Astonishing!

[The Baron]

And rather worrying....

I had never heard of this and I do take a keen interest in history..


War Plan Red - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It seems that we in the "Shades of Red" zones should be grateful to the Japanese, because Plan Red was active right up until Pearl Harbor when it became Plan Orange..

Amazed I'd never heard about it. It's coming up on TV here soon, so I will be an avid viewer.

Does this come as a surprise to anyone else here?

[Jeff Young]

There were war plans with all of the world's major "threats" to the US, and Canada and Mexico right up until WWII.

There were nothing other than planning exercises for the most part.

At the same time, you have to understand the American psyche of that time period. We were isolationist and wanted to avoid being drawn into European Wars, and WWI only reinforced that idea.

Remember also that there were tense moments with Canada and Great Britain up until the end of the 19th century along the Pacific Northwest Border (do some research on the Pig War on the San Juan Islands) AND some distrust of Great Britain for supporting the Confederacy during the US Civil War.

The "special relationship" between our countries really didn't have its beginnings until WWI (and even then there was some serious thought given to supporting the Germans in the early stages of the war) and not cemented until FDR and Churchill developed the fantastic personal relationship (with Churchill masterfully playing -- frankly, for the good of the world -- FDR) they had.

[Jeff Young]

Here is a list of all of the Army Rainbow Plans. Interesting read. Honestly, War Plan Orange (Japan) was the only one seriously studied, followed by Black (Germany).

All "serious" US interwar planning assumed either that Britain and France would be allies, or that the US would be defending the Western Hemisphere alone.

United States color-coded war plans - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Jim Craik]

Keith,

I have heard if this.

I recently read the book "War Plan Orange", a fairly boring book. It covered the US planning (mostly Naval) for what could happen in the Pacific, how we should react and how best to prepare.

It started with plans soon after The Cival War, right up until WWII.

it went through hundreds of "Rainbow" scenarios with many different countries:

What if Gemany and Spain combined, what if the Dutch and Brits combined or the Japanese and Brits, Dutch and China...........

I know now, in retrospect this seems absurd, and I doubt if even then the planners really though that might happen. But our military leaders would be stupid to fail to plan, and they were not stupid.

The book mostly covered the Pacific, but it outlined our Atantic planning as well. Plan red, war with Britain was one of hundreds, I think this article may be playing this up to be a bigger thing than it really was.

What really surprised me was how accurate they were. In the 1920's the Orange plan had Japan taking Guam, Wake, the Philippians, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies all fall fairly easily and supplying them would be a waist of resources.

But Hawaii, Midway, Samoa and Australia would be safe. They even talked of the US Army being trapped on Bataan.

[Mike]

The Plans Department/Contingency planning at the Pentagon has a group of people whose sole task is to come up with every conceivable scenario affecting the U.S and it's interests, then create a response. The detail of the response plan is directly proportional to the 'probability' of it occurring, so some plans are mere shells while others are fairly detailed. The point of the exercise is to avoid getting caught "cold" in any situation, where you would have to begin from scratch, under pressure. It's the old boy scout motto, try to always be prepared! What they can come up with can be surprising. When some idiot leaks one of these far out contigencies and the press gets a hold of it, all hell breaks loose, for no good reason other than to sell newspapers or 'scoops' or whatever.

[The Baron]

I hear all of this but cannot help thinking that one of the reasons for Plan Red was to prevent Britain from expanding it's Empire. Although WWII effectively did that, this is the primary reason that Germany sought conflict with the United Kingdom and brought about WWI.

In light of the fact that the USA was always considered 'isolationist' in terms of world politics at that time, I am somewhat astonished that the USA would even contemplate such a plan let alone spend years of planning of it, effectively keeping it current until December 1941.

[Jeff Young]

There was always a concern about European powers attempting to exapnd their influence in the Western hemisphere. Napoleon III installed an Emperor in Mexico in the 1870s, and Canada remained essentially a British Colony for a long time and there was significant enemity between the two countries.

Don't read too much into this. The US War Plan Red was a defensive war plan, not an offensive, but at the same time understand that the special relationship our two countries have did not really arise until WWII.