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Invasion of the United States

The United States has been physically invaded on several occasions: once during the War of 1812; once during the Mexican–American War; several times during the Mexican Border War; and three times during World War II, two of which were air attacks on American soil. During the Cold War, most of the US military's strategy was geared towards repelling an attack against NATO allies in Europe by the Warsaw Pact.[1]

17th and 19th centuries[edit]

The military history of the United States began with a foreign power on US soil: the British Army during the American Revolutionary War. After the conflict started at Lexington and Concord, the US contended with various land invasions, including the successful capture of Philadelphia, the first capital of the US, and the conquest of regions in Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia in the southern theater of the war, among others. Important port cities such as Boston and New York were also occupied by British forces. Imperial presence in these cities lasted for long durations of the war.


After American independence, the next attack on American soil was during the War of 1812, also with Britain, the first and only time since the end of the Revolutionary War in which a foreign power occupied the American capital (also, the capital city of Philadelphia was captured by the British during the Revolutionary War), though occupation of the United States ultimately proved unsuccessful in both conflicts.


During the Texan raids on New Mexico (1843), a group of 150 men marched north from the independent Republic of Texas, arriving in present-day Edwards County, Kansas on May 27. On June 30, their leader, Jacob Snively and his remaining force were discovered by Capt. Philip St. George Cooke and a U.S. army force of 185 men, near the present-day city of Larned, Kansas. Snively’s armed band was camped across the Arkansas River in a dense forest of trees known as Jackson Grove. Cooke prepared for battle, informed Snively he was on U.S. territory, forced him to surrender, and escorted Snively's remaining men to Missouri. [2]


On April 25, 1846, in violation of the Treaties of Velasco, Mexican forces invaded Brownsville, Texas, which they had long claimed as Mexican territory, and attacked US troops patrolling the Rio Grande in an incident known as the Thornton Affair, which sparked the Mexican–American War. The Texas Campaign remained the only campaign on American soil, and the rest of the action in the conflict occurred in California and New Mexico, which were then part of Mexico, and in the rest of Mexico.


The American Civil War may be seen as an invasion of home territory to some extent since both the Confederate and the Union Armies made forays into the other's home territory. One infamous foreign attack on American soil that occurred during the Civil War was the Chesapeake Affair on December 7, 1863, when pro-Confederate British sympathizers from both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick hijacked the American steamer Chesapeake off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, killing a crew member and wounding three others. The intent of the hijacking was to use the ship as a blockade runner for the Confederacy under the belief that they had an official Confederate letter of marque. The perpetrators had planned to recoal at Saint John, New Brunswick, and head south to Wilmington, North Carolina, but since they had difficulties at Saint John, they sailed farther east and recoaled in Halifax, Nova Scotia. US forces responded to the attack by trying to arrest the captors in Nova Scotian waters. All of the Chesapeake hijackers escaped extradition and justice through the assistance of William Johnston Almon, a prominent Nova Scotian and Confederate sympathizer.[3]


After the Civil War, the threat of an invasion from a foreign power was small, and it was not until the 20th century that any real military strategy was developed to address the possibility of an attack on America.[4]

Mexico in the 1910s[edit]

During the Mexican Revolution and more locally the Mexican Border War, in the summer of 1915, Mexican and Tejano rebels covertly supported by the Mexican Government of Venustiano Carranza, attempted to execute the Plan of San Diego by reconquering Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Texas and creating a racial utopia for Native Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, and African Americans. The plan also called for ethnic cleansing in the reconquered territories and the summary execution of all white males over the age of sixteen.[5] In order to implement the Plan, the rebels set off the Bandit War and conducted violent raids into Texas from across the Mexican border. Under pressure from his advisors to appease Carranza, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson recognized the latter as leader of Mexico in return for Carranza's "help" in suppressing the Texas border raids.


On March 9, 1916, Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa and his Villistas retaliated for the Wilson Administration's support of Carranza by invading Columbus, New Mexico in the Border War's Battle of Columbus, triggering the Pancho Villa Expedition in response, led by Major General John J. Pershing.[6]


When it was captured and leaked to the American press by British Intelligence, the Imperial German Foreign Office's offer in the Zimmermann Telegram to support Carranza's expansionist aims, as laid out in the Plan of San Diego, in return for a potential wartime alliance against the United States, led the U.S. to declare war on Imperial Germany and enter World War I on the Allied side.


War Plan Green[7] was drafted in 1918 to plan for another war with Mexico, although the ability of the Mexican Army to attack and occupy American soil was considered negligible.

Imperial Germany[edit]

Meanwhile, Imperial German plans for the invasion of the United States were drafted, like most war plans, as military logistical exercises between 1897 and 1906. Early versions planned to engage the United States Atlantic Fleet in a naval battle off Norfolk, Virginia, followed by shore bombardment of cities on the Eastern Seaboard. Later versions envisioned amphibious landings to seize control of both New York City and Boston. The plans, however, were never seriously considered because the German Empire had insufficient soldiers and military resources to carry them out successfully. In reality, the foreign policy of Kaiser Wilhelm II sought to maintain good relations and avoid unnecessarily antagonizing the United States, while also limiting US ability to intervene in Europe. This policy continued, however, until the US entered World War I in 1917 but with one alteration.


From August 1914 until April 6, 1917, when the US ended its neutrality, German military intelligence officers and spies under diplomatic cover worked covertly to both delay and destroy military supplies being built by American munitions corporations and shipped to the Allied Powers. These efforts culminated in sabotage operations like the Black Tom explosion (July 30, 1916) and the Kingsland explosion (January 11, 1917).

In popular culture[edit]

A number of films and other related media have dealt with fictitious portrayals of an attack against the US by a foreign power. One of the more well-known films is Red Dawn, detailing an attack against the US by the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Nicaragua. A 2012 remake details a similar attack, launched by North Korea and ultranationalists controlling Russia. Other films include Invasion U.S.A., Olympus Has Fallen, and White House Down. The Day After and By Dawn's Early Light, both of which detail nuclear war between US and Soviet forces. Another film that shows an invasion of the US was the 1999 film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut in which Canadian forces invade the main characters' hometown in Colorado. A bloodless Soviet takeover aftermath is depicted in the 1987 miniseries Amerika.


Invasion U.S.A. is a 1985 American action film made by Cannon Films starring Chuck Norris and directed by Joseph Zito. It involves the star fighting off a force of Soviet and Cuban-led guerrillas.


In Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, the United States is occupied by both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan after defeat in World War II, which are separated by a neutral zone, after invasions of both the West Coast and the East Coast.


Freedom Fighters, a 2003 video game by IO Interactive, has an invasion by the Soviet Union. In an alternate history where it never collapsed, the protagonist must wage guerilla warfare to fight them.


World in Conflict, a 2007 RTS video game by Massive Entertainment, takes place in an alternate 1989, where a desperate Soviet Union, unable to receive aid from the West amidst an economic collapse, launches a surprise attack on Western Europe and the U.S.


Homefront, a 2011 video game, features an invasion by a reunified Korea of the United States.


The video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 features an invasion of the United States by Russian forces following a false flag during a terrorist attack coordinated by ultranationalists, including the Fall of Washington itself. The ensuing invasion leads to a Third World War.

List of attacks on U.S. territory