Table Of ContentUNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II
The Western Hemisphere
THE FRAMEWORK OF
HEMISPHERE DEFENSE
by
Stetson Conn
and
Byron Fairchild
CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
UNITED STATES ARMY
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1989
Foreword
Self-preservation and military measures to insure the territory of the
United States against violation by foreign powers—the subject of this book—
ceased to be of serious concern to the United States Government and nation
during the nineteenth century. In World War I, the Americans concen-
trated on the offensive. In World War II, as the authors of this book remark
in their Preface, we passed to the offensive so soon and with such force after
the United States became engaged that the military provisions for defense
have been obscured from view. Other volumes in the present series sketch
these defensive plans and preparations in their general context; this and a
succeeding volume by the same authors focus on these measures and relate
them to the evolution of American foreign policy in the period 1938-41. The
experience acquired in preparing for defense when the danger of direct attack
was regarded as constituting a state of emergency is one of great interest in
our present state of danger when deterrence has become the policy of the na-
tion and its armed forces.
R. W. STEPHENS
Washington, D. C. Maj. Gen., U. S. A.
6 June 1958 Chief of Military History
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The Authors
Stetson Conn received his Ph.D. degree in history from Yale University
and has taught history at Yale, Amherst College, and The George Wash-
ington University. He joined the Office of the Chief of Military History in
1946. In OCMH he has served in the capacities of a senior editor; Acting
Chief Historian; Chief, Western Hemisphere Section; and Deputy Chief
Historian. His previous publications include Gibraltar in British Diplomacy
in the Eighteenth Century, a volume in the Yale Historical Series. He is also one
of the authors of the forthcoming Guarding the United States and Its Outposts,
the second volume of this subseries.
Byron Fairchild received his Ph.D. degree in history from Princeton Uni-
versity and has taught at the University of Maine, Amherst College, and the
Munson Institute of Maritime History. He is the author of Messrs. William
Pepperrell, which in 1954 received the Carnegie Revolving Fund Award of
the American Historical Association for the outstanding manuscript in any
field of history. A member of the OCMH staff since 1949, Dr. Fairchild is
coauthor of three volumes in the World War II series: The Army and Indus-
trial Manpower and, with Dr. Conn, the two volumes of The Western Hem-
isphere subseries. He is currently writing a volume on the Army and the
Military Assistance Program in the post-World War II period.
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Preface
This is the first of two volumes on the plans made and measures taken
by the Army to protect the United States and the rest of the Western Hem-
isphere against military attack by the Axis Powers before and during World
War II. The global character of American participation in the war, described
in the many volumes of this series, tends to obscure the primary and basic
concern of the United States Government, and consequently of the Army,
for the safety of the continental United States. When in the late 1930's the
coalition of aggressor nations foreshadowed a new world war that would in-
evitably involve the security of the United States, Army and Navy planning
officers concluded that the continental United States could not be threatened
seriously by either air or surface attack unless a hostile power first secured a
lodgment elsewhere within the Western Hemisphere. To prevent that from
happening, the United States adopted a new national policy of hemisphere
defense. Between 1939 and 1942 the Army played a key role in executing
this policy. The achievement of substantial security within the hemisphere
permitted the United States to concentrate on the offensive soon after the
Japanese attacks on Oahu and Luzon plunged the nation into open war in
December 1941.
The first seven chapters of this volume describe the evolution of the pol-
icy of hemisphere defense in the three years before Pearl Harbor, the gradual
merger of that policy into a broader national defense policy of opposing
Germany and Japan by all-out aid to nations that were fighting them, and
the quick transition in December 1941 to offensive plans and preparations
for the defeat of those powers. These chapters have been designed to intro-
duce not only the rest of this volume but also the second one being prepared
for this subseries. Chapters VIII through XV of the present volume describe
the military relationships of the United States with the other American na-
tions in support of plans and preparations for continental and hemisphere
defense, and Army ground and air action outside the continental United
States not involving bases under exclusive American military command.
Three of these chapters narrate the military relations of a general character
with the Latin American nations, and five discuss in greater detail military
co-operation with Brazil, Mexico, and Canada.
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