The lack of an education in history renders people susceptible to the most egregious nonsense.
Looking forward to the next installment!
Damning statement by Marshall.
I think I would trust General Marshall before I would trust Hopkins.
The size of the US Military at the outbreak of WWII and the long supply distance were the biggest reasons the Philippines couldn’t be held onto or reinforced. There was a lack of combat ready troops when the war broke out and the US Navy had been devastated at Pearl Harbor.
The cable story makes no sense. The Soviets feared that if Japan became involved in the broader war, they would probably be forced to fight the Japanese. What is interesting is why did Hitler declare war on the US but did not demand Japan declare war on the Soviets? Hubris or just another monumental German blunder?
I suspect there were many, many little bits of treason by embedded Soviet agents during all of FDR’s reign.
I despise FDR; we was an enemy of the US
Logistics probably is the answer. The US was fighting wars on both sides of the world.
Not a lack of education in history but history as told by the leftist/communist/communist sympathizers/dupes etc in academia, media, entertainment,politics,et al. it’s been a constant since the 1930’s
wow..pure treachery...
Could be because the heart of our Pacific fleet was sitting on the bottom of Pearl Harbor.
I suppose you would think if we were going to force an economic embargo on Japan, and that we were well aware that they would eventually attack SE Asia, that we would have made some preparations in our only territory in the area to defend it?
Like what was FDR thinking that Japan would do? Give up?
The US lacked the capability to get significant aid through to MacArthur after the Japanese attack. And only 10 convoys sailed for arctic Russia between the initial Japanese attack and the fall of Corregidor. (Some non-military aid went via the Pacific. The route through Iran wouldn’t have been a factor at this point).
As far as moving transport from the Atlantic to the Pacific (ignoring the fact that anything that got to Philippines would have been chopped up by the IJN), let’s look at the Yorktown - certainly slow cargo ships couldn’t have been moved any more quickly - it took almost two full months to get it from Norfolk to Samoa. So you’d need to allow at least to sometime in February to have gotten significant reinforcements to the western Pacific. The joint force was still holding on Bataan at that point, but the battle was not winnable.
Recommended Reading on this subject:
http://www.amazon.com/American-Betrayal-Assault-Nations-Character/dp/0312630786/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=3QEHOQMYACE8C&coliid=I16RNBDPZLJRND AND:
http://www.amazon.com/Operation-Snow-Soviet-Triggered-Harbor/dp/B00D9TE32A/ref=pd_sim_b_9
MacArthur should have been relieved of his command and court-martialed for his negligence. Instead, Dugout Doug got the Medal of Honor while tens of thousand of troops under his command got three years of hell on earth.
I posted this with the article also. FDR and Sec of War Stimson also muzzled Maj Ed Dyess and the handful of other POWs (and two Filipinos) who miraculously escaped from the POW camp at Davao, Mindanao in April, 1943. They were forbidden to talk about the atrocities the Japanese were committing upon our POWs lest the American people hear of it and demand more support for the Pacific theater. I recommend John D. Lukacs’ detailed and enlightening book for your perusal. I cannot say FDR had the same noble motives as Churchill had regarding the Coventry bombings.
How many Japanese troops were used to defeat that Allied force of 151,000 Soldiers? Most military theory says the attackers need to be three times larger than the defenders. We were defending. Did the Japanese attack with 500,000 troops?