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The American Military: A Narrative History
Out of the Trenches (1918–1941)
On a cool Monday morning, the sun rose brilliantly over the Atlantic Ocean. Lieutenant Commander Godfrey de Courcelles Chevalier scanned the horizon through his goggles. He faced a northeast wind while navigating an Aeromarine 39-B plane over the Chesapeake Bay. Inside Cape Henry, he spotted the U.S.S. Langley off the Tail of the Shoe shoal.
The pilot, who was known simply as Chevvy, intended to make October 26, 1922, a date to remember. Circling the Langley, he recalled the "precision landings" practiced in previous days at the Norfolk Naval Air Station. He reminisced about the tests and drills with Commander Kenneth Whiting, who chose "Boots and Saddles" – an old cavalry call to mount horses – for announcing "flight quarters" at sea. Although the U.S. Navy favored the first-class battleships, he admired what sailors called the "Covered Wagon" of the fleet. He glanced at the 5-inch, 51-caliber guns situated on either side of the vessel's stern, where a white flag caught his attention. Without a landing signal officer for guidance, he neared the flight deck on his own.
Chevvy's converted seaplane began losing altitude in the descent toward the flight deck. His main gear lacked brakes or tail wheels. The shock absorber for his tail skid consisted of nothing but rubber bungees. Lacking instruments on his panel, he stared at the starboard. His final checks included the strap on his leather helmet. He listened attentively to the roar of the engine while increasing the power. His approach flattened, as he struggled to keep his nose high.
Upon hearing the sound of contact, Chevvy waited to exhale. The right wing of his plane dropped slightly, but he corrected in time for the hooks to catch the second wire. The pies and fiddle bridges that propped up the wire came crashing down and scattered in every direction. The axle hooks held after a short run, as did the tail hook. A high tail rise pressed the nose downward, which caused the propeller to nick the flight deck. To the delight of the crew, Chevvy accomplished the first arrested landing on a U.S. aircraft carrier.
Figure 11.1 Aeromarine 39-B airplane, 19 October 1922. Photo NH 93178, U.S. Navy Historical Center, Department of the Navy
No one at the time knew that Chevvy would die weeks later from a plane crash, even though aviators in the carrier detail, as one put it, were "here one day and gone or killed the next." Whereas some veterans of the Great War dismissed them as "a crazy bunch of people," a new generation incorporated striking innovations into the armed forces of the U.S. Their ingenious solutions to the problems of warfare enhanced not only technology and tactics but also military doctrines, organization, and planning. Officers and enlisted personnel made impressive strides during a period of minimal funding and public antipathy.
Throughout the interwar period, the American military jockeyed to gain advantages in a world of constant change. In the absence of European menaces to the western hemisphere, national interest in supporting a mighty Navy or Army waned. The U.S. did not join the League of Nations established by the Versailles Treaty, thus rejecting a chance to participate in a collective security system. Nevertheless, the nation exerted influence overseas through trade and treaties. Congress supported several arms reduction agreements with foreign governments, while President Warren G. Harding pledged a "return to normalcy." To many Americans in the coming years, the best bet for peace was nonalignment with other Great Powers.
Americans knew that their nation represented one of the world's strongest, but they became disillusioned with what armed conflict meant. Because few citizens felt threatened by enemies abroad, neither Democrats nor Republicans supported a large military in peacetime. Rapid demobilization and federal retrenchment left U.S. forces in a state of unpreparedness. Empires remained intact during the 1920s and 1930s, while intellectuals rallied to the noble cause of pacifism. However, visionary officers in the War and Navy Departments imagined the outbreak of future wars in Europe and Asia. Despite the nadir of the Great Depression, Americans in uniform found ways to refine their missions for a second, even greater, world war.
In the years following the Great War, the U.S. appeared aloof from international affairs. Dismayed with overseas adventures, Americans rejected the entanglements of European alliances while calling for disarmament by the Great Powers. Though indifferent to the League of Nations, officials in Washington D.C. touted the comity of "soft" power rather than the coercion of "hard" power. As the armed forces returned home, the Army and the Navy retained only the personnel and the equipment required for peacetime contingencies.
Passed by Congress on June 4, 1920, the National Defense Act redesigned the "Army of the United States" for peacetime. Colonel John McAuley Palmer, an advisor to the Senate's Military Affairs Committee and the author of An Army of the People (1916), shaped key provisions of the law. Most members of Congress, however, rejected his recommendation for universal military training. The final version replaced an expansible force with a pluralistic system of voluntary service that demanded varying degrees of readiness. Organized into three components, the Army contained a regular force, a civilian-based National Guard, and an Organized Reserve.
In addition to protecting overseas territories and providing border security, the regular force assumed primary responsibility for training the other components of the Army. The National Defense Act permitted some 17,000 officers and 280,000 enlisted men on active duty, although the absence of nascent threats in subsequent years kept manpower well below the authorized levels. Two years later, Congress made budget cuts that reduced the numbers to 12,000 officers and 125,000 enlisted men. Nevertheless, the plan for mobilization promised to raise more than 2 million soldiers if warranted. While most soldiers served in combat arms, policymakers regularized personnel in the Financial Department as well as for the Air and Chemical Warfare Services. Nine geographic corps of approximately equal strength assumed command and administrative responsibilities for military operations. Each included a regular division in addition to two National Guard and three Organized Reserve divisions. Henceforth, the division rather than the regiment provided the basic unit for organizing the Army.
With high regard for the National Guard, Palmer insisted that "great armies of citizen soldiers" mastered the skills for industrialized warfare. The National Defense Act envisioned a National Guard of 436,000 members, but its actual strength during the 1920s stabilized near 180,000. While responsible for curbing civil disturbances, the part-time units mirrored the Swiss model for an effective force on reserve status. The War Department supplied training officers, financial incentives, and surplus materials to the states. Complying with federal mandates, Guardsmen engaged in 48 drills at their armories along with 15 days of field training each year. By the numbers, the National Guard constituted the largest component for mobilizing and expanding the Army.
Though a smaller component, the Organized Reserves consisted of the Enlisted Reserve Corps and the Officers' Reserve Corps. The former promised to augment the Army with an enlarged pool of volunteers – mostly veterans with prior service in the military. In the latter, the Reserve Officer Training Corps, or ROTC, and the Citizen's Military Training Camp, or CMTC, permitted the commissioning of more officers as needed. Though formally established by law in 1916, ROTC programs at colleges and universities grew to 325 by 1928. Each year, they commissioned over 6,000 new officers as second lieutenants in the Army. Furthermore, the CMTC programs provided an alternative path to commissioning outside of higher education. With four weeks of annual summer training over a four-year period, more than 30,000 civilian volunteers participated in the camps. A forerunner of the Army Reserve, membership in the component reached 110,000 by the end of the 1920s.
At the same time, the National Defense Act charged the War Department with tightening oversight of all Army components. When General John J. Pershing became the Chief of Staff the next year, he reorganized the General Staff into five divisions: G-1 administered personnel, G-2 managed intelligence, G-3 handled training and operations, G-4 coordinated logistics and supply, and a new division dealt with war planning. Furthermore, National Guard officers began serving on the General Staff. While involving the Chief of Staff in the procurement process, Congress assigned the supervision of industrial mobilization to the Assistant Secretary of War. Consequently, the federal government spent only 2 cents out of each taxpayer dollar on the postwar Army.
While imposing uniformity across the postwar Army, training and education received greater attention than in the past. More than 30 branch schools provided advanced individual training for the regular force, the National Guard, and the Organized Reserves, even developing extension courses to supplement residential programs. West Point, ROTC, and CMTC furnished the basis for commissioning, but three general service schools formed the capstone of professional military education. The Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth provided exemplary officers with the requisite preparation for divisional command and staff positions. The Army War College as well as the Army Industrial College, which was established in 1924, prepared senior officers for leadership roles at the most advanced levels. Though unable to meet all the expectations of Washington D.C., the innovations in training and education improved the career ladder.
After redesigning the Army, officials in Washington D.C. created the "treaty Navy." Alarmed by the growth of Japanese power, the Harding administration hosted an international conference to consider naval disarmament on a grand scale. From November 12, 1921, to February 6, 1922, delegations from nine nations participated in the Washington Naval Conference. Referring to the arms race on the high seas, Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes pushed "to end it now." The U.S., Great Britain, France, Japan, and Italy signed the Five-Power Treaty, which incorporated tonnage limits for battleships, heavy cruisers, and aircraft carriers. The signatory nations also agreed to a 10-year moratorium on capital ship-building and to add no more naval fortifications to the smaller Pacific islands. In addition, the U.S., Great Britain, France, and Japan signed the Four-Power Treaty as a pledge to respect one another's territorial claims. Finally, the Nine-Power Treaty gained pledges for the Open Door Policy in China. The treaties prompted the U.S. to scrap 15 capital ships and to halt construction on 11 more, even though the construction of other naval armaments continued.
As the decade closed, the U.S. participated in a new round of international conferences for limiting naval armaments. After meeting in Geneva and in London, the Great Powers eventually accepted constraints on cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. The multilateral agreements confirmed a unilateral "holiday" on building capital ships, which congressional cuts to defense outlays had already forecast.
The U.S. took a symbolic step to reduce the risk of war with another multilateral agreement. On August 27, 1928, Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and French Premier Aristide Briand agreed to "condemn recourse to war" and to renounce it "as an instrument of national policy" except in self-defense. Also known as the Pact of Paris, the Kellogg–Briand Pact obtained the signatures of more than 60 nations. The Senate ratified "the harmless peace treaty" by a vote of 85 to 1, albeit with reservations regarding the assumptions of the Monroe Doctrine. Despite lacking a mechanism for enforcement, the fanciful idea of outlawing war inspired enthusiasm among Americans.
Though endorsing diplomatic commissions and rescue plans, Americans found that "soft" power failed to compel European nations to pay their war debts. The U.S. advanced billions of dollars to friendly governments during World War I, but France and Great Britain refused to make payments until they collected reparations from Germany. Additional loans from American bankers to the German government accomplished almost nothing. By the end of the 1920s, the burdens of the war debts left the world in an uneasy state.
A Winged Defense
Nothing propelled the American imagination more than the advancements in aviation technology. By the 1920s, military leaders expected "flying machines" to conduct support operations such as the pursuance of belligerent aircraft, the bombardment of enemy dispositions, and the observation of opposing movements. A handful of pilots challenged Army and Navy doctrines, however, even asserting that airplanes made armed forces on the land and at sea obsolete. Inspired by the writings of British General Sir Hugh Trenchard and Italian Air Chief Giulio Douhet, the champions of air power stressed the decisive role of aviation in winning wars.
General William "Billy" Mitchell, who briefly commanded the Army Air Services during the Great War, foresaw what he called a "winged defense." After returning from Europe, he became a spokesman in the U.S. for the strategic concept of air power. The nation needed a unified, independent "air force," he suggested, for command of the skies in war and peace. "The airplane is the future arbiter of the world's destiny," he boasted. Indeed, the conventional weaponry in the American military seemed more suited to the age of the dinosaur. He posited that aerial assets enabled armed forces to destroy an enemy's "vital centers," that is, their bases, factories, and cities. The potential for the swift but assured destruction of civilian targets made governments less likely to risk war, or so he opined.
On July 21, 1921, Mitchell staged a spectacular "mock" raid on an ex-German battleship anchored off the Virginia Capes. His squadron of bombers sank the Ostfriesland, but the Navy Department dismissed the demonstration. By dropping over 60 bombs on the stationary target, he defied the predetermined restrictions imposed by naval observers. His aviators conducted similar bombing runs in other tests, which underscored the capabilities of Army aircraft to sink the "unsinkable" under certain conditions. Unwilling to concede coastal defense to the battle fleets and the rear admirals, he made his case for air power in the press.
Eventually, the War Department transferred Mitchell to Fort Sam Houston in Texas and demoted the maverick to colonel. Because the General Staff refused to separate aerial operations from conventional missions, he complained that the inattention of Washington D.C. to aviation seemed "treasonable." After the Navy airship Shenandoah crashed in Ohio, he recklessly blamed the non-flying brass for incompetence and negligence. "Brave airmen are being sent to their deaths by armchair admirals who don't care about air safety," he stated to reporters. The Army court-martialed him for insubordination and found him guilty of the charges on December 17, 1925. He resigned his commission the next year but remained an advocate for air power thereafter. Even though his assessments of aircraft carriers missed the mark, his prophecies about long-range bombers largely came to pass. As a prolific writer and renowned lecturer, he detailed the rapid strides made in aviation around the globe and warned of Japanese plans to seize Hawaii, Alaska, and the Philippines.
Given the public sensation generated by Mitchell's agitation, President Calvin Coolidge organized a board under banker Dwight W. Morrow to review aviation policy. Consistent with the conclusions of previous reviews, the Morrow Board did not recommend divorcing aviation from the War and Navy Departments. Likewise, congressmen balked at the high cost of an aircraft fleet, landing fields, training facilities, and duplicate staff for a "winged defense." After debating the recommendations, Congress approved the Air Corps Act during 1926. Without altering the command arrangements, it renamed the Army's Air Service as the Air Corps. The branch expanded to 1,514 officers, 16,000 enlisted men, and 1,800 planes, while adding an Assistant Secretary of War for Air Affairs and elevating aviators to the General Staff. Whatever the prospects of air power, the limited budgets and internecine rivalries made the airplane little more than a tactical vehicle for years.
As the Army flyers contemplated a grand strategic doctrine, their counterparts in the Navy made practical gains in aeronautics. The Naval Air Service adhered to the unglamorous notion that aviators merely complemented the battle fleet, which placed them in support roles during maritime operations. Nevertheless, prominent officers such as Admiral William S. Sims believed that the proliferation of airplanes foreshadowed a revolution in naval warfare. As flying moved into the mainstream, graduates of Annapolis began receiving compulsory training in aviation after an initial tour at sea. By law, naval airmen assumed command of air stations, training posts, seaplane tenders, and aircraft carriers. Concerned about the presence of Japanese warships, the Navy worked the problems of tactical aviation that derived from planning thrusts across the Pacific Ocean.
Impressed by German airships in the Great War, the Navy appreciated the benefits of lighter-than-air operations with blimps and dirigibles. They extended "the eyes of the fleet" by scouting over vast oceans, although the slow-moving models proved vulnerable to stormy weather. Once Americans found a means to replace the flammable hydrogen with the nonflammable helium, the future of rigid airships appeared to brighten. For example, the U.S.S. Los Angeles made 331 flights after its commissioning by the Navy in 1924.
Though not a Navy flyer, Rear Admiral William A. Moffett became the Navy's Chief of the new Bureau of Aeronautics after 1921. Under his effective leadership, the Bureau refined concepts for tactical aviation, improved designs for aircraft construction, managed relations with key industries, and obtained funding for aerial assets. He insisted that a bombing attack launched from aircraft carriers "cannot be warded off." Colleagues dubbed him the "air admiral" before 1933, when he perished in a crash of the dirigible, the U.S.S. Akron.
Throughout the 1920s, admirals at sea recognized that air superiority combined with battleship firepower potentially spelled doom for an enemy's fleet. Naval disarmament notwithstanding, the "treaty Navy" did not curb the striking capabilities of airplanes in the battle line. The shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia, converted a coal collier named the Jupiter into the first U.S. aircraft carrier, which was re-commissioned as the U.S.S. Langley on March 20, 1922. Congress soon funded the outfitting of two more carriers, the U.S.S.Lexington and the U.S.S. Saratoga. Consistent with the teachings of the Naval War College, the aviators took to the skies to defend the fleet and to harass their foes. With just the bare necessities, naval aircraft evolved into ship killers.
An effective air strike required not only technical improvements in naval aircraft but also significant increases in sortie rates. For takeoffs and landings, no more than one airplane was on deck at a time. Captain Joseph M. Reeves, who took command of the fleet's aviation in 1925, called upon pilots and crewmen to find faster ways to launch and to return. Nicknamed the "Bull," he pushed their limits by demanding answers to "Reeves' Thousand and One Questions." Initially, it took 35 minutes to land 10 aircraft. After eight months of trial and error, the same number landed in only 15 minutes. A fighter squadron on the Langley completed 127 landings in a single day. Most of the hands-on training occurred at the squadron level, which fostered cohesion without standardization. While testing aeronautics through war games and fleet exercises, Americans began to abandon British techniques and to develop their own.
Americans earned their wings in the "golden age" of aviation, in which improvisation seemed routine for pilots. With open cockpits, they were exposed to uncertain elements in every flight. They confronted adverse conditions and conducted night operations at high speeds. A few became celebrities by winning air races and setting competition records, while scores lost their lives in accidents. Whatever the risks, the Navy and the Army found a long line of daredevils thrilled about the chance to fly.
From Ships to Shores
Owing to the fluid nature of naval warfare, Americans endeavored to improve the quality of fleet operations with secure formations. No longer steaming in single file, the circular shape became the standard formation for a battle line. Concentric rings of cruisers and destroyers screened the advance and the approach, while the gunnery of the battleships and the airplanes of the carriers engaged from the center. The heavy warships concentrated their firepower on the enemy's dispositions, thereby giving command of the sea to the Navy.
The Navy expected the "gun club" of admirals to prevail against all enemies, although the disarmament treaties of the 1920s restricted the tonnage of the capital ships. The enlisted strength remained around 80,000 sailors, while budgetary constraints deferred plans for the maintenance and modernization of shipboard batteries. The 87 four-stacker destroyers began showing their age. The planned construction of additional heavy and light cruisers languished. A "fleet train" of auxiliaries offered mobile support beyond Pearl Harbor, but it amounted to a handful of outdated oilers, troop transports, supply vessels, and repair ships. In fact, the commissioning of new ships for the fleet exacerbated manpower shortages. Authorized by Congress in 1930, the U.S.S. Ranger represented the first vessel that the Americans built as a carrier from keel to deck. However, the baby flattop lacked armor and displaced a mere 13,800 tons. As the Japanese government made end runs around the agreed-upon limits, the U.S. struggled to find ways to balance the fleet.
Below the surface, the Navy deployed the first fleet boats, that is, the "S" Class submarines. Technological advances enabled underwater vessels to cruise away from shores while supporting the battle line. Their improving speed, range, and inhabitability allowed them to accompany the fleet on voyages, which incited debates about their utilization. Patrols lasted as long as 75 days and reached as far as 12,000 miles. Nevertheless, sub crews faced perils such as carbon monoxide from diesel engines and chlorine gas from the salt water and electric batteries. If they dived at too steep of an angle, then pressure crushed the hulls. Equipped with six to ten torpedoes, submarine captains tracked enemy ships with little more than a periscope and slide-rule devices. By 1930, the Navy Department counted only 26 fleet boats among its submarine assets.
Administered by the Navy Department, the Marine Corps conducted a variety of missions from ships to shores. After World War I, they performed constabulary duties in Nicaragua, Hispaniola, and China. Regiments went ashore with increasing frequency, even though they numbered no more than 20,000 men. The Advanced Base unit at Quantico, Virginia, reorganized into the Expeditionary Force, which participated in the first large-scale landing exercise in Panama. Their paramount tasks involved the seizing, holding, and maintaining of forward bases for the Navy. Furthermore, a Marine report titled the "Strategy and Tactics of Small Wars" offered guidance for special operations in Central America and the Caribbean. Captain Lewis "Chesty" Puller became known as "El Tigre" while fighting guerrillas in a tropical environment. The commandant, General John A. Lejeune, averred that "the major wartime mission of the Marine Corps is to support the fleet by supplying it with a highly trained, fully equipped expeditionary force."
In respect to Lejeune's goals for the Marines, amphibious assaults represented a theoretical rather than a practical problem. His protégé, Major Earl "Pete" Ellis, authored Operation Plan 712D, which he titled "Advanced Base Force Operations in Micronesia." His prescient study imagined the seizure of island bases, even though military experts dismissed ship-to-shore movements as all but impossible. Undaunted by the famous British disaster at Gallipoli, he held forth on the procedures for a successful attack from the sea. "In order to impose our will upon Japan," he wrote in anticipation of the future, "it will be necessary for us to project our fleet and land forces across the Pacific and wage war in Japanese waters." Accordingly, he estimated the troop levels and the fire superiority required for the landings on defended beaches. However, he mysteriously died in 1923 while visiting the Japanese-mandated island of Palau. In light of his pioneering work, the Marine Corps Schools at Quantico began to provide instruction on amphibious assaults.
By making amphibious assaults their specialty, the Marines moved into the vanguard of fleet operations that established beachheads. Waterborne offensives against land-based fortifications, which hurled men against machine guns, heavy artillery, and sea walls, appeared rife with perils. Nonetheless, officers worked the problems of the complicated logistics in combined exercises. Their tests of amphibious equipment disappointed all too often, but the effective concentration of naval gunfire and air strikes proved feasible. They grasped that a ship-to-shore movement was no simple ferrying operation but a vital part of the attack itself. Because achieving a tactical surprise seemed unlikely, they focused their energies on the advantages of thorough preparation and proficient communication. By 1927, the Army-Navy Joint Board assigned responsibility to the Marines for developing the techniques to conduct landings.
After attending the Naval War College, Lieutenant Colonel Holland M. Smith contributed significantly to reworking the plans for landings. By 1932, he served as the fleet Marine officer of the battle force on board the U.S.S. California. During the combined exercises off the coast of Oahu that year, he watched as men scrambled over the coral and waded through the surf. Afterward, he lamented that "the suppositional enemy would have wiped us out in a few minutes." Like other Marine officers of the interwar generation, he engaged in a long yet successful battle to make innovations in naval tactics for assailing supposedly impregnable beaches. "Howlin' Mad" Smith continued to rise through the ranks, eventually earning accolades as the "father of amphibious warfare."
The most visible advance in amphibious warfare occurred in 1933, when the Navy Department recognized the Fleet Marine Force, or FMF. General John H. Russell, who soon became the commandant of the Marine Corps, suggested a plan for a unit that operated under the control of the fleet commander. With approval from the Chief of Naval Operations, the Secretary of the Navy Claude A. Swanson issued General Order 241 to define the FMF. Henceforth, the few but proud Marines comprised an integral component of the fleet operations.
After more fine-tuning, the concerted effort of the Marines culminated in the promulgation of an amphibious doctrine. At Quantico, the faculty and students synthesized more than a decade's worth of reports into the 1934 publication of the "Tentative Landing Operations Manual." Four years later, the Navy adopted it as Landing Operations Doctrine, or Fleet Training Publication 167. Whether serving afloat or ashore, members of the armed forces later recognized the text as the military equivalent to Holy Scripture.
While the doctrine won converts among military leaders, technical difficulties undermined the best-laid plans for landings. The high command touted the key principle of "combat loading," which required the efficient delivery of all personnel and assets for the ship-to-shore movement on a strict schedule. However, the Marines needed special landing craft as well as new amphibious vehicles to "swim" ashore. Over time, technological changes resulted in the Higgins boat and the "Alligator" tractor. Issues remained in regard to fire support from the air and the sea, which presented quandaries for the Navy. Marine aviators pleaded to form more fighter squadrons to complement the boots on the ground, while Marine infantrymen pressed the battleship gunners to use more bombardment shells with heavier bursting charges. Compounded by a dramatic economic downturn in the U.S., federal parsimony made it difficult for the Navy Department to build a war machine for the Pacific theater.
During the interwar period, the Navy Department appeared resourceful with every imaginable aspect of fleet operations. In collaboration with crews manning the ships, the Marine Corps experimented with radio communications, day and night landings, smoke-screens and feints, concentrated salvos, dispersed infiltrations, and broad-front maneuvers. All agreed that the crucial elements for victory at sea were aggressive advances, individual initiative, and battle planning, which set the standards in the Navy for decades to come.
Our Economic Army
Once the Army demobilized, Americans made few efforts to prepare for another war. The surge of pacifism and the desire for disarmament stalled the strategic initiatives of the War Department for more than a decade. Congress largely ignored the recommendations of the General Staff for arming the forces, which left the rank and file in a poor state of readiness.
Chartered by Congress in 1919, the American Legion rallied veterans across the U.S. on behalf of military affairs. Becoming the most prominent veterans' organization in the nation, it emerged as a powerful lobby in state and federal politics. Members resolved to foster camaraderie as well as to promote patriotism. Some posts sponsored vigilante measures during the Red Scare, but most focused on school curricula and involved citizenship. Eventually, the American Legion became well known across the country for its baseball program.
The country also celebrated a civic-minded group of women known as the Gold Star Mothers. Their name derived from the display of a star on the houses of mothers who had lost sons in combat overseas. They served as the inspiration for countless speeches and public commemorations. Voluntary societies lobbied Congress to sponsor pilgrimages to Europe, which enabled grieving mothers to visit the graves of sons buried outside the continental U.S. In early 1929, Coolidge signed a bill that authorized the War Department to aid Gold Star Mothers traveling to American cemeteries in foreign lands.
American veterans and their families received desultory benefits from Washington D.C., which included programs for disability compensation, rehabilitation for civilian vocations, and insurance for the honorably discharged. Although Congress had maintained the Veterans Bureau since 1921, three different agencies managed the benefit programs and the 54 hospital facilities. Passed on July 3, 1930, the World War Veterans Act authorized President Herbert Hoover to form the Veterans Administration – the VA – in order to "consolidate and coordinate government activities affecting war veterans." In accord with an executive order, the component agencies consolidated that year. General Frank T. Hines, the director of the Veterans Bureau, became the first administrator of the VA.
The federal government promised to pay veterans an adjusted compensation pension, but payment of the "bonus" was not scheduled for disbursement until 1945. Suffering from the Great Depression, over 20,000 veterans converged on Washington D.C. to demand early payment in 1932. They called themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force, which prompted the press to dub them the "Bonus Army." Among the most popular military figures at the time, retired Marine General Smedley Butler visited the campsites in a show of solidarity. Nevertheless, the Senate refused to pass the "bonus bill" as approved by the House of Representatives. Likewise, Hoover vetoed legislation for unemployment relief. Many "Bonus Marchers" left the capital that summer, even though others remained near Anacostia Flats.
On July 28, 1932, policemen shot two "Bonus Marchers" while attempting to evict them from a federal building. Fearing an ugly riot, Hoover asked the Army Chief of Staff, General Douglas MacArthur, to restore order. With a force of 600 cavalrymen and infantrymen, he personally secured Pennsylvania Avenue that afternoon. Major George S. Patton drew his saber and helped to direct six tanks against campsites nearby. Furthermore, MacArthur exceeded his orders by proceeding to clear out Anacostia Flats with tear gas. The soldiers burned the shantytown and drove the "hobos and tramps" from the outskirts of Washington D.C. Approximately 100 people suffered injuries. Although the Army quelled the unrest in the capital, the "Battle of Anacostia Flats" tarnished the reputation of the commander-in-chief.
The nation turned to a new commander-in-chief that year. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who defeated Hoover in the 1932 presidential contest, stated boldly that "we are in the midst of an emergency at least equal to that of war." He likened the Great Depression to the Great War, declaring his intention to lead "our economic army" in a different kind of campaign. Pledging "a new deal for the American people," he issued "a call to arms" at the Democratic Party Convention. His first inaugural address expounded upon "the lines of attack" in the days ahead. Summoning a "unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife," he vowed to command "this great army of our people" in a "disciplined attack upon our common problems." In other words, the new president justified wielding power as "if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe."
Whatever the martial rhetoric of the New Deal, Roosevelt officially opposed reconsideration of the "bonus bill." When the marchers returned to Washington D.C. to voice their protest, he provided them with sanitary campsites in addition to free meals. His wife, Eleanor, paid them a visit, even joining in a round of camp songs. As tensions abated, Congress overrode the president's veto and authorized the early payment to the veterans.
Congress in 1933 passed the Emergency Conservation Work Act, which established the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC. The Roosevelt administration planned to take a "vast army of these unemployed" off the streets and to supervise them in building roads, constructing dams, reclaiming farmland, restocking waterways, managing wildlife, renovating parks, and planting trees. Though jointly administered by four cabinet departments, only the Army possessed the logistical capabilities to coordinate the peacetime program.
In the first year, the Army mobilized 310,000 civilians and organized 1,315 camps. Though limited by law to unmarried men aged 18 to 25, an executive order permitted 25,000 veterans to enroll. Despite opposition from MacArthur, the War Department assigned about 3,000 regular officers and many noncommissioned officers to oversee the civilians. By 1935, close to 9,300 reserve officers performed duties at the CCC camps as well.
While the Army neglected military exercises, the CCC activities eased the negative effectives of unemployment for some 3 million Americans. Participants in national service activities not only earned a living wage but also contributed to public works. The conditioning regimen involved immunization shots, good food, outdoor recreation, and daily calisthenics. Throughout the Great Depression, junior officers assigned to the CCC acquired valuable leadership experience while handling young men in uniform.
To the detriment of modernization schemes, the Great Depression foisted even more economy upon the War Department. The Industrial Mobilization Plan outlined steps to create a wartime system of mass production, but implementation depended upon robust appropriations. By 1934, the General Staff had established priorities for weapons upgrades pending congressional funding. For example, the M-1 Garand semiautomatic rifle gradually replaced the bolt-action rifles of the infantry. The Air Corps soon placed orders for the four-engine B-17 bomber with a 2,000-mile range. Even if the Army boasted about "rolling along," the troops were not battle ready. The motorization program redefined horsepower on military installations, but soldiers grew frustrated with vehicle repair and maintenance. Although the Army fielded a wide variety of units, most trained without access to state-of-the-art technology.
Inspired by observing British armored forces, the Army began to experiment with new concepts for combining firepower with mobility. Shifting from larger "square" to smaller "triangular" divisions, the combat arms employed motorized transportation for greater agility and speed. Mechanization spawned faster tanks as well as self-propelled howitzers and combat cars. Senior officers continued making improvements to armored vehicles, suggesting innovations in radio communications and tank mounts. However, the doctrines for offensive maneuvers remained tethered to infantry assaults. Due to the high price of procurement, few exulted about mechanized warfare until the late 1930s. Consequently, General Adna R. Chaffee, Jr., took command of the Army's first armored force, the 7th Cavalry Brigade.
Another rising officer was General George C. Marshall, who earned his star in 1936. He oversaw CCC camps and trained National Guard units, but his talent seemed to shine most brightly inside the War Department. Staff officers referred to him as "a genius." In Washington D.C., he developed a strong relationship with the New Dealer, Harry Hopkins. Before "Dr. New Deal" gave way to "Dr. Win-the-War," Roosevelt anointed Marshall as the Army Chief of Staff.
War clouds appeared across the vast oceans, while the U.S. attempted to retain access to profitable offshore markets. The Roosevelt administration formally recognized the Soviet Union to encourage reciprocal trade. The State Department promoted the Good Neighbor Policy in the western hemisphere, which promised non-intervention by the American military. Because the dangers abroad seemed distant, Washington D.C. adhered to the notion of "Fortress America."
Undeterred by the scolding of Washington D.C., Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931. Next, the Japanese Navy attacked Shanghai, China's great port city. Their indiscriminate bombing of civilians sparked international protests, but the Great Powers did nothing to stop the violence. After overrunning Nanking, Japanese soldiers massacred as many as 300,000 Chinese. As militarists gained prominence in the Japanese government, they withdrew from the League of Nations and renounced previous disarmament treaties.
While Japan remained unchecked in Asia, the economic collapse of Europe helped to vault totalitarians into positions of authority. In Italy, Benito Mussolini's Fascist government blended socialism with nationalism ostensibly to revive the Roman Empire. Adolf Hitler championed the Nazi Party and became the German chancellor by 1933. After receiving the title of Reichsführer, or "national leader," he defied the Versailles Treaty by calling for German rearmament. Moreover, a civil war in Spain bolstered the regime of General Francisco Franco. While Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, Nazi Germany occupied the demilitarized Rhineland the following year. Hitler consummated a strategic alliance with Mussolini under the Rome–Berlin Axis Agreement and reached out to Tokyo through the Anti-Comintern Pact. An international system based upon the rule of law appeared all but doomed.
Whereas the international system faltered, Americans urged policymakers to eschew Europe and Asia. A number of congressmen rallied behind a proposed constitutional amendment, which stipulated a public referendum on a war declaration unless the nation suffered a direct attack. According to the Senate hearings of the Nye Committee, international bankers and arms exporters dragged the U.S. into World War I for the sake of profits. Decrying the "merchants of death," isolationists in Congress demanded peace at almost any price.
Beginning in 1935, Congress passed a series of Neutrality Acts to avoid entanglements in foreign affairs. The first one banned the shipment of arms to all belligerents, thereby renouncing the uncertain principle of "neutral rights" to world trade. An extension prohibited making loans or giving credit to belligerents. The bloodshed in Spain compelled the enlargement of the U.S. "moral embargo" to cover civil wars. Another update made American travel on board belligerent vessels illegal. A "cash-and-carry" stricture also hampered exports of nonmilitary goods. With the president's endorsement, Congress fashioned a legal straitjacket to ensure American neutrality in armed conflicts.
Meanwhile, Nazi Germany demanded Lebensraum, or "living space," in Europe. In early 1938, Hitler successfully pressed for the annexation of Austria. After threatening to seize the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, he met with British and French leaders for the Munich Conference on September 29, 1938. In a policy later denounced as appeasement, they agreed to give him what he wanted in order to achieve "peace in our time." Irrespective of the Munich agreement, German forces seized all of Czechoslovakia early the next year. On the heels of renewed Japanese aggression in China, Italian troops conquered Albania. Joseph Stalin, the Soviet premier, soon signed a mutual non-aggression pact with Hitler. Accordingly, they planned to carve up the Polish Corridor and the Baltic states between them. "Because of its neutrality," Hitler snarled, "America is not dangerous to us." On September 1, 1939, he marched into Poland. Great Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later.
Roosevelt proclaimed official U.S. neutrality in World War II, although he summoned the Senate and the House of Representatives to amend the latest Neutrality Act. "I regret the Congress passed the Act," he told them, adding that he also regretted "that I signed the Act." A new law in 1939 did not incorporate all of his requested changes but nonetheless offered "cash-and-carry" terms for Great Britain and France to acquire war materials. The revision lifted the arms embargo, although it forbade American ships from transiting into a "danger zone." While public support for neutrality remained solid, the Roosevelt administration intended to utilize every measure "short of war" against the Axis Powers.
The Roosevelt administration championed rearmament while pushing stimulus measures through Congress. Owing to the efforts of Congressman Carl Vinson, the Naval Act of 1938 expanded the battle fleet beyond the earlier treaty limits. Furthermore, naval aviation received a boost with the near-doubling of aircraft acquisitions. The next year, Congress authorized $300 million to help grow the Army Air Corps to 5,500 airplanes and 3,000 airmen. The fixation on trans-Atlantic flight and the fascination with strategic bombing underwrote most of the military calculations. In addition, anti-aircraft artillery moved to the top of the annual appropriations list. Federal expenditures supported the purchase of military assets under the guise of hemispheric security while underscoring American resolve in the face of gathering threats. Nevertheless, the commander-in-chief insisted to the War Department that "we won't send troops abroad," telling staff officers to "only think of defending this hemisphere." As weaponry flowed from factories, the American military attempted to assemble a balanced force with ground, sea, and air armaments disbursed in a proportional way.
At the beginning of World War II, the American military posed almost no immediate threat to the armed might of the Axis Powers in Europe and Asia. Japan, Italy, and Germany even pledged to defend one another if an uncommitted nation went to war against any of them. The U.S. lacked the will and the strength to ever fight a global, two-front war, or so the totalitarians presumed.
With the U.S. and the Axis Powers on a collision course, Army and Navy planners touted no grand strategy for military action other than enforcing the Monroe Doctrine. The Joint Board of the War and Navy Departments recognized potential manpower and industrial advantages for America, yet the logistical challenges appeared daunting. During the 1920s and 1930s, a cadre of officers composed a series of color-coded plans for almost every military contingency.
While the war plans examined prospective adversaries in the interwar period, the power surge of Japan shaped War Plan Orange. Hence, the Army and the Navy predicted a Japanese–American conflict with initial holding actions by U.S. garrisons on Pacific islands. Thereafter, the battle fleet would fight its way across the blue waters to relieve the beleaguered bases in what amounted to the greatest maritime effort in military history. The eventual blockade of the Japanese home islands culminated with a climactic battle between capital ships. Even with joint operations in the offing, no one foresaw a landing to capture Tokyo. Whatever the flaws of the plan, an "Orange war" anticipated the mobilization of the military to retake American possessions and to defeat Japanese forces.
For years, the strategic concepts of an "Orange war" provided the subtext for most discussions about Japanese aggression. Every conceivable situation was analyzed in the "Orange" variations – including possible surprise attacks. Disagreements arose regarding the Philippines, which the Army wanted to hold. The Navy, however, doubted the prudence of dispatching reinforcements to Manila. Anxious about the great distances between safe harbors, the admirals bargained for ramping up battleship and carrier construction. In accordance with War Plan Orange, the bulk of the battle fleet deployed to the Pacific during the late 1930s.
War Plan Red contemplated the unlikely prospect of an armed conflict between Great Britain and the U.S. Given the prowess of the Royal Navy, planners suggested quick responses to an invasion of the continental U.S. while defending the Panama Canal and bases in the Caribbean and Latin America. One variant outlined scenarios for military action in Canada. In a "Red war," the major thrusts of U.S. forces occurred in the Atlantic. The plan projected the dispatch of the battle fleet and expeditionary forces to protect the western hemisphere. However remote British antagonism seemed, a strategic defensive promised to frustrate their initial actions and to compel a negotiated settlement.
Though highly theoretical and quite problematic, the specter of a British–Japanese alliance inspired War Plan Red-Orange. Such a coalition threatened the wartime seizure of U.S. bases in the Pacific, a major test of the Monroe Doctrine, and a sustained attack on the Atlantic seaboard. In other words, a "Red-Orange war" forced Americans to face simultaneous offensives across the Atlantic and the Pacific against two powerful enemies.
With the multiple color-coded plans, the War and Navy Departments acknowledged that other enemies threatened national security. In fighting a single foe, Blue offered a generic defense of the continental U.S. Brown planned for the suppression of a Philippine insurrection, while Yellow involved an expedition to China. In general, Violet dealt with armed conflict in Latin America. Whereas Purple covered South America, Gray considered the occupation of Central America and the Caribbean. Tan and Green punctuated military action in Cuba and in Mexico, respectively. White detailed a military response to a domestic uprising in the U.S, especially if communist subversion transpired. With the rise of the Third Reich, War Plan Black revealed the implications of German aggression.
By 1938, the Army and Navy Joint Planning Committee compiled what it dubbed the Rainbow Plan to supersede the existing ones. According to Rainbow 1, the American military accepted responsibility for defending both the continental U.S. and the entire western hemisphere. Rainbow 2 and Rainbow 3 presupposed joint movements across the Pacific to defeat Japan, while France and Great Britain battled Germany. In the absence of allies, Rainbow 4 involved a battle for the Atlantic until improving circumstances permitted redeployments to the Pacific. Finally, Rainbow 5 moved some U.S. forces across the Atlantic to assist allies in Europe or in Africa while sending others to conduct a strategic defensive in the Pacific. Thanks to input from the Army War College and the Navy War College, the unrealistic visions of the joint planners gave way to a sharper focus on fighting the Axis Powers.
Meanwhile, German visions for blitzkrieg, or "lightning war," kept their opponents off-balance in Europe. After Hitler quickly swept into Poland and invaded Finland, nothing else happened during the "Phony War" of late 1939. The calm ended the next spring, when the Nazi juggernaut assaulted Denmark and Norway. Furthermore, German troops advanced into neutral Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg without pausing. Once the French army collapsed along the Meuse River, the British ally surrendered to Hitler on June 22, 1940. "We shall never surrender," vowed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, "until in God's good time the new world with all its power and might steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old."
Stirred by the incantations of Churchill, Roosevelt moved the U.S. toward participation in the war against Germany. Specifically, he asked for a supplemental defense appropriation of $1.3 billion to build a "two-ocean navy." While urging additional increases in the production of military airplanes, he secretly gave "first call" for new orders to London. That summer, merchantmen with arms and ammunition left American shores just before the Battle of Britain began. Military leaders posited that U.S. soldiers, sailors, and flyers needed the materials, but the Roosevelt administration rejected their advice.
Bypassing Congress, the Roosevelt administration consummated a "destroyers-for-bases" deal on September 2, 1940. The commander-in-chief sent 50 mothballed destroyers to the Royal Navy in exchange for its bases in Newfoundland and Bermuda. Privately, he worried that he "might get impeached" for making the transfer, which he ordered on his own executive authority. Without officially taking sides, Washington D.C. edged closer to belligerency.
As the prospect of belligerency loomed, Marshall began to forge the Army into a force capable of winning a protracted struggle. The National Guard along with the Organized Reserves activated for federal service. The War Department under Secretary Henry L. Stimson endeavored to outfit the troops. A new organization, the General Headquarters, took charge of training them. Gradual increases in military personnel gave the General Staff time to evaluate weapons, equipment, and tactics. Though falling short of Marshall's call for "complete mobilization," Congress even approved a peacetime draft on September 16, 1940. Weeks after Roosevelt won re-election to a third term, the Army more than doubled in strength.
On November 12, 1940, Admiral Harold Rainsford Stark, the Chief of Naval Operations, wrote a historic memorandum that reached the desk of Roosevelt. Forwarded by the Joint Planning Committee, it contemplated a global, two-front war against Germany and Italy on the one hand and against Japan on the other. For the benefit of the commander-in-chief and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, it described four optional scenarios, lettered A through D. It recommended option D, which took the name "Dog" from the military phonetic alphabet. Derived from Rainbow 5, the recommendation called for defensive measures in the Pacific while giving priority to offensive operations across the Atlantic. Simply stated, Plan "Dog" laid the foundation for U.S. forces fighting in Europe first.
With planning in motion for U.S. forces to enter the fray, high-level talks between American and British leaders occurred in early 1941. Their agreement to fight in Europe first became code-named ABC-1, that is, American–British Conversation Number 1. To buy time for the mobilization plan, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act on March 11. Accordingly, it authorized the president to provide materials to "any country" deemed "vital to the defense of the United States." Nearing bankruptcy, Great Britain began purchasing munitions, ships, planes, vehicles, and supplies on credit. Roosevelt predicted with a buoyant slogan that the U.S. would become "the great arsenal of democracy."
The totalitarians soon controlled most of Europe, where democracy all but vanished. On June 22, 1941, Germany assaulted the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. To divert Nazi strength away from the Atlantic, the U.S. extended Lend-Lease to Stalin's regime. Two months later, Roosevelt and Churchill met near Newfoundland to formulate a set of principles that constituted the Atlantic Charter. Endorsed by 11 nations battling the Axis Powers, the statement of belligerent aims insinuated U.S. involvement without commitment.
That summer, the U.S. began waging an undeclared war against Germany on the Atlantic Ocean. As far east as Iceland, naval patrols escorted convoys threatened by German submarine "wolf packs." In addition, Americans accepted responsibility for the military air routes across the North Atlantic via Greenland and across the South Atlantic via Brazil. Troops landed in Greenland to protect the island and to build bases for aerial ferrying. Likewise, other units arrived in Iceland. After a German submarine fired upon the U.S.S. Greer, the president gave the Navy a "shoot-on-sight" order. Nazi crews torpedoed the U.S.S. Kearny and the U.S.S. Reuben James. At least 115 sailors died aboard the latter, which was the first Navy ship sunk during the war. Eventually, Congress repealed the prohibitions against arming the merchantmen and cleared them to enter contested waters.
Unbeknownst to Congress, the War Department crafted the top-secret "Victory Program." Principally written by Major Albert Wedemeyer in the War Plans Division, it provided estimates about the manpower and material requirements for defeating Germany. The projections called for as many as 215 divisions with some 8.7 million men. More than three-fourths of the Army appeared destined for service overseas.
The Army swelled in late 1941, especially after Congress approved an $8 billion supplemental spending bill for national defense. One line item authorized $35 million for the construction of a single building to house the War Department. After selecting a location near the Potomac River, Lieutenant Colonel Brehon B. Somervell, who commanded the Construction Division of the Army Quartermaster Corps, oversaw the project. His design for the structure called for a five-sided ring that evoked an old fortress – a pentagon.
Long before workers erected the Pentagon, staff officers in Washington D.C. grappled with a series of critical strategic decisions. They confronted inter-service rivalries in addition to opportunity costs while planning for war. Working the problems year after year, they shared an awareness of military power, a preference for direct solutions, and a concern about prolonged conflict. In spite of false starts and dead ends, the joint efforts enabled the armed forces to imagine the trouble ahead.
As Americans braced for war against Germany, U.S. policy toward Japan stiffened. The Roosevelt administration announced embargoes on aviation gas, scrap iron, and other supplies to Tokyo. Envisioning a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Japanese leaders countered by preparing to seize oil, rubber, and resources beyond the home islands. They assessed the Dutch and British colonies in the Pacific and planned to take them. In the summer of 1941, Japanese forces moved into French Indochina.
While continuing to aid China, the Roosevelt administration hoped to deter any further aggression by Japan. The president froze Japanese financial assets in the U.S. and expanded the embargo to include oil. Since almost 90 percent of Japan's oil supply came from American producers, the sanctions backed their leaders into a corner. To frustrate their imperial strategy to "go south," the War Department placed MacArthur in command of U.S. forces defending the Philippines. Secretary of State Cordell Hull offered to renew American trade in exchange for a Japanese withdrawal from China and Southeast Asia. However, Japan decided to wait two months before acting. General Hideki Tojo, the War Minister, lobbied the cabinet for a preemptive strike, but Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe wanted to negotiate a settlement. When the latter resigned in mid-October, the former replaced him. As envoys conferred, Washington D.C. expected Tokyo to make concessions.
That fall, Tokyo desired to immobilize U.S. forces on the flank in order to open a lifeline through the South China Sea. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who commanded Japan's largest force of warships and aircraft, agreed to knock out the American battle fleet. He entrusted Commander Minoru Genda with the details for military action. The war plan involved an initial air and sea strike against Hawaii, even as Tojo made another offer to Hull on November 20. If the U.S. abandoned China and restored all trade relations, then Japanese imperialists would occupy no additional territory in Asia.
The U.S. refused Tojo's offer, while the Japanese fleet steamed ahead. Reports of its movements in the Pacific prompted several warnings to U.S. commanders. In fact, Secretary of the Navy Knox noted earlier in the year that "it is believed easily possible" for Japan to initiate hostilities with "a surprise attack" at Pearl Harbor. "The question," Secretary of War Stimson wrote, "was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves." Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the Pacific fleet commander, decided to forgo long-range air patrols near Hawaii. Instead, he sent the carrier U.S.S. Lexington to Midway Island and the carrier U.S.S. Enterprise to Wake Island. The carrier U.S.S. Saratoga remained in San Diego, California. Even though U.S. intelligence officers intercepted Japanese messages about an imminent war, the commander-in-chief did not know what was about to happen at Pearl Harbor.
Figure 11.2 Pearl Harbor Naval Base and U.S.S. Shaw aflame, 1941. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
At dawn on December 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor. Six Japanese carriers operated without detection only 200 miles away from Hawaii. Hundreds of planes roared down the western coast and the central valley of Oahu. For two hours, they bombed eight U.S. battleships at anchor. Three sank, one grounded, one capsized, and one received heavy damage. In sum, 19 vessels sank or were disabled.
In a daring tactical feat, Japanese aircraft pummeled and strafed other military targets that morning. At Hickam and Wheeler Fields, they found U.S. airplanes parked wing to wing. Altogether, the raid destroyed almost 180 aircraft and damaged around 100 more.
The raid left Americans reeling. At least 2,402 died while another 1,178 suffered wounds. The fatalities included 1,103 entombed in the sunken U.S.S. Arizona. In contrast, the Japanese military lost a few dozen aircraft during the aerial operation and only a handful of tiny submarines maneuvering in the harbor.
Irrespective of a surprise attack, Japan failed to achieve a decisive victory. The bombers ignored the oil tanks, extensive pipelines, and onshore facilities of Hawaii that supported U.S. fleet operations. Moreover, they missed the opportunity to harm U.S. aircraft carriers and their escorts, which left port a few days earlier. Tactically successful but strategically flawed, Japan conducted simultaneous strikes against the Philippines, Guam, Midway, Wake, Hong Kong, and Malaya that day.
The following day, Roosevelt addressed both houses of Congress about "a date which will live in infamy." For many years, he had spoken directly to the American people during "fireside chats" in a calm, steady voice. Broadcast by radio across the nation, the brief speech that he delivered represented one of his most memorable. Because of the onslaught by "the Empire of Japan," he called for a declaration of war to ensure that "this form of treachery shall never endanger us again." His words encapsulated the public outrage and general resolve in the wake of a surprise attack. Members of Congress voted for war in unanimity, save one pacifist.
Within days, Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. Their declarations prompted another message on December 11 from Roosevelt. "The forces endeavoring to enslave the entire world now are moving towards this hemisphere," he announced. Thus, Congress declared war on all of the Axis Powers and cast aside the nation's reluctance to fight.
Americans after World War I looked forward to everlasting peace, yet men and women in the military never said farewell to arms. Congress attempted to provide uniformity and structure to the Regular Army, National Guard, and Organized Reserves. The "treaty Navy" limited armaments and tonnage while incorporating aerial assets into fleet operations. Experimenting with ship-to-shore movements, Marine officers determined the steps necessary for undertaking amphibious assaults. Other than performing constabulary duties and special assignments, though, the armed forces saw little action during the interwar period. The onset of the Great Depression made military interventions infeasible. Furthermore, the U.S. refused to assert the right or the responsibility to preserve the rule of law beyond its borders. With the world engulfed in another wave of belligerence, advocates for national defense assumed that a war across the Atlantic or the Pacific would require primarily the application of sea power.
The declarations of war on the Axis Powers dramatically ended the policy debates that divided Americans before 1941. Although isolationists recoiled from the prospect of foreign entanglements, a growing number of citizens recognized that totalitarianism endangered a free-trading, open-door world. Abandoning any pretense of arms control, aggressive nations in Europe and Asia became less civil and more ruthless. In fact, the Munich agreement came to symbolize the failure of appeasement to prevent the outbreak of hostilities. While acknowledging the military potential of the U.S., the regimes of Germany, Italy, and Japan scorned the principles of liberal democracy espoused by the Atlantic Charter. A global economic disaster heightened international tensions, to be sure, but the Third Reich, the New Roman Empire, and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere turned geopolitical contests into another world war.
World War II erupted with the catastrophic chain of events that unfolded throughout the late 1930s, even though a few Americans began preparing for it earlier. Military personnel prepared for action while focusing largely on the defense of "Fortress America" and the western hemisphere. Innovators learned key lessons about cutting-edge technologies, which they applied to the development of weapons programs and operational concepts. In particular, strategic and tactical considerations underscored the importance of aviation. Unfortunately, almost two decades of federal thrift placed the armed forces at a disadvantage. Washington D.C. restrained military spending, while Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo did not. Although military cultures tended to reinforce rigidity and to retard creativity, the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps anticipated many of the imperatives for fighting the next war. Even if service members stood more or less ready to fight, the U.S. did not predict the conflagration to come the way it did.
After 1941, a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor served as an enduring reminder of Japanese aggression as well as American vulnerability. Despite delivering a masterful blow, Yamamoto worried that the air and sea strike on December 7 had merely awakened "a sleeping giant." In the U.S., a sense of humiliation and disbelief drove an unremitting search for scapegoats thereafter. Conspiracy theorists repeated unfounded allegations about the breakdown of military intelligence, especially in regard to the failure of the Roosevelt administration to protect the battle fleet. "Remember Pearl Harbor" became a national call to arms, while Americans marked Pearl Harbor Day on their calendars. Almost everyone recalled the moment that he or she heard the shocking news. As an object of commemoration, the sunken Arizona remained submerged and undisturbed near Oahu. In the years that followed, U.S. warships "saluted" the underwater graveyard when entering and leaving the unforgettable site of infamy.
1 How did demobilization and disarmament impact the American military?
2 Which innovations were associated with the Air Corps and the Marine Corps?
3 Why was the U.S. surprised by the Japanese attack in 1941?
Biddle, Tami Davis. Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914–1945. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Biddle, Wayne. Barons of the Sky: From Early Flight to Strategic Warfare. 1991; repr. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
Felker, Craig C. Testing American Sea Power: U.S. Navy Strategic Exercises, 1923–1940. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007.
Heinrichs, Waldo H. Threshold of War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Entry into World War II. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Hone, Thomas C., and Trent Hone. Battle Line: United States Navy, 1919–1939. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006.
Johnson, David E. Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1917–1945. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998.
Miller, Edward S. War Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897–1945. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991.
Murray, Williamson, and Allan R. Millett, eds. Military Innovation in the Interwar Period. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Odom, William O. After the Trenches: The Transformation of U.S. Army Doctrine, 1918–1939. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999.
Pencak, William. For God and Country: The American Legion, 1919–1941. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989.
Piehler, G. Kurt. Remembering War the American Way. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995.
Pogue, Forrest C. George C. Marshall: The Education of a General, 1880–1939. New York: Viking Press, 1963.
Ross, Steven T., ed. U.S. War Plans: 1938–1945. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002.
Venzon, Anne Cipriano. From Whaleboats to Amphibious Warfare: Lt. Gen. "Howling Mad" Smith and the U.S. Marine Corps. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003.
Vogel, Steve. The Pentagon: A History. New York: Random House, 2008.
Weigley, Russell F. The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy. New York: Macmillan, 1973.
Wooldridge, E. T., ed. The Golden Age Remembered: U.S. Naval Aviation, 1919–1941. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998.


If you are an owner of Amschel Z2 and looking out for usb drivers to connect your device to the computer, then you have landed on the right page. Download Amschel Z2 USB driver from here, install it on your computer and connect your device with PC or Laptop successfully.
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To be free from the fear of failure stop imposing conditions on the outcomes of your efforts. In whatever situation, do your best, and leave the rest to Life!
Yesterday I met a young businessman who, like me, had lost a lot of money in business. He was in debt for almost 10 years. And although he has managed to clear all his loans, his business is not doing too well and he himself has become very tentative and risk-averse. "I am bogged down by the fear of failure. I am unable to work with a free mind," he confessed.
The fear of failure is a human creation. In Life's larger design there's nothing called success and failure. There are only efforts and events. Each outcome of an effort is a mere event. It is the human mind, driven by social conditioning, that labels these events as success or failure. Think about it: when you make an effort, an outcome will follow. Now, who decides and qualifies the outcome? It's you who does that. As such the outcome has no quality. For instance, you put in a lot of effort at work. At the end of one year, you get a raise. Now, because you got that raise, you label the outcome as success. Had you not got it, you would have called the outcome a failure. But what about your effort? Would you now review your effort and say you will not want to work as hard because you are not likely to get a raise? This will only lead to a mediocre performance by you. And again you will end up not getting a raise. And therefore leading to unhappiness and discontentment with your job. There's no point in looking at work and Life this way. It will leave you incomplete and frustrated. Instead simply focus on your effort. Do whatever you are good at happily. Pour your heart into it. And don't worry about the outcome. If the result meets or exceeds your expectation, fine. If the result falls short of your expectations, fine again. Either way, learn from the experience. What will people say, how society labels you – these are inconsequential. What is important is that you worked hard, and well, and enjoyed yourself in the process. Simply stay with that perspective.
The key in Life is to enjoy the experience of living. With fear of failure you make the experience nightmarish. It disturbs your inner peace and robs you of the opportunity to be happy. Let go of that fear by stopping to impose conditions on how you want the results to be. Just put in your best every single time, into each moment. And discover how blissful you can really be!


Crowne Plaza® Venice East - Quarto d'Altino hotel is a 30-minute journey on our shuttle from the cruise ship terminal at the Port of Venice.
Venice's beautiful Piazza San Marco, world-class art at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and the Teatro la Fenice opera house are only 30 minutes' drive away, or 25 minutes by train from the station opposite the hotel. Our 6 naturally lit meeting rooms have space for up to 250 guests, and our Crowne Plaza Meetings Director is on hand to help organise your event. You can discover the Roman Venice in nearby Altino, or the Venice Lagoon nearby, from which you can easily reach Murano with its glass factories.
Our stylish, contemporary rooms provide plenty of space for families. The Sleep Advantage® programme, with premium bedding and Quiet Zone rooms, ensures that you'll wake up refreshed. In the evening, you can relax in our bar, specialising in fine Italian wines, enjoy an aperitif on the summer terrace or savour regional Italian cuisine in Aquattro restaurant.


The Dixie Micks are launching their new CD, 'Down in the City', with a performance in Poulaphouca House, on Tuesday December 30th.
The new CD, which was recorded in Dublin, France and Germany, is a collection of songs and instrumentals that reflect the band's eclectic approach to music.
The Dixie Micks first came together to perform in The Dixie Bar, in the well known French ski resort of Morzine, and over the last number of years have performed in Ireland, Wales, England and Hong Kong! With the release of 'Down in the City', and the increased exposure it will bring to the band, the lads are looking forward to a busy 2015!
The Dixie Micks are: Mick McNamara (Vocals, Guitar, Bodhrán) Garry O' Meara (Banjo, Mandolin, Backing Vocals) Paul Kelly (Fiddle, Mandolin) and Alan Doherty (Flute Whistles Percussion Backing Vocals).


Participants can contribute many different types of data to the All of Us Research Program. Some participants may be asked to give physical measurements and blood and urine samples. In this video, Eric Dishman, director of All of Us, describes how and why the program is working to invite a geographically, demographically, and medically diverse group of people to donate their measurements and samples.


text:
// This file is automatically generated.

package adila.db;

/*
 * Samsung Galaxy Core Prime
 *
 * DEVICE: coreprimeve3g
 * MODEL: SM-G361HU
 */
final class coreprimeve3g_sm2dg361hu {
    public static final String DATA = "Samsung|Galaxy Core Prime|";
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Quito kē´tō [key], city (1990 pop. 1,100,847), N central Ecuador, capital of Ecuador and of Pichincha prov. After Guayaquil it is Ecuador's largest city. The setting of Quito is visually splendid: It lies at the foot of the Pichincha volcano in the hollow of a gently sloping, fertile valley. Only a short distance below the equator but at an elevation of 9,350 ft (2,850 m), Quito has a pleasant, balmy climate; however, it is subject to earthquakes and has been damaged several times. The city has textile mills and handicraft and other minor industries, but it is primarily as the educational, cultural, and political center of Ecuador that Quito is important. It is the seat of the Central Univ. of Ecuador and of the oldest art school in Latin America. The site was originally settled by the Quito people. It was captured by the Inca and became the capital of the Inca Kingdom of Quito a few decades before Sebastián de Benalcázar arrived and captured it for Spain (1534). In 1663, Quito became the seat of an audiencia, with boundaries foreshadowing that of present-day Ecuador. Quito was shifted back and forth between the viceroyalty of Peru and that of New Granada . There was an abortive uprising against Spain in 1809, and not until 1822 was the city liberated by Antonio José de Sucre . Quito has a Spanish colonial atmosphere, with many examples of fine early architecture, notably the great Church of San Francisco (see Spanish colonial art and architecture ). Much of the city's population is Native American.


OWASP is a non-profit organization dedicated to web security around the world, and includes thousands of volunteers from the security community at large.
OWASP: Open Web Application Security Project is a 501(c)(3) worldwide not-for-profit charitable organization focused on improving the security of software. Their mission is to make software security visible, so that individuals and organizations are able to make informed decisions.
dedicated to enhancing web security across the entire world.
to combine the knowledge required to protect modern web apps.
Today, OWASP has grown to over 42,000 volunteers.
Intel sit on the board of directors.
software tools helping secure the modern web.
which is what we will cover in this course.
organizations formulate and implement a strategy for application security.
strategies, as well as proper code reviews.
widely used web application scanner and vulnerability analysis tool.
these vulnerabilities can be adapted to nearly any programming language.
In the next video, we'll dive into exactly what the OWASP Top 10 is.


The herbs and life-saving plants used by healers and herbalists has its own local names and it is very difficult to find their Botanical and English names. The herbalists make the medicine powder in general form, and mostly such medicines are made with the composition of more than two different plants. For that purpose they collect medicinal plants from Alpine/sub alpine, Tropical/sub tropical and temperate zones also. Some plants are very common and available. Some are very rare and seasonal..
Treatment methodology is based on practical implementing technique. It will use very common and simple observation method to find out the results. Because, the treatment, study and research is directly related with patients and the result will show what is happening.
The composition of medicinal plants and herbals are a kind of food items. There is no need to implement or use the experiment in other animals like frog, and rat etc. Being a kind of foods, it can be used directly by patient and it is a general trend especially in rural communities.
A. The selected patients' dependable variable will be measured before the introduction of the treatment.
B. The treatment will be then introduced and the dependable variable will be measured again after the treatment introduces.
X. On this simple method the effect of treatment will be equal to the level of the phenomenon after the treatment (B) minus the level of the phenomenon before the treatment (A) i.e.
X = B - A = result.
This is general and informal research modality and everybody can see the result.
In the second phase of the program two groups of patients will be selected. The patients will be divided into two groups. One group will be called tested patient to whom treatment will be introduced (B) and second group will be called control group of patient (C) to whom not introducing the treatment. The dependable variable is then measured in both the groups at the same time. The treatment impact is assessed by subtracting the value of the dependent variable in the control group from its value in the tested patient i.e.
Treatment effect (X) = B – C = Result.
This assumption of study will be the superior to see the impact of the treatment.


"A good place to be and to sleep."
You come as a stranger and feel like a friend. Nice place, very nice owners, if you're looking for a quiet location close to bus and good valuable price restaurants this is a good place, a little out of the main noisy city. Small court yard for smokers, don't have to smoke on the street. Sit down with the other folks and enjoy a good glass of the famous Mendoza wine.


text:
from ping_project.api import Hosts, HostSerializer

def test_parent_class():
    assert Hosts.Host.Get.parent_class == Hosts.Host

def test_serializer_resolve():
    assert Hosts.Host.Get.serializer == HostSerializer
    # assert Hosts.Host.Like.Get.serializer == HostSerializer
    # assert Hosts.Rating.SubResource.Get.serializer == Hosts.default_serializer

def test_collectible_resolve():
    assert Hosts.get_collectible_class() == Hosts.Host

def test_django_checks():
    from django.core.management import call_command

    call_command('check')


I'm thinking of starting a blog. (Not sure how good of an idea this is but whatever, it's an idea.) I was shopping around the different platforms and was wondering what your take is on them. You obviously use WordPress, why? What about Blogger? Any insight would be great as they both look to be about the same to me, having not used either.
Blogging, for me, is a great place to offload stuff from my mind and I find that's it's particularly helpful for the ADHD in me.
Blogger is the lite weight version of blogging. It's backed by Google and does pretty well. You can't host it yourself, but it is free to use.
From this point on, the differences are more or less semantic. I like WordPress because it's completely open source, they have a great community of developers that are constantly evolving the platform and making it better. The hosted (free) version of WordPress is very full featured, but not overwhelming. I particularly like that the URLs are date/title formatted. For example: http://example.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/the-world-is-just-awesome/, would have been posted on April 22,d 2008 with the title "The World is Just Awesome." I also like the commenting system much better in WordPress compared to Blogger.
I don't know much about Blogger because I haven't investigated for a while now, however I do know that hosted (free) WordPress has lots and lots of themes that you can choose from.
WordPress has a pretty spiffy tagging system (in addition to the traditional catagories) that I think are a superior form of content labeling.
This shouldn't be a huge deal for you, but WordPress has (in my opinion) the best comment spam protection system.
You can have pages in addition to posts. Pages are basically the same as posts, execpt that they live outside of the normal hierarchy.
Statistics. It's nice knowing who your readers are and how many of them. WordPress stats are pretty full featured and very helpful.
I think you also get something like 5GB (yes, that's gigabytes) of space to upload content. And of course, I use it. Which not only means that WordPress is the best ;), but that I can also help you out more if you ever need it.
A new study has found Bloggers are better adjusted and live healthier, happier social lives.
The research, from Swinburne University of Technology found that "people felt they had better social support and friendship networks than those who did not blog" after a two month blogging period when compared to people who do not blog.
If any one is interested in blogging, I recommend using WordPress.com. It's an open-source, "state-of-the-art1 semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability."2. It's a great system and I would use and recommend nothing else.
I have this really cool book I got for graduation called The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church. Lent is traditionally a time of 40 days before Easter spent fasting. When I started giving something up for Lent a few years ago, it was in the spirit of fasting from something particular, soda, caffeine, swearing. Soda was originally suggested by Darren (I think) for our entire Bible Study to give up because we drank quite a bit of Dr Pepper and it was going to be a hard thing to give up. Every year I try to thing of something that I can fast from that would be meaningful.
I felt that giving up soda this year would be too easy and I wanted to find something that would be more of a challenge. I thought about blogging, instant messaging, and reading my news feeds. They would be hard to give up, but they are also critical to what I do and giving them up would be more akin to not journaling, not talking with my friends (i.e. giving them the silent treatment), and not reading the newspaper. I don't play that many video games, so giving that up wouldn't be a challenge at all and I'm really not that into Facebook (I might check it every three days or so).
I started to think about other things I could do. Perhaps instead of giving something up, I could do something instead. And so for Lent, I am going to go to church every single Sunday. It's something that I've been trying to do ever since I moved to Golden and I just really slacked on it. It will be hard, but I can do it.


text:
Casting Crowns + Hillsong Worship + Elevation Wors...
Tickets on sale Friday, July 19, 10am.
Christian rock group Casting Crowns began as a student worship band in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1999. Led by singer, songwriter, and youth pastor Mark Hall, the group initially included guitarists Juan DeVevo and Hector Cervantes, violinist Melodee DeVevo, and drummer Rob Cervantes (a.k.a. Chavez). The group relocated to Stockbridge, Georgia, in 2001, adding Chris Huffman on bass, Megan Garrett on keyboards and accordion, and drummer Andy Williams. This augmented version of Casting Crowns released two independent albums on CD, both of which were well received in the Atlanta area. Both independent albums were efforts on the part of Mark Hall and the rest of the group as outreach projects for youth in the area. The group won the GMA regional songwriters competition at Palm Beach Atlantic University, West Palm Beach, Florida, in both the "Best Song" and the "Best Artist" categories in 2004. Although the group was not searching for a record label, one of the group's albums found its way into the hands of Mark Miller, lead singer for country group Sawyer Brown, who was struck by Casting Crowns' driving pop/rock style and Hall's vocal delivery of his hard-hitting but devout songs. Miller signed Casting Crowns to his fledgling Beach Street Records, a division of Reunion Records with distribution by the Provident Label Group, making Casting Crowns the first artist signed to Beach Street Records.
Mark Miller took the group into the studio along with co-producer Steven Curtis Chapman, himself a popular artist on the CCM musical scene. The resulting eponymous album, Casting Crowns, was released in 2003 on the Beach Street imprint. The album quickly made them one of the fastest selling debut artists in Christian music history. The album's third single, "Voice of Truth", spent a record-breaking fourteen consecutive weeks at No. 1 beginning in 2003. "Voice of Truth" is also used in the trailer and the ending from the movie Facing the Giants. The album was certified platinum in 2005, and in 2011, the group received their first gold certification for a single for the song 'Who Am I' from their debut record. Lifesong followed in 2005, debuting at No. 9 on the Billboard 200 chart. The album had three singles: "Lifesong", "Praise You in this Storm", and "Does Anybody Hear Her?". "Lifesong" spent nine weeks in the top spot, with "Praise You in This Storm" remaining at No. 1 for seven weeks. Apart from being successful in the charts, Lifesong earned Casting Crowns their first Grammy Award for their work on the album in 2006. In 2006, the group released Lifesong Live, which included live performances of songs from their studio album Lifesong.
The band's third studio album The Altar and the Door debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and No. 1 on the Hot Christian Albums chart upon its release in August 2007. Ten weeks after the album's release date, it was certified gold by the RIAA. On September 27, 2007, the band embarked on the 'Altar and the Door' tour with Leeland and John Waller . The tour was highly successful, grossing $4.4 million in ticket sales.[8] Casting Crowns broke their own record in 2007 when the single "East to West" from The Altar and the Door hit sixteen consecutive weeks at No. 1. The song ended up enjoying the top spot for a total of nineteen weeks, now their most successful single to date. "Slow Fade" was also released as a single, and was included in the soundtrack of the Kirk Cameron film Fireproof. In 2008, Casting Crowns scored their eighth number one hit with "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day", a track from their newly released Christmas album entitled Peace on Earth. On October 11, 2018, the band announced their new album, Only Jesus, scheduled for release on November 16, 2018, with a video introduction by Mark Hall and made the title track available to those on their fans list.[23][24] On October 12, 2018, they also released a second track, "Nobody", featuring Matthew West, to fans. On October 19, they released a third track, "In the Hands of the Potter" to those on their fans list.
Hillsong Worship and Elevation Worship also perform!
Starting at $24.45/Ticket
Dates: 2019/11/17 - 2019/11/17

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


And to cater to their demands, the number of programs and they should have real meaning to your niche and provide search engine optimization benefits. Aside from that get assistance from the Counselors to America's Small Get an answering machine for incoming calls and record a professional sounding message. Make sure you read the rules, gudang seragam most if not all forums will not allow of a slave to the status quo than you might think. Establish a wholesale account today and be the first and with ongoing running costs around $40 per month makes it an extremely viable proposition.


text:
Weston Hospicecare volunteer backing the charity after double loss
A Weston Hospicecare shop volunteer says she will do anything she can to support the charity after two close friends received treatment before they both died.
Wendy Griggs (pictured right), aged 71, volunteers in the hospice's Yatton shop and started six years ago after the hospice cared for a friend.
Three years later, another of Wendy's friends died in the hospice's inpatient unit.
Wendy said: "A good friend of mine died six years ago and was cared for by the hospice.
"Then my closest friend died three years ago in the hospice. So even more I wanted to be involved to raise funds, keep the shops open, to help bring about seven-day care. My family and I also run and take part in fundraising events.
"The most rewarding part of my role is raising money for a clear cause but I also enjoy the camaraderie.
"Typically I spend time operating the till, tagging items and welcoming and chatting to customers and listen to their tales."
Wendy also says the hospice has huge importance it serves and encourages anyone thinking of volunteering at the hospice to join her.
She added: "The hospice is very, very, very important to the local area and I suggest volunteering at the charity to all sorts of people as I thoroughly enjoy it."
The hospice has an army of volunteers who are worth more than £1million to the hospice through the time they devote to the charity every year.
The NHS provides only 20% of the £4.2million running costs of the hospice annually meaning the remaining 80% must be raised locally.
Weston boy performs Michael Jackson act to raise money for Weston Hospicecare	Conquer the Sahara Desert for Weston Hospicecare
Blog, Event news
Teams battle for glory at second It's A Hospice Knockout event
30 free Christmas Cracker places offered to Weston Hospicecare runners
Take on the UK's highest skydive for Weston Hospicecare


I would argue that London is the greatest place on earth if you are a Muslim. The vast metropolis is an eclectic swathe of cultures, communities, faiths and fashions all living together in various states of harmony. Every tribe, tradition, sect and persuasion of Islam is represented in the British capital. From Sunni to Shi'a, Sufi to Salafi, Ahmadis to Alawis, Brelavis to Deobandis, all shades of belief have a niche in London. Almost every language that is spoken in Muslim societies can be heard, every national costume can be seen, and social custom witnessed in London. There is hardly any political movement, social organisation or evangelical group from across the Muslim world that does not have a base in the city. The spellbinding diversity and heterogeneity of Islam, all Muslim life, can be observed on the streets of London.
Of course, there are also those who shout to attract attention: the members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the Muhajiroun, the Jihadi extremists. They distort Muslim reality and perpetuate an undeserving image of the Muslim communities. But turn your gaze away from the tiny screaming minority towards the silent majority and you will see the potential ideal and true spirit of Islam.
I have been documenting Muslims of London for over two decades. As a recipient of a 'Leaders for London Millennium Award', I documented the physical landscape and thriving community within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets for the book Common Ground: Portraits of Tower Hamlets (1998). I catalogued the diverse British-Asian presence in youth culture for the 2003 O2 exhibition, 'Changing Faces'. My long-term project is focused on the lives of Muslims who attend the East London Mosque. An exhibition of my photographs from this project, 'The East End of Islam', covering the period 1997 to 2007, was recently shown at London's Rich Mix Gallery. It contains a range of intimate portraits of the Muslim community at home, prayer and study.
As a documentary photographer, I am primarily concerned with communities in transition. My images examine the relationship between individuals and their environment. I am fascinated with ordinary Muslims, the silent majority, going about their daily lives. Beauty, desire and freedom each feature as a subtle backdrop to my portraits. I hope that my images introduce a contemporary twist on traditional Islamic art.


St Helens Council has today started work on replacing the bridge at the end of Ruskin Drive which accesses our car park.
Until the replacement bridge is completed, access to the car park will be via the entrance on Rivington Road.
The Meadows and Bungalow buildings will still be accessible from Ruskin Drive.
We will keep you posted with any updates we receive regarding a scheduled completion date.
I was born in 1965, I have been a member of the Club since 1982. I play mainly boardgames and Role Playing games but I also love Ancient and Medieval games. I started gaming when I was old enough to stand an Airfix Soldier up on my parents carpet. I moved up to Model Making kits and eventually found Donald Featherstone wargame rules at the local library, since then my life has always included gaming, be it online or social face to face gaming at the club.


The Elder Scrolls series has enriched countless great games over the years, so it is not surprising that you've created a huge fan base with fascinating stories and always exciting gameplay. None of the games so far had a multiplayer mode, so we could always play our heroes solely.
This time, however, is different. Thanks to Zenimax Online Studios, the series is the world of MMOs. Elder Scrolls Online promises the atmosphere of the original games with its huge open world, but this time with countless fans. Of course, since MMO is concerned, there is also an opportunity to fight against players, even in the midst of epic battles where we can steal castles and entire areas, and even choose a king from the winners. This huge PvP system was developed by Dark Age of Camelot, so we can expect 3 factionalizations. What can still be of interest is the fact that there are no optional servers. Everyone plays on a realm, and the gaming system automatically places the player (on the server) where his friends are playing. The Elder Scrolls online mission system is similar to the dynamic events in Guild Wars 2.
Touring the lands of Vvanderfell was what started many players in the Western role back in 2002. Now we can do it again thanks to the Morrowind expansion of The Elder Scrolls Online, the MMO of Bethesda Softworks. After spending several hours in the game world we tell you in detail our impressions so you know how the return has sat.
In a world where ideas seem exhausted go back in time and rescue the classics that never go out of style is all a success. Something like this Bethesda must have thought when announcing that its next massive expansion for The Elder Scrolls Online would be Morrowind. Although it seems a lie, it's been fifteen years since the third installment of the company's most well-known role-playing saga came to light.
Many players went into the Western RPG with him, which is still considered one of the most influential titles of the genre in the history of electronic entertainment. The Elder Scrolls Online, the Bethesda Softwotks MMO, had been in the studio for more than three years, so the American company wanted to bring it to life with one of those expansions that are a must-have for classic fans as well as new ones.
As the heroes of this shared story we will land on Seydan Neen. There we will discover that many things remain the same as when we visited them fifteen years ago, except that in the history of the new game 700 years have passed since then. We will find out more about the argument so that those who launch the title of Bethesda can be surprised a little more every step they give.
If you have never been enthusiastic about PvP in MMORPG The Elder Scrolls Online, perhaps a new event from ZeniMax will force you to reconsider your opinion. The summer event Midyear Mayhem puts a lot of booty on it.
You can earn unique awards, such as the Laurel Wreath collectible hat, double Alliance Points, rare items for crafting and much more. Bonuses will operate in all PvP modes, so you only need to join hundreds of players in Cyrodiil's massive battles and compete in the dynamic battles of Battlegrounds in Morrowind.
The fun begins on July 20 and ends at the end of the month. To participate, just take the free Midyear Mayhem ticket from the in-game store and start the fight.
The "Albion Online" server is open. Sandbox Interactive emphasizes that the first adventurers have already arrived on the shores of the Royal Continent. Now that "Albion Online" is officially launched, everyone starts with a blank page and its story to write.
Legendary Starters and Founders, Veteran Starters and Founders as well as Epic Starters and Founders can play.
The player is invited to write his own story in the vast open world of Albion, a MMORPG sandbox in which he can decide his identity. No need to choose a class, it can also go from the knight to the magician simply by changing his armor and his weapons. Because it is his equipment that determines what he is. The vast world, open to exploration, consists of different unique biomes where each player's actions will have consequences. It is an economy entirely run by the players.
The world of "Albion Online" is full of opportunities to compete with its fauna, its inhabitants and other adventurers. Dungeons, Hellgates or take over territories, the playground is huge. Players will find a little respite on their own island, where they can quietly build their home, grow their crops and raise their animals. In Albion, everyone counts.
All information and news are available on the official website of Albion Online or UpAlbion.
The new launch of Madden 18 model has been welcomed by many Madden 18 fans, they think Longshot is a great update in Madden series, and this new game mode for Madden 18 will bring more fun, but do you know how many gameplay variety in Madden NFL 18 longshot mode? Today we are going to introduce this question and will tell you how to get Madden NFL 18 coins easily?
As in the normal game mode, it is important to give players the freedom to choose their own game style in the Madden 18 Longshot story mode. In some cases, it makes sense, because Devin is Madden 18 Longshot quarterback, so he will be limited by this style. So you can buy some good and valuable player cards to solve this problem in Madden 18, you can go to Madden-store to buy Madden NFL 18 coins.
In order to circumvent this limitation, players should have the freedom to choose their own game in this particular location and should be able to use pocket passers, scouts or other quarterback options instead of games that force them to decide.
So we can see that Longshot mode in Madden 18 must be very interesting, if you want to have fun, please be sure to prepare enough Madden NFL 18 coins in advance, you can go to Madden-store to buy, there are a lot safe Madden NFL 18 coins for sale, which will help you protect your NFL account when you buy Madden 18 coins.