ABSTRACT

In early 1942, the United States found itself at war in the Pacific Ocean and Europe yet lacking the means to bring its armed power to bear in either theater. In prewar planning and consultations with the British, American strategists concluded that Germany must be defeated first. A strategic defense would prevail toward the Japanese home islands. The enormous expansion of American armed forces, coupled with the global expanse of the war, required highly complex and bureaucratic military agencies. The inability of Americans and Russians to agree on postwar settlements in Europe and Asia, plus a Communist triumph in the Chinese civil war in 1949, generated a Cold War which persisted for decades. The Berlin crisis of 1961-1962 led Kennedy to institute a partial reserve mobilization to demonstrate American firmness as the Soviets constructed a wall through the divided city.