Training, Multinational

World War I

With the entry of the United States into World War I on April 6, 1917, multinational training began in earnest for the first time. On his arrival in France in [Page 1453]June 1917, General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force (AEF), began a thorough review of the tactics and training methods used by the Allied armies to train their military forces. Great Britain and France had long maintained military training centers and professional schools to train their respective military organizations. Pershing seized on this idea quickly and began creating his own training centers for the arriving AEF. Recommendations were made to the War Department that combat-experienced officers from Great Britain and France be obtained and sent to the United States to assist in the training of recruits, noncommissioned officers, and commissioned officers for the AEF. While the locations and staffing requirements were being completed for the new AEF schools, Pershing made arrangements for current AEF noncommissioned and commissioned officers to attend military schools that were operated by Great Britain and France. Pershing and his staff faced many challenges in the process of how best to integrate the AEF into the well-established military hierarchy of the British and French military forces. Britain and France had been at war with Germany and its allies for more than 3 years by the time the AEF arrived in Europe. As a result, the British and French leadership pressed for the attachment of the fresh U.S. forces directly to their own forces to bolster their depleted ranks, a move that Pershing vehemently opposed. Pershing was a firm believer in having a single, supreme commander in charge of the coalition forces, instead of a multilevel council made up of officers from each of the nations.

World War II

During World War II, strategic thinking concentrated around the idea that Germany posed a greater risk than Japan and resulted in the United States participating in many multinational training exercises in the European Theater of Operations with allies Great Britain and France. The training primarily concentrated on preparations for Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa in November 1942, and Operation Overlord, the cross-channel invasion of France that occurred on June 6, 1944. With the defeat of Nazi Germany as the primary goal, the next move for the Allies would be to build on the limited successes achieved in the Mediterranean in 1942. The selection of a supreme commander to lead a cross-channel invasion of France had been decided on at the Casablanca Conference in 1943. General Dwight D. Eisenhower would ultimately be selected as the supreme commander of the expeditionary forces, but not before much political maneuvering by other well-known and qualified Allied senior officers.

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