Posted on 08/04/2013 10:54:44 AM PDT by cutty
According to Soviet intelligence reports, we now know that one of FDR’s top officials, the Treasury Department’s Harry Dexter White, was a Soviet agent, who, among many other deceptions, subverted relations between the US and Japan by inserting “ultimatum” language into the cable flow that actually spurred the Japanese attack. This was language written in Moscow, passed to White by a Soviet handler in Washington, D.C., and dropped into a State Department communiqué sent to Japan.
This brilliantly executed influence operation doesn’t live in infamy – at least not yet.
...
“A continuous stream of fighter and pursuit planes is traversing the Pacific,” FDR cabled MacArthur is early 1942, one of the extravagant lies FDR told to the people and forces under Japanese siege. No planes were on their way. Nothing was coming. .. Truth, John Hersey later wrote, would come “in mean little doses.”
...
the US continued to sustain catastrophic losses while shipping Lend Lease supplies to Stalin through the Nazi U-boat-infested North Atlantic.
Could the decision to abandon US forces to death or the horrors of Japanese POW camps by giving uninterrupted priority to the Red Army have had anything to do with the influence of the scores of Soviet agents and assets within reach of the levers of power inside the US government? How about the man driving military supply policy, the man behind Lend Lease?
That man was Harry Hopkins and he was without question FDR’s top wartime advisor. As George Marshall would state in 1957 to his official biographer Forrest Pogue: “Hopkins’s job with the president was to represent the Russian interests. My job was to represent the American interests.”
Was Hopkins representing Russian interests at a time of American need?
Who was Harry Hopkins?
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
It took a long time to ramp up material production and train troops. They had broomsticks instead of guns and trucks with signs on them “I am a tank”. We still had, I think, horse mounted cavalry when Pearl Harbor was hit.
With the Pacific fleet decimated and the news of Japan invading and occupying all sorts of countries and islands in the Pacific, I bet it all seemed rather hopeless in the beginning.
And the Philapines was American territory.
We all knew MacArthur was starving them for oil and other things.
Still the Rape of Nanking was inexcusable as was the treat the Japanese gave our own troops that were captured.
The cause can be argued , but not the barbaric way they fought the war.
MacArthur did put his stars on the line with FDR. People forget that MacArthur was the equivalent of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs before WWII. FDR was gutting the military, and MacArthur was fighting him every step of the way. MacArthur refused to even consider debating with FDR about cutting the number of Officers. MacArthur felt the Officer Corps was the last stand. They had to be saved to provide the skeleton to grow a large military. FDR wanted the Officer Corps gutted, too. MacArthur blew up. He said something like this.
“When the enemy sticks his bayonet into the guts of an American Soldier, that American Soldier’s last words will be f**k Roosevelt, not f**k MacArthur!” He then walked out on Roosevelt. Roosevelt sent an aide to bring MacArthur back. MacArthur figured he was done. Roosevelt told him to basically forget it. MacArthur did bet his stars. Our current admirals and generals would have just nodded in agreement with FDR.
It is my belief that the only thing Roosevelt did not know about the Pearl Harbor attack was when it was coming.
History has taught us that a weak military invites attack.
We were weak at the time of the Pearl Harbor Attack, and we are weak now. And getting weaker every day.
I read about Attu and Kiska. There was tough fighting in very harsh conditions. The Japanese were able to withdraw their forces from Kiska pretty much intact. The Aleutian’s were Mostly a diversion for the battle of Midway. As a matter of fact I believe it was on or Akutan Island where the first Japanese Zero crashed pretty much intact killing the pilot. The plane was repaired by the US and used to gain knowledge of the strong points and weaknesses of the Zero. I’m going to read that book too thank you.
You should read up on George C. Marshall's post war machinations in China. He screwed over Chiang Kai-Shek and practically handed the country to Mao Tse-tung. After Hirohito surrendered to the allied Forces, Marshall diverted all allied ordnance remaining in theater to Mao thus arming the Communists while denying aid to Chiang's Nationalists who were forced to withdraw to Taiwan.
He is responsible for creating a mess we're still living with, not to mention the deaths of millions of Chinese peasants. Between Mao and Stalin they made Hitler look like a rank amature death merchant.
Regards,
GtG
Luckily the US had a lot of help, two fronts is a pretty daunting task.
No doubt we would have had our supply lines stretched out so far that what turned out to be a disaster in the Philippines could have been much worse. We had difficulties just supplying the Solomon Island campaign in the Pacific. Our Navy had to rely a lot on PT Boats early in the war because most of our big Navy plans were still on the drawing board. Before and up to the Guadalcanal Campaign the US fought a delaying action in the Pacific. It’s amazing to me that we fought such formidable enemies in Japan and Germany with very little resources to start with and still gained a decisive victory.
No, the USAAF had 100+ modern fighters and about 30 B-17’s in the Philippines.
If you want to know, in excruciating detail what happened to them, I recommend William Bartsch, “Doomed at the Start”, the title is a succinct summary. This is a massively detailed, almost plane by plane analysis of what happened to the air forces of the USAFFE.
Short answer - the biggest problems were
- that the USAAF was unprepared for the start of the war, more in terms of personnel and outlook/attitude than materiel; almost everyone from the top to the bottom grossly underperformed on the first few days.
- though they learned very fast, they could not recover from the losses of the first few days because there was no way to get replacement aircraft. It was not that a replacement convoy could not get through - perhaps, with enormous risks one could have, but that they needed replacement aircraft on day 1, and there was no secure supply line to get them to the Philippines, no chain of supplied bases and airfields from Australia through the Netherlands East Indies. The US just wasn’t on a war footing, and neither were any of the allies in East Asia.
I have always known that. Hitler was bad enough, but those two chumps were a lot worse. I have always wondered why Hitler got all the bad press, while Stalin and Mao seemed to get somewhat of a pass? Communist propaganda maybe? I don't know. What do you think?
McArthur made a big error in the Philippines, and it hasn’t got anything to do with B-17’s or the air force. On the other hand its hard to see what he could have done differently. His big contribution was to convince both the Americans and the Filipinos that the Philippine Army (a conscripted citizen army at the time) could be made effective with the pathetic budgets, few cadre and derisory training time available. I suspect this was based on his rather limited experience with leading a US National Guard Division in WWI. The “Rainbow” division was combat effective and had high morale, even when it was inexperienced. This confidence in such troops was not warranted when it came to the Philippine army. The first major action at Lingayen made it painfully clear that the Philippine Army was nearly useless in maneuver battle and probably would remain so without months more of training and combat experience. That put an end to any idea of protracted resistance.
FDR federalized the Philippine army in July of 1941 and recalled MacArthur to active duty naming him commander of the United States Army Forces in the Far East. War broke out Dec 7/8, 1941.
But the point is the he was caught off guard as well.
He wasn't caught off guard, he was busily preparing for war and US forces in the Philippines were on alert the morning of Dec 8, 1941. The Gods of war just happened to be favoring the Japanese that morning.
No.
The Japanese attacked Luzon with two divisions, an independent brigade, and two tank regiments, plus various supporting artillery, etc.
Luzon was defended by @ 90,000 Filipino and US troops in, nominally, one US division (understrength, 2/3 Philippine scouts), 9 Philippine Army divisions (all about regiment-sized, effectively), one battalion sized Scout cavalry regiment and one battalion sized Marine regiment, and two tank groups.
There were also a very large number of support, fortress, Navy and USAAF personnel, but these were not combat troops.
The big difference is that the Philippine troops could not be expected to hold anywhere by themselves unless concentrated in overwhelming numbers, and that because the Japanese could land anywhere, there were no positions they could be expected to hold, unless it was the short Bataan front. There were only the equivalent of 10 US/Scout infantry battalions that were combat effective in Dec 1941. That’s why Philippine defense reverted to War Plan Orange-3.
“...the russians are really orientals...”
True now as then, and first observed by Winston Churchill in 1890:
“The Russian is a delightful person until he tucks in his shirt. As an Oriental he is charming, but it is only when he insists on being treated as the most Easterly of Westerns rather than Westerly of Easterns that the Russian becomes a racial anomaly most difficult to handle. One never knows which side of his nature is going to emerge next.”
Does anyone really regard Vladimir Putin as a Westerner? Oh yes, I forgot, our wonderful Obama regime does, and gets played like a cheap fiddle in Moscow.
Surely you say that as some sort of sarcasm, or joke?
MacArthur did refuse and was ordered to leave.
USAFFE didn't have that many men.
JM, as far as I know, he died of cereberal malaria, on the death march. My mother told me, that while her and dad were watching news reel footage, that dad was firmly convinced he had seen his brother in the films. Who knows for sure.
Temu, I was in Davao, Mindanao a few months ago. I liked New Bataan, in Compastela Valley, northeast of Davao City, but it floods too much. I will be moving to Davao City soon. It is not dangerous, like many try to say. It is one of the safest places in the Philippines. Now, in western Mindanao, it is not safe, but the east is good. I have been there many times. You can google earth Davao City and see it, right on the beach. I can't wait.
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