U.S. Strategy in World War II

...From the overweening American policy of unconditional surrender in Europe, Wedemeyer was now plunged into the essential vacuum of policy which lurked not far beneath the surface confusion of contradictory American activities in China...

...has a message...

...Once committed to war by what he does not consider an unprovoked Japanese attack, Wedemeyer undertook the thankless task of trying to win over Winston Churchill and the British Chiefs of Staff to the American position on strategy...

...among other things, Greece was small and its Government cooperated with its American military advisors...

...Still a relatively young man upon his retirement with the rank of a full genera], Wedemeyer fortunately alludes only briefly to the 17 years he endured as a lieutenant—the customary penance inflicted upon those misguided enough to remain professional soldiers in a democracy at peace...

...above all, unlike Stilweli, Wedemeyer from the start considered the Chinese Communists devoted acolytes of Marx and Stalin rather than the only American hope for an efficient and aggressive Chinese government...

...Revieived by Trumbull Higgins Author, "Winston Churchill and the Second Front" A PRIMARY VALUE of military memoirs for the initiate is that they help to redress the reticence of presumably objective official histories with the necessary balance of the subjective, the candid and the audible conclusion...

...For the public, too, Wedemeyer Reports...

...The vast bulk of Wedemeyer's prospective 200 American divisions were scheduled to cross the English Channel, beginning in May 1943, upon the then likely assumption that the Soviet Union would not withstand Hitler's recent assault...

...Wedemeyer probably overestimates the significance of the concessions Roosevelt and Churchill granted at Yalta to win an eventually redundant Soviet entry into the war against Japan, but his foresight and decision in moving Chiang's unwieldy forces down to the Chinese coast following V-J Day certainly was inspired...

...More distrustful of the British than General George Marshall, Wedemeyer did not put much faith in the brief British agreement in the spring of 1942 to mount a major attack against the Germans across the Channel in 1943...

...General Staff in 1941, Wedemeyer—now a major— was given the opportunity to develop production requirements geared to a long-range, pre-determined strategy of concentration upon an increasingly probable German enemy...

...His final report on China and Korea buried by an embarrassed Administration, Wedemeyer himself returned to the U.S...

...it is an enthralling account of high-level strategic planning which may grant the general reader some perception into the actual processes by which war—any war—is conducted from the top...

...Rather curiously, however, in early 1943 Wedemeyer himself had not fully realized that as an inherent consequence of the fruition of Churchill's strategy in the Mediterranean, no cross-Channel operation could now be staged before 1944...

...should "not become an active belligerent until we have created the means by which we can accomplish our national objectives...

...ground general nominally in command of all Chinese and American forces in the Far East, detested Chiang and was committed both by his instructions and his inclinations to sponsoring as vigorous as possible a land struggle against the Japanese...

...But the disintegration of American military power following the Axis surrender and the overwhelming disinclination of the Administration in Washington (any Administration, and not just a Democratic one, as Wedemeyer does not always make clear) to undertake vast commitments in China rendered all his endeavors fruitless...

...Although generous regarding several State Department aides who had unquestionably been misled by the Chinese Communists, Wedemeyer does not fully recognize the arguments behind the Truman Administration's attitude that further support for the Nationalists was simply money down the drain...

...In striking contrast with his feelings toward Churchill, Wedemeyer came to sympathize with Chiang Kaishek's desperate attempts to maintain his weak regime in power by avoiding unnecessary conflict with the Japanese...

...Unlike Stilwell, Wedemeyer got on with his fellow iconoclast, Admiral Mountbatten, in India...

...Finally rising to the status of captain in 1936, the now almost middle-aged Wedemeyer had the good fortune to be posted to the famous German Kriegsakaderaie for two immensely profitable years, years which laid the foundation for his subsequent rapid promotion...

...The often-cited analogy with Greece is not entirely valid...

...Here, General Claire Chennault's emphasis on air power played into the Gimo's hands as much as did Chennault's personal devotion to Chiang...

...While at that time Wedemeyer's isolationist views caused him some difficulty with the FBI, his arguments against an American involvement in the war were military in conception...

...In common with many of his professional colleagues before Pearl Harbor, Wedemeyer held that the U.S...

...Antagonizing his old patron, General Marshall, with his advice that what Chiang needed was more American aid rather than more Communists in his Government, Wedemeyer witnessed the gradual disappearance of the feeble Chinese liberal center between the brutal and effective Communist Left and the corrupt and incompetent Nationalist Right...

...Wedemeyer was jeopardizing his career as a Staff planner by arguing that the British limited conception of war was laying the real basis for a subsequent Russian domination of much of the European continent...

...Few American officers have earned more for their country: few have written more illuminating memoirs...

...Appallingly miscast in what was, in essence, a diplomatic post, Stilweli was eventually replaced by Wedemeyer, an almost ideal choice in almost hopeless circumstances...

...But unlike Roosevelt, Churchill was no amateur at war, if not always quite so artful a dodger as Wedemeyer suggests...

...Ultimately, of course, Stilwell's combat infantryman's horse-sense proved right on one aspect of this matter: the Chinese Communists would make fax better fighting men than the Nationalist—if not on our side...

...in a mood of chagrin and sorrow, his recommendations ignored and his career halted just short of a well-deserved tenure as Chief of Staff...

...constitutes (with the single exception of Robert Sherwood's Roosevelt and Hopkins) the most valuable account and analysis of American grand strategy during and immediately after the Second World War...

...In fact, his largely unsuccessful efforts to beg, borrow or steal seven American divisions from General Douglas MacArthur and the Joint Chiefs in order to resist a Chinese Communist infiltration south from Manchuria foreshadows to an extraordinary extent the future American dilemma in China...

...When the complex course of strategy can deceive the professionals, the errors of amateurs such as Roosevelt are not surprising...

...Properly predicting that the Allies could never "drive rampant'' up the Italian Boot, as Churchill had proclaimed- Wedemeyer, in criticizing the Prime Minister's whole Mediterranean outlook, stressed that it was logistically impossible to beat the Russians to Eastern Europe through the Alps or the Balkans...

...In Berlin, Wedemeyer became acquainted with new standards of military pedagogery, with the orthodox theories of strategic concentration propounded by Clausewitz, with the more heterodox dootrines of Mac-Kinder and Haushofer and, most remarkably, with several future members of the German military conspiracy against Hitler...

...Eased out to Asia" to please the British, Wedemeyer found himself in that graveyard of American reputations, the unbelievably complicated China-Burma-India theater...

...Long before Churchill's belated anti-Communist stand in late 1944...

...Wedemeyer's warnings and suggestions for Korea were equally insightful...

...On the other hand, "Vinegar" Joe Stilwell, the U.S...

...Notwithstanding a certain diffuseness in organization, Wedemeyer Reports...

...Again he observed that strategy is the tool of policy...

...Placed as a consequence of these experiences at a War Plans Division desk on the U.S...

...President Roosevelt's belief that he was something of a strategist himself, combined with the influence of what Wedemeyer terms the "many drugstore strategists" among the President's political intimates, enabled Churchill to push through the British policy of "periphery-pecking" in the Mediterranean...

...Indeed, Wedemeyer is almost unique in pointing out how shamelessly the British took out of context the American proposals for a highly dubious 1942 cross-Channel invasion, "using the obvious arguments against it [in 1942] to discredit any and all planning for an invasion of Northern France" in 1943...

...unlike Stilweli, Wedemeyer did not rely on opening a land route through Burma to hail out the Chinese...