United States color-coded war plans
[5] Orange formed some of the basis for the actual campaign against Japan in World War II and included the huge economic blockade from mainland China and the plans for interning the Japanese American population.[3] The best-known version of Black was conceived as a contingency plan during World War I in case France fell and the Germans attempted to seize French possessions in the Caribbean or launch an attack on the eastern seaboard.In 1912, US President William Howard Taft considered sending an expeditionary force to protect foreign-owned property from damage during the Mexican Revolution.In 1917, British intelligence intercepted a telegram from the German foreign ministry to its embassy in Mexico City offering an alliance against the United States and assistance in the Mexican reconquest of the Southwest.The articles, both by the Tribune's Washington correspondent, Chesly Manly, revealed plans to build a 10-million-man Army with a five-million-man expeditionary force to be sent to Europe in 1943 in order to defeat Nazi Germany.Germany publicly ridiculed the plan the next day, doubting "whether the entire world shipping would be sufficient to transport 5,000,000 troops to Europe, much less supply them there.The source of the leak has never been determined, with speculation listing several possibilities, including disgruntled or isolationist military officers and even President Roosevelt himself.