[PUGACHEV]

I was born in 1950 and growing up I had the benefit of the views of both my father and my grandfather on WWII. They were both very well connected with associates in the highest levels of government, finance, and the military at the time. Neither of them lacked patriotism, and, in fact, my father served as a deck officer in the Merchant Marine during the first years of the war and later joined the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Both expressed the same rational for the country's reluctance to get involved in WWII before Pearl Harbor, although both saw war with Japan as an inevitability.

The general feeling in the county 1939 was that we had been tricked into involvement in WWI at the behest of the British, who's real interest was to preserve the economic benefits of their empire by excluding others, including Germany and the U.S., from foreign markets which they controlled. It was felt, generally, that WWI for all its high ideals, had really accomplished nothing and that the U.S. would have been far better off by not getting involved and letting the European powers fight it out to a final resolution. To his credit, Roosevelt understood this, and the Lend-lease Deal worked out to save Brittan from immanent collapse required that it effectively dissolve the Empire within several years of the war's end. So it did, and the U.S. has been profiting from that deal and follow-on Breton Woods Agreement to the present day.

[dfwgator]

The world would have been better off if the Central Powers won WWI.

They would have taken care of Russia, so no Bolsheviks. The old imperial order would have remained in place in Germany, so no Hitler. Britain would still have her Empire.