History of the United States II / Unit 12 USH2 1685 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Europe First
The idea
Although Japan attacked the United States, Roosevelt had long been concerned for Britain, and he saw Germany as the greater threat to freedom. So the United States adopted a Europe First strategy: most of its resources would go to defeating Germany, and then the nation would turn to Japan. The anchor says Roosevelt leaned toward this even before America entered the war.
In practice
American forces in the Pacific fighting with what they could assemble, the anchor says, to blunt the Japanese advance.
Where people slip
The question is why a nation attacked by Japan fought Germany first, and the course gives the anchor's answer as the anchor's reasoning: Germany was the greater danger. The Yawp adds a fact that bears on it: the Soviet Union broke Hitler's army, and roughly eighty percent of all German casualties came on the Eastern Front.
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