WWII Discussion

Yes

Gn

     How could America not have joined the war in the Pacific? Had the USA just abandoned the Philippines and stopped sending aid to Britain, Japan might have made more conquests in Asia, but their war with China would have dragged on for years anyway.

     In Europe, the war with the Soviet Union was lost before the Americans and other allies invaded Italy and later France.

     Not discounting allied contributions to the war effort, but the issue was decided on the eastern front in the winter of 1942-43. German troops and resources were pulled from North Africa to join the invasion of the Soviet Union. German industrial production actually increased despite the bombing. No troops were taken from the west because their armaments were inadequate in the face of the new weapons the Soviets were producing. The US produced no armaments of sufficient quality to be useful on the eastern front, but the Soviets did love the Dodge trucks they got--these remain a legend in Russia.

     It may have taken longer and cost more lives for the USSR to annihilate Nazi Germany, but the result was inevitable--nothing Germany did slowed them down after Stalingrad.

Technically the issue was decided in 1940, when the Germans lost the Battle of Britain--because they diverted from bombing RAF bases to bombing London--and this in turn forced them to fight a two-front war, diverting vital resources from the initial offensive of Operation Barbarosa, which in turn allowed the Soviets to just barely survive that first incursion (only the Russian human-wave assaults at Moscow, together with good old "General Winter", stopped the Germans just short of Moscow and quick victory.

But people keep forgetting about the AMERICAN Lend-Lease Program, which kept both the Brits and the Russkies afloat long enough to resist the Germans until the U.S. joined the war...and this in turn stemmed from the efforts of  President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was instrumental in setting the stage for Germany's eventual fall. Never mind CHURCHILL----he gets way too much press in history...it was Roosevelt who was the true mover-and-shaker in that war; and he was very nearly assassinated some years earlier! A case could be made, then, that the true turning point of  WWII ( which took place before WWII) was Roosevelt surviving that assassination attempt. Had it succeeded, the War Department would not have been revamped, the U.S. would have been ill-prepared for the eventual showdown with the Axis, and the world might very well have looked like that shown in THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE series from last decade (and the book of the same name)...

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     Nothing that Britain did in 1940 "forced" Nazi Germany to fight a two-front war. They didn't invade the USSR until June 1941. There was NO possibility of an English expedition to the continent, so Germany  just ignored the British "threat". No Allied troops invaded Europe until September 1943. By that time the German-USSR conflict had been decided and Soviet armies rolled west with no serious impediment.

     Lend Lease did little for the USSR. They were not included until after the Nazi invasion, it was difficult to get any supplies through to Russia, and the US diverted promised aid to it's own use starting December 8, 1941. Had the USA not been attacked and remained in isolation, little would have changed on the eastern front. 

     It is appropriate that you have turned to science fiction to explain your theory. Even there, "The Man in the High Castle" is far from Philip K Dick's best work.

I wasn't "turning to science fiction" to explain my theory!! It is very REAL HISTORY that the War Department was revamped by Marshall with Roosevelt's backing, all of which allowed the U.S. to be in a position to nit only

Not only defend itself but also join the effort against Germany!!

You give the Soviet Union far too much credit for how WWII turned out...

Regardless of German disposition toward Britain after 1940, nevertheless they DID keep men and material in the West, which could've been used in the 1941 push on Moscow!

It's not about whether or not Allied troops had invaded Europe yet by 1943; the fact of Allied PRESENCE in the West warranted German attention (in the form of troops, war materiel, etc.), which detracted from German designs on Russia.

As for Japan and U.S. entry into the war, that was inevitable----various actions taken by the U.S., like the oil embargo and the moving of the Pacific Fleet to Pearl Harbor (which was at the border of the proclaimed Japanese Co-Prosperity sphere; the equivalent of a foreign army suddenly becoming stationed outside Alaska), all provoked Japan into eventually attacking the U.S.; its mutual-defense pact with Germany meant that once it declated war, Germany was contractually obligated to also declate war, and so it was on.

Getting back to the European Front again, if the Soviets were such the steamroller you claim they were in 1942-43, then WHY did Stalin scream for help year after year for a Second Front to be opened up??!!

War is good...population control...after all, we humans have no natural predators to keep our numbers under control...