Europe first

• 1. Introduction

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  Europe first named a strategy the United States never quite followed in its own opening moves. In the first six months after the US entered World War II in December 1941, its army sent more than 300,000 soldiers to the Pacific. Fewer than 100,000 went to Europe in that same span. Yet Europe first, also called Germany first, was the policy the United States and the United Kingdom had agreed upon. It called for pouring the greater share of Allied strength into defeating Nazi Germany first. A smaller force would hold the line against Japan in the Pacific. Only after Germany fell would the full Allied war machine turn toward Japan. So why did the numbers point one way while the policy pointed the other? And how long did that contradiction last before the two finally matched?

• 2. Forging The Agreement

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  The Fall of France in 1940 left the United Kingdom facing Germany alone. German forces had overrun most of Western Europe within weeks, and Britain had no continental ally left standing. Germany's planned invasion, Operation Sea Lion, never happened. It was averted by Germany's failure to win air superiority in the Battle of Britain and by its clear inferiority at sea. At the same time, war with Japan in East Asia looked increasingly likely. Though the United States had not yet entered the war, it met with British officials several times to plan a joint strategy. Their report from the ABC-1 conference, dated the 29th of March 1941, set out two strategic objectives. The first was the early defeat of Germany as the predominant member of the Axis, with the principal US military effort exerted in the Atlantic and European area. The second was a strategic defensive in the Far East.

  Hitler might crush the Soviet Union and turn Europe into an unconquerable fortress if American attention shifted fully to the Pacific, or so the United Kingdom feared. Japan's attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor, on the 7th of December 1941, changed none of this thinking in Washington. Churchill hurried to Washington immediately afterward for the Arcadia Conference, determined to make sure the Americans held firm to Europe first.

  In 1941, Roosevelt appointed John Gilbert Winant as ambassador to Britain, replacing Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., who had favored appeasing Germany. Historian Lynne Olson's 2010 book, Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour, describes Winant's arrival as a dramatic change in the American stance in London. That same spring, W. Averell Harriman served Roosevelt as a special envoy to Europe, helping coordinate the Lend-Lease program. The two countries reaffirmed their position plainly: notwithstanding the entry of Japan into the war, their view remained that Germany was still the prime enemy and her defeat was the key to victory, and that once Germany was defeated, the collapse of Italy and the defeat of Japan would follow. Winant stayed at his post in London until he resigned in March 1946, nearly a year after the fighting in Europe had ended.

• 3. Plan Versus Practice

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  Before Pearl Harbor, in 1940, the US military had proposed to Roosevelt a plan combining a Europe-first push with a Pacific holding action. When Germany declared war on the United States on the 11th of December 1941, Washington faced a real choice about where to send its resources. Japan had already struck US territory directly, and its navy threatened more of it in ways Germany's limited surface fleet could not. Still, planners considered Germany the more dangerous threat to Europe, given its geographic closeness to the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union.

  Chief of Naval Operations Harold Rainsford Stark had anticipated this dilemma before Pearl Harbor, in what became known as the Plan Dog memo. It argued for concentrating on victory in Europe while staying on the defensive in the Pacific. Despite reassurances given to the British, Washington's immediate concern in practice was Japan. General George Marshall later explained the shift plainly: "we had a fair understanding of what we had best do rather than the necessity of engaging in prolonged conversations... This understanding, which included a recognition that Germany was the main enemy and that the major effort would be made initially in Europe, was obviously not applicable in the present situation. Of first importance now was the necessity to check the Japanese."

  Marshall and other American generals pushed for an invasion of northern Europe in 1943, an idea the British flatly rejected. After Churchill pressed instead for a landing in French North Africa in 1942, Marshall proposed something drastic to Roosevelt. He suggested abandoning the Germany-first strategy entirely and taking the offensive in the Pacific instead. Roosevelt disapproved the idea, saying it would do nothing to help Russia. With his backing, and Marshall unable to change British minds, Operation Torch was scheduled in July 1942 for later that year. Europe first stayed the official policy for the rest of the war, though its companion terms, holding action and limited offensive, kept shifting in meaning as US commanders and Allied leaders reinterpreted them conference after conference. Even in the war's later stages, the Pacific and European theaters competed intensely for the same ships, planes, and troops.

  Operation Torch would land American troops in North Africa, not northern Europe, the very delay Marshall's push for 1943 had tried to avoid.

• 4. Navy Versus Army

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  Fleet Admiral Ernest King, head of the US Navy, was a genuine believer in Europe first, despite what the British assumed. His aggressive instincts would not let him leave Atlantic resources idle when they could be used in the Pacific instead. He doubted the British would ever agree to a cross-Channel invasion. King once complained that the Pacific deserved 30 percent of Allied resources but was getting only 15 percent. His combined influence with General Douglas MacArthur helped push more resources toward the Pacific, partly because King and Churchill simply did not get along.

  General Hastings Ismay, Churchill's chief of staff, summed up King in blunt terms: "tough as nails and carried himself as stiffly as a poker. He was blunt and stand-offish, almost to the point of rudeness. At the start, he was intolerant and suspicious of all things British, especially the Royal Navy; but he was almost equally intolerant and suspicious of the American Army. War against Japan was the problem to which he had devoted the study of a lifetime, and he resented the idea of American resources being used for any other purpose than to destroy Japanese. He mistrusted Churchill's powers of advocacy, and was apprehensive that he would wheedle President Roosevelt into neglecting the war in the Pacific."

  At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke accused King of favoring the Pacific war, and the argument turned heated. US General Joseph Stilwell described the clash: "Brooke got nasty, and King got good and sore. King almost climbed over the table at Brooke. God, he was mad. I wished he had socked him."

  In February 1943, one of the few wartime opinion polls found that 53 percent of Americans called Japan the chief enemy, against 34 percent for Germany. A later poll found 82 percent of Americans believed the Japanese were more cruel at heart than the Germans. As a result, American resources devoted to defeating Japan initially outpaced those sent to Europe. The country's first major offensive of the war came in the Pacific, at Guadalcanal in August 1942. Australian forces fought in parallel, pushing back the Japanese in the Kokoda Track Campaign in New Guinea.

  Guadalcanal and Kokoda were only the opening moves in a Pacific campaign that would keep demanding ships, planes, and troops for years to come.

• 5. The Ledger

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  Three US Army divisions reached Australia and New Zealand in February and March 1942, sent there at Churchill's request. Their arrival let seasoned Australian and New Zealand troops stay deployed in the Middle East instead of returning home to defend their own countries. Through this deployment, the United States actually served the Europe-first strategy by freeing those experienced troops to keep fighting German forces.

  By December 1943, the United States had deployed 1,873,023 men against Japan compared with 1,810,367 against Germany, a strikingly close balance. It also had 7,857 aircraft and 713 warships committed against Japan, versus 8,807 airplanes and 515 warships against Germany.

  Early in 1944, the buildup of American forces for the invasion of France finally tipped that balance toward Europe. Europe first stopped being just a stated goal and became, for the first time, an operational reality. Even so, the United States still found the resources to mount major Pacific operations that same year. Its forces took Saipan in June, Guam in July, and Peleliu in September, then landed at Leyte in the Philippines in October.

  Through 1944 and 1945, the balance of American resources shifted decisively toward Europe. By the war's end there, the US Army fielded 47 divisions in Europe against 21 Army divisions and 6 Marine Corps divisions in the Pacific. 78 percent of Army and Army Air Force manpower stood against Germany, compared with 22 percent facing Japan. Plans for the invasion of Japan called for transferring 15 of those European divisions, plus the Eighth Air Force, to the Pacific.

  Historian H. P. Willmott argued that the United States committed little more than a quarter of its total war effort against Japan. That figure leaves out a detail from official US statistics: 70 percent of the Navy and the entire Marine Corps were in the Pacific. So was 22 percent of the Army, still deployed there at the moment Germany surrendered in May 1945.