Today is D-Day Remembrance of 1944 Allied Freedom Commitment.

It's hard to know where to start. The Japanese invaded China in 1937. Check out the atrocities they committed in Nanking --The Rape of Nanking, which the Japanese dutifully documented. The Germans invaded Poland in 1939.

The US was in no hurry to enter the war and almost waited too late. December 1941 was well after the world was at war.

If the US had not entered WWII, Hitler would have conquered all of western Europe. He was well on his way to developing nuclear weapons.

It is folly to think the US would be safe in the years ahead from either Germany or Japan had we sat out the war.

Stalin and Mao killed millions of their own people without invading other countries. Both Japan,Germany and Italy invaded other countries and killed their citizens. The two oceans which gave us some degree of refuge would ultimately not been enough to save us.

I've spoken to a lot of WWII vets over the years, some of whom have advanced degrees. They aren't and weren't stupid people. None of them has ever expressed regrets or reservations over their service and the horrors they experienced.

Many of the conflicts the US has entered were not warranted. WWII was not one them.

Additionally, WWII was concluded in well under 4 years. Considering where we started in December 1941, I would consider the war effort to have been a monumental success and not one of incompetence.

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Re: You've given me pause to revisit the history of the war.

Jun 7, 2022, 11:29 AM

Every involved nation has its own perspective, but WW2 (in Europe at least) was essentially the Russian Front, and then everything else. That's in terms of scale, length, and cause.

Although the war technically started in Manchuria/China in 1931, no one really cared about that. We continued to sell Japan oil and steel all through the thirties to prosecute that war.

In Europe, however, Hitler made it clear in 1925 in Mein Kampf that Russia was the prize and the ultimate goal. Lebensraum, or "Living Room", for the German people.

So while in the West we see the war as being France, Britain, etc., we only see it that way because that was the chronological order of German invasions. But Hitler didn't invade France to live there (though the Germans surely would have), he really invaded them to eliminate them as a threat and to prevent a two front war like in WW1.

There was of course all the baggage from the Versailles Treaty, but in terms of war goals, land in the east was the driving force behind Germany's aims.

The Pacific, however, was our war. Japan was, is, and has been our dog on a leash since 1853. They have no resources, so we (and earlier, the Brits and the Dutch with us) have controlled how big their military is by what we sell to them.

In 1940 we were in a bind, however. We needed to get into Europe to maintain the current world order, but with isolationism being so strong here we could not do it. So, we used Japan as our wedge to enter the war in Europe.

Japan was way out on a limb in China, totally dependent on our oil to maintain their war. So, we put them in a completely untenable position. We cut their oil, and made them either lose their war in China, or attack SE Asia to get what no one would sell them.

To clear that invasion path they needed to delay us at Pearl, which they did. We then used Pearl Harbor to justify sending 85% of our men and material to Europe. Only 15% of our resources went to winning the war in the Pacific. Why? Because it's all water and a few small islands.

A minor mystery in the war has always been why Hitler made it easier for us to enter Europe. Right after the Japanese attacked us, he declared war on us. But why?

As fate would have it, and through no apparent coordination of efforts, Germany's final assault on Moscow was in November 1941, Operation Typhoon. They got close enough to see the Kremlin. In scale, the Russian invasion covered all of America from the Eastern Seaboard to the Rocky Mountains, in 6 months. And the Germans were now close enough to see Denver.

All Hitler needed was a distraction, any distraction, to force the Russians to pull troops away from, instead of towards, Moscow, and the war would be over. He hoped to telegraph this to the Japanese so they would invade Siberia, or at least make enough noise there to give him the tiniest of edges he needed to take Moscow.

But way back in 1937 the Japanese had skirmished with the Russians in Siberia and got their axxes kicked, and they wanted no part of that again. So the Japanese did nothing in Russia after attacking us in Dec 1941 at Pearl, and the Russians survived, primarily by moving troops from, yes, Siberia.

So while we see Dec 1941 as pivotal in the war, it was, but not because of Pearl, because of Typhoon. The fate of all Europe, and the entire war itself, was decided in December of 1941, while we were licking our wounds at Pearl on the other side of the globe.

The Germans threw almost 2 million men against Moscow against over 1 million Russians, in a battle the size of the state of Connecticut, and lost by the skin of their teeth. At the same time, we lost 2500 men and the battleship Arizona.

Hitler wasn't even worried about getting America into the war because he calculated it would take us 2 full years to prepare for an invasion of NW Europe, and Russia would be defeated by then. It took us 2-1/2 years, and in June of 1944 we hit the Normandy beaches.

We didn't have the troops, or the time, or the inclination to take the losses the Russians were willing to take to push hard to Berlin. The Russians were used to yearly battles with a million men on each side and battlegrounds as big as entire US states. Moscow in 41, Stalingrad in 42, Kursk in 43, Bagration in 44. The Battle of Berlin in 45 was 2.5 million Russians against not quite a million Germans.

So they took Berlin and we finally met them on our side of Germany to protect France. But in the Pacific, Japan was, and was always going to be, our kill. It was our dog, and it was going to suffer our punishment.

We didn't have to drop the A-bomb on them for military reasons at all. They were blockaded, and starving, and however many of them wanted to die hungry in caves was fine by us. By 1945 Japan was a B-29 wasteland, blown to bits, with no military targets remaining. 500-bomber raids almost every day on every major city in a country the size of California will do that.

We dropped the bomb to show Russia we would drop it, (per the recommendation of Jimmy Byrnes, namesake of Byrnes High School) because Russia had already "liberated" Manchuria from the Japanese in Operation August Storm, and was preparing to invade Japan.

Even after the bombs were dropped Japan was prepared to fight, or really die, on. Their one demand was that their Emperor remain in power over the people. We gave them that, so it wasn't really an unconditional surrender. We agreed that the Japanese people would answer to their Emperor, and their Emperor would answer to MacArthur, and that worked for everyone. And that was that.

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Great, brave men. Real heroes.***

Re: Today is D-Day Remembrance of 1944 Allied Freedom Commitment.

Terrible as it was, WWI was even worse.

I live about 45 minutes from Bedford, VA.

of course today we could not use some of the tools employed

I think we should stop glorifying the bankers' wars.

You're not wrong. We could say the same for the Gulf War.

Re: I think we should stop glorifying the bankers' wars.

The US did not enter the war in 1941.***

Re: The US did not ender the war in 1941.***

Re: The US did not ender the war in 1941.***

Re: The US did not ender the war in 1941.***

Of course he knew we were going to war, we were already

Re: Of course he knew we were going to war, we were already

I have a direct relative who was fighting in North Africa in

Believe what you will. I believe Hitler had a great chance

The USSR had already defeated Germany by D-Day.

Re: The USSR had already defeated Germany by D-Day.

You've given me pause to revisit the history of the war.

Re: You've given me pause to revisit the history of the war.

Re: I think we should stop glorifying the bankers' wars.

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