Europe first

Europe first, also known as Germany first, was the key element of the grand strategy employed by the United States and the United Kingdom during World War II. According to this policy, the United States and the United Kingdom would use the preponderance of their resources to subdue Nazi Germany in Europe first. They would also fight a holding action against Japan in the Pacific, using fewer resources. After the defeat of Germany—considered the greatest threat to Great Britain—all Allied forces could be concentrated against Japan.

Background

United Kingdom

Germany was the United Kingdom's primary threat, which escalated after the Fall of France, which saw Germany overrunning all of the Allies in Western Europe, leaving the United Kingdom alone. Germany's planned invasion, Operation Sea Lion, was averted due to their failure to establish air superiority in the Battle of Britain. America, in ABC-1 agreement with British, had adopted the grand strategy of "getting Germany first". If the United States was diverted from its main focus in Europe to the Pacific (Japan), Hitler might crush both the Soviet Union and Britain, and would then rise as the unconquerable fortress in Europe.

Most of the aircraft in Britain's colonies were of obsolete types, as modern designs such as the Supermarine Spitfire were badly needed for home defense. As a result, the British lacked the resources to achieve air superiority in the Far East. The drive to tighten air defenses was dulled because the Allies' underestimated the performance of Japanese aircraft such as the A6M Zero.

First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound had originally decided that no capital ships could be spared to reinforce Singapore, as too many of them would have to be deployed in the Far East to counter the Japanese Navy, leaving an insufficient number to deal with Europe. That shortfall would have to be made up by the US agreeing to deploy most of its battleships in the Atlantic.

Against Admiralty planning, Prime Minister Winston Churchill urged the reinforcement of Singapore after several British naval successes were achieved in 1941. These included the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck, which ended the threat of heavy surface warships against Atlantic convoys, and the Battles of Taranto and Cape Matapan, which gave the Allies the upper hand over the Italian Navy in the Mediterranean Theater. A compromise was made to send two capital ships and an aircraft carrier, but Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk. Strategists had known that the British flotilla on its own could not make much impact, and it was always assumed that they would be joined by ships of the US Pacific fleet which included eight battleships at Pearl Harbor.

United States

When Japan attacked the United States, the United Kingdom had already been fighting in Europe for over two years, and had few resources to spare to protect far-flung colonies.

When Germany declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, the United States faced a decision about how to allocate resources between these two separate theaters of war.

On the one hand, Japan had attacked the United States directly at Pearl Harbor, and the Japanese Navy threatened United States territory in a way that Germany, with a limited surface fleet, was not in a position to do. On the other hand, Germany was universally considered the stronger and more dangerous threat to Europe because only Great Britain and the Soviet Union remained un-occupied by Nazi Germany, Germanys geographical proximity to the UK and the Soviet Union was therefore a greater threat to their survival

Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, American planners foresaw the possibility of a two-front war. Chief of Naval Operations Harold Rainsford Stark authored the Plan Dog memo, which advocated concentrating on victory in Europe while staying on the defensive in the Pacific. This memo laid the basis for the "Europe first" policy.

Agreement

Soon after the declaration of war, the United States and the United Kingdom agreed at the Arcadia Conference on the "Europe first" strategy, and the United States committed to sending its army and air force to fight Germany in Europe and Africa as soon as those forces were ready. The campaign against Japan would be focused on halting Japanese expansion until the war on Germany was complete, at which time the full power of the United Kingdom, the United States, and eventually the Soviet Union could be turned against Japan. This strategy would concentrate on what was perceived as the strongest of the Axis Powers, and would prevent a German victory that might knock the United Kingdom or the Soviets out of the war.

Opposition

The "Europe First" strategy did not go along well with factions of the US military, driving a wedge between the Navy and the Army. While USN Fleet Admiral Ernest King was a strong believer in "Europe First", contrary to British perceptions, his natural aggression did not permit him to leave resources idle in the Atlantic that could be utilized in the Pacific, especially when "it was doubtful when — if ever — the British would consent to a cross-Channel operation". King once complained that the Pacific deserved 30% of Allied resources but was getting only 15%. In spite of (or perhaps partly because of) the fact that the two men did not get along, the combined influence of King and General Douglas MacArthur increased the allocation of resources to the Pacific War.

General Hastings Ismay, chief of staff to Winston Churchill, described King as:

tough as nails and carried himself as stiffly as a poker. He was blunt and stand-offish, almost to the point of rudeness. At the start, he was intolerant and suspicious of all things British, especially the Royal Navy; but he was almost equally intolerant and suspicious of the American Army. War against Japan was the problem to which he had devoted the study of a lifetime, and he resented the idea of American resources being used for any other purpose than to destroy Japanese. He mistrusted Churchill's powers of advocacy, and was apprehensive that he would wheedle President Roosevelt into neglecting the war in the Pacific.

At the Casablanca Conference, King was accused by Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke of favoring the Pacific war, and the argument became heated. The combative General Joseph Stilwell wrote: "Brooke got nasty, and King got good and sore. King almost climbed over the table at Brooke. God, he was mad. I wished he had socked him."

Consequences

Initially, few new resources were committed to the Far East after Pearl Harbor and the Fall of Singapore. Japanese forces essentially went undefeated for six months after Pearl Harbor as they conquered Southeast Asia and several Pacific islands, threatening Australia. The Allies were largely caught off guard by the rapid Japanese expansion, with their remaining cruisers and destroyers in the Far East all but wiped out in the Battle of the Java Sea. The British had withdrawn from the Indian Ocean citing superior Japanese carrier forces.

While freed up from the Pacific and responsibilities to the allies, many Royal Navy capital ships were then tied up in the Mediterranean and Arctic.

The Soviet Union focused almost entirely on the Eastern Front, repelling the Axis invasion and eventually conquering the Eastern European countries, ultimately driving towards Germany. The Soviets only agreed near the end of the war to invade Japanese possessions in China and Manchukuo.

Japan's decisive defeat by the United States at the Battle of Midway, involving the loss of four Japanese fleet carriers and a significant number of trained aircrews, crippled its offensive capability and ended plans for eastern expansion. Nonetheless, the Japanese continued their invasion moves in the South Pacific.

Up to this point, the Allies had been on the defensive in the Pacific. King advocated (with Roosevelt's tacit consent) the invasion of Guadalcanal. When General Marshall resisted this line of action (as well as who would command the operation), King stated that the Navy (and the Marines) would then carry out the operation by themselves, and instructed Admiral Chester Nimitz to proceed with the preliminary planning. King eventually won the argument, and the successful invasion went ahead with the backing of the Joint Chiefs. Not only was it the first time that the Japanese lost ground during the War, but the momentum placed the Allies on the offensive. Australian war historians held Admiral King in high regard for his attention to the Pacific Theatre.

Unlike the British and Soviets, the United States was willing to wage war offensively on both the Pacific and European fronts without diverting resources from either side. Most of the US carriers, battleships, and cruisers were deployed against Japan. Germany's surface fleet was small and the escort ships used in the Second Battle of the Atlantic were mostly destroyers and destroyer escorts to counter the U-boat threat. The Pacific War could be prosecuted successfully with well placed ground troops, usually Marines, though this was also because US Army General George C. Marshall resisted sending troops to the Pacific, leaving operations like Guadalcanal entirely to the Navy and Marines. Old second-rate battleships remained in the Atlantic theatre, provided bombardment support for the D-Day landings, which were carried out by the British, Canadian and US Armies.

By the end of 1942, the US had suffered heavy losses in carriers and cruisers in the Pacific (as had the Japanese naval vessels) as a result of the Battles of Coral Sea, Midway, and the prolonged campaigns of attrition around Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands. Nonetheless, the Pacific Theater was far from neglected, as shipbuilding programs were accelerated after Pearl Harbor, intended not only replace the early war losses, but also to give the US an insurmountable material advantage. The new ships were ready starting in early 1943, particularly the many carriers of the Essex-class. There were few trade-offs that the US Navy was forced to make, the only notable one was the cancellation of the Montana-class battleships as such ships were less important than they were pre-war, and as this freed up shipyards to construct the more urgently needed aircraft carriers, amphibious and anti-submarine vessels.

The surrender of Italy in 1943 enabled the transfer of some Allied carriers and battleships to the Indian Ocean, where they could launch strikes against Japanese conquered possessions in Southeast Asia. However, the Royal Navy had to keep most of its key units at home to maintain a strong presence in the Arctic, being tied down by Nazi Germany's last capital ship, the German battleship Tirpitz. After a series of sorties in 1944 finally resulting in the sinking of Tirpitz, then the British were able to transfer carriers and battleships to the Pacific.

By the time Germany was defeated, the Allies had liberated Burma, the Philippines, and a string of island bases leading up to the home islands of Japan, including Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The U.S. started a massive reallocation of Army troops to the Pacific to prepare for the invasion of Japan, known as Operation Downfall, but during preparations Japan surrendered following detonation of atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki and invasion by Soviet forces in China and Manchukuo.

British/Commonwealth involvement in the Pacific

The "Europe First" policy had political implications, as it limited the employment of British and Empire forces in the Pacific. The Australian Government had sought U.S. military assistance in 1942, when it was faced with the possibility of Japanese invasion, and while Australia had made a significant contribution to the Pacific War, it had never been an equal partner with its U.S. counterparts in strategic decision-making. While General MacArthur had more Australian than US forces under his command in 1942, it has been claimed that he nonetheless decreed that all Australian victories would be reported as "Allied victories", while American victories would be reported as American. It is also a widely-held view that, from mid-1943 onwards, MacArthur confined the Australian Army divisions under his command to tough and largely irrelevant actions, while reserving the more prestigious actions for US troops, resulting in enduring antipathy towards MacArthur in Australia.

It was argued that a British presence would act as a counter-balance to the powerful and increasing U.S. presence in the Pacific, and the Australians would warmly welcome the British Pacific Fleet when they established their main base in Sydney. The measure was forced on Churchill by the British Chiefs of Staff, not only to re-establish British presence in the region, but to mitigate any perception in the U.S. that the British were doing nothing to help defeat Japan. However, Admiral Ernest King and General George C. Marshall had continually resisted operations that would assist the British agenda in reclaiming or maintaining any part of its pre-war colonial holdings in the Pacific or the eastern Mediterranean. King was adamant that naval operations against Japan remain 100% American, and angrily resisted the idea of a British naval presence in the Pacific at the Quadrant Conference in late 1944, citing (among other things) the difficulty of supplying additional naval forces in the theater. For much the same reason, General Henry Arnold resisted the offer of RAF units in the Pacific. Roosevelt, however, overruled King and allowed British Empire forces to deploy in the Pacific.

Despite King's reservations, the British Pacific Fleet did acquit itself sufficiently in the Pacific, as the armoured flight decks of their aircraft carriers appeared to hold up well against Kamikaze attacks. The British had a limited presence against Japan up until the last months of the war.

Analysis

One clear result of the Europe first policy was that battles in the European theater tended to be set-piece, pre-planned events. With fewer resources, the United States commanders in the Pacific tended to run much smaller, innovative operations and were forced to be more flexible in their strategic planning, in order to save lives. For example, as a result of fortuitous events, the Battle of Leyte and later Battle of Iwo Jima were undertaken with almost no strategic foreplanning.

The differences in the theaters were also due to their nature; as Europe was heavily land-based, the best perceived way to beat Nazi Germany was to invade the continent. When Germany surrendered, Berlin had been captured and only Norway and Denmark remained in Axis hands. By contrast, to defeat Imperial Japan, a naval power spread out wide across islands in the world's largest ocean, key islands could be taken (such as Leyte) to cut off supply lines and bypass major bases such as Rabaul and Truk Lagoon; examples of such campaigns included Operation Cartwheel. At the end of World War II the Japanese still held most of their conquered possessions in China and Southeast Asia until the Soviet intervention.

See also

• Asia First

References

• Hornfischer, James D. Neptune's Inferno: The US Navy at Guadalcanal. New York: Bantam Books, 2011. ISBN 978-0-553-80670-0.