this thread is indeed hilarious, Im glad if I entertained

To the OP: Do you mean all of WWII? Or do you mean the European front only? I think we didn't have a hell of a lot of choice after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. We had to retaliate for that.

Congratulations! This is the most ignorant and appallingly stupid thread I've seen on this site to date, though I will admit I have TC muted. I hope you are not an American citizen jpgredsox. Assume for a second that America had not intervened in the war, Hitler would have won in Europe and Russia and then what? Do you think that Hitler would have thought: Oh, well since the USA stayed out of my way I will stop my crusade on the borders of Europe and leave them in peace? No, the US would have ended up at war anyways and without the support of our allies facing a much stronger enemy. "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing".

On the issue of trucks, Lend Lease supplied a little over 30% of the overall truck production for the USSR. LL "lifeliners" like to claim that number was nearly all truck production. One must consider that if the Soviets weren't getting these trucks, they likely would have increased domestic truck production.

http://fat-yankey.livejournal.com/32078.html

Did LL help with the offensives? Yes. Studebakers were used at the front, anyway. But it's importance is grossly overstated.

Putin, you can quibble all you want, but the allies played a significant role in the war even if the Russians served as the backbone of the military struggle. Who knows the effect if Britain had not held off the Germans in the middle east or the Americans had not taken on nearly the whole burden of the war in the Pacific, or if Yugoslav, Greek, and British resistance had not delayed Barbarossa, or If the North African Campaigns had not diverted millions of Germans and Italians from the Eastern front. If you want to portray the war as being single handedly won by the soviets, go ahead but you are living in a fantasy land.

Hitler planned a war with the united states in the 1970s. Read the unpublished sequel to mein kampf.

*sigh* I hate when fellow American's look like stupid jackasses...

SC makes a point there. If the Suez was cut, then Russia would have had even more supply problems, because I believe many supplies arrived via Iran, right? I could be wrong on that. But there was still the potential that German armies could have swept north through the Caucasus (hypothetically) had the British been defeated.

But most importantly, the efforts of the Allies would have been in vain had the Germans taken Moscow in 1941 and cut the rail lines. On top of that Moscow was a huge manufacturing hub. Had Hitler focused their instead of pissing forces away towards Leningrad and Stalingrad, then things might have been very different.

Hindsight is 20/20 especially for armchair quarterbacks and armchair generals.

Someone give me an answer to these three questions:

1. Why was helping Stalin against Hitler the correct thing to do? Stalin butchered more people than Hitler, and pre-WW2 Soviet Russia was indisputably more murderous than Nazi Germany. So, somebody please justify allying with Stalin.

2. Why would Japan willfully attack the United States except as an act of preemption? Does anyone think Japan actually thought they could defeat the United States? If the U.S. had remained neutral toward Japan and practiced non-interventionism in Southeast Asia, would Japan have attacked us?

3. Did Pearl Harbor justify the Tokyo fire-bombings, Nagasaki and Hiroshima? Attacking a genuine military target in an act of aggression is morally reprehensible, but does it really justify the deaths of a few hundred thousand Japanese civilians?

And to whomever said Hitler would have turned against the US if his attempts at conquering Europe succeeded, you truly are an idiot. World War Two was essentially an extension of World War One, another war the U.S. should have stayed out of, and it was focused on revenge, particularly against nations such as France. Hitler wanted to destroy Bolshevism and enslave/exterminate the Slavic race (particularly) as well as the Jews and the Gypsies. Hitler believed many in the United States and Britain as close, racially, to the Aryan race. It's easy to believe Hitler wanted world domination, but I think that German occupation of all of Europe as well as Russia would have been tying down enough troops.

And what of Japan and it's Imperialistic agression towards its neighbors and preemptive strike against the US? Were we to ignore that? There was more to WWII than just the war in Europe.

And I am an american citizen, and I love America. I believe that, compared to the rest of the world, it truly is still a beacon of liberty. Advocating that the United States should not have entered WW2 does not turn me into an American-hating individual. And one last thing: it has been assumed throughout this thread by many that Hitler was poised to destroy Russia inevitably, but this was not the case by December 1941, when the U.S. entered the war officially. Operation Barbarossa had failed in its initial objectives, and the Soviets were already counterattacking before Pearl Harbor.

"1. Why was helping Stalin against Hitler the correct thing to do? Stalin butchered more people than Hitler, and pre-WW2 Soviet Russia was indisputably more murderous than Nazi Germany. So, somebody please justify allying with Stalin."

We did not join a war to help the Soviets, we joined a war to counteract the possibility of fascist domination of Europe, Africa and the Near East and to assist our long term partner in global domination, Great Britain. War makes for strange bedfellows.

"2. Why would Japan willfully attack the United States except as an act of preemption? Does anyone think Japan actually thought they could defeat the United States? If the U.S. had remained neutral toward Japan and practiced non-interventionism in Southeast Asia, would Japan have attacked us? "

No Japan attacked the United States because they were running out of Oil and specifically airplane grade fuel to carry on their murderous war of aggression against China. They realized their only chance to continue the war and possibly defeat the Americans was a preemptive strike. Documents show that they saw Americans as soft as Americans had rejected earlier attempts to confront the Japanese, loved luxuries, and were racially inferior, and Japan felt that a strike which would annihalate the US pacific fleet would end the war before it started and the two powers could coexist for a time on their repective sides of the Pacific.

"3. Did Pearl Harbor justify the Tokyo fire-bombings, Nagasaki and Hiroshima? Attacking a genuine military target in an act of aggression is morally reprehensible, but does it really justify the deaths of a few hundred thousand Japanese civilians? "

Completely irrelevant, this is you realizing how little of an argument you have (based on the fact it seems you have little to no knowledge). Were US tactics acceptable? Thats another question. Was the US embargo justified, certainly, was the US justified fighting back against Japanese aggression, absolutely.

Sorry Draug - I do have a tendency to look back and say "wtf were you doing!" to various generals throughout history haha. Its just a majority of Hitler's staff was against the idea as well, so I figured that would give it more credence than just if I said it 70 years later.

And jpgredsox - you answered your own question with one of your rebuttals. You said Hitler wanted to enslave/exterminate several ethnicities, including Slavs. Russia is Slavic. So based off of what you're said, we chose the lesser of two evils by fighting Hitler. I mean, come on man is it really that big of a question?

Again, your flaw in logic. Why is the US obligated to remain neutral to a Japanese Regime that acted in complete opposition to American goals? Why is it desirable for the US to feed a Japanese War Machine which by some estimates killed 20 million Chinese Civilians in a war of absolute clear cut aggression. If they had, and the world was unlucky enough to have seen another version of your sperm grow into a shit-for-brains Red Sox fan you would be bitching about how the US fueled one of the greatest Massacres in world history

Your abject hypocrisy is sickening. You whine and cry about the poor irish in Northern Ireland, yet you give a pass for the murdering of 10 times that number in asia. You bitch about the death of one terrorist who took up arms against the United States yet you insist U.S. oil companies should have been allowed to fuel a genocidal Imperial Japanese Army. Its absolutely unbelievable.

I don't have the stats at the moment, but most of the supplies shipped to the Soviets came via Vladivostock and the Pacific route. Very little came through Iran for the same fact that Iranian ports and railways were of very limited capacity. It's telling that despite the fact that the Iranian route was the safest of the three (the three being the Arctic, Pacific, and Iranian routes), the Allies didn't bother much with it. The monthly capacity of the Persian railroads was equal to less than a single shipload.

Germany wasn't interested in the Suez which is why there wasn't a more concerted effort to take the Middle East. The only reason Germany was in North Africa was to bail out the Italians. Their grand prize was the Baku oilfields, which is why Germany "pissed" away forces to the south toward Ukraine instead of focusing on Moscow. With Baku in hand, Germany would have both defeated the Soviets since the latter relied almost exclusively on this area for its energy needs, and it would have secured a permanent oil supply to defeat the remaining allies.

Anyway Germany's southern push was very successful. Germany destroyed 4 field armies. It would have much harder to defend German supply lines and maintain Moscow than to take Ukraine, which gave them more territory. The mistake was continuing to press onto Moscow so close to winter after the victory in Ukraine. . Furthermore, Ukraine itself provided quite a lot of raw materials and food to the Soviets. Ukraine's capture seriously undermined Soviet industrial production for a time. It was the right move to go South. Leningrad was also a valuable target, due to the industrial capacity with many military factories there and because it was the only Soviet outlet to the Baltic. They didn't need to capture it, only blockade it which is effectively what they did.

I agree with the founders in believing that the us should not get involved in conflicts abroad and should maintain a non-interventionist foreign policy. Did I ask for the united states to invade northern ireland to help the irish defeat the british? No. Japan and china had been fighting each other for hundreds of years, and why that was the busininess of the united states is foreign to me. Even if the us had initiated the embargo, the lack of the pacific fleet in pearl harbor would have meant there would have been no surprise attack. The united states could've placed their fleet in pearl harbor, and they did, but we could also place an army in el paso rite now, but thaqt wouldn't look too peaceful to the mexican govt.

"I agree with the founders in believing that the us should not get involved in conflicts abroad and should maintain a non-interventionist foreign policy."

Oh you mean the founders like John Adams who fought a Naval War with the French, Thomas Jefferson who fought a War with Tripoli including a ground invasion? Or do you mean founders like Madison who challenged the greatest power in the world to a slugfest in order to pursue a pipe dream of Canadian conquest. Maybe you should study history instead of following idealized versons of the founders.

"Japan and china had been fighting each other for hundreds of years, and why that was the busininess of the united states is foreign to me."

No they hadn't Japan had manufactured a war in the early 1930s... Where the fuck do you get your information.

"Even if the us had initiated the embargo, the lack of the pacific fleet in pearl harbor would have meant there would have been no surprise attack."

Explain again why the US cannot keep a naval fleet in Peral harbor when the Japanese kept naval forces and illegally fortified naval bases on the doorstep of Australia throughout the 1930?

"The united states could've placed their fleet in pearl harbor, and they did, but we could also place an army in el paso rite now, but thaqt wouldn't look too peaceful to the mexican govt. "

Hawaii is 4000 fucking miles from Tokyo! How is that any threat to Japan!!!

Interesting facts, Putin. I mean, that makes the southern drive a lot more plausible. The Germans would have had more success had they not mistreated the Ukrainians - who if my studies are correct didn't have much love for the Soviets. Instead, they just made another enemy.

I remember that there were those oil fields in the Caucasus, but wouldn't the same thing have essentially been done had the Germans cut the rail line in Moscow? Then the northern half of the Soviet front would collapse from lack of fuel, no? Or was Moscow's importance as a rail hub overstated in history texts? But I can see the reasoning in why a push for Moscow in early winter hurt the Germans more than it helped

" Why was helping Stalin against Hitler the correct thing to do? Stalin butchered more people than Hitler, and pre-WW2 Soviet Russia was indisputably more murderous than Nazi Germany. So, somebody please justify allying with Stalin."

The 799,455 executions which took place from 1921-1953 does not come close to the millions murdered by Hitler in a handful of years. Most people who entered the gulags, left them, with the exception of a couple of war years when conditions of the prisons were bad due to the war. The fatality rate for most of this period was quite low. And most of the people interned with actual criminals, not political dissidents. The famine was not "man-made" but was the result of widespread crop failure combined with civil unrest between poor peasants and rich peasants, in which the latter burnt their crops and killed their livestock rather than submit to collectivization. Furthermore the fact that so many Ukrainians enthusiastically resisted the Nazi invasion (a half million guerillas and between 4 & 5 million soldiers), as well as the fact that the Soviets had a successful harvest in 1933 with great effort being placed in improving agricultural production in the Ukraine, and the fact that large increases in production followed in the years running up to the war, give lie to this claim that the famine was "man-made". As does the fact that the famine went beyond just Ukraine and took place in areas that were not resistant to collectivization.

"Why would Japan willfully attack the United States except as an act of preemption? Does anyone think Japan actually thought they could defeat the United States? If the U.S. had remained neutral toward Japan and practiced non-interventionism in Southeast Asia, would Japan have attacked us? ""

In a long term war of attrition? No, Japan had no hope of victory. But Japan thought a quick knock out blow against the NEI, Malaya, and the Philippines would force the Allies to peace terms favorable to them. The fact is the Allies might have been conciliatory to Japan in light of the German invasion of the USSR, since they wanted to keep Japan, a signatory of the Tripartite Pact, out of that conflict. But the problem was the Japanese invasion of southern Indochina. Quite frankly, Japan's military regime was far too aggressive relative to its capabilities. You have to admit that occupying the South China Sea Islands, invading China, attacking the Soviets along the Mongolian border, invading northern Indochina (which was met with sanctions) and then refusing to heed warnings and invading southern Indochina (which was met with a total asset freeze) was highly aggressive. Not to mention the Tripartite Pact, which meant that Roosevelt, which was much more concerned about Germany than Japan, had to concern himself with a Japanese attack if he ever did convince the country to intervene.

"Did Pearl Harbor justify the Tokyo fire-bombings, Nagasaki and Hiroshima? Attacking a genuine military target in an act of aggression is morally reprehensible, but does it really justify the deaths of a few hundred thousand Japanese civilians? ""

No, certainly not. That's neither here nor there about who is to blame about the origins of the pacific war though.

Moscow was indeed an important rail hub, but industrial production had long been moved to the Urals, furthermore the main government institutions were evacuated east of Moscow, in Samara, which was the effective capital for much of the war. I believe the Soviets could have effectively fought the Germans in light of the precarious logistical problems the latter had. For example, the problem of reinforcements (especially relative to the Soviets whose manpower continued to grow). How to reinforce the massive losses caused by the seizure of Moscow? Germany already faced such problems elsewhere. They may not have held it for very long.