for as a stage for the maneuvers: a largely underpopulated area able to sustain the damage and destruction that the maneuvers would inevitably produce. Scouts went out all over the United States to locate ideal areas. After studying their reports, Marshall finally decided on the lower Sabine River area for the first exercise. The river formed a natural border between Texas and Louisiana, and the area long ago had been involved in boundary disputes between the United States and Mexico. The mock war zone selected was a sparsely populated, reptile-rich swampy area presenting its own set of challenges. The front for the staged warfare would extend along the river for 25 to 30 miles.
The exact location of the first of these events had been kept under wraps until February 7, 1940, when Senator John Holmes Overton Sr. (Democrat of Louisiana) announced to the press that he had gotten word directly from Marshall that the maneuvers would take place in Louisiana. Marshall had told the senator that the Army needed a large area with plenty of rivers as obstacles for a mobile infantry to overcome. Overton was pleased, as he saw the maneuvers as a boon to Louisiana’s economy. He estimated that the cost of the exercise would be $28 million; Louisiana would receive a large slice of that amount.20
Gaining permission to trespass on private land was a process that moved rapidly once the mock war zone had been mapped out. Some 6,500 individual and mostly small landowners signed on granting access to 3,400 square miles. A mere three and a half square miles were denied outright, and there was an additional ten square miles where the owner could not be found. By the time the maneuvers were ready to start, more than two million acres had been set aside for the mock war. The area was almost three times the size of Rhode Island.21,*
As the Phoney War dragged on overseas, Marshall gradually brought other southern politicians into his plans. On March 21, Marshall told Representative William M. Colmer (Democrat of Mississippi) that in the early part of May, 36,000 troops would pass through his state as they traveled from Fort Benning, Georgia, to the Sabine River in Louisiana for the exercises, which would soon be known far and wide as the Louisiana Maneuvers. These maneuvers were scheduled to begin on May 5 and end on May 23.22
But war games were one thing and war another. One effect of the Phoney War on the United States was that in the spring of 1940, public opinion was strongly opposed to American involvement. One poll, taken in March, held that 96.4 percent of Americans were against going to war with Germany.23
To many, Marshall’s requests for more troops and equipment were regarded as “mere warmongering,” in the words of Marshall’s wife, Katherine. As if to underscore the point, on April 3, 1940, the House Appropriations Committee—the same body that Marshall had warned about the coming blaze—cut the modest defense budget by 10 percent, more than $67 million below the amount requested by the president. Among the items cut was $12 million for a cold-weather air-training base in Alaska, which caused Marshall to be “very much concerned,” as the base was needed to protect naval bases planned for the Aleutian Islands as well as the rest of Alaska—all of which would be a prime invasion point for Imperial Japan if it attacked North America. Without the new base, Alaska’s defense would rest on the occupants of some wooden barracks constructed in Sitka about 40 years earlier.24 The cuts were especially damaging to the Army Air Corps, which had requested 496 new aircraft but was granted only 57.25
“One thing is certain,” British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said of Hitler on April 4, 1940, in a speech delivered in Central Hall, Westminster. “He missed the bus.” Five days later, Chamberlain was proven disastrously wrong when the Phoney War came to an abrupt end. Germany invaded Denmark, which surrendered in only six hours, and at the same time Nazi warships entered Norwegian waters, attacking ships and landing troops that began to occupy key cities by the end of the day.26
The next morning’s eight-column headline in the New York Times read: GERMANS OCCUPY DENMARK, ATTACK OSLO. By the next day, as the Associated Press announced, a new Norwegian government had been formed under the leadership of Vidkun Quisling, the head of the Norwegian Nazi Party. Almost immediately, the name Quisling became a powerful eponym for collaborator and traitor. Despite the Nazi flag flying over Oslo and the flight of the royal family and much of the government to the north, the Norwegian resistance and the regular army continued to fight, along with expeditionary forces sent by the British and the French.27
The Louisiana Maneuvers of 1940 were billed as the greatest military maneuver in U.S. history. Seventy thousand uniformed army men from camps and bases in 33 states began assembling in two locations in the Deep South in March. Texas was sending the greatest number of men to the event, 12,000, and Georgia and New York State provided 7,000 apiece. The 70,000 troops represented about half the standing U.S. Army. In addition, the Army was sending almost all of its 400 or so working tanks, including several of experimental design, along with 340 armored vehicles and 3,000 trucks. One hundred and twenty-eight aircraft, including bombers and pursuit, attack, and observation aircraft, would take part in the games.
Units were assigned to one of two armies, which would assemble approximately 600 miles apart, a separation made more difficult by swamps and muddy terrain. The troops of the Blue Army headed to Fort Benning, Georgia, while the Red Army gathered around Natchitoches, Louisiana. As the ordered equipment arrived, the two armies moved forward, the Red taking up positions along the Texas side of the Sabine River and the Blue Army on the Louisiana side. Marshall provided the two armies’ commanders with the following information on the countries at war:
Blue (East) is a small nation with a common boundary at the Sabine River with another small nation, Red (West). Blue has a small army, normally scattered throughout the country. Red has an even smaller army. These troops, however, are highly trained and are concentrated along the border.
Boundary disputes, local border incidents and alien minorities have resulted in increasing tension between the two nations. On April 20, the Red government provocatively announced it would hold its spring maneuvers just west of the Sabine River.
The Blue government became alarmed, increased its garrison at its border town of Alexandria and announced that it would move its Army to the vicinity of Alexandria for large-scale maneuvers.
The Red Army was to be the aggressor nation, schooled in the tactics of blitzkrieg, and the Blue, the defending force, protecting its national border along the Sabine River from a foreign invader. The Sabine, much of which marks the Texas-Louisiana line, was also regarded by many as the border between the Old South and the Southwest, so the sense of it as a national border was not far-fetched.
As the director of the maneuvers, Marshall was quick to point out that these exercises would have importance far greater than that normally attributed to war games. These maneuvers would be unscripted and, as in real war, based on “free play.” Commanders would be tested on the ground, where their errors and achievements would be boldly displayed. The maneuvers were meant to be a test of man, machine, and command. The maneuvers were to allow American troops to test tactics similar to those the Nazis were employing in Europe and to learn how to defend against them.28
The exercises would test not only the new triangular divisions but also the methods of marching men into battle. Gone were the close formations of 1917–18. Advancing or retreating troops would now move through the underbrush, spaced several yards apart in irregular patterns, an approach exemplifying the differences between the old square divisions and the new triangular ones.29
The stated premise of the maneuvers was that they were designed to test American forces in case of an invasion of North America, but this would be essentially a cover story, as Roosevelt, Marshall, and everyone else involved in the event knew they were also an early test of an expeditionary army.
Because the news of what was happening in Europe dominated the headlines and the front pages of newspapers in the
