Stepping Stones to Nowhere: The Aleutian Islands, Alaska, and American Military Strategy ...

The Aleutian Islands, a mostly forgotten portion of the United States on the southwest coast of Alaska, have often assumed a key role in American military strategy. W.H. Seward believed that acquiring Alaska would permit America to dominate the Pacific. Bill Clinton recently attempted to install an American ballistic missile defence system on the islands. But for most Americans, prior to the Second World War, the barren and bleak islands were of far less interest than the Philippines. In Stepping Stones to Nowhere, Galen Perras shows how all that changed with the Japanese occupation of the western Aleutians, which climaxed in the horrendous battle for Attu. Efforts to make the area a major theatre of war rivalling Europe or the South Pacific foundered, but certainly not for lack of effort. Yet this campaign was unique in its involvement of Britain, the Soviet Union, and Canada. Perras reveals how this clash in the North Pacific demonstrated serious problems with the way that American decision makers - civilian and military - sought to incite a global conflict. A thoroughly researched and accessible volume, this book will be invaluable to military and naval historians, as well as those with a general interest in the history of the Second World War.