Albert Coady Wedemeyer

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Wedemeyer, Albert Coady (1897–1989) U.S. Army officer. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Albert C. Wedemeyer initially graduated from the war-shortened course at West Point in 1918, but he was one of the half of that group recalled to serve another year there as student officers before officially becoming the Class of 1919. After a series of routine infantry assignments, in 1936 he became the first American officer to attend the Kriegsakademie, the German general staff school, since World War I. In 1941 he was assigned to the War Plans Division of the General Staff, where he became the primary author of the “Victory Plan” predicting American requirements for the coming war. He served as an aide to Gen. George C. Marshall for the principal Allied strategy conferences until October 1943, when newly-promoted Maj. Gen. Wedemeyer was appointed deputy chief of staff to Lord Louis Mountbatten, supreme Allied commander in Southeast Asia. After Gen. Joseph Stilwell's recall a year later, Wedemeyer was named commander of the China theater and chief of staff to Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek. After the war he commanded the Second and Sixth Armies, before retiring in July 1951. Three years later he was promoted to full general on the retired list.

Albert Coady Wedemeyer , 1897–1989, American general, b. Omaha, Nebr., grad. West Point, 1918. After service in China, the Philippines, and Europe, he was graduated (1936) from the general staff school at Fort Leavenworth, Kans., and was sent to the German general staff school. In World War II he was (1941–43) a member of the war plans division of the general staff and in 1944 was named to succeed Joseph Stilwell as commander of the U.S. forces in China. Promoted (1945) to lieutenant general, Wedemeyer made (1947) a survey of China and Korea for President Harry S. Truman and was named (1949) commander of the U.S. 6th Army. He retired from active service in 1951. Wedemeyer became a business executive and was an active anti-Communist.

Bibliography: See his Wedemeyer Reports (1958).