Defense of the Americas.pdf

Introduction

World War II was the largest and most violent armed conflict in

the history of mankind. However, the half century that now sepa-

rates us from that conflict has exacted its toll on our collective

knowledge. While World War II continues to absorb the interest of

military scholars and historians, as well as its veterans, a generation

of Americans has grown to maturity largely unaware of the political,

social, and military implications of a 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 about the profession of arms, but also about military pre-

paredness, global strategy, and combined operations in the coalition

war against fascism. During the next several years, the U.S. Army

will participate in the nation’s 50th anniversary commemoration of

World War II. The commemoration will include the publication of

various materials to help educate Americans about that war. The

works produced will provide great opportunities to learn about and

renew pride in an Army that fought so magnificently in what has

been called “the mighty endeavor.”

World War II was waged on land, on sea, and in the air over sev-

eral diverse theaters of operation for approximately six years. The

following essay is one of a series of campaign studies highlighting

those struggles that, with their accompanying suggestions for fur-

ther reading, are designed to introduce you to one of the Army’s signifi-

cant military feats from that war.

This brochure was prepared in the U.S. Army Center of Military

History by Charles E. Kirkpatrick. I hope this absorbing account of

that period will enhance your appreciation of American achieve-

ments during World War II.

M. P. W. Stone

Secretary of the Army

American soldiers stood ready in hastily erected defenses throughout

the Western Hemisphere in the months before the attack on Pearl Har-

bor, waging war mainly on boredom and insects. With the outbreak of

war, guarding the harbors, anchorages, and bases of America’s outpost

line assumed greater importance because the country needed time to

build an army and to mobilize for total war. In this painting, Coast Ar-

tillery troops from Puerto Rico man a 155-mm. gun on a “Panama”

mount on the island of Trinidad, in the West Indies. (U.S. Army Art

Collection)

Defense of the Americas

7 December 1941–2 September 1945

The defense of the Americas was the longest, most uneventful,

and least heralded military campaign the United States conducted in

World War II. Yet it was fundamental to Allied victory against the

Axis coalition, for it guaranteed the security of the base that Presi-

dent Franklin D. Roosevelt earlier termed the “arsenal of democ-

racy.” It likewise guarded the Americas from attack while the

United States raised and trained its armed forces.

Of all the Allied nations, the United States possessed the great-

est economic and industrial power, and thus held the keys to victory.

By 1945 American industry had manufactured enormous masses of

military materiel, equipment that gave Allied soldiers on every bat-

tlefront a decisive advantage over their enemies. U.S. production

lines, for example, turned out 88,410 tanks and self-propelled guns,

as compared to only 46,857 built in Germany. Aircraft plants as-

sembled 283,230 planes of all types, while Germany could manage

only 107,245. The situation in the Pacific naval war was even more

striking. After the Pearl Harbor attack, the aircraft carrier emerged

as the principal capital ship. Between 1942 and 1945, Japan com-

missioned 13 of them, while American shipbuilders launched 137.

American industry, safe in its continental bastion, unquestionably

made an overwhelming contribution to the eventual victory.

While industry expanded to meet the needs of supplying lend-

lease and placing the military on a war footing, the Army com-

menced its own prodigious expansion from a force of less than

200,000 men to one of more than 8 million. Between the Pearl Har-

bor attack and the Allied invasion of North Africa a year later, the

small existing professional cadre absorbed, equipped, trained, and

organized an Army that finally amounted to 89 divisions and a large

air force. Meanwhile, the services forged the logistical bases and

ocean-spanning supply lines to sustain those divisions and air forces

wherever they had to fight, and shipyards laid the keels for the thou-

sands of merchant ships the vast logistical organization required.

Arsenal of Democracy. American production lines built tanks to equip

an expanding Army, as well as for Lend-Lease. (DA photograph)

During that critical year of preparation and indeed throughout

the entire war, the physical security of the continental United States

was virtually absolute. Not once during the war years did Axis forces

interrupt American industry as it supplied its own armed forces and

those of its principal Allies. Nor did Americans ever, after the few

weeks of panic that followed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,

live in fear of invasion. Not once did foreign attack interfere with the

training and organization of troops for foreign service. By achieving

security within the Western Hemisphere, the United States was able

to concentrate on the offensive very soon after the Japanese attacks

in Hawaii and the Philippines. Thus the importance of the American

theater totally transcended its prosaic conduct.

Strategic Setting

The prospects for American defense were extremely good because

of the fortunate geographic position of the United States and its hemi-

spheric neighbors. Separated from potential European and Asian ag-

gressors by thousands of miles of ocean, the nation could expect ample

warning of any attack. It was also clear that, despite recent impressive

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