Wedemeyer, Albert Coady, 1897-1989

General Albert Coady Wedemeyer (July 9, 1897 – December 17, 1989) was a United States Army commander. A 1919 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, he was a temporary Lieutenant Colonel at the outbreak of World War II in December 1941. His first major assignment had come earlier in the year when President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the War Department to develop tactics to win the war that he believed the U.S. was destined to enter.

He was the only U.S. officer to graduate from the German Army General Staff College and used what he learned there to draw up what became known as the Victory Program, which advocated the defeat of the German armies on the European continent. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the U.S. declared war on both Germany and Japan, a modified version of his plan was adopted by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. This culminted with the invasion of France by Allied Forces in June 1944.

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