walter Lippmann popularized the idea that the United States entered the war to protect its vital national security interests. There is, however, no evidence that the President believed that Germany was a threat to U.S. security.
    • (4) Some people argued that the United States acted in an unneutral manner when individual U.S. citizens sent goods and lent money to Britain and France. This allegedly led to a justifiable German retaliation, which, in turn, led to a U.S. declaration of war (actually, this trade did not violate neutrality, according to international law, because the U.S. government did not subsidize trade with the Allies nor forbid commerce with the Central Powers).
    • (5) Another explanation for the war is that President Wilson, unversed in diplomacy, gave Germany an ultimatum about submarine warfare without realizing that it was an irreversible commitment. When Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare, the President had to carry through his threat or back down. Concerned about protecting his personal prestige and U.S. international prestige, Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany.
    • (6) Clearly, the German decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare in January 1917 was a critical factor in the U.S. decision to go to war. Many at the time, and many since, question whether the actual impact of the submarine warfare campaign justified a U.S. declaration of war.
    • (7) There are other reasons proposed for U.S. entry into the war, but those mentioned above are the major contenders. If none are entirely satisfactory, it is probably because there was no single cause for the U.S. declaration of war. Some combination of the proposed causes--along with America's special sympathy for Britain and France--finally led the United States into the war.
• 5. The Economic Impact of the War.
  • a. The United States was in a recession when the war broke out, but the rapid surge of demands for U.S. goods because of the conflict stimulated American production.
  • b. The cost of their wartime purchases forced Britain and France to borrow money from U.S. investors and to sell them valuable holdings. This transformed the United States from a debtor to a creditor nation.
• 6. The Preparedness Movement.
  • a. Wilson distrusted the military and was reluctant to increase U.S. military preparedness, because he was determined to stay out of the war--the political platform on which he ran for re-election.
  • b. However, troubles with Mexico, growing concern about German interference with American shipping and trade, and political concern over Republican exploitation of the preparedness issue led Wilson to support the National Defense Act in 1916.
  • c. The "Plattsburg movement" of volunteer officer-training camps showed some Americans expected U.S. involvment in the European war.
  • d. The Maneuver Division, organized to observe the Mexican Revolution, gave the Army a large unit organization.
  • e. The partial mobilization for the punitive expedition gave the Army some experience in dealing with large numbers of men.
• 7. Mobilization.
  • a. Wilson announced conscription in his war message to Congress.
  • b. Despite some Congressional opposition, the draft act passed and set up a system that avoided some of the inequities and unpopular features of the Civil War draft.
  • c. The National Guard mobilized and ultimately went into action in France.
  • d. In 1917, most Americans did not anticipate sending a massive army to Europe but expected to send supplies instead.
  • e. The Army found it hard to provide officers for the mass army it mobilized.
  • f. The United States mobilized its men first and then tried to equip them.
  • g. Five million men served in the military during World War I.
    • (1) As war production increased, the work force expanded. By the end of the war, nearly 5 million women entered the domestic work force for the first time.
    • (2) The U.S. effort to mobilize its productive forces ran into great difficulties, and many shortages developeD.
    • (3) The government operated the railways for part of the war in an attempt to unclog the transportation system.
    • (4) No tanks, planes, or artillery pieces made for U.S. forces arrived in France in time to be used before the armistice.
    • (5) The U.S. had difficulty shipping men and supplies to Europe.
  • h. The government made a massive effort to mobilize public opinion in support of the war through such measures as-
    • (1) crackdowns on subversive and seditious elements.
    • (2) war bond drives.
    • (3) speakers bureaus and "four minutemen" to support the war.
  • i. The U.S. government did not anticipate the cost of the war and was slow to mobilize financial resources. It spent over $12 billion in each of the next 3 years. For comparison, the total cost of the Civil War to the federal government was $4 billion.

LESSON 20: STUDENT LESSON SUMMARY

World War I: The U.S. Armed Forces Overseas

(Matloff, chapter 18)

• 1. The Organization of the AEF.
  • a. The first real awareness in the United States that the Allies needed a large body of U.S. troops came three weeks after the declaration of war, when Joffre, former French commander in chief, came to the United States and asked for an American expeditionary force.
  • b. Congress passed a conscription act that laid the basis for the AEF.
  • c. Many volunteers filled out the services before the draft began to operate, but the Army failed to fit them to jobs that matched their civilian skills. Highly trained telegraph and telephone operators and maintenance personnel ended up in the infantry, not the Signal Corps.
  • d. Wilson squelched the idea of volunteer units when he refused to allow Theodore Roosevelt to raise a division, even when Roosevelt promised to die in combat if allowed to lead it to France.
• 2. The Transportation of the AEF.
  • a. The first troops arrived in France in June 1917.
  • b. Troops moved overland in the United States to ports, shipped 3,000 miles across the ocean, then advanced overland in France to the front.
  • c. The U.S. Army improved the ports where it landed men and supplies, improved the railroads that carried its units to their training area, and built camps and training facilities for its men.
  • d. Only 700 men per day reached France in 1917.
  • e. In October 1917, the first U.S. division deployed on a quiet part of the trench line.
  • f. In March 1918, with Britain furnishing most of the shipping, the first substantial U.S. contingents (85,000 men) arriveD.
  • g. By June 1918, American divisions held several segments of the trenches--mostly on the quiet eastern section of the line--and the 1st Infantry Division attacked and captured the little town of Cantigny.
• 3. The Training Problems of the AEF in France.
  • a. Once hurried shipments began, troops arrived in different stages of training, and Pershing needed to mold them into organized units.
  • b. There were quarrels between National Guard and Regular Army officers, which were compounded by the presence of large numbers of recent graduates of various officer training programs.
  • c. Pershing believed his fresh American troops could crack the German lines and was reluctant to train his men for static trench warfare.
  • (1) This caused difficulties with the experienced British and French officers, who attempted to teach the Americans the defensive strategy that the Allies had learned in three long years of war.
  • (2) American aggressiveness resulted in heavy casualties, when the Americans learned the hard way that bayonet charges against machine guns were ineffective.
  • d. To build up his trained forces, Pershing incorporated Marine units into his army divisions.
  • e. Pershing' s doctrine was roughly that of the French in 1914: break through the German lines, return to a war of maneuver, and drive on to Berlin. Given the technology of 1918 and the enormous strength of the defensive mode, this was not a realistic approach to the war.
• 4. Backed by his orders from President Wilson, Pershing insisted on an independent U.S. Army.
  • a. He refused to allow Allied units to use his men as fillers, even as organized battalions.
  • b. The Allies argued that U.S. officers had no experience in commanding or leading large military units and that if they led their armies into combat, excessive manpower losses would endanger the Allied cause.
  • c. Pershing compensated for his lack of senior officers by making his divisions twice the normal size.
  • d. After the surrender of Russia in early 1918, the full strength of Germany turned to the Western Front. There was grave danger that the Germans would break the Allied lines before the Americans were ready to fight under their own senior leadership. Nonetheless, Pershing was willing to run this risk rather than lose operational control of his army.
• 5. The Major Battles of the AEF.
  • a. At Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Woods, the U.S. 2d and 3d Divisions helped stop the last great German offensive.
  • b. At Soissons, American units played a major role in the first great successful Allied counterattack. An American officer commanded a corps in this assault.
  • c. On 10 August, the U.S. First Army came into existence.
  • d. In September, the Americans eliminated the Saint-Mihiel salient.
  • e. In October and November, the Americans pushed through the German lines in the Meuse-Argonne.
  • f. Other U.S. units fought with the French and British Armies.
    • (1) Three regiments of the 93d Division (black) fought under French control.
    • (2) Two U.S. divisions joined in the great British offensive in Flanders. 6. The Armistice came on 11 November 1918, as American troops advanced on the critical railroad line just beyond the Meuse River.

LESSON 21: STUDENT LESSON SUMMARY

U.S. Armed Forces Between World Wars

(Matloff, chapter 19)

• 1. LESSONS OF THE WAR. World War I demonstrated the evolution of total war and provided the following lessons:
  • a. Countries must mobilize their civilian populations and economies.
  • b. The development of the internal combustion engine, especially for tanks and motor transport, changed the tactics of war.
  • c. Aircraft demonstrated potential for close-support of infantry on the battlefield and the strategic bombing of enemy industries and cities.
  • d. Submarine and antisubmarine warfare was vital for economic warfare and national survival.
  • e. Effective staff planning for battles involving hundreds of thousands of men and vast distances required written tactical doctrine and standardized staff procedures.
  • f. Generals must understand the effects of newly developed technology.
  • g. A nation's scientific community is a vital war resource.
• 2. MILITARY DEVELOPMENTS, 1919-39.
  • a. United States.
    • (1) The U.S. military posture reflected the nation's isolationism. Consequently, the Navy was the nation's first line of defense. The Army defended the continental United States and overseas possessions such as the Philippines.
    • (2) Arms and equipment used in World War I provided the bulk of the stocks used by the Army during the interwar years. Lack of personnel was a major problem. The Army fell to a strength of 12,000 officers and 125,000 men (compared to 3.5 million men in World War I). The National Guard was the Army's largest component until 1939.
    • (3) During the interwar years, the Army Air Corps received almost all of the very limited amount of new equipment.
    • (4) The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 limitation agreements limited the U.S. Navy.
    • (5) A number of features characterized U.S. military thought during the interwar years:
    • (a) The Army paid little attention to its trench warfare experience and instead practiced open warfare. Consistent with these plans, it considered tanks and aircraft as support weapons for infantry in the attack.
    • (b) The Army Air Corps, however, claimed to be a decisive force in future war. To prove that aircraft could be a decisive weapon, Brigadier General "Billy" Mitchell sank obsolete warships in peacetime tests. After publicly condemning U.S. military policy, Mitchell was court-martialed for insubordination. His supporters, however, expanded his ideas into a theory of strategic bombardment. This theory postulated that bombers could destroy enemy industries and quickly put an end to any war. To implement this theory, the Army Air Corps, under the guise of defending the U.S. coast in the 1930s, acquired aircraft, such as the B-17.
    • (c) U.S. Navy thinkers, predicting war with Japan, prepared for conflict through fleet exercises during the 1920s and 1930s. In them, the Navy developed aircraft carrier tactics, amphibious assault doctrine, and an ability to support warships and invasion fleets deployed across the Pacific Ocean. At this time, conventional theorists still predicted a decisive fleet action between surface warships. Nonetheless, the airplane, assault landing craft, and the submarine were the decisive weapons of Pacific naval engagements during World War 2.
  • b. Europe
    • (1) British military theorists Major General J. F. C. Fuller and Captain B.I. Liddell Hart projected the lessons learned and new technology of World War I into the future. Fuller developed tank tactics that foreign armies copied but which the British Army shelved for economic reasons. Liddell Hart accurately predicted that tanks, airplanes, motorized infantry, and self-propelled artillery would dominate future battlefields.
    • (2) The enormous casualties France suffered during World War I heavily influenced French military thought and practice. The French believed in the supremacy of the defense. They built the Maginot Line, a concrete defense along their common border with Germany. Units not garrisoning these forts constituted a reserve stationed behind the fortresses. However, the line had gaps in it. The French did not build northward along the common border with Belgium, in part, because they had a treaty with Belgium and depended on the Belgian fortifications along the Meuse River to extend the Maginot Line.
    • (3) Heinz Guderian and other German officers read the writings of Fuller and Liddell Hart. Guderian later expanded on the theories of the Britons, combining English ideas with infiltration tactics developed by Germany in World War I. Thus, Guderian helped create the German blitzkrieg (lightning war) doctrine, which relied on tanks and dive-bombers to rip through enemy defenses.
    • (4) Italian theorist Douhet and British theorist Air Marshal Hugh Trenchard believed that the bomber would destroy a nation's cities, its economy, and its will to fight. However, the German Air Force was developed primarily as a tactical weapon to support ground forces.
    • (5) During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), Germans, Italians, and Russians tested their theories of air power and tanks and their new equipment.
    • (6) Some members of the Japanese Navy saw the aircraft carrier as a decisive naval weapon in the 1920s and 1930s. They developed new tactics and aerial torpedoes, and trained the world's best carrier pilots. Japan used these tactics and pilots with stunning effect against the U.S. battle fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941.
• 3. OVERVIEW.
  • The period between the world wars--though dominated by the economic problems of the world depression and the rise of Nazism, communism, fascism, and Japanese expansionism--was, nonetheless, a time of theoretical and technological innovation in military affairs. The tactics and weapons that shaped World War II and changed the nature of armed conflict matured between 1919 and 1939.

LESSON 22-STUDENT LESSON SUMMARY

World War II: An Overview

• 1. There were many causes for World War 2.
  • a. Dissatisfaction with the World War I peace treaties was widespread.
  • b. The economic distress of the Great Depression made some nations resort to desperate expedients.
  • c. Disillusion with democracy growing from the World War I experience saw the growth of totalitarian alternatives, Communism, Fascism, and Nazism all of which endorsed violent political actions including war.
  • d. American isolationism reduced U.S. influence in world affairs and left a power vacuum.
  • e. The more immediate causes of the war were the small wars which preceded and led up to it.
  • (1) Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 upset Asian stability.
  • (2) The Italian attack on Ethiopia split the bickering allies of World War I (France, Britain, and Italy) and unsettled European political relations.
  • (3) The Spanish Civil War caused deep ideological rifts within the democracies and saw substantial intervention by totalitarian states.
  • (4) The Japanese invasion of China in 1937 set Japan and the U.S. on a collision course.
  • (5) The Russian-German Pact in August 1939 freed Hitler of concerns about a two-front war and allowed him to bring the full power of Germany against Britain and France.
• 2. Unlike the situation in World War I, the United States was pro-Allied from the beginning. However, this sympathy did not extend to entering the war.
• 3. The U.S. Army was unprepared for war and did not rush preparation when the war broke out.
• 4. Only after the fall of France did the U.S. begin serious preparations for war.
  • a. In early May 1940, Congress reduced the military appropriations bill of 1 billion dollars by 10 percent.
  • b. At the end of May, Congress passed, with one dissenting vote, a supplementary military appropriations bill of ten billion dollars.
  • c. In July, President Roosevelt nationalized the National Guard.
  • d. In August, Congress approved a draft.
• 5. Under George c. Marshall the Army began planning a million-man army.
  • a. Remembering the problems of World War II, Marshall sought to get the necessary equipment before calling up men.
  • b. However, political demands gave personnel increases first priority.
• 6. The U.S. also began planning for coalition warfare and offered Britain "all aid short of war.
• 7. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941, and German declaration of war, 11 December 1941, brought the United States fully into the war.
• 9. Managing an American military force of approximately 15 million, while coordinating with our allies, was a major unprecedented undertaking.
• 10. Before the war the U.S. prepared the color plans, contingency plans fighting Japan (orange) Britain (red).
• 11. After the outbreak of the war the U.S. turned to the Rainbow Plans, which prepared for coalition warfare.
• 12. The U.S. and British chiefs of staff met repeatedly during the war to prepare plans for future operations.
• 13. Major problems discussed at these conferences included.
  • a. The time, place, and force of a landing in Western Europe.
  • b. The resources allocated to the Mediterranean theater.
  • c. The requirements of the Pacific War.
  • d. Coordination with the Russians.
  • e. Allocation of manpower and supplies.
• 14. There were a number of meetings between the U.S. president and other heads of state to plan military operations and postwar settlements.
  • a. At Casablanca in 1942, the U.S. demanded unconditional surrender of the Axis Powers.
  • b. At Teheran in 1943, Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt met to plan a second front.
  • c. At Yalta in 1945 they met again to plan for postwar Europe and Russian entry into the Paclfic War.

LESSON 23: STUDENT LESSON SUMMARY

The War in the Pacific, 1941-1943

• 1. BACKGROUND. Japan began its expansionist program by seizing Manchuria in 1931. In 1937, it initiated a full-scale war in China, conquering one-third of the country by 1939. Japan then planned to expand its influence to encompass Southeast Asia, the Dutch East Indies, Burma, the Philippines, and the islands of the central Pacific. Behind this perimeter, it would defend its empire and control the natural resources of Asia. In 1941, this area was partially under the control of the United States, Great Britain, the Free Dutch, and France. Japanese designs on this area threatened war with all of these countries.
• 2. Japan planned surprise attacks to neutralize simultaneously the U.S. Pacific Fleet, the Philippines, and British Malaya. Then, with the bulk of Allied air and naval units out of action, the Japanese could rapidly mount operations to accomplish their objectives.
• 3. On 7 December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack against the U.S. fleet in the Hawaiian Islands at Pearl Harbor. This air strike from Japanese carriers sank 5 battleships, destroyed the bulk of land-based aircraft, and inflicted over 3,500 casualties. Japanese losses were twenty-nine planes and five midget and one regular-size submarines.
• 4. Air strikes in the Philippines destroyed most American aircraft on the ground. Several days later, the Japanese Army launched amphibious landings. American forces fought on Bataan peninsula until April and held Corregidor Island until May. All attempts to relieve the garrison there failed.
• 5. General Douglas MacArthur commanded the Philippine garrison until ordered to Australia to assume command of all Allied forces in the southwest Pacific area.
• 6. By May 1942, Japan had conquered French Indochina, Burma, Malaya, Borneo, the Philippines, and the Dutch East Indies and had begun operations in New Guinea.
• 7. The naval battles of the Coral Sea in May and Midway in June 1942 stopped further Japanese expansion. Carrier aircraft fought both battles--the first naval battles in history where the opposing fleets did not see each other. The Battle of Midway was a decisive victory for the United States, largely attributable to the United States' breaking of the Japanese codes.
• 8. In 1942, the Allies subdivided the Pacific Area Command into theaters, with the British retaining command in China-Burma-India and the United States in the remainder of the area (General MacArthur, southwest Pacific; Admiral Nimitz, central Pacific).
• 9. The Allied counteroffensive began at Guadalcanal in August 1942 and in New Guinea in September 1942. By the end of 1943, the Allies ended all threats to Australia and recaptured the bulk of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.
  • a. The Guadalcanal campaign was a toint operation with Navy, Marine, and Army elements fighting for six-months against stubborn Japanese resistance.
  • b. The United States followed the reconquest of Guadalcanal with new landings in the Solomon chain. The strategic benefits of these additional landings were questionable.
  • c. The Buna-Gona campaign was a joint and combined operation, with Australian forces serving under a U.S. commander, General Douglas MacArthur.
  • d. General MacArthur made new landings in New Guinea after the reconquest of Buna. The logistical and personnel shortages in the southwest Pacific did not prevent MacArthur's advance, although some later students believe that New Guinea was a strategic dead end.
• 10. THE NAVAL WAR. Two weapons dominated the Pacific naval war: the carrier and the submarine. U.S. carriers achieved ascendancy at Midway and dominated all fleet operations after 1943. U.S. submarines destroyed most Japan's merchant fleet and large numbers of warships. The Marines and the Army moved Allied bases closer to Japan, with amphibious assaults by the Marines on the islands of the central Pacific and Army landings behind the lines in the southwest Pacific area.
  • a. The development of fast carrier strike forces, combined with long-range land-based bombers, allowed the U.S. forces to attack major Japanese bases without seizing outlying strongpoints.of
  • b. The assault on Tarawa exhibited both the techniques and the perils of "island hopping"--the major strategic concept of the central Pacific offensive under Admiral Nimitz. 11. SOME KEY PERSONALITIES.
  • a. General Douglas MacArthur was the brilliant and controversial commander whose southwest Pacific campaigns were typified by the skillful use of amphibious landings and supporting air power.
  • b. Admiral Chester Nimitz was the commander of the largest naval force in history and oversaw the capture of the islands in the south and central Pacific.
  • c. Admiral William Bull" Halsey -was the commander of U.S. forces in the Guadalcanal campaign. He was one of the most aggressive and famous of the U.S. admirals.
  • d. General Claire Chennault was the U.S. Army Air Force general who formed the American volunteer group in China known as the Flying Tigers. His U.S. Fourteenth Air Force was the smallest and one of the most effective of the war's air units.

LESSON 24-STUDENT LESSON SUMMARY

World War II: The War Against Germany and Italy

(Matloff, chapter 22)

• 1. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. On 3 September, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany.
• 2. Germany's first blitzkrieg campaign conquered Poland in less than a month. The German Luftwaffe destroyed the Polish Air Force in the opening days of battle and then turned to attack Polish forces attempting to deploy. The jaws of two army groups--spearheaded by panzer (tank) and motorized divisions followed by slower conventional forces--encircled and annihilated the Polish Army.
• 3. The Nazis seized Norway and Denmark in April 1940 through a combination of amphibious and airborne (parachute) attacks. Hitler's fifth column of Nazi sympathizers helped erode resistance internally, as they had in Poland.
• 4. In May 1940, Hitler's forces facing Belgium and France totaled 122 divisions, 10 of which were panzer and 6 motorized rifle divisions. The Germans possessed some 2,500 tanks and 3,600 aircraft. The Allies had 129 divisions, 2,000 aircraft, and nearly 2,700 tanks. 5
• 5. Hitler planned to attack key points in Holland and Belgium using a small but potent airborne force plus some concentrated panzer and regular divisions. This attack, beginning on 10 May, seemed to duplicate the 1914 German invasion plan of France. The Allies rushed their mobile reserves to back their defenses. Simultaneously, the Germans launched the decisive attack from the center, through the Ardennes, spearheaded by Guderian's panzers. They penetrated the gap in the French defenses, outflanked the Maginot Line, and split the Allied front. Guderian's panzers then raced for the coast, cutting the Allied armies in half. The British subsequently withdrew the bulk of their army and a large number of French troops at Dunkirk. With the northernmost quarter of France and all of Belgium secure, the panzers now turned south, encircling the remnants of the French Army, which surrendered in large numbers. The troops in their fortress positions surrendered last.
• 6. The war in the west lasted only six weeks and proved the superiority of German strategy and their blitzkrieg tactics.
• 7. Hitler began the Battle of Britain by launching his German Luftwaffe against the Royal Air Force. His failure to establish air superiority over the English Channel, however, prevented a German invasion of Britain. Thereafter, Hitler turned to the Blitz, the terror bombing of British cities. The English use of radar and their ground-controlled interception of German bomber formations proved critical. The Battle of Britain, the first decisive campaign waged solely by aircraft, was one of the war's most important victories, ensuring the survival of England.
• 8. In late 1940, Britain took the offensive in the Middle East and drove the Italians from Libya. After achieving great success, the British met German forces under General Erwin Rommel, the "Desert Fox," sent to bolster the Italians. The war then became a seesaw mobile contest, although Rommel was badly outnumbered. The fighting lasted until 1943.
• 9. In April 1941, Hitler began a campaign in the Balkans, invading and quickly conquering Greece and Yugoslavia. He then seized the island of Crete with a parachute and glider assault group.
• 10. Hitler turned on his former ally, Russia, in June 1941, attacking the Russians with 162 divisions, spearheaded by 3,500 tanks. Despite inflicting massive losses and driving to within forty miles of Moscow, the Germans failed to defeat the Russians in the three to four months they thought it would take. The Germans gravely underestimated Russia's strength. The Russians subsequently counterattacked in a winter offensive, beginning a bloody campaign that would fatally drain German manpower.
• 11. The United States supported the Allied cause but attempted to avoid a combat role in the European war. The Lend-Lease Program, implemented in 1941, loaned the British war goods in return for bases in Bermuda and the Caribbean. But despite hopes of avoiding combat, in 1940, the nation introduced peacetime conscription to expand U.S. forces for a possible war.
• 12. THE BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC. Germany began the war with only fifty-seven submarines but immediately tried to isolate Britain. The submarine menace became less critical after 1943, when a joint convoy system, extensive use of aircraft, radio intercepts, and advanced radar technology began to take effect. 13. PLANS TO DEFEAT THE AXIS.
  • a. U.S. strategic planners thought it necessary to defeat Germany before concentrating on Japan. After the Pacific situation stabilized and became favorable for the Allies, the bulk of U.S. materiel and personnel went to the European Theater of Operations.
  • b. In 1942, the Americans pressed for a cross-Channel attack to land forces in France to fight the Germans. The British opposed the idea, saying that the Allies were not ready to launch the invasion. The Americans consented to invade North Africa instead, Roosevelt feeling a need to commit United States forces against the Germans and the necessity of supporting the Russians with a second front somewhere.
  • c. Roosevelt made the decision to invade North Africa in November 1942 over the objections of Chief of Staff George Marshall, who favored an early invasion of western Europe. The British had wanted to get some American troops into action in 1942 to give them battle experience and had been urging the United States to invade North Africa.
  • d. Churchill favored extensive Mediterranean operations against Europe's "soft underbelly," not the frontal assault on northwest Europe the Americans proposed.
  • e. The command structure for North Africa, with Major General Dwight Eisenhower commanding a joint-combined headquarters, was the precursor of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE).

LESSON 25: STUDENT LESSON SUMMARY

World War II in Europe, 1944-1945: Battles and Leaders

• 1. Following the capture of North Africa, the Allies exploited their success by invading Sicily in July 1943. Then, with Italy teetering, they invaded the mainland in September 1943. Italy surrendered but was immediately occupied by the Germans. The Italian campaign dragged on until the last days of the war against Germany, draining forces from both sides.
• 2. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Allied supreme commander in the North African and Mediterranean campaigns, became commander for the cross-Channel assault in January 1944. Named Overlord, this operation against the Normandy coast began in the spring of 1944.
• 3. On D-Day, 6 June 1944, 8 Allied divisions--including 3 airborne divisions, 5,000 ships, 11,500 aircraft, and 3,500 gliders--began the assault. Allied forces broke out of the Normandy area in late July 1944. They liberated most of France, Belgium, and Holland by September 1944. Then, severe supply shortages, caused by the rapid campaign, brought operations to a halt.
• 4. The Allied forces attempted a daring dash to secure a bridgehead over the Rhine and an entry into northern Germany in mid-September 1944. They dropped three airborne divisions to seize a series of bridges for the ensuing ground attack. The failure to break through to the last bridge at Arnhem, Holland, dashed hopes for an end to the fighting in Europe in 1944.
• 5. Though heavy and bloody fighting continued on the German border in October and November, the Allies made no substantial gains.
• 6. On 16 December 1944, Hitler launched a massive attack under cover of bad weather against the thinnest part of the American lines in the Ardennes Forest. This operation, the Battle of the Bulge, was Hitler's last attempt to split the Allied armies in two. It drove a fifty-mile bulge in the American lines. But although American losses were high, Hitler's were larger--and irreplaceable--and the German attack failed.
• 7. After clearing the Rhineland, the Allies crossed the Rhine River capturing a bridge at Remagen and making assault crossings and a two-division airborne drop. Two U.S. armies encircled the industrial Ruhr, capturing over 300,000 enemy troops. Allied forces then stopped at the Elbe River, linking up with advancing Russian forces.
• 8. The Russian Army assaulted Berlin in April. After Hitler's suicide, Germany surrendered unconditionally at General Eisenhower's headquarters, effective 8 May 1945.
• 9. THE WAR IN THE EAST.
  • a. The largest and bloodiest battles of World War II took place on the Eastern (Russian) Front.
  • b. Huge battles took place that depleted the equipment and personnel strength of the German Army. Despite its marked advantage in skill and quality of equipment, sheer attrition and the enervating effects of operating in Russia's vast space destroyed the Germans' ability to achieve a favorable decision.
  • c. The Russian Army then overran Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania, and eastern Germany, in addition to capturing Berlin.
• 10. STRATEGIC BOMBING OFFENSIVE, 1942-45.
  • a. Beginning in 1942, the Royal Air Force Bomber Command began an intensive campaign of night aerial bombardments against Germany's industrial cities. Unable to sustain the losses they incurred in daytime raids and incapable of achieving destruction of specific targets at night, the British attacks were area raids (no longer precision bombing) that attempted to destroy Germany's civilian housing, morale, and industrial plant areas. After 1943, these raids used incendiary bombs to burn large areas.
  • b. U.S. daylight precision bombardment began in earnest in mid-1943 and sought to destroy German industrial capacity by focusing on specific elements of the industrial system, such as the ballbearing plants. Heavy losses, however, demonstrated that German airspace was too dangerous for American bombers to traverse until the introduction of long-range escort fighters in 1944.
  • c. To support the Normandy invasion, target priorities shifted from emphasizing German cities and industries to the German transportation network, primarily in France. By isolating the battlefield, air power help prevent the Germans from reinforcing their troops in Normandy.
  • d. The Allies incurred heavy losses in the air war over Europe, suffering approximately 150,000 Allied air crewmen killed. In addition, ai raids killed about 600,000 German civilians.
• 11. LEADERSHIP DURING THE WAR IN EUROPE.
  • a. The German and Allied commands differed significantly in World War II. Hitler retained supreme command of all German forces and increasingly interfered at lower tactical levels as the war progressed. Hitler often bypassed the German command system when assigning responsibility or dealing with subordinates. The Allies' policy, initiated by the Combined Chiefs of Staff of Britain and the United States, resulted in policy directives to Allied Supreme Commander General Eisenhower.
  • b. Prominent among the war's generals were-
    • (1) General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme allied commander.
    • (2) Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, British general in Africa, Sicily, and Italy; land forces commander for D-Day; and the commander of the 21st Army Group, 1944-45.
    • (3) General Omar Bradley, who commanded U.S. ground forces in the Normandy invasion and the 12th Army Group, which reached 1.3 million men in size. Called the GI's general, he was often said to be the most popular general in the U.S. Army.
    • (4) General George S. Patton, who commanded U.S. Seventh Army in Sicily and U.S. Third Army in Europe, was a highly aggressive and controversial personality and Montgomery's archrival for the support of Eisenhower.
    • (5) General Carl Spaatz, who commanded U.S. Strategic Air Forces Europe, directed U.S. bomber offensives against Germany.

LESSON 26: STUDENT LESSON SUMMARY

World War II in the Pacific, 1944-1945: Battles and Leaders

• 1. The Twin Drives. Two simultaneous campaigns were waged after mid-1943. In one, MacArthur's ground forces leapfrogged along the New Guinea coast, always landing behind Japanese strongpoints. Despite a low priority in troops and ships, MacArthur's skillful use of amphibious landings, combined with land-based air support, was extremely successful and caused heavy Japanese losses with relatively light Allied casualties. In the other campaign across the central Pacific, Admiral Nimitz conducted Like MacArthur in the Southwest pacific, Admiral Nimitz bypassed and isolated the the main Japanese base at Truk in the Caroline Islands. However the great distaces involved necessitated frontal assaults on the heavily defended Japanese islands. American forces suffered heavy losses there, but by late 1944, they obtained air bases for U.S. heavy bombers. With the establishment of naval/air superiority in the Central Pacific, U.S. was not only moving closer to objectives like the Philippines, which was macArthur's goal, but also within bombing range of the Japanese home islands.
  • a) Central Pacific.
    • 1) The U.S. Navy thrust across the central Pacific began with the attack on Tarawa, one of the Gilbert Islands, in late November 1943.
    • 2) In February 1944, the United States completed the conquest of the Marshall Islands with the capture of Kwajalein and Eniwetok Islands.
    • 3) In June 1944, U.S. forces landed on Saipan and Guam in the Marianas, within bomber range of Japan. The U.S. Navy defeated the Japanese Navy when it attempted to relieve Saipan.
  • b) Southwest Pacific.
    • 1) In February 1944, MacArthur's forces seized the Admiralty Islands.
    • 2) In April, Allied forces seized the Hollandia area of New Guinea and by the end of July had completed the conquest of New Guinea.
    • 3) In September, MacArthur's forces seized Morotai in the Moluccas, while the Marines landed on Palau.
• 6. The Strategic debate over the Pacific Campaign in 1944.
  • A) Philipinnes Campaign Admiral Ernest King, chief of naval operations, opposed the Philippine invasion, preferring to invade Formosa. Roosevelt, however, supported MacArthur and ordered the invasion of the Philippines on 20 October 1944. Nimitz' forces from the central Pacific joined MacArthur for the invasion of the Philippines.
    • 1) The landing at Leyte initially went smoothly for the ground troops.
    • 2) The Battle of Leyte Gulf was a great victory for the U.S. Navy but ultimately came close to being a disaster for the landing forces.
    • 3) On 9 January 1945, the United States landed on Luzon, and by 4 March 1945, Manila was in American hands.
  • B) The Air War and the Central Pacific Campaign. U.S. heavy bombers began bombing Japan from China in late 1944 but were ineffective until the spring of 1945, partly because strong wind currents prevented precision bombing. General Curtis LeMay, directing B-29 operations, switched from targeting industrial plants and military bases to the low-level firebombing of Japanese cities in March 1945. The bombings heavily damaged sixty-six of sixty-nine major Japanese cities, crippling Japan's industrial power and eliminating its ability to sustain a war.
• 7. Conclusion---Closing in.
  

Peace Becomes Cold War, 1945-1950

• 1. The United States, at the end of World War II, was the most powerful country in the world and sole possessor of the Abomb. England, exhausted by war, could no longer hold its empire against the politically aroused populations of colonies like India. Russia, after the defeat of Germany, became the great power in Europe.
• 2. The United States realized it could not return to isolationism and sought to promote world peace through the United Nations.
• 3. Although the U.S. armed forces quickly demobilized, the nation assumed responsibilities, during and after World War II, that required the use of armed force. The Army's immediate postwar missions included occupation duty in Japan and Germany.
• 4. Congress created the U.S. Defense Department in 1947, unifying the three separate services under one civilian secretary. (The Air Force emerged from the old Army Air Force.) At the same time, Congress authorized the Joint Chiefs, CIA, and National Security Council.
• 5. U.S. foreign policy endeavored to prevent the spread of communism, as stipulated by NSC68. This policy paper, in 1950, proposed the deterrence of expansionism by maintaining atomic superiority and strong conventional forces.
• 6. The atomic bomb made Douhet's theory of destruction by air power a reality. Development of the B36 superbomber, with an intercontinental range increased by aerial refueling, meant that the United States could destroy any city in the world from the U.S. homeland. As a result, new strategic questions arose:
  • a. What should be the object of strategy if the armed services can totally annihilate an enemy?
  • b. What happened when the Soviets developed an Abomb and the United States lost its monopoly? (This happened in 1949.)
  • c. How could we use military force to respond to a threat but not use the ultimate weaponthe Abomb (which would invite annihilation of our own cities)?
• 7. The Navy developed supercarriers as a key naval weapon.
• 8. The Army and Navy generally viewed the Abomb as another tactical weapon, fearing its existence as a strategic weapon would jeopardize their own organizational reason for being.
• 9. Although not predicted, the United States soon entered an era of limited wars fought for political objectives short of absolute military victory. This situation developed from the need to avoid the use of atomic weapons.

LESSON 28: STUDENT LESSON SUMMARY

The Korean War, 1950-1953

• 1. North Korea's invasion of South Korea in June 1950 embroiled the United States in a land war in Asia.
• 2. The North Korean Army advanced relentlessly in the early days of the war, pushing U.S. and ROK defenders back into the Pusan Perimeter, a beachhead in southeast Korea. The United States rushed additional divisions to Korea along with a U.S. Marine brigade. All troops on the peninsula and in the surrounding naval sectors came under United Nations' control, with an American, General Douglas MacArthur, designated as the UN commander.
• 3. In a bold, strategic move, MacArthur launched an amphibious landing behind the North Korean Army at Inchon in September 1950. Its success nearly destroyed the North Korean Army. UN forces crossed the 38th Parallel into North Korea to complete their victory with vigorous pursuit before scattered enemy forces could reconstitute. In November 1950, as UN forces approached its border, China unexpectedly entered the war, throwing the UN forces back nearly 300 miles and inflicting heavy casualties. The UN could not restore the situation until the following spring.
• 4. President Truman relieved General MacArthur of his command in April 1951 for publicly disagreeing with Truman's decision to limit war aims to a restoration of the status quo. MacArthur, saying, There is no substitute for victory, advocated a military triumph over North Korea and the Chinese.
• 5. The war stalemated in the summer of 1951, as seesaw battles raged for Korean ridges. In July 1953, the war ended in an uneasy truce that remains in effect.
• 6. U.S. policymakers, believing that Europe was America's foremost concern, feared that the United States might weaken its commitment to NATO by too much involvement in Asian affairs. The United States did not want to expand the war to China nor did it want to resort to nuclear weapons. Korea ushered in an era of limited wars.