STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR COALITION WARFARE: 1941-1942. By Maurice Matloff and Edwin M. Snell. (1953, 1986, 1990; 454 pages, 3 charts, 12 illustrations, 7 appendixes, bibliographical note, glossaries, index, CMH Pub 1-3.)

Strategy means strategic concepts, plans for executing these concepts, and an application of national power designed to bring the enemy to terms. In World War II the production of strategic plans became a major industry in the military establishment. The main theme of this book is the history of that industry, as far as the War Department was concerned, to the end of 1942.

The basic strategic concepts of the Allies were embodied in the decisions reached in 1941 to treat Germany as the number one enemy and to wage unlimited war. This book is focused on the process by which these concepts were translated into strategic plans. It tells how national strategic plans were made, unmade, and remade. More particularly the authors are concerned with the Army's concepts of strategy and its efforts to get them accepted. Their book is therefore indispensable to military planners. But the treatment is so broadly conceived and so thorough that the book brings a wealth of information to bear on the whole picture of Allied strategy. It lights up, on the one hand, the evolution of strategic concepts. It includes the discussions of the Allies in the great conferences where the fate of the Army's plans and proposals was finally decided.

The volume follows, on the other hand, the search for forces, supplies, and ships with which to achieve the strategic objectives decided on as necessary and feasible. Using all the available information on its theme in American records, it is an organized account of what it meant (and may mean again), in terms of American

Page 7

thought and military potentials and the requirements of combined action, to prepare for, plan, and mount a global coalition war.

For the student of strategy this volume has a special value because it deals with a period of beginnings. It was a time of political indecision, extreme military anxiety, grave disappointments, meager resources, and "cut and try" in an incessant effort to keep strategic plans realistic. Army planners had to resolve continued differences between their views and those of the Navy, and American planners had to learn how to deal with the British, who in this period were urging plans which, although framed within agreements "in principle," were diametrically opposed to those of the Americans. Throughout the period American planners, groping for procedures that would be effective in dealing with these and their other problems, were acting without adequate precedents in American experience and without an organized record of such precedents as existed. The lessons they learned, as these developed from the circumstances of the time, are here set forth for the benefit of their successors.

Key topics:
1. The interplay of military, political, economic, and sentimental factors in determining what to do and when to do it (Chs. I, II, IV, VIII, XII, XVII).
2. Interaction of deployment and strategic concepts (Chs. VI, VII, XIV, XVI).
3. Coordination of strategic planning and immediate military demands (Chs. III, IX, X, XV, XVI).
4. The role of logistical feasibility (Ch. XVI; this subject is extensively treated in Global Logistics and Strategy: 1940-1943).
5. Planning against scarce resources (Chs. V, VII, IX, XVI).
6. Correlation of strategy with industrial potentials (Chs. III, XVI).
7. Problems of planning for a two-front global war (Chs. I, III, V, VII).
8. Encirclement and peripheral attrition versus concentration on a knockout blow (Chs. II, V, VII, VIII, XVII).
9. Differences between the strategic outlook of the Army and the Navy and their coordination (Chs. VII, X, XII, XIII).
10. Integration of air concepts and plans with those of the Army and Navy (Chs. II, VI, VII, XV, XVII).
11. Prewar evolution of the ORANGE and RAINBOW plans (Chs. I-IV).
12. Anglo-American staff conversations (ABC-1; ARCADIA) (Chs. III, V).
13. The Victory Program (Chs. III, VIII; more fully treated in Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations, Global Logistics and Strategy: 1940-1943, and The Army and Economic Mobilization).
14. Evolution of the BOLERO concept and plan as an Army contribution to American strategy (Chs. VII-VIII; see also: Washington Command Post: The Operations Division, Global Logistics and Strategy: 1940-1943, and Cross-Channel Attack).
15. The effect of limited warfare in the Pacific on deployment for unlimited war (Chs. VII, IX-XII, XVI).
16. The presidential decision to invade North Africa (TORCH) and its effect on American deployment and strategic plans (Chs. XII-XIV).

Page 8

17. The introduction of the President's unconditional surrender formula (Ch. XVII).
18. Anglo-American plans and Soviet expectations (Chs. VI, IX, X, XII, XV).
19. The strategic outlook of the United States on the eve of the Casablanca Conference, January 1943 (Ch. XVII).