Now the U.S. Must Fight for It's Life

Geon

Donor
In the March 2, 1942 edition of LIFE magazine an article was published entitled Now the U.S. Must Fight for It's Life. The article was published three months after Pearl Harbor at a time when Americans feared possible invasion by either or both Axis powers. This article captures the attitude of the time and also post six scenarios on how the Axis would invade the U.S. supposedly. While we now know none of these scenarios were realistic they still portray the American mindset at the time.

Here is the link to that issue of LIFE magazine.

http://books.google.com/books?id=K04EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA15&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

or simply go to LIFE-Google Books and look up the March 2nd 1942 edition of LIFE.

Given all of the discussions on this board on how the Axis might have won World War II, I thought it would be instructive to show one man's vision of what-might have-been. Any comments or discussion will be appreciated.

Geon
 

Markus

Banned
Thanks, it gave me some good laughs. The Operation S...n scenarios look downright realistic compared to that. :D
 
Albidoom

Albidoom

Markus said:
The Operation S...n scenarios look downright realistic compared to that.
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Especially since the plans shown there all depict Britain still in the fight.

And somwhere further down in the book another article shows the Navies of the belligerent parties (only heavy stuff like carriers & cruisers, but still), where the Allies already have a significant advantage in numbers, even though the french navy is (intriguingly) listed among the axis fleets.

Unrelated, the advertisements in there are also interesting.
 

LeX

I like their idea of a "special pain-inducing knot" used by would-be Japanese invaders on US prisoners.
 

Geon

Donor
Allied vs. Axis Navies

I don't know if the editors of LIFE meant to do this but I suspect the purpose behind the section on the fleets was to show that according to the known lineup of Axis and Allied vessels there was parity. Now, of course the chance of the mega-battle mentioned in the article between the Axis and Allied navies was rated as nil or none. But the article's purpose seems to have been to show just how narrow a lead we had at the time of Pearl Harbor as regards naval forces even with British and French ships. I know, were I living in this period I would have been a bit anxious after reading these articles.

And yes, I like the ads too, that's one of the reasons I collect older magazines.

Geon
 

galveston bay

Geon said:
In the March 2, 1942 edition of LIFE magazine an article was published entitled Now the U.S. Must Fight for It's Life. The article was published three months after Pearl Harbor at a time when Americans feared possible invasion by either or both Axis powers. This article captures the attitude of the time and also post six scenarios on how the Axis would invade the U.S. supposedly. While we now know none of these scenarios were realistic they still portray the American mindset at the time.

Here is the link to that issue of LIFE magazine.

http://books.google.com/books?id=K04EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA15&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

or simply go to LIFE-Google Books and look up the March 2nd 1942 edition of LIFE.

Given all of the discussions on this board on how the Axis might have won World War II, I thought it would be instructive to show one man's vision of what-might have-been. Any comments or discussion will be appreciated.

Geon
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in there defense, things were looking pretty bleak for the Allies on March 2, 1942.
 

Geon

Donor
Pain Inducing Knot

LeoXiao said:
I like their idea of a "special pain-inducing knot" used by would-be Japanese invaders on US prisoners.
Click to expand...

Bear in mind that anti-Japanese fervor was at an all time high. The Japanese were seen as brutal monsters by the rank and file American at the time.

Personally, I find the picture of a service station attendant trying to burn a Japanese tank chilling.

Geon
 
The Kiat

The Kiat

The Alaskan route seems the easiest way, but only after a good decade spent building the infrastructure to allow it.
 

Adam

Geon said:
Bear in mind that anti-Japanese fervor was at an all time high. The Japanese were seen as brutal monsters by the rank and file American at the time.
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Well, you really can't blame them.

Forgotten Armies, pg209
At Alexandra Hospital in Singapore, after the bitter fighting nearby on the western outskirts of the city, a terrible retribution was taken. The doctors who met the Japanese at the hospital entrance were slaughtered and many patients were bayonetted in their beds. Around 400 others were crowded into an outhouse overnight, later to be killed. The Asian doctors on duty were aghast as they watched the soldiers smashing the X-ray machinery. "Why were they like lunatics, their eyes, just like lunatics?"
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The Kiat

The Kiat

Adam said:
Or the manpower and enough lucky streaks of weather worthy of the God-Emperor of Man.
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I've tried that route in PTO II (I know it's just a game) and you have to take Attu and Dutch Harbor, and then expand the harbors, ship in fuel, build up staging areas. It would take at least a year to get started, and Uncle Sam ain't going to just stand by while the construction is going on.
 
Thande

Thande

Donor
But that's the thing I always like to bring up here. It doesn't matter if we can prove now with charts and numbers that something like say a German invasion of the USA is completely absurd. It barely matters if the governments then could prove it with good intelligence of the enemy. What matters is what the man in the street believes and how he accordingly acts.
 

Atomo

Plans 5 and 6 almost look like what the Nazis do in the book '1945' (the one by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen).
 

Gridley

Geon said:
Given all of the discussions on this board on how the Axis might have won World War II, I thought it would be instructive to show one man's vision of what-might have-been. Any comments or discussion will be appreciated.

Geon
Click to expand...

More and more, I think logistics should be a mandatory subject in high school?

The trans-Atlantic range German bombers and troops carriers were a nice touch.
 

aktarian

I wonder if people who wrote these articles actually beleived stuff they wrote or was it just panic mongering. Surely there were some people who were at least vaguely aware of Germans fighting desperate defence battles against Soviets. One should think they saw a clip or two of germans surrendering in waist high snow. It's not as if soviets weren't giving them to anybody who wanted them

:rolleyes::rolleyes:
 

galveston bay

Grimm Reaper said:
You want to hear about atrocities, you say?

http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_germ-warfare.html
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A lot of that wasn't known until after the war, and parts much later

Bataan hadn't fallen yet in last week of February 1942 (when the article was written, keeping in mind that March 2 is the publication date).

However, reports of Japanese atrocities in Hong Kong (Victoria Hospital), the vicious bombing of cities by Japanese bombers (Rangoon, Manila... in spite of Manila being declared an open city at the time, as well as Singapore and Chinese cities), and of course the Rape of Nanking (very well known) and other atrocities in China were all known by the date of writing and publication.

American xenophobia regarding Japan goes back prior to the 20th Century, so there is a certain racism that Pearl Harbor simply worsened. Note that the actual internment of Japanese residents and their citizen children began on the West Coast soon after the date of publication of this article.

At the time this article was published, German submarines are routinely sinking Allied cargo ships and tankers practically right off the beach all along the East Coast. The Allies had yet to achieve even a temporary halt against Japan except for brief stands at Wake and a temporary stalling of a landing at Balikpapan. No Doolittle Raid yet either, and only a few hit and run attacks by Halsey in the Marshal Islands.

The Germans had just wiped out a entire Soviet front at Kharkov too.

Things looked pretty damned grim from the Allied point of view, so for Life writers to wonder if the Axis were indeed 10 feet tall and capable of damned near anything is not an unreasonable view for them at the time.
 
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