Page:John Banks Wilson - Maneuver and Firepower (1998).djvu/222

 200

When the War Department approved the redeployment policy in the spring of 1945, planners believed the European command would need to furnish fifteen divisions to end the war in the Far East and twenty-one to the United States to reconstitute a strategic reserve, which had ceased to exist in February 1945. Following the German offensive in the Ardennes in December 1944, the last seven divisions in the ninety-division troop program had been sent to Europe. With the point system and a tentative troop basis in place, redeployment waited only for the fighting to end in Europe.

On 12 May, four days after the surrender of Germany, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, set the readjustment program into motion. High and low point men switched units, and in June the 86th, 95th, 97th, and 104th Infantry Divisions left Europe for reassignment. Arriving home, the men took thirty-day leaves before undergoing training to prepare for the Pacific theater. But the successful use of atomic bombs against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August skewed all readjustment plans toward demobilization. By September 1945, 19 divisions—1 airborne, 1 mountain, 2 armored, and 15 infantry—returned from Europe for use elsewhere. Of those units, only the 86th and 97th Infantry Divisions moved to the Far East, arriving in the Philippines and Japan after the fighting had ended.