History of the US Army Europe
The history of the US Army Europe (USAREUR) involves many reorganizations, numerous restructurings, but throughout its forty plus years, it has remained as the "keeper of the peace" that it fought to gain in World War Two. The command was founded on 8 June 1942 in London as the American forces massed in Great Britain to begin training for the assault the continent of Europe that would take place two years later on the beaches of Normandy. The Command, first designated as the Headquarters, European Theater of Operations, U. S. Army (ETOUSA), was initially under the command of Major General James E. Chaney, an Army Air Corps officer. Major General, later General, Dwight D. Eisenhower, replaced Chaney in late June. The following month, Eisenhower departed the command of all Allied military forces in Europe.
The following month, Eisenhower was officially designated as the Supreme Allied Commander Europe. He also maintained his leadership of ETOUSA, thus providing him with a dual role which he maintained until the end of hostilities in Europe in May 1945.
The European Theater of Operations, U. S. Army (ETOUSA) was originally tasked to build up the American forces in Great Britain and then support them with logistics and administrative services. These last two functions parallel some of USAREUR's functions today. The Command's Deputy Theater Commander for logistics and administration was Major General John C.H. ("Court House") Lee who remains as the chief logistician throughout the war.
Having successfully planned and carried out the largest invasion in history on the Normandy Beaches in June 1944, Eisenhower's logistical problems supporting a large moving force intensified. By late August and into September, Lieutenant General George Patton's Third Army was halted for five days because they lacked sufficient fuel for their tanks and vehicles. A possible crisis was averted when Eisenhower's very able Chief of Staff. General Walter Bedell Smith, successfully interceded with Lee and made certain that Patton had the logistical support he needed to continue his drive across France and into Germany.
When the war ended in Europe in 8 May 1945, the Headquarters for ETOUSA was located in Versailles, France, just outside of Paris. As Eisenhower and his staff began to prepare for the occupation of Germany, the Supreme Headquarters Allied occupation of Germany, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) moved to the I.G. Farbenindustrie Building in Frankfurt. This large structure, later re-named the Abrams Building, served as the Headquarters for the V Corps until late in 1994 when the Corps Headquarters began to relocate to Heidelberg. Despite the size of this building, the number of personnel assigned or attached to the Headquarters reached 16,000 with another 14,000 assigned to other supporting agencies. The leadership rapidly realized that the size of the command had overwhelmed the size of the facilities available on post-war Germany. For this reason and for security purposes, the command was decentralized into the towns of Hanau and Offinbach. Eventually, the organization covered six Landkreis or counties.
As the war ended, Eisenhower redesignated ETOUSA as U.S. forces European Theater (USFET). The Headquarters was also assigned to Frankfurt in the Farben Building and co-located with SHAEF. The Communications Zone, that provided logistical and administrative support, remained in Paris. In mid-July 1945, General Eisenhower departed and SHAEF was officially dissolved with most if the staff members assuming parallel positions in the newly created USFET. Eisenhower continued as the Commander if USFEET until he departed in late November and General Joseph T. McNarney became the Commander in Chief, a position he held until the Spring of 1947 when General Lucius D. Clay replaced him. Clay also assumed the position of U.S. Military Governor of Germany with staff and offices in Berlin. During this period, USFET was redesignated as the European Command (EUCOM).
With the merger of the British and American Zones of Occupation in 1948, EUCOM Headquarters moved from Frankfurt to Heidelberg. The U.S. Constabulary, a modified Corps Headquarters, relocated from its previous location in Heidelberg to Stuttgart, with both moves completed in early 1949. At this point, the Command consisted of a theater headquarters and staff (EUCOM), and two tactical units: 1st Infantry Division and the constabulary, which was about the size of an armored division.
Several significant events caused U. S. forces to move their emphasis from occupational duties to the defense of Germany and Western Europe. These included the Soviet blockade of land routes to Berlin that caused the initiation of the Berlin Airlift during the 1948-1949 period; the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948; the successful detonation of the first Soviet nuclear device in 1949; the invasion of South Korea in 1950, and numerous hostile actions along the long border between the Allied and Soviet forces in Europe. Largely as a result of these factors, the Seventh U. S. Army was activated at Stuttgart in late November 1950 and U.S. Constabulary assigned to it. As tensions increased and the Korean War ground on, two corps headquarters were organized and four divisions arrived in the summer and fall of 1951.
With the rapid deployment of these units and their associated personnel, there was a serious lack of adequate facilities. To work on this and other related problems, a new unified United States European Command (USEUCOM) was established on August 1, 1952 and its Headquarters placed in Frankfurt. On the same date, the Headquarters EUCOM at Heidelberg was redesignated as the Headquarters, USAREUR. This action gave USAREUR, for the first time since the World War II period, a separate operational staff of its own. General Matthew B. Ridgeway commanded the new Headquarters with General Thomas Handy serving as the Deputy and the Chief of Staff. In the Fall of 1952, USEUCOM moved from Frankfurt to the suburbs of Paris, only to return to Germany (Stuttgart) in 1967 when France withdrew from all of its NATO military commitments.
In 1953, the Korean War Armistice was signed and tensions began to decrease in Europe. USAREUR divisions, using the new Pentomic structure, consisted of about 13,500 personnel. Their equipment was being upgraded with the introduction of the M-48 tank, the M-59 armored personnel carrier, and tactical nuclear weapons. This all changed in June 1961 when the Soviet Premier Khrushchev announced that the USSR was planning to conclude a peace treaty with the East German government. By late summer, the flow of refugees from East Germany to Berlin reached 3,000 per day. Suddenly on the night of August 12, the Soviets closed all the border crossing points and began to construct the Berlin Wall. In response to this action, the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment deployed to Europe along with additional support units. USAREUR strength reached an all-time high of 277,342 in June of 1962 as the crisis deepened.
The Command dispatched the 1st Battle Group, 18th Infantry (Reinforced) to Berlin to support the previously deployed troops. This unit was personally greeted by the Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was in Berlin to dramatize the American response to the Berlin Wall. As the crisis in Berlin "cooled," USAREUR attempted to improve its abilities with newer equipment and systems. It received the M-113 armored personnel carrier, the M-14 rifle, the M-60 machine gun, the OV-1 fixed wing observation aircraft, the UH-1B Huey helicopter, the M-151 truck and the M-60 tank.
Because of economic problems, the number of dependents allowed in Europe was decreased in 1961 and for the first time since the end of World War Tow, the currency was revalued. The DM, previously at 4.2 /1.00 was lowered to 4.0 /1.00. To further reduce costs, a program of rotating battle groups and battalions was instituted in 1962 and 1963. In a related move, the first prepositioning of equipment for an infantry division, an armored division, and ten supporting units took place. The concept, a predecessor to the more recent POMCUS, allowed units to "fall in" on their equipment when they arrived from CONUS locations.
Because of the French military withdrawal from NATO, US forces were given one year to leave all French posts. USEUCON moved on 1967 to Stuttgart, where it remains today. Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) to a new location near Mons, Belgium. Headquarters for Allied Forces Central Europe (AFCENT) to Brunssum in the Netherlands. And in December 1967, USAREUR and the Seventh Army headquarters merged on Heidelberg. These commands remain in the same locations today, except for AFCENT which moved to Heidelberg on 1 July 1993.
The first Redeployment of Forces FROM Germany (REFORGER) took place on 1968 with the removal of about 28,000 spaces from Germany. This realignment was accomplished for both political and economies reasons. The units and personnel withdrawn remained committed to MATO and during REFORGER I, renamed RETURN of Forces TO Germany, conducted on January 1969, over 12,000 soldiers returned to Germany for the exercise and used pre-positioned equipment.
The demands for personnel for the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia Began to draw trained soldiers from USAREUR. In many cases, experienced NCOs, junior and field grade officers were sent to SEA with younger and less experienced troops sent to USAREUR to replace them, if there were any sent at all. In 190, USAREUR continued to improve its firepower when it received the new M-16A1 rifle, the TOW anti-tank weapon, the OH-58 observation helicopter and the AH-1G Cobra helicopter.
As the war in SEA drew down, forces began to return to USAREUR. In January 1973, the 3rd Battalion of the 509th Infantry was activated. At the same time, the existing 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 509th Infantry were designated as dual-capable, mechanized and airborne. They were later discontinued and replaced with two battalions (2d/28th Infantry and 2d/87th Infantry) which brought the 8th Infantry Division to fully mechanized status and provided it with the ability to defend Central Europe, its primary task. To provide greater mobility to the Mediterranean area, the 3rd Battalion of the 509th Infantry was redesignated as the 1st Battalion of the 509th Infantry (Airborne Battalion Combat Team) and assigned to Italy.
After a detailed study on how to support all of the units within the command, USAREUR adopted a new system that was based upon the community commander concept. It simplified lines of authority and gave the commander needed authority that matched his responsibilities. In 1974, mergers of and transfers of functions to streamline the headquarters resulted in the termination of the U.S. Theater Army Support Command. This agency, later replaced by a smaller organization called the 21st Theater Army Area Command (TAACOM), consisted of almost 70,000 U.S. and local national civilians.
Also in the late-70's, one Brigade of the 2d Armored Division deployed to USAREUR which marked the first significant increase to combat forces since the original buildup in the 1950s. Sent to northern Germany to the newly-constructed Clay Casern, this unit added strength to NATOs northern flank. In 1976, the 4th Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division moved to the command and was sent to the Wiesbaden area. The process to centralize the elements of NATO Headquarters began in the late 1970s with Campbell Barracks selected as the site. The 4th Allied Tactical Air Force (ATAF) became operational in 1980. Later the same year, the Central Army Group (CENTAG) and the Allied Command Europe (ACE) Mobile Force (Land) were also located at Campbell Barracks.
With the combat and support components in place, the command undertook a wide-ranging modernization in the decade of the 1980s. More than 400 new systems were introduced that included individual weapons, new field rations, the M1A1 Abrams tank, the M2 and M3 series of infantry and cavalry fighting vehicles, the multiple launch rocket system (MLRS), the Patriot air defense system, the UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter and the AH-64A Apache scout helicopter.
The unexpected political events of the late 1980s that included the demise of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union and a variety of weapons treaties combined to change USAREUR again. Intermediate nuclear weapons were withdrawn, chemical weapons were moved out of Europe and sent for destruction to the Pacific. and units began to depart the European continent for CONUS locations while many others were inactivated. Planning for the drawdown of Army forces in Europe began in the Spring of 1990 and was about to be implemented when another unexpected development occurred on Southwest Asia (SWA). Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and the subsequent rapid deployment of personnel and equipment put all of the drawdown plans "on hold."
USAREUR answered the request for assistance and rapidly dispatched medical [personnel and MEDEVAC helicopters to the Operations Desert Shield/Storm. These were quickly followed by intelligence specialists, chemical warfare experts, logistical personnel, many individual replacements, and finally almost the entire VII Corps. The Command eventually deployed over 75,000 personnel plus 1,200 tanks, 1,700 armored combat vehicles, over 650 pieces of artillery, and over 325 aircraft. When the Hundred Hour war ended, many of the members of the USAREUR team remained to complete the logistical cleanup while others were deployed to northern Iraq or Turkey to aid refugees. When many returned to Europe, they found that their units were in the process or were about to begin the process of either relocating to CONUS or inactivating.
New missions appeared for the Command after Desert Shield/Storm that were different than the standard "defense of central Europe," the most important mission since the late 1940s. These new missions involved humanitarian activities, military to military exchanges, often with former enemies, joint and combined was a "shadow of its former self" on the early 1990s. Gone were the VII Corps, the 3d Armored Division, the 8th Infantry Division (Mechanized), the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment, and the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. Many smaller supporting units also disappeared. In 1992 alone, about 70,000 soldiers were deployed back to CONUS with about 90,000 dependents and most of these were not replaced. The Command went from a strength of 213,000 soldiers in 1990 to 122,000 in 1992 with a target of 65,000 by 1995. From 858 installations in 1990, USAREUR "owned" only 415 in 1993 with more scheduled to close in the years ahead.
Throughout its over 50 years as a major element in the U.S. Army and the defense community, USAREUR always met the difficult challenges placed before it in both wartime and in times of peace. Its missions have been demanding, its personnel have been dedicated, and its successes have not always come easily. It has been able to adapt to many different riles, operate in varied regions, in many cultures, and still prevail. The fact that the Berlin Wall cane down and that the Communist system collapsed are directly related to the presence of the trained, ready, and motivated force of military and civilians that have been a part of USAREUR for the last 52 years. And their military missions and successes did not interfere with their ability to live with and mingle with the peoples of western Europe who now grow concerned as they watch their American friends prepare to depart western Europe in ever increasing numbers.
