Posted on 02/28/2019 6:31:09 AM PST by DIRTYSECRET
Temperature is down with the Norks so I'm beginning to think so. He's certainly no Chamberlin. He would have left Japan alone to let them be the big brother of Asia. The Hearst News Syndicate would have been told to go pound sand.
If the Japanese had found our 3 carriers before we found their 4 carriers we would have lost at Midway. Then, they would have sailed to california and bombed the coastal cities and factories until we gave up. War would have lasted at least another two years and the outcome might have been different.
As far as the question at hand What if the course of post war Japan and western Europe, from essentially medieval, post apocalyptic societies to first world economic superpowers in roughly 20 years was presented to the great powers at the turn of the 20th century by the master negotiator, President Trump.
“Your choice - A golden age of Science, Industry, Art, Culture, Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness on one hand or millions of lives lost and trillions of dollars wasted on what, in effect will be a hundred year long series of wars”. Could President Trump have sold this in 1904 ? What would the world be like today if he did ?
“Heck he didn’t want to go to war with England!”
If he really didn’t want that, then he wouldn’t have invaded Poland.
America First, had pretty widespread support across the board, until France fell.
By late 1941, I would dare say most America First supporters had some sympathies towards Nazi Germany.
LOL, if we had FR back in those days.....
Heck half the posts would be members accusing other members of being “FDR Lovers” or “Hitler Lovers” or “Stalin Lovers”.
And that was actually pretty good indicator that we were not going to do so.
And there would have been a major push to cut any aid to the UK except maybe for their troops in the Pacific. And that was only a maybe. We really did not want to get into the war in Europe. Certainly we did not want to get involved until Japan was dealt with.
And the US president sending vital war material to the UK when it was needed for the Pacific would have been a sure way to get himself in hot water.
The German Army was on the verge of taking Moscow when they declared war on us. So I don't think they were worried about Russia at that point.
So once again the puzzle of the 20th century is why did that nitwit declare war on the US when he didn't have to do so.
Looking at the all the evidence I think it was because he actually thought that Japan would win and he wanted his share of the spoils of a defeated US.
Greed.
It will get you every time.
When they declared war on us, they were in big trouble in Stalingrad.
Ah, everybody invades Poland :)
Dragging another enemy into the fray was not logical. Unless you thought they would fall quickly and you wanted some of their stuff.
Germany was required by treaty to declare war on the U.S. after we did with Japan.
Without Hitler coming to power there would have been no WWII and no Holocaust.
In broad strokes there were four factors that brought Hitler to power.
The first factor was WWI, because without WWI there would have been no Treaty of Versailles. Kaiser Wilhelm went through life overcompensating because he was a forceps baby and the delivery stunted the development of his right arm. His family had him tortured as a child with no end of quack medical cures because he was heir to the throne and no monarch could be seen as physically imperfect. His life as an adult revolved around camouflaging his deformity, and he was spoiling for the war that would prove his virility. Willie is the uncaused first cause of Hitler.
Second, the Versailles Treaty was a serious kick in the crotch to the Germans. It was going to take them decades to dig out from under that debt, which significantly diminished their standard of living. And their national pride was grievously wounded by it. The rank and file largely felt they’d not lost the Great War in the first place but that they had been betrayed by their leaders, so many looked forward to WWI Part II.
Third, The Great Depression, which only magnified Germany’s financial woes from Versailles.
Fourth was post-WWI German politics, particularly the factious nature of Weimar politics and the fear of the rise of communism. Germany had more than 25 different political parties and they all were so small that only a coalition of quite a few of them could ever have enough collective votes to elect a Chancellor. The capitalist and anti-communist factions sided with Hitler because he was the one non-communist candidate who they saw as having enough popular support to overcome the powerful coalition the communists had formed. The general perception is that they didn’t think Hitler was the best candidate but they did think he had the best chance of staving off a communist takeover. But there are some who theorize that they believed a fiery national leader (such as Hitler) would reignite WWI, which was something they actively wanted.
Realistically, the only one of the four that Trump might have changed the outcome of was the treaty of Versailles. I can tell you Trump has studied Sun-Tzu because I see him repeatedly put his principles into action, such as always leave your enemy an honorable route of retreat. Which is a corollary to the (non-Sun-Tzu) principle of “the dying serpent bites deepest.” Trump’s implementation of this is that he wants everyone to walk away from the negotiating table with something to brag about, no matter how small. Just like the carnival barker says, everybody wins. Trump goes to the negotiating table not only with his own objectives in mind, he also considers how he will allow his opponent (trading partner) to “feel” he has won in some measure.
There was no “win” in Versailles for the German nation. Nothing but despair. Woodrow Wilson was one of the more moderate voices in the jury that would sentence Germany but we know from history (and hindsight is always 20-20) that Versailles was just too harsh for the German people to endure. Based on his past propensities, I’m confident Trump would have left the Germans some scrap to walk away with that they could claim as a victory, if only a moral one. Even if that meant he also would have to bribe or strongarm the most embittered of the Allied nations.
Might that have prevented the rise of Hitler? We’ll never know.
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