quote:
Even if they had left Britain alone, there's no way the British would stand by and let the Germans take over its neighbors like France. So war between them was inevitable if Germany wanted to expand in Europe.

There was a lull in, I think 41, where the fighting with Britain had stopped. Britain was trying to recruit us to fight Germany. But 95% of Americans were against a War with Germany. Very bad memories of WW1 were prevalent.

Roosevelt wouldn't have even been able to declare war against Germany, if they hadn't have declared war on us after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. That was a huge stroke of luck for Churchill. Otherwise, we'd have only fight Japan until Roosevelt could find a reason.

We really didn't aggressively go after Japan at first. Roosevelt was more focused on Germany. Because beating Japan wouldn't stop Germany. But beating Germany could stop Japan (help from Allies).

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Posted by Cooter Davenport

Austin, TX

Member since Apr 2012

9006 posts

Posted on 7/19/17 at 8:56 am to CCTider

quote:
That was a huge stroke of luck for Churchill. Otherwise, we'd have only fight Japan until Roosevelt could find a reason.

Yes, and ANOTHER unforced error by Hitler. Germany and Japan had a mutual defense agreement, but review of it now shows - and the understanding of it among the German command at the time was - that Japan's actions against the United States were clearly offensive and as such Germany had no treaty-derived war-obligation against the U.S. on Japan's behalf. Later interviews with German high command officers have revealed that they believed Hitler was acting impulsively and rashly by declaring war on the United States when he didn't have to.

This post was edited on 7/19/17 at 8:57 am

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