The Road to Rainbow: Army Planning for Global War, 1934-1940 (review)

Colonel Henry G. Gole (Ret.) has written an important book on the influence of the Army War College on U.S. strategy for World War II. Based on College Course materials and student strategic studies, Gole seeks to demonstrate that the strategy of the Rainbow Plans and the ABC-1 Conference had been examined by the War College classes for several years prior to 1939. The strategic concepts of a two-ocean war, Germany first, Coalition Partnership, and national mobilization were all found in War College studies in the mid 1930s. Moreover, many graduates of the Army War College went on to serve on the Army General Staff thereby providing continuity between the War College and Army strategic plans.

Had the author broadened his research, he would have discovered that most of the strategic concepts examined by Army War College classes were by the early 1930s deeply embedded in American strategic thought. The concept of a two-ocean war with a focus on the European enemy first can, for example, be traced back to 1897. Officers at the Naval War College discussed U.S. options if Japan joined Spain in a war against the United States. The solution was to deal with Spain first while standing on the defense in the Pacific. Later the Joint Board produced the Red-Orange Plan for a war against the British Empire and Japan. Again the solution was to deal with Britain first and then focus on Japan. It, therefore, required no great feat of mental legerdemain to substitute Germany for Britain in the years before America entered the Second World War.

Operating as part of a coalition was also a concept deeply rooted in American strategic thought. American forces had participated as a member of the Boxer Relief Expedition and in 1902 a Naval War College study assumed that in case of war with Russia and France, the U.S. Navy would help transport a Japanese army to Korea. During World War I, U.S. ground and naval forces worked with the Allied powers. Thus, operating as part of a coalition had its roots well established before the 1930s.

Mobilization for major and even some minor wars was part of America's military tradition. Traditionally, the regular army served as a cadre force, and in wartime the government called for volunteers. War plans of the early twentieth century assumed that in a major war the nation would again mobilize its manpower, and many plans including Red, Orange, and Red-Orange provided for mobilization and even contained mobilization schedules. It was by the 1930s a well-established concept that a serious conflict required mobilization.

The author also notes that Army War College classes examined a number of plans for regional defense. The War College, for example, devised Plan Purple to resist German penetration of Brazil, but the Navy in 1903 and the Joint Board in 1906 were in Plan Black aware of this possibility. In the 1920s the Joint Board wrote Plan Violet for intervention in Latin America, and in 1929 the Army War Plans Division produced Plan Purple designed for intervention in every South American country except Bolivia and Paraguay.

Army War College students also studied and wrote plans for a war with Mexico, Plan Green, and Canada, Plan Crimson. Planning for Green was one of the oldest war plans, and varieties of Green included everything from border protection to the complete conquest and occupation of the entire country. Crimson was actually part of Plan Red wherein various colonies and dominions of the British Empire were given Color codes in various shades of red. As early as the 1880s, military and naval planners had examined ways to invade Canada.

Army War College classes functioned within a strategic framework that...