Defending the homeland: an historical perspective - The Global War On Terrorism

Joint Force Quarterly, Summer, 2002 by John S. Brown

The emphasis on homeland security over the last year has generated intense interest in a range of possible threats. Understandably, the current focus has been on civil defense, with concern for protecting innocent populations from weapons of mass destruction. Planners today as in the past, however, recognize that civil defense is only one part of a larger issue. In analyses conducted for both the Quadrennial Defense Review and the global war against terrorism, the U.S. Army Center of Military History added rear area security, border security, aid to the civil authority, internment, humanitarian relief, economic intervention, and domestic disturbances to civil defense in its consideration of homeland defense--the military component of homeland security.

Rear Area Security

Warring nations have always sought to secure their heartlands from the depredations of the enemy. Prior to the 20th century, operations were intended to intercept enemy forces at sufficient distances to ensure that centers of agriculture, commerce, recruitment, training, and civil life could continue unmolested. With industrialization, the relevance to the war effort of protected territory became more pronounced, and with the mass armies of World War I the concept of a continuously defended front extending along an entire national border became feasible. During World War II, the continental United States became a consciously secured rear area where the so-called Arsenal of Democracy generated the material wherewithal to support its own war effort and that of its allies.

The United States adopted an isolationist posture during the interwar years. If necessary, it would defend itself without allies. The Navy and Air Force would intercept all comers far from American shores. A major fraction of the Army force structure was given over to coast artillery, assigned to fortifications carefully laid out to provide overlapping fires at extended ranges using the most modern technology to defend approaches such as Long Island Sound, the Chesapeake Bay, and estuaries on both coasts of the continent.

When the United States entered World War II, an actual invasion of the homeland seemed unlikely. Strategic bombardment was more probable. Film footage of the devastation wrought by Germany during the Battle of Britain galvanized America. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of New York City, for example, participated in elaborate air raid rehearsals with firemen, policemen, and other first responders. Industrial facilities undertook complex camouflage and concealment schemes. The Coast Guard seized Greenland, a possession of German-occupied Denmark, and discovered a Luftwaffe weather station, raising speculation that a larger enemy establishment might have been contemplated had America not acted. Threat of strategic bombardment from the Pacific seemed even more real, given the catastrophic destruction Japanese aircraft inflicted at Pearl Harbor. The fear faded after the dramatic victory at Midway crippled the enemy carrier fleet. The ultimately successful Battle of the Atlantic foreclosed German options as well. The Japanese did pursue a bizarre initiative to launch balloons with incendiary devices on prevailing winds across the Pacific in the hope of starting forest fires in the American Northwest. The balloons had little success but did cause the Army to divert a battalion of paratroopers--the famous 555th "Triple Nickel"--to duty as smokejumpers.

Throughout the war the most realistic threats to homeland security were raids or sabotage against key facilities. The United States did suffer several Japanese submarine-launched shellings of Pacific coastal facilities, and German submarines released two teams, each with four saboteurs with explosives, across Atlantic beaches. The Federal Bureau of Investigation rounded them up, but not before they fueled public panic. Local authorities argued that police and state troopers were too few and that when the War Department federalized the National Guard it removed the only state means of securing themselves. The political give and take resulted in an overreaction, and 19 of 34 divisions then in training were diverted to domestic security. This disruption threw ground force mobilization timelines off schedule by as much as six months as guardsmen who should have been preparing to deploy were guarding beaches, dams, factories, and railway bridges.

The War Department realized it had to relieve deployable forces of domestic security duties to fight the war. Civil defense efforts soon attracted five million volunteers who could fulfill some security and surveillance functions. Newly organized state guard units, consisting largely of overage former guardsmen and other nondeployables, were also useful. The best solution to meeting specific installation security needs was deputizing Federal Auxiliary Military Police, individuals who often worked at the sites. Most factories had security forces, which proved to be useful with modest investments in training and equipment when they were integrated into larger networks for coordination and reporting. As dictated by circumstances, these 200,000 auxiliary policemen could be reinforced by state guardsmen, who numbered 160,000, or 50,000 military police retained in the Zone of the Interior to secure Federal property and provide reaction forces. There was also the broader surveillance provided by the five million civil defense volunteers. Ultimately, 16,007 factories were deemed essential to the war effort and placed under this security mantle, as were critical bridges, roads, dams, and other infrastructure.