Official policy was a “Europe First” position. This was first set forth in Admiral Stark’s Dog Plan memo of November 1940. This position was affirmed in the ABC-1 Conferences which this Atlantic Conference meeting can be considered a portion of.
The reality was somewhat different though. By the end of 1942, despite the fact that we had invasion forces in North Africa, there were more troops committed to the fight against Japan then there were against Italy and Germany (460,000 against Japan vs 380,000 for Italy and Germany).
A good book on the subject of these agreements and how they worked in practice is “Allies and Adversaries: The Joints Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and U.S. Strategy in World War II” by Mark A. Stoler.
thanks, I’ve gotta read that book!
I’ve always wondered what “Europe first” really meant in practice, since obviously in 1942 and even much deeper into the USA’s war a huge portion of US forces went to the Pacific.
In 1942 we were so seriously limited in what we could do against Hitler beyond the anti-submarine war, the invasion of N. Africa etc. Stalin would have loved us to throw any kind of invasion force onto the continent of Europe, since even a fiasco for the US/UK might at least distract German forces a bit. But we had excellent reasons to wait and develop an invasion that could really succeed, no matter how long it took to get to D-Day.