Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: JimSEA
Great job, Chamberlain bought an ill prepared Britain a whole eleven months to do the preparation they should have started in in 1933. If William Shirer could see what was coming and Winston Churchill could see the likely future, others should have also.
Yes, but do not underestimate the demoralization caused by the Great War. Nobody wanted a reprise of it - and I’m talking about the “victors!” Even in 1941, entry into WWII polled no more than 20% among Americans before Pear Harbor.

The reality of the historical situation is that nobody had the vision and the moral authority to act in 1933. Churchill was humiliated by Gallipoli; would you in 1933 have been enthusiastic about having your son drafted into a war against Germany then - only 15 years after your older brother had returned in a coffin from WWI?

for another Gallipoli?
The only thing which would have prevented WWII would have been prosperity. Absent the disastrous decay of American - and British - industry due to the policies of Hoover which were doubled down on by FDR, even as FDR blamed the results of those policies on Herbert Hoover, it wouldn’t have taken so much time to ramp up production of war materiel.

The little-known story of the American buildup of war materiel production is told in

Freedom's Forge:
How American Business Produced Victory in World War II
Arthur Herman
It’s not politically correct for you to know that FDR - with his Under Secretary of the Navy experience of the signal failure of US industry to produce and deliver war materiel to Europe before WWI ended - ramped up war production from the fall of France (May, 1940) right through Pearl Harbor and US entry into WWII. He did it by hook or by crook, and US entry into the war - nominally on the timetable of the Japanese, and of the Germans who declared war on us after Pearl Harbor. But it is an interesting coincidence that, after FDR had been told by GM’s Wm Knudsen that it would take 18 months to ramp up American war materiel production, the Japanese happened to attack in December of 1941. A coincidence which could lend credence to the theory that the Japanese were played like a Stradivarius by FDR’s diplomacy, and got us into WWII on FDR’s timetable.

The reason that, notwithstanding American ramped up military production starting in mid-1940, America had very weak forces on hand in December 1941 is simply that American production (and, in the case of obsolescent bolt-action rifles, existing inventory) had been devoted to keeping the British war effort afloat. But with the preliminary 18 months behind him, Knudsen was in a position to say in December 1941 that America could produce 50,000 warplanes in 1942. The administration was throttling back on military production well before the war was over.

Presumably, then, in the absence of the Depression American production potential would have made it far easier to dominate a contest of war materiel production in 1933. But in 1933, FDR was not Winston Churchill.


28 posted on 10/01/2013 1:06:30 PM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (“Liberalism” is a conspiracy against the public by wire-service journalism.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies ]


To: conservatism_IS_compassion

Very good points.


32 posted on 10/01/2013 3:22:05 PM PDT by JimSEA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 28 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson