Question for the WW2 history buffs....Follow

I think we both like that better

Oh, and I know of no country that hasn't enforced attack orders with draconian punishments, so in that respect, the russkies, yanks, brits, canucks, kiwis etc.

All Guilty

Scene: Leningrad, 1943, A Soviet stronghold of 16 facing 16,000 Krauts

Comrade Capitanovich: Attack men! A Whole Potato to the village of the last Comrade standing!
Men: Job Tvoje Madj!!
Comrade Capitanovich: Fair comment

All die in a ritualistic Borsch fight

Now if I remember correctly, and correct me if im wrong.

As stated before int he beginning of this war the US kept at a distance and watched it un fold. We started sending supplies to Britain in aid. One of the merchant ships that was carrying supplies was attacked by a German U boat(Submarine) and thus broke a type of treaty that dis allowed the attacking of an un armed ship (AKA Merchant ship).

When this was found out by the press, it became a huge issue as it was the first attack on one of our own ships. This then fueled us to become involved with the over all war.

You're wrong. That was WWI, the ship was the Lusitania. In WW2, US Navy ships routinely protected convoys headed to Britian and were actively engaged in anti-submarine warfare against the Germans well before we were attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.

Ok. How come when I say something like this, I get bashed for the silly idea that Hitler could have decided not to declare war on the US (and ultimately would have been better of if he had), but Deathwysh gets a free ride?

I demand Justice! An Asylum judiciary of my peers must address this inequity at once. Um. And a bunch of other legal sounding stuff too...

You were bashed for the silly idea that the US could have chosen not to go to war against Germany after Germany declared war on the US.

Not exactly correct.

The discussion at the time was about whether the US government (specifically Roosevelt) wanted to go to war with Germany and allowed the Pearl Harbor attack to occur in order to have a justification to declare war on Germany and thus take a more active roll in the European conflict.

I argued that it was a silly premise because there was no guarantee that if Japan attacked Pearl Harbor (and we therefor declared war on them), that Germany would follow suit and declare war as well.

As support for this argument, I used two pieces of historical fact:

1. We did not in fact declare war on Germany at the same time that we declared war on Japan. If our goal was to give us an excuse to fight Germany, wouldn't we have just declared war on both? We did not declare war on Germany until they declared on us. There is therefore every indication that had Germany *not* chosen to side with Japan and declare war against us, that we'd have been in a war purely with Japan and never gotten involved in Europe.

2. It would not have been unreasonable for Germany to have chosen to not declare war against the US. In fact, it was downright unreasonable to expect it (which would be required for the aforementioned "evil plot" to make any sense at all). Germany and Japan had a mutal defense and support pact. When Germany declared war and invaded Russia, Japan chose not to declare war with them. Clearly, their pact did not require that either party take part in a war started by the other. Why on earth would you assume after Japan not joining Germany in attacking Russia that Germany would join Japan in attacking the US?


At no time did I *ever* suggest that the US could have chosen to not go to war against a nation that declared war against it. I did however show that the US chose to fight against Germany first rather then Japan, and suggest that we could have chosen to do it the other way around instead. My point was to show that while it's clear that the US wanted to fight Germany more then we wanted to fight Japan (due to choosing to fight Germany first even though Japan invaded us and Germany did not), there is no reasonable support for the idea that anyone "planned" Pearl Harbor specifically to cause that result.


How the statement that we could have chosen not to fight Germany initialy got turned into us not declaring war at all is beyond me. More of the Smasharoo twistaround logic I guess. I guess the fact that I mentioned a choice of declaring war in the same post as mentioning chosing between attacking Germany or Japan first was sufficient for "skimalong" Smash to mess it all up. All I was commenting on was our first choice of target. We most certainly could have chosen to spend all our efforts in the Pacific first and then after defeating Japan gone after Germany. We chose to do it in the other order (for a number of very logical reasons actually). That's all I was talking about. The choice of order of attack. Not the choice to go to war in the first place.

Lol. Like I have any search ability whether it's working or not.



And that's the point I went off on a spiel about. Germany and Japan's treaty most definately did *not* require that one declare war against an opponent that the other attacked, otherwise Japan would have been forced to declare war against Russia (which they did not do).

My point was never about whether the US "had" to declare war on Germany. I said that:

1. Germany didn't have to declare war on us.

and

2. We did not have to attack Germany before attacking Japan (note. "Attack", not "declare war").


What possible relevance could whether we had a choice to declare war against Germany have? What matters is the choice of targets. If Germany declares war on us, we are at a state of war with Germany whether we like it or not. What possible level of support for my argument could saying that we didn't have to declare war on Germany have? It is irrelevant to the argument Joph. What matters is that Germany did not have to choose to declare war against us, and we did not have to choose to focus on fighting Germany before Japan.


Doesn't that make a hell of a lot more sense in the context of the discussion? Now maybe the ol'smasharoo managed to twist what I was saying out of context and that's what you remember, but that twisting makes no sense (which I tried to point out then, but everyone was listening to Smash's twisting instead of what I actually wrote, which was not untypical really). The statement's I've written above match what my argument was back then and make complete sense. The statement you think I made doesn't. Are you implying that I was arguing that Roosevelt didn't have a "let Pearl Harbor happen so we can get into the war with Germany" plot going because he could have chosen not to declare war against Germany even after Germany declared war against the US? Um... That makes zero sense. If I'd actually said that, don't you think you'd have remembered *that* rather then just the fact that I'd supposedly claimed that we didn't have to declare war?

It just pisses me off to no end that 2 years later, you're still thinking I wrote something that I never wrote and that would have made no sense for me to write purely because someone else managed to cleverly paraphrase me and make you remember what he wrote about what I said instead of what I actually wrote myself.

Grrr Arrrgh!

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilecki

Witold Pilecki actually volunteered to get himself rounded up and sent to Auschwitz, the closest place to hell on Earth itself, to get information on the conditions therein out. When the allies did not do anything about it, he escaped to give firsthand accounts.

The word "hero" seems insufficient in this case.