Americans as a whole were 80% against another war with Germany right up until Pearl Harbor
I believe this is correct...and I believe conservative Republican isolationists were the leading exponents of this view.
But FDR was able to push Japan into attacking us; Pearl Harbor represented the success of FDR foreign policy
This is correct in essence, I believe
FDR's leaking of his plan to raise a huge army to fight Germany and Japan...is what induced Hitler to declare war on the US
Possibly. I've always seen Hitler's declaration of war against us treated as a thoughtless, spur-of-the-moment support of an ally.
Of course when FDR's foreign policy succeeded, 400 merchantmen were promptly sunk off the US coast, and scores of thousands of G.I.s were killed or captured by the Japanese offensive in the Philipines and elsewhere in the Pacific--but hey, what is that compared to the need to save the Soviet Union from being crushed by Germany? If you're a Commie symp, nothing at all, is what.
Please. Your comments to this point have been sane and reasonable. We didn't want the Germans to crush the British or the Russians. We didn't want the Japanese to crush the Chinese. Simple power politics - regardless of what you think of the various regimes. It's a continuation of British continental policy...which itself is probably basid on Roman principles.
Yes, but in The New Dealers' War Thomas Flemming indicates that the German High Command counted the cost of war with the US--it meant going over to the strategic defensive, and that is what they decided to do. They (Hitler) didn't follow through on that decision, tho . . .Of course when FDR's foreign policy succeeded, 400 merchantmen were promptly sunk off the US coast, and scores of thousands of G.I.s were killed or captured by the Japanese offensive in the Philipines and elsewhere in the Pacific--but hey, what is that compared to the need to save the Soviet Union from being crushed by Germany? If you're a Commie symp, nothing at all, is what.
Please. Your comments to this point have been sane and reasonable. We didn't want the Germans to crush the British or the Russians. We didn't want the Japanese to crush the Chinese. Simple power politics - regardless of what you think of the various regimes. It's a continuation of British continental policy...which itself is probably basid on Roman principles.
I only read The New Dealers' War because I caught the Booknotes segment on it on C-Span. Brian Lamb opened the interview by asking Flemming if he had voted for FDR; Flemming replied that he was too young to vote in 1944. Brian asked if he would vote for FDR if he had the chance; he replied "It would depend." Flemming said that he had voted for Truman; Brian asked if he'd vote for Truman again and he said "Yes."Having read the book I found those answers stunning. FDR was death warmed over and restricted to a 20-hour workweek during much of WWII. Flemming asserts, and adduces reason to believe, that FDR's main objective was to not only prevent the conquest of the USSR but to put Stalin in the driver's seat in postwar Europe.
FDR's "unconditional surrender" demand on Germany was popular from the POV of Americans who didn't want to think of ending with another armistace which would allow yet a third German war to start in Europe. But it did two things: it buttressed Hitler's then-shaky pollitical position, and it married the US to the USSR because we had no intention of grinding up the entire Wehrmacht ourselves without "der Ostfront."
And the Lend-Lease program wasn't intended only to keep the USSR on life-support, it was intended to make the USSR strong. It is difficult now to credit just how influential the USSR was within the FDR administration. But the data are there from the Venona transcripts--which, BTW, were decrypted against Truman's orders by a general who didn't want the country to be surprised by another Soviet flip like the one that allied them with Hitler to start the invasion of Poland.