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While looking at some 1940s military projects, I stumbled across Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson. He's perhaps most (in)famous for the Revolt of the Admirals, after he ordered construction to cease on the USS United States (CVA-58), the first supercarrier planned for the United States Navy. However, he also made some other decisions that weakened the strength of the United States military heading into the Korean War. They eerily parallel some of the defense decisions made by many European states in the 1930s on financial grounds.

Here's how Johnson responded to the test of the first Soviet atomic bomb. Keep in mind that the only part of the military receiving adequate funding during this period was Strategic Air Command, and even it wasn't receiving much. Atomic weapons production was drastically curtailed after World War II, and the B-36 wasn't procured in quantities in line with its vital role in United States military strategy.

In August 1949, earlier than U.S. intelligence analysts had anticipated, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic device. This event and the almost concurrent retreat of the Kuomintang regime from mainland China hastened debate within the administration as to whether the United States should develop a hydrogen bomb. Initially, Johnson suspected — despite confirming air samples — that the Soviets had not really tested an atomic device at all. He theorized that perhaps an accidental laboratory explosion had occurred, and that no reassessments of U.S. defense capabilities were needed.[23]

Concluding that the hydrogen bomb was now required as deterrent as well as an offensive weapon, on January 31, 1950, Truman decided to proceed with development; Johnson supported the president's decision. Truman at the same time directed the Secretaries of State and Defense to review and reassess U.S. national security policy in the light of the Soviet atomic explosion, the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, and acquisition of the hydrogen bomb, and to produce a paper based on their new analysis. Johnson went about this task reluctantly, as he had promised Truman he would hold the line on increased defense spending. He was also upset that the State Department had first taken the lead on the policy assessment and had heavily influenced the contents of the resultant report NSC 68.

Truman was less than enthused about the large defense cost projections for NSC-68 and its implications for existing domestic budgetary spending priorities, and initially sent it back without comment to its authors for further analysis. Although Truman took no immediate formal action on NSC 68, the paper gained considerable support when the North Koreans attacked South Korea on June 25, 1950. Johnson's obstinate attitude toward the State Department role in the preparation of this paper adversely affected his relations with both Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Truman. Although Johnson publicly professed belief that "the advance guard in the campaign for peace that America wages today must be the State Department," his disagreements with Acheson and his restrictions on DoD contacts with the State Department persisted until the realities of the Korean War caused his fall from favor with the White House.
As you can imagine, things didn't go well in Korea with this level of preparedness:

By 1950, Johnson had established a policy of faithfully following President Truman's defense economization policy, and had aggressively attempted to implement it even in the face of steadily increasing external threats posed by the Soviet Union and its allied Communist regimes. He consequently received much of the blame for the initial setbacks in Korea and the widespread reports of ill-equipped and inadequately trained U.S. forces. Johnson's failure to adequately plan for U.S. conventional force commitments, to adequately train and equip current forces, or even to budget funds for storage of surplus Army and Navy war-fighting materiel for future use in the event of conflict would prove fateful after war broke out on the Korean Peninsula.[8]

In June 1950, the lightly armed South Korean Army and its U.S. advisors found themselves under attack from North Korean aircraft and waves of well-trained infantry equipped with Soviet tanks and artillery.[8] In an initial response, Truman called for a naval blockade of North Korea, and was shocked to learn that such a blockade could only be imposed 'on paper', since the U.S. Navy no longer had the warships with which to carry out his request.[8][24]

Ordered to intervene in Korea by the President, U.S. armed forces were short of both men and equipment. Army officials recovered Sherman tanks from World War II Pacific battlefields, reconditioning them for shipment to Korea.[8] Army Ordnance officials at Fort Knox pulled down M26 Pershing tanks from display pedestals around Fort Knox in order to equip the third company of the Army's hastily formed 70th Tank Battalion.[25] Without adequate numbers of tactical fighter-bomber aircraft, the Air Force took F-51 (P-51) propeller-driven aircraft out of storage or from existing Air National Guard squadrons, and rushed them into front-line service. A shortage of spare parts and qualified maintenance personnel resulted in improvised repairs and overhauls. A Navy helicopter pilot aboard an active-duty warship recalled fixing damaged rotor blades with masking tape in the absence of spares.[26]

Army infantry reservists and new inductees called to duty to fill out understrength infantry divisions found themselves short of nearly everything needed to repel the North Korean forces: artillery, ammunition, heavy tanks, ground-support aircraft, even effective anti-tank weapons such as the M20 3.5-inch (89 mm) Super Bazooka.[27] Some Army combat units sent to Korea were supplied with wornout, 'red-lined' M-1 rifles or carbines in immediate need of Ordnance overhaul or repair.[28][29] Unlike the U.S. Army, the Soviet Union had retained its large World War II surplus arms inventories and kept them in a state of combat readiness. With this abundance of military hardware, the Soviet Union had supplied the North Korean Army over a period of several years with heavy tanks, machine guns, mortars, combat aircraft, and artillery, together with instructors to train the North Korean Army.[8][18][20][21][22][23] As a consequence, initial combat encounters by the 24th Infantry division and other Army units at the Battle of Osan with North Korean armored spearheads proved disastrous. Ironically, only the U.S. Marine Corps, whose commanders had stored and maintained their World War II surplus inventories of equipment and weapons, proved ready for deployment, though they still were understrength[30] and in need of suitable landing craft to practice amphibious operations (Johnson had transferred most of the remaining craft to the Navy and reserved them for use in training Army units).[18][31] As U.S. and South Korean forces lacked sufficient armor and artillery to repel the North Korean forces, Army and Marine Corps ground troops were instead committed to a series of costly rearguard actions as the enemy steadily progressed down the Korean peninsula, eventually encircling Pusan.[32][33]

The impact of Korea on Johnson's defense planning was glaringly evident in the Defense Department's original and supplemental budgetary requests for FY 1951. For that fiscal year, Johnson had at first supported Truman's recommendation of a $13.3 billion defense budget, but a month after the fighting in Korea started, the secretary hastily proposed a supplemental appropriation request of $10.5 billion, (an increase of 79%), bringing the total requested to $23.8 billion.[34] In making the additional request, Johnson informed a House appropriations subcommittee that "in light of the actual fighting that is now in progress, we have reached the point where the military considerations clearly outweigh the fiscal considerations."[35]

U.S. reverses in Korea and the continued priority accorded to European security resulted in rapid, substantive changes in U.S. defense policies, including a long-term expansion of the armed forces and increased emphasis on military assistance to U.S. allies. Preoccupied with public criticism of his handling of the Korean War, and wishing to deflect attention from the peacetime defense economy measures he had previously espoused, Truman decided to ask for Johnson's resignation. On September 19, 1950, Johnson resigned as Secretary of Defense, and the president quickly replaced him with General George C. Marshall.
I'm not sure how accurate the Wikipedia article is of course, but if even half of it is true the United States military was in sorry shape by 1950, as its performance in the early parts of World War II and the crash remilitarization program shows. Just how bad could things have gotten under President Truman and Secretary Johnson? Would they have been even worse under an isolationist Republican government if they had won both the 1946 and 1948 elections?
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