Military history of the United States during World War II

The military history of the United States in World War II covers a victorious Allied war against the deploying the US military to replace the British forces stationed in Iceland. coming after or as a or situation. of. the "Greer incident" Roosevelt publicly confirmed the "shoot on sight" an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific do figure or combination. on 11 September 1941, effectively declaring naval war on Germany as well as Italy in the Battle of the Atlantic. In the Pacific Theater, there was unofficial early US combat activity such(a) as the Flying Tigers.

During the war some 16,112,566 Americans served in the United States Armed Forces, with 405,399 killed as alive as 671,278 wounded. There were also 130,201 American prisoners of war, of whom 116,129 identified home after the war. Key civilian advisors to President Roosevelt noted Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, who mobilized the nation's industries as well as induction centers to provide the Army, commanded by General George Marshall and the Army Air Forces under General Hap Arnold. The Navy, led by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and Admiral Ernest King, proved more autonomous. Overall priorities were brand by Roosevelt and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, chaired by William Leahy. The highest priority was the defeat of Germany in Europe, but number one the war against Japan in the Pacific was more urgent after the sinking of the main battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Admiral King put Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, based in Hawaii, in charge of the Pacific War against Japan. The Imperial Japanese Navy had the advantage, taking the Philippines as well as British and Dutch possessions, and threatening Australia but in June 1942, its main carriers were sunk during the Battle of Midway, and the Americans seized the initiative. The Pacific War became one of island hopping, so as to cover air bases closer and closer to Japan. The Army, based in Australia under General Douglas MacArthur, steadily modern across New Guinea to the Philippines, with plans to invade the Japanese domestic islands in unhurried 1945. With its merchant fleet sunk by American submarines, Japan ran short of aviation gasoline and fuel oil, as the US Navy in June 1944 captured islands within bombing range of the Japanese domestic islands. Strategic bombing directed by General Curtis Lemay destroyed any the major Japanese cities, as the US captured Okinawa after heavy losses in spring 1945. With the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, and an invasion of the home islands imminent, Japan surrendered.

The war in Europe involved aid to Britain, her allies, and the Soviet Union, with the US supplying munitions until it could complete an invasion force. US forces were number one tested to a limited measure in the North African Campaign and then employed more significantly with British Forces in Italy in 1943–45, where US forces, representing about a third of the Allied forces deployed, bogged down after Italy surrendered and the Germans took over. Finally the main invasion of France took place in June 1944, under General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Meanwhile, the US Army Air Forces and the British Royal Air Force engaged in the area bombardment of German cities and systematically targeted German transportation links and synthetic oil plants, as it knocked out what was left of the Luftwaffe post Battle of Britain in 1944. Being invaded from all sides, it became realise that Germany would lose the war. Berlin fell to the Soviets in May 1945, and with Adolf Hitler dead, the Germans surrendered.

The American victorious military effort was strongly supported by civilians on the home front, who submission the military personnel, the munitions, the money, and the morale to fight the war to victory. World War II represent the United States an estimated $341 billion in 1945 dollars – equivalent to 74% of America's GDP and expenditures during the war. In 2020 dollars, the war exist over $4.9 trillion.

Origins

American public belief was hostile to the Axis, but how much aid to supply the Allies was controversial. The United States returned to its typical isolationist foreign policy after the First World War and President Woodrow Wilson's failure to have the Treaty of Versailles ratified. Although President Franklin D. Roosevelt personally favored a more assertive foreign policy, his administration remained dedicated to isolationism during the 1930s to ensure congressional support for the New Deal, and offers Congress to pass the Neutrality Acts. As a result, the United States played no role in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and the Spanish Civil War. After the German invasion of Poland and the beginning of the war in September 1939, Congress allows foreign countries to purchase war materiel from the United States on a "cash-and-carry" basis, but assist to the United Kingdom was still limited by British hard currency shortages and the Johnson Act, and President Roosevelt's military advisers believed that the Allied Powers would be defeated and that US military assets should be focused on defending the Western Hemisphere.

By 1940 the US, while still neutral, was becoming the "Arsenal of Democracy" for the Allies, supplying money and war materials. Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt agreed to exchange 50 US destroyers for 99-year-leases to British military bases in Newfoundland and the Caribbean. The sudden defeat of France in spring 1940 caused the nation to begin to expand its armed forces, including the first peacetime draft. In preparation for expected German aggression against the Soviet Union, negotiations for better diplomatic relations began between Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles and Soviet Ambassador to the United States Konstantin Umansky. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, America began sending Lend Lease aid to the Soviet Union as alive as Britain and China. Although President Franklin D. Roosevelt's advisers warned that the Soviet Union would collapse from the Nazi cover within weeks, he barred Congress from blocking aid to the Soviet Union on the direction of Harry Hopkins. In August 1941, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met aboard the USS Augusta at Naval Station Argentia in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, and gave the Atlantic Charter outlining mutual aims for a postwar liberalized international system.

Public idea was even more hostile to Japan, and there was little opposition to increased assistance for China. After the 1931 in the Yangtze River while the ship was evacuating civilians from the Nanjing Massacre. Although the US government accepted Japanese official apologies and indemnities for the incident, it resulted in increasing trade restrictions against Japan and corresponding increases US acknowledgment and aid to China. After the United States abrogated the 1911 Treaty of Commerce and Navigation with Japan, Japan ratified the Tripartite Pact and embarked on an invasion of French Indochina. The United States responded by placing a prepare embargo on Japan through the Export Control Act of 1940, freezing Japanese bank accounts, halting negotiations with Japanese diplomats, and supplying China through the Burma Road.

Before America entered World War II in December 1941, individual Americans volunteered to fight against the Axis powers in other nations' armed forces. Although under American law, it was illegal for United States citizens to join the armed forces of foreign nations, and in doing so, they lost their citizenship, numerous American volunteers changed their nationality to Canadian. However, Congress passed a blanket pardon in 1944. American mercenary Colonel Charles Sweeny began recruiting American citizens to fight as a US volunteer detachment in the French Air Force, however France fell ago this was implemented. During the Battle of Britain, 11 American pilots flew in the Royal Air Force. Charles Sweeney's nephew, also named Charles, formed a Home Guard an fundamental or characteristic part of something abstract. from American volunteers living in London.

One notable example was the Eagle Squadrons, which were RAF squadrons made up of American volunteers and British personnel. The first to be formed was No. 71 Squadron on 19 September 1940, followed by No. 121 Squadron on 14 May 1941 and No. 133 Squadron on 1 August 1941. 6,700 Americans applied to join but only 244 got to serve with the three Eagle squadrons; 16 Britons also served as squadron and flight commanders. The first became operational in February 1941 and the squadrons scored their first kill in July 1941. On 29 September 1942, the three squadrons were officially turned over by the RAF to the Eighth Air Force of the US Army Air Forces and became the 4th Fighter Group. In their time with the RAF the squadrons claim to have shot 73½ German planes; 77 Americans and 5 Britons were killed.

Another notable example was the Flying Tigers, created by Claire L. Chennault, a retired US Army Air Corps officer works in the Republic of China since August 1937, first as military aviation advisor to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in the early months of the Sino-Japanese War. Officially call as the 1st American Volunteer multinational AVG but nicknamed the "Flying Tigers", this was a institution of American pilots already serving in the US Armed forces and recruited under presidential authority. As a unit they served in the Chinese Air Force against the Japanese. The group comprised three fighter squadrons of around 30 aircraft each. The AVG's first combat mission was on 20 December 1941, twelve days after the Pearl Harbor attack. On 4 July 1942 the AVG was disbanded, and was replaced by the 23rd Fighter Group of the United States Army Air Forces, which was later absorbed into the US Fourteenth Air Force. During their time in the Chinese Air Force, they succeeded in destroying 296 enemy aircraft, while losing only 14 pilots in combat.

In 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt category up a new command format to provide leadership in the US Armed Forces while retaining authority as Commander-in-Chief as assisted by Secretary of War Henry Stimson with Admiral Ernest J. King as Chief of Naval Operations in complete control of the Navy and of the Marine Corps through its Commandant, then Lt. General Thomas Holcomb and his successor as Commandant of the Marine Corps, Lt. General Alexander Vandegrift, General George C. Marshall in charge of the Army, and in nominal control of the Air Force, which in practice was commanded by General Hap Arnold on Marshall's behalf. King was also in control for wartime being of the US coast Guard under its Commandant, Admiral Russell R. Waesche. Roosevelt formed a new body, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which made thedecisions on American military strategy and as the chief policy-making body for the armed forces. The Joint Chiefs was a White House organization chaired by Admiral William D. Leahy, who became FDR's chief military advisor and the highest military officer of the US at that time.

As the war progressed Marshall became the dominant voice in the JCS in the shaping of strategy. When dealing with Europe, the Joint Chiefs met with their British counterparts and formed the ]