In the final months leading up to World War II, America's strategic leaders recognized a troubling gap between the nation's industrial capacity and the projected requirements of a full-scale mobilization. Their recognition created momentum for a strategic estimate encompassing not only theaters and military operations, but manpower and industrial production as well. The result was the Victory Program, which officially began in the summer of 1941 with a joint Army and Navy response to President Roosevelt's request for industrial production requirements necessary to defeat America's potential enemies known as the Victory Plan. According to the official history, the strategic genius behind the Victory Plan was not a senior Army officer, but the uniquely qualified Major Albert Wedemeyer. For more than six decades, accounts ranging from Wedemeyer's autobiography, Army official history, and various secondary sources maintained a consensus regarding Wedemeyer's unique and invaluable contribution to American war planning. In recent years, however, intensifying interest in the Victory Program, including the role played by economists, spawned an opposing narrative that diminishes Wedemeyer's role in the creation of the Victory Plan, as well as the enduring Victory Program and Anglo-American grand strategy. The two schools of thought offer little middle ground; they portray Wedemeyer as either a gifted strategic genius or an inconsequential staff officer. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, with Wedemeyer serving in a key position at a critical point in the nation's history, but not quite the savior some have made him out to be.

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