It's a bit strange how this myth that the US didn't want to go to war has grown up over the decades.
David,
I agree that your incomplete presentation in # 11 is misleading.
A 'push poll' is one intended to suggest to readers that a majority of others share a specific opinion (through selection of sample or slanted questions). If the Population had been as tabulated in the untitled listing at the start of your insert, this would certainly have been true. Unquestionably, after June 1941 and the nazi violation of the Hitler-Stalin pact, pressure from far left groups calling for our intervention in the European war went from negative to constant.
It would be interesting to see the actual polled Population of your key question.
I recall assertions that British funding was employed in attempts to shape American public opinion prior to Pearl Harbor.
Dynasoar
Now a return to alternative realities where, hopefully, the US can concentrate on victory in the Pacific without the drain of lend-lease, while the nazis and communists reduce each other, with Britain occasionally night bombing German cities.
...
Now a return to alternative realities where, hopefully, the US can concentrate on victory in the Pacific without the drain of lend-lease, while the nazis and communists reduce each other, with Britain occasionally night bombing German cities.
Dynasoar
You indicate that Gallup had a Republican bias in the mid thirties; this had certainly long dissipated by 1960!
There was certainly a racial component: quite a few people couldn't believe inferior Orientals could have done this to white men. A man I once knew said to me in I believe about 2000 that "[the Germans] gave [the Japanese] the planes". He was a little boy at the time; he probably never finished grade school, and he probably heard it then or a few years later from older relatives equally ignorant.Many people thought at the time, that Germany was involved somehow, because everyone knew that the Japanese were all nearsighted and weak, and couldn't come up with such a bold action.
So on December 8, after a long speech, AH kicks Japan out of the Axis, and offers support against Japan. How does that fly?
GDIS,
Please don't presume to tell me what my views on Nazi genocide were in 1941, or at any other time. Stalin, being a mass murderer second only to Mao in the real world, surpassed Hitler by a substantial margin.
Recall that in 1941 the term genocide was a word in the dictionary and Nazi extermination camps were mostly not yet in operation and entirely unsuspected in the US.
Is the next attack, ad hominem, to be racism because I want to concentrate on Japan?
So you are perfectly happy with letting the Germans commit genocide against the Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians, Jews, Gypsies, Gays, and other "Non-Aryan groups"? Do you recognize the fact that the US cannot do anything more substantial in the Pacific without the deployment the fleet train of amphibious warships and fast carriers that would not enter the war until late 43? Or the fact that that alternative reality will never ever happen because the USN was already involved in a shooting war with the Kriegsmarine in the Atlantic?
Contributors-
No new inputs to this promising topic over the last four days. Hope it was nothing I said. There have been excellent contributions, and I've certainly been exposed to new information and different outlooks.
If this Pacific only conduct of WW2 has been the subject of previous discussions please direct me .
Dynasoar