Unready Ally, Uneasy Alliance

• Main Author: Kennedy, David m.
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University PressNew York, NY 2003
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195168938.003.0004; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52557149/isbn-9780195168938-book-part-4.pdf

Abstract America’s war against Germany, like its war against Japan, began at sea. The Battle of the Atlantic, already two years old when the United States entered the war, was a contest for supremacy on the ocean highway across which all American supplies and troops must fiow to Europe. Everything depended on keeping that highway open. Dwight D. Eisen hower, newly promoted to brigadier general and freshly installed as chief of the army’s War Plans Division, submitted a penetrating assessment of the importance of the North Atlantic sea lanes to George Marshall on February 28, 1942. “Maximum safety of these lines of communication is a ‘must’ in our military effort, no matter what else we attempt to do,” Eisenhower emphasized. Shipping, he presciently added, “will remain the bottleneck of our effective effort,” a statement that echoed repeated pronouncements by both Churchill and Roosevelt that the struggle with Hitler would be won or lost at sea.