Bøger af Jonathan M. Nielson

The Second World War was to Alaska what the First World War had been to the nation. The essential reality of Alaska's experience during World War II was the end of its isolation from the continental United States. As a consequence of the war, Alaska's territorial era entered its twilight years, eclipsed by the dawn of statehood nineteen years later and driven largely by military imperatives. A further legacy was Alaska's inevitably significant role in the militarization of the Arctic, a strategic watershed that emerged in the postwar confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. The conjunction was fortuitous as it enhanced Alaska's strategic importance in national defense. Indeed, Alaska was in the estimation of one military authority America's "Gibraltar of the North."While the presence of the armed services in Alaska continued to decline as the war's strategic focus shifted south, worsening relations with the Soviet Union by 1945-46 caused growing alarm in Washington. Perceptions of hardening Soviet intransigence and more strident demands in Europe and elsewhere provoked concerns about postwar American-Soviet relations. Given these perceptions, it was obvious that zones of confrontation and potential conflict emerged everywhere America-Soviet interests and ambitions clashed and that this might be especially serious where the two superpowers came closest to each other territorially. Here, "a kind of watery...invisible...Berlin Wall" demarcated the "free world" from the communist bloc...an "ice curtain" every bit as real as the barrier Winston Churchill so vividly described in his famous "iron curtain" speech.Within a few years a vast defense perimeter ran from extreme northwestern Alaska, through Attu and the Aleutian islands, Paramushiru in the Kuriles, the Bonin Islands, to the Philippines, and thence eastward to the Pacific coast of South America.Abruptly Alaska was elevated anew to geographic and strategic stature, and it now seemed unlikely that the territory could ever again be left defenseless. Thereafter with advent of the Great Circle Route over the pole, Alaska's military relevance increased steadily and assumed even greater importance during the postwar decades. This reflected changing military relationships, advances in military technology, and revised strategic doctrines. As United States-Soviet relations became increasingly abrasive, voices in Congress were again heard calling for Alaska's re-militarization.

The most significant military development to touch Alaska during the interwar years was the advent of air power, an innovation that completely altered Alaska's strategic position. Suddenly the world became smaller as areas once thought safely distant from potential enemies became vulnerable. Nowhere was this more evident than in the Pacific, whose countless islands became potential advanced air bases. As air technology improved, the ability of long-range bombers and, by the 1930s, of carrier aircraft, to penetrate American airspace was a development of far reaching significance. While such warnings were largely limited to a handful of air-power advocates their vocal advocacy constituted nothing less than an "insurrection", a revolution in military thinking fought against entrenched military conservatism, cultural aversion to change, fears of budget cuts, and War Department lethargy.Indeed it was the air power crusader General Billy Mitchell who aggressively fought to convince the War and Navy Departments to embrace the new doctrine of offensive air power. Mitchell came to understand Alaska's strategic importance early on. Consequently, he saw the Aleutians as a vulnerability: if left unguarded Japan could "creep up" and, by establishing air dominance, take Alaska and Canada's West Coast. But he also saw Alaska as a strategic base from which American planes could "reduce Tokyo to powder." Prophetically, in 1923 Mitchell forecast precisely the military threat and strategic arguments that would shape military thinking almost twenty years later: "I am thinking of Alaska. In an air war, if we were unprepared Japan could take it away from us, first by dominating the sky and creeping up the Aleutians."By the mid-to late 1930s military and civilian advocates of air power and more visionary strategists were beginning to make their voices heard in Congress and elsewhere, decrying Alaska's military vulnerability. Between 1933 and 1944 no one was more adamant than Alaska's Delegate in Congress, Anthony Joseph "Tony" Dimond, who challenged the nation to defend itself by defending Alaska. To Dimond, it seemed poor strategy to fortify one pacific base, Hawaii, while ignoring another, Alaska. Dimond's campaign was strengthened by passage of the Wilcox Bill, sponsored by Representative J. Mark Wilcox (D-Florida), officially known as the National Air Defense Act. This truly significant legislation authorized the location and construction of military airfields throughout the United States as a general defense preparedness measure. Alaska was recognized as one of the nation's six strategic regions, and two bases, one at Anchorage, the other at Fairbanks, were recommended in part, "because Alaska was closer to Japan than it is to the center of [the] continental United States."Fortuitously for Alaska defense advocates, General Douglas MacArthur stepped down as Chief of Staff of the Army and was replaced by Major General Malin Craig in October 1935. Craig and Brigadier General Stanley D. Embick advocated a substantial reconfiguration of Plan Orange arguing that the Philippines presented an invitation to attack and should be "neutralized" in favor defending the "Alaska-Hawaii-Panama Triangle." Both the Army and Navy were charged with defending Alaska as far west as Dutch Harbor, and the army pledged to mobilize 6,600 troops in Alaska within a month of attack by Japan. In contemplating the defense of Alaska the Army General Staff formulated five priority objectives: first, increase the Alaska garrison; second, establish a major base for Army operations near Anchorage; third, develop a network of air bases within Alaska; fourth, garrison these bases with combat troops; and fifth, protect the naval installations at Sitka, Kodiak, and Dutch Harbor. Alaska was about to go to war.

This book examines the contribution of the military to the exploration, settlement, development, and defense of Alaska. The work covers the period of time from its purchase from Russia in 1867 to the present. During that time Alaska emerged from an obscure colonial dependency to a resource-rich state. This same period confirmed its strategic significance in hemispheric and continental defense, first during the second world war, when Japanese forces occupied the Aleutian Islands, and then during the cold war confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union.While in some ways analagous to the western experience generally, the duties of the military on the Alaska frontier were unique. Geography, climate, and unprecendented responsibilities of governance and law enforcement imposed many new challenges. In recent years Alaska and the Arctic have acquired military significance for both the United States and Russia. This fascinating study is in inquiry into the historical evidence and the major themes, events, and personalities that have shaped the development of our forty-ninth state. It offers original research in archival and manuscript sources, and provides a useful synthesis of the published documentary record, and brings together in a comprehensive bibliography resources that are available for those who wish to pursue specific areas of interest. The broad scope, both interpretive and narrative, of this important work will make it an indispensable aid to students and scholars of the western historical experience, American military history, and world history.