Post by Tristan Herman on Jul 9, 2012 19:30:28 GMT
"Yesterday, December seventh, nineteen-forty-one: a date which will live in infamy..." --- Franklin Delano Roosevelt; Pearl Harbor Address to the United States of America
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was the nail in the coffin for the United States' maritime policy. No more neutrality. No more discretion. No more tip-toeing through diplomatic channels. It was time to go to war.
In truth, President Roosevelt had been holding off on an intervention in Europe in part only to the general consensus of the American public: remain neutral. Signs of his want to enter the war were transparent in many of his foreign dealings up until that fateful day in December. The Lend-Lease Bill and the Japanese oil embargo were the most prominent examples of this, with the former directly aiding the British, French, and Soviets.
With the official declaration of war by the United States on Japan, and the declaration from German and Italy proceeding on the twelfth, the United States geared up for war.
On the home front, the US objective was clear: focus all industry and infrastructure on the war effort. It was a task the US population took to heart, starting the engine on what came to be known world-wide as the "Arsenal of Democracy". No nation on earth could ever compete with the power of American production. Within the first twelve months of war, factories had produced over twenty-five thousand tanks. By comparison, the Third Reich only produced just over six thousand. And what the US gained in production, they matched in training, producing one of the largest, most effective fighting forces the world has ever seen.
The United States would fight in every theater of the war at some point, although combat on the Ostfront (or East Front) was limited to air support. Some it's first land operations took place in North Africa, fighting alongside the British "Desert Rats" against Field Marshall Erwin Rommel's "Afrika Korps"; some of the hardiest and most experienced troops the German Army had to offer, consisting of troops drawn from the invasion of France and Belgium, as well as the invasion of Poland; the initial conflict of the second World War.
Following the invasion of Africa, US forces, alongside their Allies, invaded Italy with the start of Operation Husky. France followed with Operation Overlord, made famous by the Operation Neptune component (the landings at Normandy). Meanwhile, American forces conducted an island-hopping campaign in the Pacific, spearheaded, almost exclusively, by the United States Marines and Navy. While costly, the campaign was effective.
American forces, with their English, French, Canadian, Australian, New Zealander, South American, and British allies would go on to liberate Europe in 1945, and eventually descend into the Cold War in 1947, as the Soviets began to partition off Eastern Europe as part of the communist state known as the USSR.
If you have a request for information on US involvement in a specific Campaign, operation, or battle, post below, and I will take the time to write it up in this thread.
