Europe first
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Europe first (sometimes 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 Germany in Europe first, and fight a holding action against Japan in the Pacific in the meanwhile, using fewer resources. After the defeat of Germany, considered the greater threat, all Allied forces could be concentrated against Japan.
[edit] Background
When Japan attacked the United States, the United Kingdom had already been fighting in Europe for years, and had relatively few resources to spare to protect far-flung colonies. Since Germany declared war on the United States on December 11, the United States faced a decision about how to allocate resources between these two separate theaters of war. (At the maximum extent of Axis power, there were still several thousand miles of Allied territory between the regions of German occupation and Japanese occupation, so the wars could be considered separately from a strategic viewpoint.) On the one hand, Japan had attacked the United States directly, and the Japanese navy threatened United States territory in a way that Germany, with a limited surface navy, was not in a position to do. On the other hand, Germany was universally considered the stronger and more dangerous power, and the United States' European allies were forced by geography to focus there.
[edit] Agreement
Soon after the declaration of war at the Arcadia Conference, the United States and the United Kingdom agreed on the Europe first strategy, and the United States committed to sending the army and air force it was raising to fight Germany in Europe and Africa as soon as it was 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.
[edit] Consequences
In practice, the United States was able to use most of its fleet against Japan anyway, since Germany's surface fleet was small and the escort ships used in the Second Battle of the Atlantic were mostly destroyers rather than carriers or battleships. The Pacific War could be prosecuted successfully with relatively small numbers of ground troops (usually Marines), and by the time Germany was defeated, the allies had reconquered Burma, the Philippines, and a string of island bases leading up to the home islands of Japan. The US started a massive reallocation of troops to the Pacific to prepare for the invasion of Japan, but in the process, Japan surrendered following detonation of atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Soviet victories in Manchuria.
One clear result of the Europe First was that battles in the European theatre tended to be set-piece, pre-planned events. With fewer resources, the Allied Commanders in the Pacific tended to run much smaller, ad-hoc operations and were forced (by necessity of circumstances) to be more flexible in their strategic planning - 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.
