re: Could almost anyone born after 1940 fight in WWI

quote:

---

hence the use of the word "most" ...

---

That would go for any generation. Even in civil war there were millions of people living here and only 100s of thousands fought. So yea, most is correct but it always has been. In any war in our history thousands and thousands of abled body men didn’t fight.

quote:

---

You really don't know what you're talking about or how foreign policy making works in reality. You are regurgitating hollow themes of morality as motivation for far more complex world events. Bless your heart. This is one of the big reasons neoconservatism and interventionism were able to grow into the mainstream policy platforms in this country that they did.

---

Well, I think you're wrong there. Yes there is the decades long argument of allying with Stalin to defeat Hitler. I'm honestly not sure myself if that was the correct move. That was the one ally that is difficult to justify their motives, but with what had happened to the French, British, Polish, Chinese, and ourselves, what choice did we really have? Maybe in hindsight a 3 way war would have been preferable, but it could have turned into another WWI scenario or worse once we met in Berlin.

It's just an alternative history question, and given what I knew at the time, I would ally myself with Stalin to defeat Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini. Stalin wasn't as imperialistic as the first two mentioned at the time. I would say hindsight is 20/20, but we don't know really if we made the incorrect choice here, especially given the fact that the nuclear bomb had just been developed.

quote:

---

Non-critical regurgitation of moral examinations of the outbreak and expansion of the Second World War and the romanticization of intervention and the narrative that a lack of even greater interventionism is what led to the scope and horror of the war.

---

I have acknowledged in this thread that the romanization of WWII is a problem. But what's your solution to the Soviets? If you don't have one, shut the frick up. If you do, then you're talking about alternative history that is almost impossible to predict. If the Germans stormed Paris in 1914, then it's a pretty safe guess that Lenin does not return to Russia, and hell maybe even the Czar survives for some time. Declaring war on the Soviets during WWII can go in hundreds of different directions.

quote:

---

I notice that you, like most when I raise this question, ignored application of your morality narrative to the USSR though. It's a bit of an inconvenience to the simplistic black and white narrative that people like to frame the war in.

---

Well what's your definitive solution with a likely good outcome? You're just throwing shite at the wall.

quote:

---

That you would call someone else an "ignoramus" for not endorsing your childlike perspective of WWII is quite ironic. Perhaps you should read some of Herbert Hoover's thoughts on the matter, among others. Or is he an ignoramus too?

---

Save for the Soviets, WWII was really a good vs evil war. They were the Boltons/Freys to the Northmen. It makes it easy to romanticize, which is a problem in you overlooking your country's and allies problems during it. But I ask again, what is your solution to a better outcome in this? The worst outcome was determined more by WWI than II (separating the fact that WWI caused II). Maybe we could have locked down China and Korea more to make sure that Mao or Kim Il Sung didn't come to power, but it is difficult to perceive a better ending to WWII than what we were given. On the inverse, it's hard to think of a worse ending to WWI than what we were given.



By the way, your avatar is beyond outdated. That was in like what 2006? 11 years ago?
People are leaving Kramer alone and more focusing on Harvey Weinstein and his ilk these days.

quote:

---

Well what's your definitive solution with a likely good outcome? You're just throwing shite at the wall.

---

It's not a matter of "definitive solution." I'm challenging your simplistic characterization of the Second World War and America's place in it. I don't have to have some theoretical alternative that is a "definitive solution" to critique your argument. And a definitive solution to what? That's more childish language that I reject as a premise. History is politics and problems and solutions are subjective. The problem was the structure of Europe as enforced following the First World War and that it fundamentally created an environment that had to be either revised politically or result in conflict. There were infinite moments along the timeline where alternatives could have avoided a European wide war. And there was certainly no compelling reason for U.S. involvement.

If you're interested in what alternatives existed outside of the foreign policy carried out by the FDR administration, you can start with reading Washington's Farewell Address or John Quincy Adam's speech warning of entangling ourselves in European feuds. It's another effect of romanticization and propaganda that anyone would struggle to comprehend an alternative outside of an expansion to the ongoing war which did not involve the United States.

That you can be so opposed to the First World War and so in favor of the Second is absolutely puzzling to me given that the fundamental causes of the war are essentially the same or directly related. You have fallen hook, line, and sinker for the retroactive "moral" justification of U.S. involvement in European power politics squabbles. The United States had neutrality acts to keep us out of the war. Antiwar sentiment was so strong in the U.S. that FDR, like Wilson before him, ran on keeping us out of the war in his run for his third term. However he quickly put us on a war path after getting elected and engaged in smearing Americans who wanted to remain neutral.

The outcome of the Second World War, which saw the USSR occupying all the nations east of Germany whose "preservation" was apparently so important that it necessitated a European war more destructive than any in human history, is a testament itself to how foolish the war was. It achieved nothing except destruction and bankruptcy of great European states and the awarding of Eastern Europe to Bolshevist Communism which imperiled all of Western Civilization for the next half century. If that's a scenario where you struggle to envision an alternative that could provide a better outcome, on top of the tens of millions killed in the war itself, I don't know what to say. The reality was an awful and disastrous outcome. It's only the false narrative that tells people we had no other alternative path at all and that "the war was inevitable" and "we should have jumped in sooner" that leads people to believe otherwise.

Something I always found odd related to this WW2 debate: Why do we have so many holocaust memorials in the USA? It's not like the Germans personally did anything to us.

quote:

---

 whatever smarter, more powerful, and richer people convince them to do.

---

I wouod argue 2/3 of this statement is true

quote:

---

Because American journalists weren’t allowed into 1940s Nazi Germany? China was a Republic at the time. Nanking was an international city before Japan came and destroyed it. Only Westerners were left alive really.

---

I've read that the NYT buried stories of the Holocaust, not that they didn't actually know about it.

quote:

---

I've read that the NYT buried stories of the Holocaust, not that they didn't actually know about it.

---

I’d like a link on this.

quote:

---

Funny how the NYT was able to report on Nanking yet the Holocaust somehow got by them...

---

Wasn't the NYT involved in printing Stalin propaganda in some way or another? Thought I heard that the other day.


ETA: Yep, NYT Pulitzer Prize winner was basically printing lies about what was going on in Russia.

LINK

quote:

---

"There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be." --New York Times, Nov. 15, 1931, page 1

"Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda." --New York Times, August 23, 1933

"Enemies and foreign critics can say what they please. Weaklings and despondents at home may groan under the burden, but the youth and strength of the Russian people is essentially at one with the Kremlin's program, believes it worthwhile and supports it, however hard be the sledding." --New York Times, December 9, 1932,


page 6 "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs." --New York Times, May 14, 1933,

page 18 "There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition." --New York Times, March 31, 1933, page 13

---

LINK

LINK

LINK