Victory plan

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The Victory Plan , also called the Victory Program (actually called the Joint Board Estimate of the United States Over-all Production Requirements ), was a strategic document of the United States Armed Forces from 1941. In it, based on an assessment of the national goals in Second World War and the strategies used to realize it , estimates of the size of the US armed forces in the event of involvement in the war against the Axis powers were made in order to be able to coordinate the armaments efforts of the US economy on this basis. The part of the plan that concerned the Army Ground Forces (titled Ultimate Requirements Study, Estimate of Army Ground Forces ) was largely drawn up by Major Albert Wedemeyer in the War Plans Division (WPD) of the General Staff of the US War Department in the summer of 1941 . The Army Air Forces document became known as AWPD / 1 .

background

At the beginning of World War II in 1939, the United States was a subordinate power from a military point of view with a standing army of around 200,000 men. However, the successes of the European Axis powers Germany and Italy from 1939 to spring 1941 as well as the latent threat to American interests in the Asia-Pacific region from expansionist Japan allowed the United States to enter World War II earlier for the military planners and political leadership or later appear to be inevitable. The basis for American military planning in this period was the Protective Mobilization Plan of 1939, which initially only provided for an increase in active army strength to over a million men.

On April 18, 1941, War Department Undersecretary Robert P. Patterson addressed a memorandum to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson , in which he urged a realistic formulation of US goals with regard to the war in Europe. The lending and leasing law passed by Congress in February 1941 threatened to overturn plans for the military equipment of the enlarged US Army. Patterson called for a decision on the production targets of the US defense industry and made it unequivocally clear that he saw US involvement in the war as a likely future scenario. Two weeks after the memorandum, Stimson asked Chief of Staff George C. Marshall to work towards a joint conference of the armed forces, the Maritime Commission and the Office of Production Management . It was not until July 9, however, that US President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a definitive directive to Secretary of State for Army and Navy Affairs Stimson and Knox to determine the production capacity of military equipment necessary for victory over the potential Enemies of the US would be necessary.

Army plans

By this time, Major Wedemeyer, an employee of the Army's War Plans Division, had already begun what would later become known as the Victory Program on behalf of Marshall . Wedemeyer's self-defined work program comprised four main points:

  1. Determination of US National Goals Regarding War
  2. Determination of the strategies to be used for implementation
  3. Determination of the required military strength
  4. Determination of the requirements for the composition, equipment and training of these forces

Wedemeyer was able to rely on the help of many employees of the War Plans Division in his work, although he is considered the main author of the plan. According to the Rainbow 5 war plan, the United States' objective was the elimination of the European dictatorial regimes in cooperation with Great Britain and the defense against Japanese expansion plans. To achieve these goals, a strategy was envisaged that shifted from defending the western hemisphere and the outer territories of the United States to offensive operations against the European Axis powers, while at the same time engaging in defensive behavior against Japan in the Pacific region. Wedemeyer assumed July 1, 1943 as the earliest date of offensive operations against the axis.

On the basis of statistical data from earlier wars, Wedemeyer subsequently determined the mobilization potential of the USA. With a mobilization rate of around 10%, which should not be exceeded, and a population of 140 million in the USA, he came to a number of 12 to 14 million military personnel. These were then transferred to the armed forces, whereby the Navy had already announced a need of around 4 million men. This left over 8 million for the Army (which the Army Air Corps was then part of). Of this, just over 2 million were reserved for the Army Air Corps (or the Army Air Forces , as they were called from June 1941). In its final version, Wedemeyer's plan called for an army of around 6.75 million soldiers. With a ratio between combat and rear troops of 1: 1 (which later turned out to be much too low), this was enough for the formation of 215  divisions .

As a next step, Wedemeyer tried to determine the composition of the ground troops. He proceeded from the military strength of the potential enemies of the USA and its possible allies and calculated that in the worst case, a defeat of the Soviet Union by 1943, the combined strength of the USA and Great Britain and its Commonwealth would not be sufficient to cope with a numerical one Superiority of 2: 1 to go on the offensive. For this reason, he suggested setting up a highly mechanized armed force that would be adequately supported by air units capable of compensating for this disadvantage through highly mobile warfare. According to his plans, of the 215 divisions, no fewer than 61 should be  armored divisions and as many motorized divisions. In addition, the formation of ten paratrooper and as many mountain fighter divisions was planned. There should also be plenty of anti-tank and anti-aircraft units .

The troops should be divided into several task forces and a central reserve. The 1st , 3rd and 4th US Army for operations overseas and two smaller groups for Brazil and Colombia - Ecuador - Peru were envisaged as task forces . The US external areas and bases as well as Alaska were to be defended by relatively small forces of no more than 350,000 men.

On September 10, 1941, the plan and its facilities were handed over by Marshall to Secretary of War Stimson. Two weeks later, on September 25, the President received the consolidated proposals from the War and Naval Departments.

Press leak

In the period before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the American public was largely isolationist and opposed to entering the war. As early as November 1941, isolationists had spread the word that the US Army was planning to send a military force to Africa. These rumors were immediately denied by Chief of Staff Marshall. On December 4th, three days before Pearl Harbor, an article appeared in the Chicago Tribune, and later in other newspapers, in which the well-informed authors described parts of the program. Secretary of War Stimson chose to face the allegations in a press conference on December 5th. He presented the program as an unfinished study that only included possible contingency plans and denied that it was a US government-authorized program.

implementation

Although many of the plan's predictions were not fulfilled (instead of over 200, only about 90 divisions were actually deployed later), Wedemeyer estimated the overall strength of the US Army with remarkable accuracy. At its peak, the strength of the Army (including Army Air Forces) was just under 8.2 million men, compared to 8.8 million under the Victory Plan. The discrepancy in the number of divisions is explained by a wrong approach of the so-called division slice , the relation between the number of immediate combat troops and that of logistical and support units. According to the circumstances (long connecting lines), the latter were considerably more numerous than Wedemeyer assumed. The difficulties in providing space for the passage across the Atlantic prevented the use of mechanized units on the scale suggested by Wedemeyer. Instead of 61 armored divisions, only 16 were set up, and mechanized divisions were completely dispensed with. Anti-aircraft and anti-tank units were also much smaller than assumed in the Victory Plan.

The time frame adopted by Wedemeyer for the start of the offensive against the European Axis powers also turned out to be on the whole correct. The Torch Operation in North Africa began in November 1942 and the Italian campaign was the first European (side) front was in July 1943 with the invasion of Sicily opened. The belated opening of a second main front in Europe (alongside the Eastern Front ; Operation Overlord in June 1944) is mainly explained by the delaying tactics of the British as the most important ally.

literature

  • Charles E. Kirkpatrick: An Unknown Future and a Doubtful Present: Writing the Victory Plan of 1941. Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington DC 1992 ( online ).
  • James Lacey: Keep From All Thoughtful Men: How US Economists Won World War II. Naval Institute Press, 2011, ISBN 978-1-61251-034-7 .
  • John J. McLaughlin: General Albert C. Wedemeyer: America's Unsung Strategist in World War II. Casemate Books, 2012. ISBN 978-1-61200-069-5 .
  • Mark A. Stoler: Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and US Strategy in World War II. UNC Press Books, 2003, ISBN 0-8078-5507-3 .
  • Mark Skinner Watson: Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations. Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington DC 1991 ( online ).

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