Only to start WW3Originally posted by BurlySurly
You asked for it, ya got it.
Can we have a "Why Should We Invade Canada" thread?Originally posted by SandMan
Only to start WW3
...and at the expense of 100,000+ Japanese civilians.Originally posted by ohio
Too bad the world we saved was short about 6 million Jews, among others.
The ones we bombed or the US citizens we forced into camps?Originally posted by Tenchiro
...and at the expense of 100,000+ Japanese civilians.
Yeah that is too bad.Originally posted by ohio
Too bad the world we saved was short about 6 million Jews, among others.
Originally posted by ohio
The ones we bombed or the US citizens we forced into camps?
Nah, no guilt for me. My ancestors were too busy being exterminated to oppress the Japanese-Americans.Originally posted by llkoolkeg
Ohio, your regularly-scheduled self-flagellation must last well into the night.
YesOriginally posted by ohio
The ones we bombed or the US citizens we forced into camps?
True, but to pretend our motives ever had anything to do with saving Jews is delusional. Our liberation of the camps was incidental to our involvement in the war...Originally posted by BurlySurly
Although, its certainly better than complete extermination.
I think you might be forgetting panama.Originally posted by ohio
Anyway, like I've said before, the Revolutionary War and WWII were the only two truly just and necessary wars in our history.
Nope, but you don't pat yourself on the back for something you did by accident. At least I don't.Originally posted by BurlySurly
Rrrright.
So the fact that we saved it for the wrong reasons changes the fact we saved it?
Excellent point DTOriginally posted by Damn True
Did'nt the US stay out of the war as long as it did due to some of the very same arguments we are hearing today?
It isn't our problem.
They aren't a real threat to us.
What business is it of ours?
We shouldn't interfere in the affairs of other nations.
Involvement will only cause retribution against us and our interests.
So if we are wrong now, were we wrong then?
You really can't compare the Nazi Germany and Iraq.Originally posted by Damn True
Did'nt the US stay out of the war as long as it did due to some of the very same arguments we are hearing today?
It isn't our problem.
They aren't a real threat to us.
What business is it of ours?
We shouldn't interfere in the affairs of other nations.
Involvement will only cause retribution against us and our interests.
So if we are wrong now, were we wrong then?
Let's wait until we can.Originally posted by SandMan
You really can't compare the Nazi Germany and Iraq.
You are right, the US does not want Iraq to control so much of the oil.Originally posted by mrbigisbudgood
Let's wait until we can.
Yes, we also dont want them terrorizing Jews.Originally posted by SandMan
You are right, the US does not want Iraq to control so much of the oil.
I was going to stay out of this.Originally posted by ohio
Nope, but you don't pat yourself on the back for something you did by accident. At least I don't.
The US government knew the Jews were being exterminated and did nothing. The fact that they were liberated in the process of defeating Germany after we let 6 million of them be slaughtered is nothing to congratulate ourselves for. Better-than-nothing does not equal heroism.
We did some things right (beat Germany), and we did some things wrong (let Jews be murdered)... it's okay to admit that.
Let me know if you are ever going to be in San Jose. I want to buy you a beer.Originally posted by DRB
I was going to stay out of this.
What should they have done? Its one thing to know something but its another all together to do something about it.
Most of these camps (at least the ones that the US was in a position to liberate) were deep within Germany and Czechoslovakia. The remainder were within Poland.
You could have mounted an airborne operation over the heart of Germany to drop an airborne division on top of one of these camps. Of course the a large percentage of that force wouldn't have even made it to the jump zone. Then once the remaineder was spread out over a 25 mile area around the camp, it would have had to linked up to provide some sort of cohesive defense. And don't forget this would be right into the heart of Germany on top of all sorts of Germany army units. Then tried like hell to drive an armored force towards them to relieve them before it was destroyed. All of which would have accomplished NOTHING. You have to look no farther than operation Market Garden to see how such an operation would have worked. Oh something else would have been accomplished, the Germans would have started quicker on covering up what they had done.
You seem to think that things can only have one goal and that everything else is just an accident. God forbid that any of those directing these efforts might have any decency in their hearts and seeing the bigger picture to include all of the things that might be accomplished by fulfilling that "one" goal. Or that when they came up with the "one" goal that other factors might have come into play in determining the "one" goal.
Lastly, for congratulating ourselves, you are 100% correct about that. The fact of the matter is that it should have never gotten that far. The whole damn thing shouldn't have gotten beyond 1937. Someone with the courage of conviction should have rolled Hitler's ass then and it would have been moot. Samething with Japan. It had become painfully obvious with their invasion of China they needed to dealt with. BUT folks were too busy looking for the diplomatic way, let's see if we can talk him out of his agression, if we continue to talk maybe that will work, they aren't a threat to me, need I go on or should I just recycle the language in your own posts. No wait I just did.
Minimizing the accomplishments of US forces in World War II is just as bad as overstating them.
Hello, Earth to DT, Germany declared war on you, the Japanese attacked you. You should be able to find that info in a history book somewhere. How you were expected to "stay out" of the war under those circumstances is beyond me.Originally posted by Damn True
Did'nt the US stay out of the war as long as it did due to some of the very same arguments we are hearing today?
Yes, Germany declared war on us. But how in the name of Christ do you think they would have been able to do ANYTHING to hurt us. At the time they were fighting Russia to the east, Great Brittian in North Africa, and they were busy gathering art and wine from France. They had absolutely no means of projecting siginificant power to our side of the Atlantic.Originally posted by valve bouncer
Hello, Earth to DT, Germany declared war on you, the Japanese attacked you. You should be able to find that info in a history book somewhere. How you were expected to "stay out" of the war under those circumstances is beyond me.
Agree with you on Japan, their aim was never to "defeat" the US, more to keep the US off their patch by giving them a bloody nose. Serious mis-reading of the situation on their part.Originally posted by Damn True
Yes, Germany declared war on us. But how in the name of Christ do you think they would have been able to do ANYTHING to hurt us. At the time they were fighting Russia to the east, Great Brittian in North Africa, and they were busy gathering art and wine from France. They had absolutely no means of projecting siginificant power to our side of the Atlantic.
As for Japan, we had been involved in that war long before Pearl Harbour. They attacked us as a means to prevent us from protecting oil interests that they were after in SE Asia. Their thinking was that if they crippled our Navy we could not rebuild in time to prevent them from running roughshod through SE Asia and Oceana. They were wrong.
Interesting read....I'm sure old Hitler had a lot of second thoughts just before he dropped that cyanide pill in the bunker. I bet he wished he had stayed a painterOriginally posted by Damn True
Hitler himself had second thoughts about goading the US into war.
"Japans attack on Oahu (7 December 1941) took place when Germany was the mightiest nation on earth. It gave Hitler a tremendous, if temporary, lift. "The turning point!" he exclaimed when he heard that the Japanese had hit Pearl Harbor.
To Walter Hewel, an official from the foreign ministry assigned to Hitlers staff, he made a startling statement. "Now it is impossible for us to lose the war!" he said, wildly exaggerating the strength of Imperial Japan, which, along with Mussolinis Italy, was his partner in the Axis alliance. "We now have an ally," claimed Hitler, "who has never been vanquished in 3,000 years!"
The German dictator personally congratulated the Japanese ambassador to Berlin for his countrys success in catching US forces off guard: "You gave the right declaration of war! This method is the only proper one!"
The source of Hitlers confidence at the time of Pearl Harbor was simple: he imagined that the Japanese would tie down American resources indefinitely.
FDR would do everything in his power to stop the advance of fascism, but the president faced some very basic problems. Immediately after the beginning of hostilities with Japan, he doubted that the American people would tolerate a simultaneous war with Germany. It was the Japanese who had killed American sailors and soldiers on US territory in Hawaii. It was the Japanese that American citizens most feared and wanted to punish. They had no equal grudge against the German dictator.
Ultimately, it was Hitler and Mussolinis declaration of war against the US on 11 December 1941, that overcame American opposition to a crusade against all the fascist powers.
Interestingly, Nazi Germany had signed no treaty that bound Hitler to support Japanese aggression. He was committed to taking on the US only in the event that America initiated hostilities.
What most drew Hitler into declaring war on the US was the very grandiosity of the thing. Not far beneath the surface, he was wildly excited that he was now the central figure in what had become the widest war in human history.
Attempting to justify his decision for war during a speech to the Reichstag, Hitler concentrated on goading FDR, whom he called "the main culprit of this war." As he proceeded in his charges against America, he echoed US isolationists who said that Roosevelt counted on foreign adventures to divert attention from the New Deals failure to mend the American economy.
From behind Hitlers bravado, however, seeped out some very real concerns over the way the war was unfolding. He kept repeating that the people of the US lacked fighting spirit, but he also voiced respect for Americas industrial might. Before the American blood shed at Pearl Harbor excited his lust for war with the US, Hitler had hoped that the Japanese would either attack the Soviet Far East or limit themselves to taking such Asian outposts of European colonialism as British Singapore, French Indochina, and the Dutch East Indies.
Eventually Hitler would reveal the full extent of his reservations about fighting the United States. "This war against America is a tragedy," he told Martin Bormann, the Nazi party secretary. "Germany and the United States should have been able to support each other without undue strain on either of them."
Joseph Stalin, as Hitler realized, would be the foremost beneficiary of the Axis war with the US, for the Soviet dictator could now be sure that Japanese forces would be spreading out further into east Asia and the Pacific, not moving north and west to invade Siberia. Units of the Red Army that had long been tied down in the Soviet Far East could now be redeployed to Europe to fight the Germans in Russia and the Ukraine."
-Larry Hedrick
Noted WWII historian and author of "The Nazi Monstrosity"
I don't believe that our endeavors are limited to one goal. There are too many people involved for that to be true. However, I do believe that individuals can be extremely single-minded. So while certainly some were celebrating the liberation of the death camps, it seems silly to me to pretend they were ever strategic, unlike the labor camps. They were a by-product. The last step. We could have bombed the tracks to several camps long before our foot soldiers opened the gates... for each camp it would have diverted a few bombing raids from more "strategic targets." I'm not damning the decisions we made, I'm damning the belief that we're infallible.Originally posted by DRB
You seem to think that things can only have one goal and that everything else is just an accident.
BUT folks were too busy looking for the diplomatic way, let's see if we can talk him out of his agression, if we continue to talk maybe that will work, they aren't a threat to me, need I go on or should I just recycle the language in your own posts. No wait I just did.
Minimizing the accomplishments of US forces in World War II is just as bad as overstating them.
Thought I'd add that you know as well as I do that Saddam does not have and will never approach the level of strength (military and domestic-political) Hitler possessed in 1937.Originally posted by DRB
The whole damn thing shouldn't have gotten beyond 1937. Someone with the courage of conviction should have rolled Hitler's ass then and it would have been moot. Samething with Japan. It had become painfully obvious with their invasion of China they needed to dealt with. BUT folks were too busy looking for the diplomatic way, let's see if we can talk him out of his agression, if we continue to talk maybe that will work, they aren't a threat to me,
I thought this was the World War II thread. But I'll answer your point about Hitler in 1937. He wasn't that strong. He could have been dealt with then. Even on his own time table he jumped the gun early on Poland in 1939 because he was worried about theOriginally posted by ohio
Thought I'd add that you know as well as I do that Saddam does not have and will never approach the level of strength (military and domestic-political) Hitler possessed in 1937.
He invaded Kuwait, like Japan to China... why didn't we treat Iraq's defeat like Japan's? With full occupation? (That's not rhetorical, by the way... I don't know the answer)
Originally posted by ohio
Thought I'd add that you know as well as I do that Saddam does not have and will never approach the level of strength (military and domestic-political) Hitler possessed in 1937.
He invaded Kuwait, like Japan to China... why didn't we treat Iraq's defeat like Japan's? With full occupation? (That's not rhetorical, by the way... I don't know the answer)
Individuals certainly can be extremely single-minded. I can even bet there were some among the Allies that could give to shakes about any of those camps. Shoot there are still people today that deny their existance. But as you point out there are too many people involved for that to be globaly true. So why not say some individuals....Originally posted by ohio
I don't believe that our endeavors are limited to one goal. There are too many people involved for that to be true. However, I do believe that individuals can be extremely single-minded. So while certainly some were celebrating the liberation of the death camps, it seems silly to me to pretend they were ever strategic, unlike the labor camps. They were a by-product. The last step. We could have bombed the tracks to several camps long before our foot soldiers opened the gates... for each camp it would have diverted a few bombing raids from more "strategic targets." I'm not damning the decisions we made, I'm damning the belief that we're infallible.
You are the one using words like by-product, accident, last step, and let Jews be murdered. It might not be what you meant but it certainly reads like that.
As for minimizing accomplishments... well, I don't believe I did that. Like I said, we had our successes and we had our failures. The failures don't take away FROM the successes, but likewise the successes don't erase the failures. The more we acknowledge both the better of we'll be in similar future situations.
and do you know how Many Japanese Civilians Died During the fire bombing of Toyko ? Or Not using the Bomb , Would have ment an Ambphibous (sp?) landing on Japan and do you know how many lives that would have cost both Japanese and American ?Originally posted by Tenchiro
...and at the expense of 100,000+ Japanese civilians.
It was until you felt like "recycling" my words from other topics into this one. Though why you feel they would apply is beyond me.Originally posted by DRB
I thought this was the World War II thread.
We're not talking power relative to immediate neighbors, we're talking power relative to major world powers (Germany to USSR/USA, Iraq to USA/...UN). Plus Hitler had on emotional grip on his people that Saddam will never have. They are very different situations.Originally posted by DRB
But I'll answer your point about Hitler in 1937. He wasn't that strong. He could have been dealt with then. Even on his own time table he jumped the gun early on Poland in 1939 because he was worried about the
Russians beating him to the punch. It caused him to sit tight for 7 months (phony war) until he was ready for the rest of Europe. A comparison Iraq to either of the Axis powers today is not accurate. (And I never made it) In 1990 it was. Truth be told Saddam had more that Hitler had in 1937, 38 and 39. Equals in 1940.
Funny how none of that made into our news. I remember feeling at the time like it was a war without casualties.Originally posted by DRB
Additionally, the world cringed at what they saw when the the US military was unleashed. Calling the road to Basra, the road of death was not an overstatement. It was not a pretty sight and the pictures don't do it justice.