Louisiana Maneuvers

The Louisiana Maneuvers were a series of U.S. Army exercises held around Northern and Western-Central Louisiana, including Fort Polk, Camp Claiborne and Camp Livingston, in 1940 and 1941. The exercises, which involved some 400,000 troops, were designed to evaluate U.S. training, logistics, doctrine, and commanders.

Many Army officers present at the maneuvers later rose to very senior roles in World War II, including Omar Bradley, Mark Clark, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Walter Krueger, Lesley J. McNair, Joseph Stilwell, and George Patton.

When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, starting World War II, the U.S. Army was largely an infantry force with supporting artillery, engineers, and cavalry, as well as combat support and combat service supporting arms. It was far smaller than most European armies, and few units were motorized or mechanized. As war approached, there was a need to both modernize the force and to conduct large-scale maneuvers to test all aspects of a fast-growing, inexperienced force. General George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, appointed General Leslie McNair as director of all army training. He and Colonel Mark Wayne Clark picked thousands of acres of unused land in Louisiana as a good place for large-scale training. The war games were conducted while the British awaited an expected German invasion of the United Kingdom, and some speculated that the National Guard units used in the maneuvers would not be demobilized afterwards.

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