![]() ![]() Shortly following the first major declassification of U.S. ![]() relationship deepening after this earth-shattering event, scholars sensibly viewed the development of American grand strategy at the time as a process defined in part by its connections to its British counterpart. strategic thinking in this period, particularly between the Fall of France in the spring of 1940 and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, with negative repercussions for grasping how American grand strategy developed before the United States was thrust into the war and during the immediate months afterward.Īfter Germany’s lightning attacks on Western Europe and the Fall of France in May-June 1940, Britain was left as the only major power the United States could conceivably partner with in a potential war with the Axis. This has led historians to mischaracterise and misrepresent U.S. When this subject has been studied, it has not received the investigative depth one would imagine for such a topic. military officials and strategic planners envisioned fighting a global war against the Axis before the United States became an active belligerent in World War II has received remarkably little scholarly attention over the past several decades. military planners, backed by their superiors, laid out their views on what American grand strategy ought to be if and when their nation went to war against the German-led Axis powers. 2 Going far beyond the president’s original directive, top U.S. Two months later, the president instead received the ‘Joint Board Estimate of United States Overall Production Requirements’, a report labelled by a Roosevelt speechwriter as ‘one of the most remarkable documents of American history’ because of its farsighted strategic outlook and mostly uncanny ability to predict how the Allies could defeat their adversaries. 1 To Roosevelt, these were mainly industrial and logistical questions focused on munitions and military equipment aimed at bolstering U.S. ![]() Eying how the German assault might change the nature of the war in Europe, Roosevelt asked Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Navy Secretary Frank Knox to direct their departments to explore the United States’ production requirements for defeating ‘our potential enemies’ if it entered the war. Roosevelt sent an urgent message to his secretaries of war and the navy. On 9 July 1941, around two weeks after Nazi Germany nullified the Molotov-Ribbentrop nonaggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union, President Franklin D. ![]()
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