Posted on 08/16/2012 7:43:49 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War and its Aftermath.
As it turns out, Hoover stated what would be his central thesis in a conversation at a 1951 Manhattan dinner to a New York public relations man in language that history buffs who associate the former president with the high starch collars he wore would never guess that he would use. “When Roosevelt put America in to help Russia as Hitler invaded in June, 1941,” Hoover said. “We should have let those two bastards annihilate themselves.”
George H. Nash, no mean historian himself, supplied the above anecdote in his introduction to the presidential memoir published more than four decades after the author’s death. Nash edited the volume, which runs to more than 900 pages with footnotes and appendices.
“Hitler’s constant ambition, intention and preparation during eight years had been the conquest of Russia and Eastern Europe and the uprooting of the Communist Vatican in Moscow,” Hoover wrote in one of the notes which Nash appends to the text. “Roosevelt knew in December 1940 and more emphatically in March 1941 that Hitler had turned his military objectives to that purpose.”
“His State Department in mid-January had even warned Russia it was coming.” It turns out that Hoover had a really reliable source providing him with that last tidbit of information—Roosevelt’s Secretary of State, Cordell Hull.
“I met with Secretary of Hull in Washington during February, 1941, to discuss relief matters, subsequent to which we had a general conversation,” Hoover recounted. “In reply to my query as to what the Germans were doing against Russia, Hull told me that they had concentrated 1,250,000 troops along their eastern frontier, and at least 300,000 additional troops on the Bulgarian frontier.”
(Excerpt) Read more at academia.org ...
Coulda, shoulda, woulda in hindsight.
Shoulda been on better watch and prepared at Pearl Harbor, too.
Shoulda been ramped up with war material production earlier.
The plan to let the Soviets shed most of the blood was a valid option, and it worked.
Had not the Soviets degraded the German war capacity, many more allied troops would have gone to their deaths.....Americans, Brits, Candians.
Besides, war in Europe wasn’t even popular in the United States until Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s declaration of war against us.
Like FDR or not, he couyld not single handedly take America further into war, against GOP isolationism of the time.
If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances. Neither of them thinks anything of their pledged word. -- As quoted in The New York Times (24 June 1941)
But:
1) Once Japan attacked us we were going in on allied side. No more shilly-shallying.
2) Right or wrong, there was a feeling that if we didn't "drain the swamp" this time, we'd have to do it in the next generation. And, as bad as the outcome of the war was for Eastern Europe and some other parts of the world, we didn't have another World War after 1945 (though, to be sure the atomic bomb may have been the main reason for that).
3) You couldn't tell at the time how things were going to end. A lucky break for Germany might have brought Japan, Arab militants, Indian nationalists and Latin American dictators on board and created an even more powerful -- unstoppable -- force.
A Soviet win might have brought them not only Eastern Europe and (eventually and for a time) China, but also Western Europe and Japan. We got involved in the Cold War to prevent that. Possibly our getting involved in WWII had the same effect earlier.
True & True. But Hitler being Hitler he couldn't see it.
If we want to play "Alternate History" imagine what might have happened if Marshal Foch & General Pershing got their way. Germany totally defeated in 1919? The Allied armies on Revolutionary Russia's doorstep, in a position to strangle Lenin's Regime?
I'm reminded of an author who wrote an alternate history of the US Civil War where the Confederacy achieved independence. His methodology was to look at the broad factors, demographics, economics and so forth as more or less 'fixed'. Then he looked for small turning points. Decisive battles being the easiest to identify. Swung those battles on the smallest of events (ie. Pickett's Charge) and looked at how the results of the Campaign might have turned out if the aims were achieved. He identified something like 6 Battles that the Union won, and figured that the Confederacy had to win like 4 of them to achieve Independece. Even then he foresaw an end to Slavery and eventual reunification around the time of WW1 (1912-14).
To defeat the Russians in WW2, Hitler would have had to get on an incredible roll even longer than the one his armies had benefitted from. He'd have had to take Moscow in '41, before the snows. Capture & hold the oil fields around Baku in '42. And somehow avoid the attrition battle around Stalingrad. And that's just for openers.
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Thanks Academiadotorg."When Roosevelt put America in to help Russia as Hitler invaded in June, 1941," Hoover said. "We should have let those two bastards annihilate themselves."Some returning veterans of WWII said the same thing, and Churchill's approach (let them fight it out, while the UK battles mostly the Italians in North Africa) suggests that he thought so, too. |
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Don’t forget the mighty Hungarians who fought on the Eastern Front. They provided Hitler with nine infantry divisions, comprising 200,000 soldiers.
you are very correct. although, i think that by not interfering with the economy would have been the best choice.
i believe that the economy would have corrected itself much faster if fdr’s “reforms” were not in place. his failures led to many americans supporting fascist and marxist leanings.
Blessings, boob
Germany actually produced many times more raw materials in WW2 than the Soviets did.
Production of steel in 1942 (million metric tons):
Germany = 32.1
Soviet Union = 8.1
Production of steel in 1943 (million metric tons):
Germany = 34.6
Soviet Union = 8.5
Production of aluminum in 1942 (thousand metric tons):
Germany = 264.0
Soviet Union = 51.7
Production of aluminum in 1943 (thousand metric tons):
Germany = 250.0
Soviet Union = 62.3
Production of coal in 1942 (million metric tons):
Germany = 513.1
Soviet Union = 75.5
Production of coal in 1943 (million metric tons):
Germany = 521.4
Soviet Union = 93.1
The reason why Soviet production is so low in 1942 and 1943 is that 30-40% of their population was under German occupation. Thousands of factories and mines had either been overrun or destroyed.
But the Soviets managed to get by because they of the Lend-lease raw materials. Lend-lease provided 55% of aluminum, 45% of copper, 40% of lead, 28% of tin, 52% of tungsten and 73% of molybdenum.
Also, the Germans never fully utilized their manufacturing capacity for war production until 1944.
Actually, in Roosevelt’s first two terms he pushed for:
1. Neutrality laws and
2. smaller defense budgets.
That is why I said “might.”
Germany declared war on four nations, each with bigger economies and more population than all of Germany. It never fails to amaze me that they got as far as they did; they took out one, and put another (perhaps two others) on the ropes. I think it is barely possible they might have pulled it off, perhaps in the very unlikely event of support from Japan.
Of course the leaders of Japan were ever more idiotic. They pissed off a country which had individual STATES with more miles of paved roads and rail roads, and more industry than all of Japan...
“Germany declared war on four nations”
The only country Germany declared war on in WWII was the United States.
Truman's idea of backing one side when it was weak and then backing the other when it became weaker wasn't really in the cards. Democratic countries have to make wars into moral crusades and can't shift gears as fast as dictatorships can. Strange as it may seem there's still something like honor or principle that prevents countries with representative governments from switching sides. It does happen on a small scale, when people aren't paying attention, but it's harder to pull off a major reversal of policy when the whole country and world are watching.
Germany was like the swordsman in the Indiana Jones movie: Americans just got sick and tired of them and didn't want to put up with them any longer, so we weren't going to bother with any attempts to court their favor (maybe that's not the right metaphor but it does capture something). During the war we just wanted to get them off the scene as a world power and international threat. Once that happened, we'd figure out what to do next, rather than playing some complicated strategic balancing game with unpredictable outcomes.
Having perused the article, there is much that I am agreement with the so called revisionists, as stated by Strauss: in the 20's and 30's the USSR was considered the pariah of the modern world. Indeed, in my opinion, among the modern world, the USSR probably had better relations with the United States during the terms of Woodrow Wilson and FDR. Both of these administrations were very pro socialist. President Hoover's assessment strikes me as true about the FDR administration being pro soviet.
Where I digress with the revisionists is that Stalin had plans for offensive operations before the German invasion. I do believe that Stalin would exploit the war in the west to expand soviet power, but realistically, you do not decimate your army up to 4 years before contemplated offensive operations as Stalin did.
Had Stalin had intentions of offensive operations, he would have done the following: used more secure codes for communications (he did not), not purged his generals, not allowed his air force to be destroyed on the ground, allowed the red army to actively develop offensive operational doctrine of combined arms, and given army commanders more trust by not relying on the political commissars. As proof of my contention, i ask you: when did the red army develop its offensive operational doctrine? The answer is after operation Barbarossa, and the cost was millions of lives lost learning the doctrine (on live fire two way ranges). I think what they revisionists en masse fail to state is that Stalin was a psychopath, even more dangerous than Hitler. Yes, they accurately give the numbers of the red terror, but they don't seem to discuss how every remotely potential threat to Stalin's hold on power was liquidated (to use the soviet term).
Yes, the revisionists are correct imho that Hitler was compelled more by his own foolish propaganda to execute operation Barbarossa more so than any kind of military necessity. Militarily, that one decision doomed his regime; most military history people agree on that point.
Yet, ironically, western historians are pretty much ignorant how paranoid, evil, and brutal Stalin was. I think this is because the victors in the war wrote the history books, FDR was the U.S. president, and many of the historians have socialist sympathies.
That’s pretty much where I come down. I posted the information precisely because most people have never seen it, and there may be a grain of truth in it. Like dfwgator said, Staling was probably looking a few years down the road — 1943 perhaps — figuring that Germany would be bogged down fighting an attrition battle in Northern France. Only that didn’t happen.
The interesting thing was the Red Army dispositions (close to the frontiers) as opposed to building a “defense-in-depth” as you would logically expect. That could have been simply a function of incompetence, or a fear of a military coup. Keep your more competent military units as far away from the seat of power as possible. Recall that Republican Spain had Francisco Franco essentially exiled to the Canary Islands and most of their better military formations were in North Africa — away from Madrid. Did France view that as an offensive threat to their overseas possesions? I don’t know, but probably. Professional military & intel-types are “paid to worry.”
Anyway, it’s interesting to kick this stuff around!
I agree with you that one reason for moving forces to the frontier was fear of a military coup. Since the beginning of the USSR, up to its fall, the political class was always very reluctant to have forces near Moscow.
However, from military point of view, there exist a simple justification to position forces far forward. We would call it a show of force or a trigger line...you cross here and you are going to have to fight us. This is a demonstration of political resolve and may not necessarily be a good tactical or operational decision, but politics always trumps military decisions.
Finally, and a point I failed to mention before, in order to conduct offensive operations against the best trained army in the world, you need to be prepared to fight them. That requires a lot of training (in those days it would be the integration of mobile forces-tanks, mechanized infantry, with artillery and air power). The red army had yet to develop this capability prior to operation Barbarossa. Additionally, you must have very mobile reserves to be used for deep attacks against enemy targets of opportunity. This all requires tremendous planning and setting aside vast amounts of fuel, equipment, and ammunition. This was never done, because the Red Army did not have the necessary large amount of resources committed to such an undertaking in 1941.
Regards,
OC
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