Known collectively as "the Green Books," the multi-volume history of the American army during World War II stands as an enduring tribute to the role historical inquiry plays in a free society.
The Army's Center for Military History has made the individual volumes available in PDF format. Unfortunately (and is too often the case with .GOV websites), the PDFs are cumbersome given the resources tasked to their distribution. Moreover, there's no way to use a download utility to grab all of the volumes at once. Finally, the scheme used to name the PDFs leaves a lot to be desired. Consequently, interested parties have no choice but to do a lot of pointing, clicking, renaming, and waiting. (Me, bitter? Never.)
In any case.
- The reader's guide is here.
- The eight volumes focusing on the War Department are here.
- The two volumes on the Army ground forces are here.
- The single volume on the Army service forces is here.
- The two volumes on the Western Hemisphere are here.
- Eleven volumes on the War in the Pacific are here.
- Four volumes on the Mediterranean Theater of Operations are there.
- The ten volumes centered around the European Theater of Operations are here.
- The single volume dealing with the Middle East is here.
- The three volumes on the China Burma India Theater are here.
- Twenty-three volumes on the Technical Services are here.
- Ten volumes of Special Studies (including MANHATTAN) are here.
- The three volume Pictorial Record is here.
At this point, a
caveat is in order. The
Journal of Military History has recently published an extensive article by James Lacey that carefully details GEN Albert C. Wedemeyer's deliberate efforts over a span of years to present himself fraudulently as the sole author of the VICTORY program. Lacey points out that
Quote:
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In modern terms, Wedemeyer’s version of the “Victory Program” is analogous to any one of hundreds of PowerPoint presentations given to Pentagon audiences every month—over in an hour and just as quickly forgotten. It was not until after the war that historians discovered the “importance”*
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Because of this falsehood, many of the discussions in the Green Books of the formulation of America's grand strategy for the war are historically inaccurate in their specific references to Wedemeyer's VICTORY program. These inaccuracies come at the expense of the contributions of those Americans--ADM. Harold Stark, and economists Robert Nathan, Simon Kuznets, and Stacy May--who projected the United States's needs for a global coalition war.
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* James Lacey, "World War II's Real Victory Program,"
Journal of Military History 75:3 (July 2011): 812.