Posted on 12/07/2023 10:16:59 AM PST by Enlightened1
I think the end justify the means here.
the reason to enter the war will eventually come, he speed up the process.
There were some supports for Germany in the start too, it’s probably good to be isolated in the beginning and do a wait and see.
can you imagine if Hitler had keep his word and not going after Russia, and in turn recruited them into axis.
> The reason the aircraft carriers were not at Pearl is because they were the most important component of 1940s modern warfare. <
Yes, that is correct. But few admirals realized it at the time. The battleship was king (or so they thought). In 1941 all the major navies were still building battleship after battleship.
The absence of the carriers was just a very fortunate coincidence.
That is an overstatement to the max. Very few American admirals knew the strategic and tactical value of their aircraft carriers until they became valuable assets after the attack on Pear Harbor.
Until then, they were considered support vessels for battleship centric fleets.
Best Years of Our Lives - "And For What?" YouTube 85,604 views Uploaded Nov 22, 2016
as an InfoWarrior type confronts 2 veterans with an opposing view to the war. The cause of their suffering is called into question as we see an example of cognitive dissonance play out. Healing will never take place and courses will never be reversed until we acknowledge and confront the true source of what's hurting us.
Stop fighting your brothers and start exposing your leaders.
It wasn’t a blockade, they were sanctions of trade.
I don’t know about FDR. But you are certainly right about the leftists. They were okay with Hitler. After all, he signed a treaty with Uncle Joe Stalin. So leave Hitler alone. He’s not our problem.
Then as you noted, Germany invaded the USSR. All of a sudden, Hitler must be stopped. The hypocrisy there stinks to high heaven.
Awww ... poor little oppressed Japan was “provoked” ... while raping and murdering its way through Indochina.
Identical
That's how such conspiracy theories work. Gloss over or ignore the events and logic that don't support your position. The author has written a few books that paint the past 100 years of US history as one giant conspiracy theory.
Even the sinking of the Reuben James a few months earlier didn’t get us into the war against Germany.
Although if you listened to FDR’s “Arsenal of Democracy” speech, it was for all intents and purposes, a declation of war on Nazi Germany.
All our bases in the Pacific were on alert a week before in anticipation the Japanese were going to strike somewhere...they did not of course...but war was coming and everyone knew it, including Kimmel and Short...Halsey even had a shoot on sight order when he sailed out in the Enterprise before Dec 7...bottom line we had no patrol planes out during this period, including Dec 7...that was not on orders from FDR...it was gross incompetence on Kimmel and Shorts part.
Actually it started with the Immigration Bill of 1924, which limited Asian immigration. Japan saw it as an insult. Plus they felt they were short-changed as a member of the Allies during WWI, and they felt they didn’t get their spoils.
I sense he expected it to be the Philippines, and of course they were attacked on the same day as Pearl. Japan took care of all family business on December 7th.
I hate politicians from all countries.
Kimmel stood by the window of his office at the submarine base, his jaw set in stony anguish. As he watched the disaster across the harbor unfold with terrible fury, a spent .50 caliber machine gun bullet crashed through the glass. It brushed the admiral before it clanged to the floor. It cut his white jacket and raised a welt on his chest. “It would have been merciful had it killed me,” Kimmel murmured to his communications officer, Commander Maurice “Germany” Curts.
Japan was in desperate need of natural resources, particularly petroleum.
Their plan was to seize the Dutch East Indies to secure those things.
The near simultaneous attacks on Pearl, the Philippines, Guam, and Wake were to ensure they could seize the resources in southeast Asia will little or no push-back.
I have no doubt that Roosevelt and all of the military intelligence knew an attack was coming, but the “where” and “when” were unknown to them.
Western leftists, FDR included loved the USSR “great socialist experiment.” In 1932, Walter Duranty, who served as Moscow bureau chief of The New York Times, wrote glowing articles on Stalin’s “worker’s paradise.” Winning a Pulitzer prize, while millions died in forced famine and gulags.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty
Japan could have been a useful ally against the Bolsheviks, if we played our cards right. But we weren’t about to pressure the Euros into give up their colonies.
My argument with the author is not about his main thesis - that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor and allowed it to happen, which the evidence seems to point to.
My argument with the author is how he paints western nations actions in the Pacific as “provoking” Japan, ignoring that Japan had been waging war around the Pacific rim for years before 1941, and the author not calling THOSE actions provocations. He did not need to make that false premise in order to make his case about FDR.
"...A door opened, a hush fell, he looked around the room, his eyes calm, his face impassive “To save time,” he said, I’m going to ask you what questions you have in mind.” His eyes turned to the first correspondent. “What’s your question?” A penetrating query was put; General Marshall went on to the next man-and so around the room, until 60 corespondents had asked challenging questions ranging from major strategy to technical details of the war on a dozen fronts.
General Marshall looked off into space for perhaps 30 seconds. Then he began. For nearly 40 minutes he spoke. His talk was a smooth, connected, brilliantly clear narrative that encompassed the war. And this narrative, smooth enough to be a chapter in a book, included a complete answer to every question we had asked.
But what astounded us most was this: as he reached the point in his narrative which dwelt upon a specific question, he looked directly at the man who had asked the question!
Afterward I heard many comments from the correspondents. Some said they had just encountered the greatest military mind in history. Others exclaimed over the encyclopedic detail Marshall could remember. All agreed on one thing: “That’s the most brilliant interview I have ever attended in my life.”
The point of this is, on the the morning of December 7, 1941, George Marshall was nowhere to be found. He couldn't be reached. And when he was asked, over time, he gave three completely different accounts of where he was that morning and what he had been doing. Horseback riding in one, breakfast with his wife in another, etc.
How does one square that reality with the anecdote (widely published in the day to show just how remarkable Marshall's memory and intellect was?
Hard to do. I don't know what Roosevelt did or didn't know, but Marshall's hazy recollection of his whereabouts on the morning of December 7, 1941, (as Chief of Staff of the US Army!) on a morning where every American could remember decades later where they were when they found out, makes it difficult to swallow.
Sure, he might have been passed out drunk, he might have been having an affair somewhere, who knows? But it is clear there is something inside that smoke of Marshall's inability to remember where he was, and to have changed his story that often.
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