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[Paula Yacovone]

Introduction World War II was the largest and most violent armed conflict in thehistory of mankind. However, the half century that now separates us fromthat conflict has exacted its toll on our collective knowledge. While WorldWar II continues to absorb the interest of military scholars and historians,as well as its veterans, a generation of Americans has grown to maturitylargely unaware of the political, social, and military implications ofa war that, more than any other, united us as a people with a common purpose. Highly relevant today, World War II has much to teach us, not only aboutthe profession of arms, but also about military preparedness, global strategy,and combined operations in the coalition war against fascism. During thenext several years, the U.S. Army will participate in the nation's 50thanniversary commemoration of World War II. The commemoration will includethe publication of various materials to help educate Americans about thatwar. The works produced will provide great opportunities to learn aboutand renew pride in an Army that fought so magnificently in what has beencalled "the mighty endeavor." A Brief History of the U.S. Army in World War II highlights themajor ground force campaigns during the six years of the war, offers suggestionsfor further reading, and provides Americans an opportunity to learn aboutthe Army's role in World War II. This brochure was prepared at the U.S.Army Center of Military History by Wayne M. Dzwonchyk (Europe) and JohnRay Skates (Pacific). I hope this absorbing account of that period willenhance your appreciation of American achievements during World War II. M. P. W. StoneSecretary of the Army ii Contents
The War in Europe 3 The Outbreak of War 4 The United States Enters the War 8 The North African Campaign 10 Sicily and Italy 15 The Cross-Channel Attack 17 Battles of Attrition 21 The Battle of the Bulge 22 The Final Offensive 23 The Pacific War 29 Japan on the Offensive 31 The Tide Turns 34 Twin Drives to American Victory 39 Aftermath 43 Maps Allied Operations in World War II, 1942-1945 12 The Pacific and Adjacent Theaters, 1942-1945 36 Further Readings 45 iii "OMAHA Beach" by Gary Sheahan. This was the one sectorof the Normandy coast where the German defenses had begun to reach theexpectations of Field Marshal Rommel, and here the Allied invasion of Francefaced its greatest crisis. (Army Art Collection) The War in Europe World War I left unresolved the question of who would dominate Europe. The tremendous dislocations caused by the war laid the groundwork for the collapse of democratic institutions there and set the stage for a second German attempt at conquest. A worldwide depression that began in 1929 destroyed the fragile democratic regime in Germany. In 1933 Adolf Hitler led to power the National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) Party, a mass movement that was virulently nationalistic, antidemocratic, and anti-Semitic. He ended parliamentary government, assumed dictatorial powers, and proclaimed the Third Reich. The Nazi government increased the strength of the German armed forces and sought to overturn the Versailles Treaty, to recover German territory lost at the peace settlement, and to return to the so-called Fatherland German-speaking minorities within the borders of surrounding countries. The ultimate goal of Hitler's policy was to secure "living space" forthe German "master race" in eastern Europe. A gambler by instinct, Hitlerrelied on diplomatic bluff and military innovation to overcome Germany'sweaknesses. He played skillfully on the divisions among the European powersto gain many of his aims without war. With the Italian Fascist dictatorBenito Mussolini he announced a Rome-Berlin alliance (the Axis) in 1935.Meanwhile, in the Far East, the Japanese-the only Asian industrial power-covetedthe natural resources of China and Southeast Asia, but found their expansionblocked by European colonial powers or by the United States. Having seizedManchuria in 1931, they began a war against China in 1937. The League ofNations failed to counter effectively Japanese aggression in Manchuriaand an Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Soon Germany, Italy, and Japan becameallies, facing Western democratic governments that wanted to avoid anotherwar and the Soviet Union whose Communist government was widely distrusted. The people of the United States, having rejected the Versailles Treatyand the Covenant of the League of Nations after World War I, remained largelyindifferent to most international concerns. They firmly discounted thelikelihood of American involvement in an 3 other major war, except perhaps with Japan. Isolationist strength inCongress led to the passage of the Neutrality Act of 1937, making it unlawfulfor the United States to trade with belligerents. American policy aimedat continental defense and designated the Navy as the first line of suchdefense. The Army's role was to serve as the nucleus of a mass mobilizationthat would defeat any invaders who managed to fight their way past theNavy and the nation's powerful coastal defense installations. The NationalDefense Act of 1920 allowed an Army of 280,000, the largest in peacetimehistory, but until 1939 Congress never appropriated funds to pay for muchmore than half of that strength. Most of the funds available for new equipmentwent to the fledgling air corps. Throughout most of the interwar period,the Army was tiny and insular, filled with hard-bitten, long-serving volunteersscattered in small garrisons throughout the continental United States,Hawaii, the Philippines, and Panama. Yet some innovative thinking and preparation for the future took placein the interwar Army. Experiments with armored vehicles and motorization,air-ground cooperation, and the aerial transport of troops came to nothingfor lack of resources and of consistent high-level support. The Army did,however, develop an interest in amphibious warfare and in related techniquesthat were then being pioneered by the U.S. Marine Corps. By the outbreakof war the Signal Corps was a leader in improving radio communications,and American artillery practiced the most sophisticated fire-directionand -control techniques in the world. In addition, war plans for variouscontingencies had been drawn up, as had industrial and manpower mobilizationplans. During the early 1930s Col. George C. Marshall, assistant commandantof the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, had earmarked a numberof younger officers for leadership positions. Despite such preparations,the Army as a whole was unready for the war that broke out in Europe on1 September 1939. The Outbreak of War During March 1938 German troops had occupied Austria, incorporatingit into the Reich. In September Hitler announced that the "oppression"of ethnic Germans living in Czechoslovakia was intolerable and that warwas near. England and France met with Hitler (the Munich Pact) and compelledCzechoslovakia to cede its frontier districts to Germany in order to secure"peace in our time." Peace, however, was only an illusion. During March1939 Hitler seized the rest of Czechoslovakia by force of arms and thenturned 4 his attention to Poland. Although Britain and France had guaranteedthe integrity of Poland, Hitler and Josef Stalin, dictator of the SovietUnion, signed a secret, mutual nonaggression pact in August 1939. Withthe pact Stalin bought time to build up his strength at the expense ofBritain and France, and Hitler gained a free hand to deal with Poland.When Hitler's army invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, World War II began. While German forces overran western Poland, Soviet troops entered fromthe east to claim their portion of that country. France and Britain declaredwar on Germany and mobilized their forces. The subsequent period of deceptiveinactivity, lasting until spring, became known as the Phony War. Nothinghappened to indicate that World War II would differ significantly in styleor tempo from World War I. But the years since 1918 had brought important developments in the useof tanks. A number of students of war-the British Sir Basil Liddell Hartand J. F. C. Fuller, the Frenchman Charles de Gaulle, the American GeorgeS. Patton, and the Germans Oswald Lutz and Heinz Guderian-believed thatarmored vehicles held the key to restoring decision to the battlefield.But only the Germans conceived the idea of massing tanks in division-sizeunits, with infantry, artillery, engineers, and other supporting arms mechanizedand all moving at the same pace. Moreover, only Lutz and Guderian receivedthe enthusiastic support of their government. In the spring of 1940 their theories were put to the test as Germanforces struck against Norway and Denmark in April; invaded the Netherlands,Belgium, and Luxembourg in May; and late in the same month broke througha hilly, wooded district in France. Their columns sliced through to theEnglish Channel, cutting off British and French troops in northern Franceand Belgium. The French Army, plagued by low morale, divided command, andprimitive communications, fell apart. The British evacuated their forcesfrom Dunkerque with the loss of most of their equipment. The Germans enteredParis on 14 June, and the French government, defeatist and deeply dividedpolitically, sued for an armistice. The success of the German Blitzkriegforced the remaining combatants to rethink their doctrine and restructuretheir armies. With his forces occupying northern France and with a puppet French governmentestablished in the south, Hitler launched the Luftwaffe againstthe airfields and cities of England to pave the way for an invasion. Britain'ssurvival hung by a thread. From July to October 1940, while German landingbarges and invasion forces waited on the Channel coasts, the Royal AirForce, greatly outnumbered, 5 drove the Luftwaffe from the daytime skies in the legendary Battleof Britain. At sea the British Navy, with increasing American cooperation,fought a desperate battle against German submarine packs to keep the NorthAtlantic open. British pugnacity finally forced Hitler to abandon all plansto invade England. In February Hitler sent troops under Lt. Gen. Erwin Rommel to aid the Italians who were fighting against the British in North Africa. German forces coming to the aid of the Italians in the Balkans routed a British expedition in Greece, and German paratroopers seized the important island of Crete. Then, in June 1941, Hitler turned against his supposed ally, the Soviet Union, with the full might of the German armed forces. Armored spearheads thrust deep into Soviet territory, driving towardLeningrad, Moscow, and the Ukraine and cutting off entire Soviet armies.Despite tremendous losses, Russian military forces withdrew farther intothe country and continued to resist. Nazi expectations of a quick victoryevaporated, and the onset of winter caught the Germans unprepared. Thirtymiles short of Moscow their advance ground to a halt, and the Soviets launchedmassive counterattacks. The Germans withstood the counterattacks and resumed their offensivethe following spring. The Soviets, now locked in a titanic death struggle,faced the bulk of the German land forces-over two hundred divisions. Thefront stretched for 2,000 miles, from the Arctic Circle to the Black Sea.Soon casualties ran into the millions. Waging war with the implacable ruthlessnessof totalitarian regimes, both sides committed wholesale atrocities-mistreatmentof prisoners of war, enslavement of civilian populations, and, in the caseof the Jews, outright genocide. In the United States preparations for war moved slowly. General GeorgeC. Marshall took over as Chief of Staff in 1939, but the Army remainedhard pressed simply to carry out its mission of defending the continentalUnited States. Defending overseas possessions like the Philippines seemeda hopeless task. In early 1939, prompted by fears that a hostile powermight be able to establish air bases in the Western Hemisphere, thus exposingthe Panama Canal or continental United States to aerial attack, PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt launched a limited preparedness campaign. The powerof the Army Air Corps increased; Army and Navy leaders drafted a new seriesof war plans to deal with the threatening international situation. Thefocus of military policy changed from continental to hemisphere defense. After the outbreak of war in Europe the President proclaimed a limitedemergency and authorized increases in the size of the Regu- 6 "Barrage Balloon" by Alexander Brook. The reported ability ofballoons to interfere with low-level bombardment in Great Britain and Germanyspurred the Army to develop a barrage balloon force for continental defense.(Army Art Collection) lar Army and the National Guard. Congress amended the Neutrality Actto permit munitions sales to the French and British, and large orders fromthem stimulated retooling and laid the basis for the expansion of war productionin the future. The Army concentrated on equipping its regular forces asquickly as possible and in 1940 held the first large-scale corps and armymaneuvers in American history. The rapid defeat of France and the possiblecollapse of Britain dramatically accelerated defense preparations. Rooseveltdirected the transfer of large stocks of World War I munitions to Franceand Britain in the spring of 1940 and went further in September when heagreed to the transfer of fifty over-age destroyers to Britain in exchangefor bases in the Atlantic and Caribbean. In March 1941 Congress repealedsome provisions of the Neutrality Act. Passage of the Lend-Lease Act, whichgave the President authority to sell, transfer, or lease war goods to thegovernment of any country whose 7 defenses he deemed vital to the defense of the United States, spelledthe virtual end of neutrality. The President proclaimed that the UnitedStates would become the "arsenal of democracy." In the spring of 1941 Americanand British military representatives held their first combined staff conferencesto discuss strategy in the event of active U.S. participation in the war,which seemed increasingly likely to include Japan as well as Germany. Thestaffs agreed that if the United States entered the war the Allies shouldconcentrate on the defeat of Germany first. The President authorized activenaval patrols in the western half of the Atlantic, and in July, Americantroops took the place of British forces guarding Iceland. Meanwhile, General Marshall and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson madeplans to expand the Army to 1.5 million men. On 27 August 1940, Congressapproved inducting the National Guard into federal service and callingup the reserves. A few weeks later the lawmakers passed the Selective Serviceand Training Act, the first peacetime draft in American history. By mid-1941the Army had achieved its planned strength, with 27 infantry, 5 armored,and 2 cavalry divisions; 35 air groups; and a host of support units. Butit remained far from ready to deploy overseas against well-equipped, experienced,and determined foes. The United States Enters the War On 7 December 1941, while German armies were freezing before Moscow,Japan suddenly pushed the United States into the struggle by attackingthe American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Four days later Hitlerdeclared war on the United States. President Roosevelt called on Congressfor immediate and massive expansion of the armed forces. Twenty years ofneglect and indifference, however, could not be overcome in a few days. Helpless as American garrisons in the Pacific fell to the Japanese inthe spring of 1942, military leaders in Washington worked feverishly tocreate a headquarters that could direct a distant war effort and to turnthe fledgling ground and air units into viable, balanced fighting forces.In early 1942 the Joint Chiefs of Staff emerged as a committee of the nation'smilitary leaders to advise the President and to coordinate strategy withthe British. In March the War Department General Staff was reorganizedand the Army divided into three major commands: the Air Forces, GroundForces, and Service Forces. Thirty-seven Army divisions were in some stateof training, but only one was fully trained, equipped, and deployable byJanuary 8 "Ex-Luxury Liner" by Barse Miller. The largest liners used bytheArmy, the British ships Queen Elizabeth and QueenMary, couldeach carry up to 15,000 troops. (Army Art Collection) 1942. Army planners of the time estimated that victory would requirean Army of nearly 9 million men, organized into 215 combat divisions, estimatesthat proved accurate regarding overall manpower but too ambitious for the90 divisions that eventually were established and supported on far-flungbattlefields. Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair, head of Army Ground Forces and an ardentadvocate of mobile war, oversaw the development of armored and airbornedivisions. He directed the restructuring of existing organizations as well,turning the old World War I "square" division based on four infantry regimentsinto a lighter, more maneuverable triangular division with three infantryregiments. A serious and continuing shortage of Allied shipping space placedabsolute limits on the size and capabilities of Army units. New tablesof organization stressed leanness and mobility, sometimes at the expenseof fighting power and endurance. Billeting, training areas, and equipmentwere all in short supply. American industry had to support the nation'sAllies as well as its own military expansion. Britain needed large amountsof munitions and equipment; and lend-lease aid, including tens of thousandsof trucks and other vehicles and equipment, played 9 an important part in mechanizing the Soviet Army. Amphibious warfarerequired large numbers of landing craft and support vessels, yet to bebuilt. The first U.S. troops arrived in the British Isles in January 1942,but nearly a year passed before they went into action against the Axis.Meanwhile, air power provided virtually the only means for the Allies tostrike at Germany. The Royal Air Force began its air offensive againstGermany in May 1942, and on 4 July the first American crews participatedin air raids against the Continent. In early 1942 British and American leaders reaffirmed the priority ofthe European theater. General Marshall argued for an immediate buildupof American forces in Great Britain, a possible diversionary attack onthe Continent in the fall, and a definite full-scale invasion in 1943.The British greeted this program with caution. Remembering the enormouscasualties of World War I, they preferred to strike at German power inthe Mediterranean, rather than risk a direct confrontation in haste. Althoughacknowledging the eventual necessity for an invasion of France, they hopedto defer it until much later. Instead, Prime Minister Winston S. Churchillsuggested Anglo-American landings in North Africa, bringing the Frencharmies in France's colonies there back into the war on the side of theAllies and aiding the British in their fight against the Italians and theforces of German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Months of lively debate followed,but ultimately President Roosevelt directed General Marshall to plan andcarry out amphibious landings on the coast of North Africa before the endof 1942. The North African Campaign Marshall ordered Lt. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, then in England, to take command of the invasion. Meeting the November deadline required improvisation of every kind Army troops were hurriedly trained in amphibious warfare. Technicians modified commercial vessels to serve as landing ships. While General Eisenhower monitored operations from Gibraltar, American forces, convoyed directly from the United States, landed along