f reedom of a ction 171the face of these multiple threats, the United States as yet had few
combat-ready units.
Confi rming the understanding arrived at before the United States
became a belligerent, Anglo-American grand strategy treated Germany
as the main enemy. Roosevelt, Churchill, and their military advisors
agreed that only the Nazi regime could potentially defeat the Allies,
particularly if the Russians were beaten on the European mainland and
German U-boats severed the sea lifeline from the United States to Great
Britain. Already Stalin clamored for the Anglo-Americans to open a
second front to draw off German forces. Increasing losses to German
submarine attacks meanwhile raised doubts about whether the United
States could meet British supply needs and build up a fi eld army for an
eventual attack on the European mainland.
“Germany First” did not mean, however, that the war in the Pacifi c
could be ignored. As King understood, a strictly defensive posture in
what was primarily a naval war made no sense—the ocean itself cannot
be held. He insisted that protecting the sea route to Australia and New
Zealand required at least opportunistic attacks, a position the president
shared. Further, the president remained determined to keep China in
the war, believing at this early stage that Chiang’s Nationalist armies
could make a substantial contribution to Allied victory. For political
reasons, too, the Pacifi c theater demanded attention. Th e Japanese had
struck Pearl Harbor and infl icted humiliating defeats on U.S. forces in
the Philippines, on Wake Island, and elsewhere. Americans felt a much
deeper hatred for their Japanese enemies—a passion heightened by
racial animosity—than for the Germans.
For Anglo-American political leaders and senior military com-
manders, the great strategic debate about the war against Germany
involved how best to engage the enemy on terms likely to bring Allied
victory. Th is debate, which started in early 1942, continued to the very
last months of the war in Europe and has been the focus of extensive
historical commentary. I will concentrate here on the central themes
and the factors that shaped the fi nal resolution. At the heart of the
dispute lay the question of when to launch an invasion of France across
the English Channel. Narrow though the issue may appear, it embodied
a range of others, primarily political in nature—how best to maintain
the cooperation of the Soviet Union during and after the war, the