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To: doug from upland
Actually the week after the Battle of Midway, the right wing anti FDR Chicago Tribune published a story that the victory at Midway was the result of breaking the Imperial Navy's code. FDR's Attorney General advised FDR to do nothing of a legal nature,fearing that criminal action would prove the story as trueto the Japanese.

A half year before the same newspaper published a secret war plan developed by General Albert Wedemeyer which listed the steps America would take after declaring war on Germany. The plan was reproduced in exquisite detail in the Dec 4, 1941 issue of the Chi Trb. Publisher John McCormick, an ardent isolationist, hoped knowledge that Roosevelt was preparing to buils a 100 division army would mobilize the anti war movement which had been losing steam.

Sides change. Tactics don't.

14 posted on 12/21/2005 9:07:55 PM PST by xkaydet65 (Peace, Love, Brotherhood, and Firepower. And the greatest of these is Firepower!)
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To: xkaydet65
The leaking of the Army development plan sometimes called the 'Victory Plan' is still something of a mystery. On the surface the reason for leaking would appear obvious. The only reason the US who was still a technical nonbelligerent would be planning and Army of something like 200 division would be to project power far overseas in a war against distant enemies in flat contradiction to FDR's 'no foreign war' pledge. So the leakers would be trying to blow the administration's cover and if possible sabotage its plans for intervention in the world war in massive scale.
At first the finger of suspicion pointed at Wedemeyer as director of War Plans and intimately familiar with the sourcing documents to support the variants of Plan Orange.
Moreover the general was known to be deeply opposed to US involvement in the war and one of a number in the higher echelons of the Army and navy who saw Stalin's Russia as a much greater longterm risk to the US than the Nazi Reich.

However, no indication of Roosevelt's suspicion of Wedemeyer ever surfaced and he continued to occupy ever more sensitive posts throughout the war. Also the so-called Victory Plan had already been effectively scrapped when it was leaked. The size of the army required to support it on top of the man power demands for the Navy's very ambitious expansion plans and those equally large one's for the USAAF would exhaust the industrial workforce necessary to support the highly mechanized and technologically advanced force that US war planners were gradually evolving as the future force to fight the war. At the time the plan was leaked the real future force structure was in turmoil and the number of proposed divisions had already been chopped significantly and the force mix was changed dramatically emphasizing far more support forces, artillery, and specialized units.

What has been suspected is that the leak of the 'Victory Plan' was a deliberate over the transom job done by War department staff with White House direction. The goal was to serve notice on the Axis that the US was deadly serious about not letting them prevail and the size of the army that was never to be that the Victory Plan spelled out was to prove that point beyond question. No real secrets would be revealed as the plan was already yesterday's news in the war plans community.
60 posted on 12/22/2005 1:41:50 PM PST by robowombat
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To: xkaydet65
Actually the week after the Battle of Midway, the right wing anti FDR Chicago Tribune published a story that the victory at Midway was the result of breaking the Imperial Navy's code. FDR's Attorney General advised FDR to do nothing of a legal nature,fearing that criminal action would prove the story as true to the Japanese.

Very true. Thank heavens Jap hubris didn't believe the story. However, FDR's legal advice was good for a limited time. Once we had Japan occupied and the story had been officially admitted - 1950s or early '60s, well before Ultra was announced in the 70s, I don't recall precisely - then any surviving guilty parties could have been charged without harming national security and deserved to have been so charged. There shouldn't be any statue of limitations for such treason any more than for the holocaust butchers. The more important timing is how long their successful trial can deter the next traitor. Hanoi Jane would still be eligible if I had a court.

75 posted on 12/26/2005 10:49:53 PM PST by JohnBovenmyer
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