Play as · WW2 1939 · L1 · US Territory · Caribbean Strategic

US Virgin Islands - 1939

The US Virgin Islands in 1939 is the United States unincorporated territory in the Caribbean - under US administration since the 1917 Treaty of the Danish West Indies that transferred sovereignty from Denmark to the United States in exchange for $25M in gold (the largest US territorial-acquisition payment in history per area). Population about 25,000. The territory has been administered through the post-1931 civilian-administrative framework that ended the post-1917 Naval-administrative period (the Department of the Interior took over the administration in 1931), with Governor Lawrence Cramer (in office from 1935) leading the colonial-administrative apparatus. The strategic identity is the US Caribbean unincorporated territory with the substantial post-1939 wartime expansion that will produce the major US Navy Submarine Base St. Thomas development (the principal US Caribbean submarine-and-anti-submarine-warfare facility for the wartime period), the broader US Caribbean-strategic positioning, and the substantial wartime industrial-and-military mobilization.

Starting position

The US Virgin Islands' defense-architecture in 1939 includes the substantial US Naval Base St. Thomas-precursor facilities, the Insular Force (the territorial-defense formation organized under the post-1917 framework), and the broader US-imperial-strategic architecture in the Caribbean. The substantial post-Pearl-Harbor wartime expansion will progressively institutionalize the major Submarine Base St. Thomas (the principal US Caribbean submarine-and-anti-submarine-warfare facility through the war), the broader US Naval Air Station development, and the substantial Caribbean Convoy operational-cooperation framework that the post-1942 US-British coordination will institutionalize. The economic foundation is substantially limited (sugar production, the limited tourism, the substantial remittances and federal-administrative-spending) - the wartime expansion will substantially restructure the economic base.

What turns the campaign

What the US Virgin Islands in 1939 wants is the US territorial-administrative framework preserved at the level the post-1917 architecture has institutionalized, the substantial wartime strategic-investment delivered at the scale the looming wartime Caribbean-strategic-significance requires, the political-status conversation managed through whatever federal-political process the wartime period will permit, and the substantial Caribbean strategic-positioning institutionalized through the post-1939 expansion that will substantially restructure the territorial economic-and-political-institutional architecture. What the US Virgin Islands fears is a substantial U-boat operations escalation in the Caribbean that affects the limited shipping-environment (the post-1942 Operation Drumbeat will substantially affect the immediate-Caribbean shipping waters), a federal-political shift that compresses the territorial-engagement, and a domestic political-economic crisis that the substantial post-1917-economic-restructuring period has been continuously managing.

Signature challenge