In spades. What always gets me is his decision to declare war on the US. I'm hearing that he did so in the "hope" that Japan would, in turn, attack Russia, not realizing their aims were to the south.
My own feeling, being a kid and listening to the adults at that time, was that America was SO pist at the Japs, that, had Hitler held off, there would have been a tremendous pressure on Roosevelt to take care of Japan first and to Hell with Europe.
What sticks in my mind was an incident in England where Gen. DeGaulle was giving a speech, when someone burst into the room, breathlessly exclaiming that Hitler had declared war on the US. Not missing a beat, DeGaulle said, "Then we have won the war." Mind you, these were in pretty grim backs-to-the-wall days, and the audience was stunned at the apparent lunacy of that statement. DeGaulle expanded, and said that the flood of productive capacity of America would drown the Germans.
[off topic] When I was a kid, a veteran told me he was talking with a Russian officer as overflights of aircraft were blotting out the sky, and he mentioned that they were doing the same to the Japs. The Russian was wide-eyed in wonderment of a country that could field that much equipment on two fronts.
Hitler brought on the war, but in a sense he was our biggest asset. What a maroon!
The US public wasn’t “down” with the Germany-first policy articulated after the first meetings of FDR and Churchill, as Japan had been the aggressor. FDR’s attempt to entangle us by German sinkings of convoy ships didn’t catch hold of the American public. The Russians shifted 70 divisions out of the Far East to hurl against Operation Barbarrossa and figuratively speaking didn’t fire a shot against the Japanese until 1945.
The British laid track and set aside training areas for an eventual cross-channel invasion of France, but fought against it right up until at least May of 1944, insisting that the invasion of southern France (which did take place, after D-Day) be cancelled, D-Day further delayed, and more effort put into the Italian campaign, with a view toward an invasion of the Balkans, Greece, and the Aegean.
Throughout the wartime conferences, Marshall pointed out the US public political support for the Pacific war and the fact that the US was fighting it alone to keep up the scare on the British, letting them know that if the US forces were not being used for a cross-channel invasion (and most remained in training on US soil until early 1944) they’d be deployed against Japan. By the end of the war in Europe, only 27 percent of US forces were in the Pacific theater, but the amount of real estate was fairly small, mostly flyspeck islands, so troop density was fairly high in some of these.
After a little defense plant stint, in 1942 my uncle went to enlist, and had been tipped by friends who had already gone in that those who tried to enlist in the Navy were assigned to the Army, and vice versa. It worked, he went into the Navy by asking for Army.
>>The Russian was wide-eyed in wonderment of a country that could field that much equipment on two fronts.
While the Soviets built a lot of armor and fielded immense armies, the amount of equipment, raw materials, and food we sent them was staggering, especially since we were also supplying our own forces and considerable parts of the Free World.
Lend Lease to Russia
From Major Jordan’ Diaries
(NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1952)
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/pearl/www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/lend.html