It was an effort—­in the language of the military men—­of deployment of our forces.  Many battles—­essential battles—­were fought; many victories—­vital victories—­were won.  But these battles and these victories were fought and won to hold back the attacking enemy, and to put us in positions from which we and our allies could deliver the final, decisive blows.

In the beginning our most important military task was to prevent our enemies—­the strongest and most violently aggressive powers that ever have threatened civilization—­from winning decisive victories.  But even while we were conducting defensive, delaying actions, we were looking forward to the time when we could wrest the initiative from our enemies and place our superior resources of men and materials into direct competition with them.

It was plain then that the defeat of either enemy would require the massing of overwhelming forces—­ground, sea, and air—­in positions from which we and our allies could strike directly against the enemy homelands and destroy the Nazi and Japanese war machines.

In the case of Japan, we had to await the completion of extensive preliminary operations—­operations designed to establish secure supply lines through the Japanese outer-zone defenses.  This called for overwhelming sea power and air power—­supported by ground forces strategically employed against isolated outpost garrisons.

Always—­from the very day we were attacked—­it was right militarily as well as morally to reject the arguments of those shortsighted people who would have had us throw Britain and Russia to the Nazi wolves and concentrate against the Japanese.  Such people urged that we fight a purely defensive war against Japan while allowing the domination of all the rest of the world by Nazism and Fascism.

In the European theater the necessary bases for the massing of ground and air power against Germany were already available in Great Britain.  In the Mediterranean area we could begin ground operations against major elements of the German Army as rapidly as we could put troops in the field, first in North Africa and then in Italy.

Therefore, our decision was made to concentrate the bulk of our ground and air forces against Germany until her utter defeat.  That decision was based on all these factors; and it was also based on the realization that, of our two enemies, Germany would be more able to digest quickly her conquests, the more able quickly to convert the manpower and resources of her conquered territory into a war potential.

We had in Europe two active and indomitable allies—­Britain and the Soviet Union—­and there were also the heroic resistance movements in the occupied countries, constantly engaging and harassing the Germans.  We cannot forget how Britain held the line, alone, in 1940 and 1941; and at the same time, despite ferocious bombardment from the air, built up a tremendous armaments industry which enabled her to take the offensive at El Alamein in 1942.