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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsShould the US have gotten involved in Europe in WWII?
No, in many ways Syria doesn't compare to the European war in the 1930s and 1940s. But I'm curious as to how DUers feel about this.
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| Yes, we should have gotten involved | |
9 (82%) |
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| We should have stayed out | |
2 (18%) |
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Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)Germany declared war on the US.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)If it was up to most Americans, if you polled them on December 6th, 1941, Americans did not want to get involved by large majorities.
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)I wondered if anyone would catch the first point... I should have known you'd get it in a second!
Renew Deal
(81,846 posts)1940 U.S. to Enter WWII Prior to entering World War II, 62% percent of the American public believes that defeating Germany is more important than staying out of the war.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/9967/timeline-polling-history-events-shaped-united-states-world.aspx
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)FDR had to work hard to get Americans behind the Lend/Lease act. Most wanted to be isolationist.
thucythucy
(8,038 posts)passed the House by one vote.
Renew Deal
(81,846 posts)hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)
BootinUp
(47,078 posts)cherokeeprogressive
(24,853 posts)I'd love to hear the reasoning... love love love to hear the reasoning.
neverforget
(9,436 posts)and then we declared war on them the same day.
NutmegYankee
(16,199 posts)And Germany immediately attacked our merchant marine. We had no choice.
davidn3600
(6,342 posts)Japan attacked us directly. When we declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy declared war on us.
That war came to America.
Syria is absolutely no threat to the United States and only a very limited threat to our interests. Germany, Italy, and Japan were major threats to the world.
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)it's not a good comparison?
unblock
(52,116 posts)i agree that we were not officially at war, then came pearl harbor along with a belated declaration of war against the u.s., then a u.s. declaration of war against japan, followed by a german declaration of war against the u.s.
if you stop there, of course it sounds like we were just innocent bystanders in all this.
the details are considerably muddier.
we were actively supplying the soviets
we were actively supplying england.
we were actively firing upon german submarines
we were intercepting german supply vessels.
here is some background on one of the us-german encounters prior to the declarations of war. note that we're not entirely innocent here and in any event, after this incident, fdr ordered our navy to "shoot-on-sight" any german subs in any waters we deemed "necessary for american defense", i.e., anywhere along our route to supply england.
we were officially neutral, but we were hardly switzerland here.
personally i think we should have started our open military involvement as soon as the allies declared war, but i understand that fdr didn't have the support at home for this. so he did all he could outside a formal state of war, until the events of december 1941 made open war politically palatable (indeed, mandatory).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Greer_(DD-145)
Declaring that Germany had been guilty of "an act of piracy,"[4] President Roosevelt announced what became known as his "shoot-on-sight" order: that Nazi submarines' "very presence in any waters which America deems vital to its defense constitutes an attack. In the waters which we deem necessary for our defense, American naval vessels and American planes will no longer wait until Axis submarines lurking under the water, or Axis raiders on the surface of the sea, strike their deadly blow—first."[4] He concluded:
The aggression is not ours. [Our concern] is solely defense. But let this warning be clear. From now on, if German or Italian vessels of war enter the waters, the protection of which is necessary for American defense, they do so at their own peril. . . . The sole responsibility rests upon Germany. There will be no shooting unless Germany continues to seek it.[4]
Senator David I. Walsh (Democrat–Massachusetts), isolationist Chair of the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs, scheduled a committee hearing to unearth the details of the incident, which prompted Admiral Harold R. Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, to issue a written report. Stark's account, made public in October 1941, confirmed that the Greer dropped its charges only after the submarine fired its first torpedo at it, but revealed that the Greer had gone in search of the submarine after its presence was noted by the British aircraft. Admiral Stark's report stated:
At 0840 that morning, Greer, carrying mail and passengers to Iceland, "was informed by a British plane of the presence of a submerged submarine about 10 miles [(16 km)] directly ahead. . . . Acting on the information from the British plane the Greer proceeded to search for the submarine and at 0920 she located the submarine directly ahead by her underwater sound equipment. The Greer proceeded then to trail the submarine and broadcast the submarine's position. This action, taken by the Greer, was in accordance with her orders, that is, to give out information but not to attack." The British plane continued in the vicinity of the submarine until 1032, but prior to her departure the plane dropped four depth charges in the vicinity of the submarine. The Greer maintained [its] contact until about 1248. During this period (three hours 28 minutes),the Greer maneuvered so as to keep the submarine ahead. At 1240 the submarine changed course and closed the Greer. At 1245 an impulse bubble (indicating the discharge of a torpedo by the submarine) was sighted close aboard the Greer. At 1249 a torpedo track was sighted crossing the wake of the ship from starboard to port, distant about 100 yards [(100 m)] astern. At this time the Greer lost sound contact with the submarine. At 1300 the Greer started searching for the submarine and at 1512 . . . the Greer made underwater contact with a submarine. The Greer attacked immediately with depth charges.[5]
Stark went on to report that the result of the encounter was undetermined,[5] although most assumed from the German response that the sub had survived.
Historian Charles A. Beard would later write that Admiral Stark's report to the Senate Committee "made the President's statement... appear in some respects inadequate, and, in others, incorrect."[6] In his postwar summary of the Stark report, Beard emphasized that (1) the Greer had chased the sub and held contact with the sub for 3 hours and 28 minutes before the sub fired its first torpedo; (2) the Greer then lost contact with the sub, searched, and after re-establishing contact two hours later, attacked immediately with depth charges, then (3) searched for three more hours before proceeding to its destination.[6]
The Stark report's account of how the Greer's engagement began caused Pulitzer-prizewinning New York Times reporter Arthur Krock to address it (and the Nazi sub engagements with the Kearny, and the Reuben James) when speaking about "who 'attacked' whom."[7][8] Krock defined the term "attack" as "an onset, an aggressive initiation of combat, a move which is the antithesis of 'defense.'"[7] "In that definition," he said, "all three of our destroyers attacked the German submarines."[7]
tazkcmo
(7,300 posts)unblock
(52,116 posts)HardTimes99
(2,049 posts)Last edited Tue Sep 3, 2013, 08:53 AM - Edit history (1)
by stretching ingenuity to its limits). Operation Barbarossa began in June 1941 and Pearl Harbor was attacked in Deceber 1941. So we would have had about six months to aid the USSR before Pearl Harbor brought us into the war as combatants.
If you have links to sources for our pre-Pearl Harbor support for the USSR, I would like to see them. I'm pretty sure they don't exist.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,265 posts)FDR approves Lend-Lease aid to the USSR
On this day in 1941, President Roosevelt, determined to keep the United States out of the war while helping those allies already mired in it, approves $1 billion in Lend-Lease loans to the Soviet Union. The terms: no interest and repayment did not have to start until five years after the war was over.
The Lend-Lease program was devised by President Roosevelt and passed by Congress on March 11, 1941. Originally, it was meant to aid Great Britain in its war effort against the Germans by giving the chief executive the power to "sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of" any military resources the president deemed ultimately in the interest of the defense of the United States. The reasoning was: If a neighbor was successful in defending his home, the security of your home was enhanced.
Although the Soviet Union had already been the recipient of American military weapons, and now had been promised $1 billion in financial aid, formal approval to extend the Lend-Lease program to the USSR had to be given by Congress. Anticommunist feeling meant much heated debate, but Congress finally gave its approval to the extension on November 7.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-approves-lend-lease-aid-to-the-ussr
HardTimes99
(2,049 posts)something new (and how often I re-learn the lesson not to shoot off my big, fat mouth without doing some research before-hand and the consequences of being lazy, but that's by-the-by 
.
Looks like our formal aid to the USSR may have preceded our entry into WWII by a month or two, based on your find above. I of course knew that the Lend-Lease program provided invaluable materiel to the USSR but had thought that LL to the USSR only began after our formal entry into hostilities. So your documentation is much appreciated and I hereby stand corrected.
exboyfil
(17,862 posts)Our delaying a direct encounter with Germany as long as we could (until it became obvious that the Russians were going to turn the tide and push deep into Germany) was one of the better moves in the war - it saved many American lives. As bad as the Western Front seemed, it was nothing compared to what was going on on the Eastern Front.
PDJane
(10,103 posts)However, the US was supplying England under the lend-lease programmes. US industrialists and bankers were also supplying the Nazis with materials because it was lucrative to do so, and because there was a hefty portion of the US who were anti-semitic. I. C. Farben and Vereinigte Stahlwerke build weaponry with American assistance and funding. Standard Oil gave Farben a monopoly on production of synthetic oil from coal, along with the patent for synthetic silk for parachutes. Just under one half of the high octane fuel produced in Germany during the period came directly from that programme, and much of the rest came from subsidiaries. Opel, a Subsidiary of General Motors, produced tanks. Ford himself was decorated by the Nazis for his investments in German manufacturing.
Alcoa and Dow transferred domestic technology, as did IBM. Bendix Aviation supplied Siemens & Halske A. G. in Germany with data on automatic pilots and aircraft instruments, along with technical data to Robert Bosch for aircraft and diesel engine starters and received royalty payments in return. I. G. Farben and Standard Oil of New Jersey suppressed development of the synthetic rubber industry in the United States, to the advantage of Germany. And yes, the Bush family was in there, too.
Why am I pointing out this old history? Because war, for the US, has been a mostly economic endeavor. US multinationals and the US banking system make money, lots of it, from being above the fray. Their investments have not been confined to helping America or her allies during the wars that have come their way; it's about money, only money. How to get it. How to control it. How to make sure that every death swells their pockets, no matter on which side the deaths occur. How to make sure that the people who control the money are 'citizens of the world,' with hegemony on their mind. They are above corruption, because they have no loyalties. The system is amoral and self-sustaining.
American financial rules mask the risk of big banks. Part of the reason that Canada didn't get hit as hard with the crisis in 2009 is that Canada uses international financial rules; mortgages are on the books, unlike the US, even though 75% are guaranteed by the government. The firewall between investment and commercial banking remains in place in Canada, despite Conservative efforts to move us to a US system. US banks have resisted more accountability and some necessary accounting changes. This masks risks. For example, as a percentage of GDP, Switzerland's UBS and Credit Suisse alone account for nearly 600% of the country's GDP. The US banking system, with much more risk, state the % of GDP as between 56 and 69%. No matter what the truth of the matter, it seems that the banking system in the first world is a very greedy behemoth, sucking up a totally incredible amount of money. It's not money for work, it's money for the sake of making money, and it's unsustainable.
These wars are an unsustainable expenditure, too.
All of it, from the wars to mortgages to the fees they charge the poor and disenfranchised for banking services, are the way that the banking giants control the economy. They, even more than the big corporations, are responsible for the dip in the economy and the attitude of the elite.
Response to MannyGoldstein (Original post)
Demonaut This message was self-deleted by its author.
B Calm
(28,762 posts)
RiffRandell
(5,909 posts)
JVS
(61,935 posts)Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)To say 'in many ways Syria does not compare' is specious. Name the ways it does compare. Are there any? The US did not acknowledge German death camps prior to the war and in fact refused to so much as destroy the tracks to the camps after we were in the war.
David Krout
(423 posts)And remember, non-chemical is ok according to some.
workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)A day that will live in infamy.
Japan attacked US soil and Germany declared war on us.
Did Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria attack US territory?
No..what we are doing is building a worldwide imperial empire to benefit multi national corporations, the MIC and the billionaires that control them, that we can no longer afford.
Rome did the same thing thousands of years ago and the USA Empire is about to meet the same fate as the Roman one.
Lurks Often
(5,455 posts)You would get a much different response if you asked the question based on what the average person knew at the time.
Post 15 made some good points, the Unites States was hardly "neutral" prior to Pearl Harbor. We were supplying the British, we gave them 50 WWI destroyers in exchange for basing rights at various British colonies and we were repairing heavily damaged British warships.
We were hardly innocent in Asia either, the short version is the US, British and Dutch made choices, right & wrong, that essentially forced Japan down a path that gave them no real option other then war.