What would the US do if Hitler didn't declare war?

What would the US do if Hitler didn't declare war?

  • US simply declares war on Germany by the end of 1941 - despite lack of public support

    Votes: 19 11.6%
  • Roosevelt orders the USN to be more aggressive against the German Navy, hoping to create a crisis

    Votes: 63 38.4%
  • Roosevelt steps up aid to the UK and USSR, hoping to provoke Germany into declaring war

    Votes: 95 57.9%
  • Nothing - Roosevelt shakes his fists at Hitler after being outsmarted and forced to fight Japan only

    Votes: 10 6.1%
  • US fabricates "evidence" of Nazi scheming and uses this as an excuse to declare war

    Votes: 16 9.8%
  • US simply declares war on Germany by the end of 1941

    Votes: 28 17.1%

  • Total voters
    164
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
 
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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

Sigh.

(1) You're still getting what a "push poll" is wrong. A push poll is not a "biased" poll. It is not one that is meant to give to the public a misleading impression of what public opinion is. Rather, it is a poll that is meant to influence the *people being questioned* by giving them misleading "information". It is not really a poll at all but a marketing technique. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_poll If Gallup had asked "considering that Hitler was behind the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, do you think President Roosevelt should have asked Congress to declare war on Germany as well as Japan?" that would be a typical push poll question (though it still would strictly speaking be a push poll only if it was meant to affect the *respondents'* behavior). There was of course no such language prefacing question 17. It was a straightforward question.

(2) There was nothing misleading about the page I scanned. You seem to be the only one who jumped to the ridiculous conclusion that what are clearly the *answers* to question 15 are the percentages of people polled who belong to each group named! First of all, this is contrary to common sense--why on earth would they suddenly give a demographic breakdown of the people they are surveying somewhere other than the beginning or end of the survey? Quite obviously the question that precedes question 16 is question 15 (the beginning of which is obviously on the preceding page, which I didn't scan because the questions on it were not relevant to my point). That would be a very strange place to put the demographic breakdown for the survey. It is also contrary to common sense because the whole point of the polling pioneered by Gallup is to have a representative sample--not something ridiculous like having 55% of your respondents be labor leaders. (That was why Gallup managed to predict that FDR would win in 1936--though it underestimated his margin of victory.) Finally, the *very language* of the page scanned indicates that these are *answers.* After arriving at a total of 157% they say Percentages add to more than 100 because some respondents gave more than one *answer* [my emphasis--DT] And it gives 1 percent for "no *answer.*" [again my emphasis]

(3) I don't have the preceding page with me now, but I think I can guess what question 15 was. See https://books.google.com/books?id=vzDWCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA284 A standard question that Gallup asked throughout the war was as follows: "Are there any people or groups here in the United States that you think are taking unfair advantage of the War to get money or power for themselves?" If people answered "Yes" they were given the following choices of which groups they might be:
gallup.jpg


The fact that 55% named "labor leaders" and only much smaller percentages "the wealthy" or "business men" certainly doesn't seem to indicate any left-wing bias in the poll! (Presumably the prior page gives percentages for other groups like Jews--given that anti-Semitism was fairly widespread in 1941, I suspect that the number was fairly high...)

(4) Given that only a month earlier Gallup had found large majorities *against* going to war with Germany or Japan, which seems more plausible? (a) Pearl Harbor changed US public opinion toward Germany as well as Japan, or (b) a poll that had done little to please the British in any prior month (at least insofar as outright US entry into the war was concerned) *suddenly* fell under nefarious British influence on December 10, 1941 and misstated what 90% of its respondents thought? Somehow I think (a) is more plausible...

(BTW, if Gallup had *any* (unintentional) statistical bias at all in its early years, it was toward Republicans. As noted in 1936, though unlike Literary Digest it did forecast FDR's victory, it still underestimated his margin. And in 1948 it famously had Dewey ahead--though it did show the race getting closer.)
 
David,

With no sighs or asterisks, thank you for your comprehensive response. Having spent six enjoyable years with a Princeton based aerospace research and consulting group (still recall George Gallup Junior's Mercedes 300SL gull-wing coupe which I really admired, and lunches at "The King's Court" with other Poll executives in the late fifties- it was a small town then). I was fully prepared to accept that a polling organization might select
an eccentric Population to achieve desired results- thus my lack of surprise to see what, unidentified, could have been, at that time, a Population yielding a sharply pro war result. You indicate that Gallup had a Republican bias in the mid thirties; this had certainly long dissipated by 1960!

My group had access to an IBM 650 computer (and later Librascope LGP-300s) and would occasionally perform some statistical filtering for one of their people after hours (not me, I needed the computer time for my own projects).

As for the definition of "Push Polling": Nowhere can I find any statement of mine that the British attempts to involve the U.S. as a WW2 partner began on Dec 10, 1941. (Your notation (4)). I believe we both recognize that these efforts began in 1939 and increased frantically with time. Today, the definition of "Push Poll" has gone far beyond choice of of slanted questions or weighted populations, and has become weaponized to obtain political outcomes.

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
 
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.

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?
 
...
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

For several reasons this is really difficult. A major factor is the US had little real offensive capability in the Pacific in 1942. Even with the battleships still afloat. Theres a very good reason why we could not effectively intervene to save Maylasia, Singapore, or the DEI, and why the battle surrounding Guadalcanal was called Operation Shoestring. It took the better part of three years for the Two Ocean Navy Act to bear fruit with the start of the Central Pacific offensive in 1943. The matter is not warships, but one of creating the mobile infrastructure to support offensives extending across one third of the planet.

Conversely the infrastructure for getting at the European Axis nations already existed. & we had Allies already embroiled there that were in danger of being defeated. at least from the PoV of December 1941. No one wanted to think much about fighting the European Axis were the USSR to collapse in the winter of spring of 1942, or any time later. The Plan DOG memo from Admiral Stark is often regarded as the start of the Europe first strategy. However the initial mobilization of 1940 was biased towards Europe. Had we wanted a Japan first strategy to be effective changes would have had to made as far back as July 1940, altering priorities and slowing the mobilization of sectors like the Army ground forces, & shifting early production to naval type aircraft vs Army Air Corps models. All this had a culmative effect in 1941. by early 1942 it was not a matter of redirecting ship loads of stuff from Europe to the Pacific, it was amateur or redirecting activities all the way back to priorities for producing raw materials, transporting those and all the way through industry and military training to the field forces and fleets. A year may have been barely enough to reverse the inertial.

Consider; the LST that was so important for large long distance amphibious operations did not even exist for most of 1942. The four Macarimba conversions were pretty much it till the end of the year. Were the Brits going to give those awkward ships up to support a divergent strategy?

There are some really fundamental reasons why Adm. Kimmels WPP-46, published in March 1941, contemplated raids and opportunities and not major offensives in the Pacific for some 18 months.
 
You indicate that Gallup had a Republican bias in the mid thirties; this had certainly long dissipated by 1960!

They didn't show a Democratic bias in 1960, either; their final poll had it 51-49 for JFK, almost exactly correct. In 1936, 1940, 1944, and 1948, they generally slightly overestimated the GOP vote. In 1952, perhaps as an overreaction, they underestimated Eisenhower's margin of victory, but in 1956 they slightly overestimated it. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/preferences.php

In any event, you still haven't answered why the same poll that showed the public heavily against entering the war in November showed them overwhelmingly in favor of it--against Germany as well as Japan--after Pearl Harbor (but before the German declaration of war). If the British were somehow manipulating the poll, they would have produced pro-war results in November as well as December. Much more plausible than any conspiracy theory involving British influence on Gallup is simply that Pearl Harbor changed the American public's mind about war with Germany as well as Japan--which indeed was widely reported at the time, as Richard Hill's *Hitler Attacks Pearl Harbor* documents. Hitler's declaration of war simply meant that the US declaration of war with Germany would come a bit earlier than otherwise, and would be virtually unanimous instead of "merely" overwhelming.
 
Have you guys by chance seen The Producers? Upon reading the choices my mind flashed to when the audience is staring with open mouths at the beginning of Springtime for Hitler. Is it bad manners to post gifs and images of that sort in these discussion threads? Anyways, if Hitler doesn't declare war then the US focuses a bit more on Japan. Though why would the Nazis hold back? They probably thought that at least this way they finally had permission to return fire on American ships. Plus Hitler had a big speech coming up and declaring war on the US was something grand at a time when he had a lot of setbacks in Russia. He needed something to jazz up the Reichstag meeting.

And seriously, the fourth post reminds me of the revisionism I found in that old Adolf manga, which had FDR deliberately lure the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor despite... well, not exactly telling HOW they could be lured. Or pointing out that, if they went into Pearl Harbor revisionism, that the various other places the Japanese might have attacked all were within a week. With the exception of San Diego. Still, what can you expect from a comic that has Hitler being part Jewish? Dramatic irony does not make a good historical story.
 
IMHO both FDR & Churchill can take a major credit for saving western civilisation. Churchill, could 'hold the line' but yes needed US help, to both stay the course and finish the job.
FDR new that Hitler's Germany was a major threat to the US, and had to be dealt with one way or another, but no matter how much he 'knew' that, there was no way to show the American people that. Public opinion needed to be nudged into the right direction by events, it couldn't be dragged like some reluctant donkey! In the dark days of 1940 many in the US were afraid that Germany would win, and that Britain would fold, Mers el-Kebir put an end to that, even more so with Kennedy discredited.
A different President may have led US public opinion in a different direction. But if then, what chance of Germany beating Russia!? FDR realised he couldn't risk the Germans being masters from the Channel to the Urals.
But how - he always wanted the 'other side' to make the hostile act - Japan duly obliged. With Germany, I think FDR would've continued to up the ante until Hitler thought 'enough is enough'!
 
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 largely 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?
 

Kaze

Banned
We would declare anyway - there was a sinking of a US ship by a German u-boat. It was only a fishing boat, but good enough excuse.
 
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.
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.
So on December 8, after a long speech, AH kicks Japan out of the Axis, and offers support against Japan. How does that fly?

Like the proverbial lead balloon. It might lead to Hitler being quietly deposed by his fellow Nazis, as it would be evidence that he had gone barking mad. Repudiate a powerful ally for attacking Germany's enemies, as Hitler, through Ribbentrop, had been vigorously urging Japan to do for months? Obviously the Fuhrer is suffering from mental confusion brought on by the strain of overwork. He must retire to Berchtesgaden for a rest cure.

The Allies wouldn't believe it for a second. For one thing, they had the MAGIC decrypts of Japanese diplomatic messages, which included full accounts of these German pleas. They would think it was some weird Hitlerian ploy to divert the US from the war in Europe.

The US public would think about the same, even without the MAGIC intelligence.
 
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?

I asked you two questions you have failed to answer both those questions. I never did presume your views. Nazi extermination camps weren't in operation in 1941 yes, Germany confiscation food and starvation of various Slavic groups, however, was in full effect as the Heer was rampaging across Ukraine. Nor does it change the fact Nazi Germany planned to "liquidate" well over 100 million people in Eastern Europe.

Also citation for Stalin killed more people than Hitler
 
GDIS
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?

Please don't ask me for citations of facts that are solid parts of history. That is a pajamaboy ploy that is entirely out of place here. (Your #53)

Now for your "questions":
1. Please find citations for the battle of Midway, May-June 1942. Then, perhaps you might look up our invasion of the Solomon islands. We did reasonably good work with what we had. The outcome of the Pacific War became clear at that time. American concentration on the Pacific could have ended operations against Japan earlier with (probable) saving of lives on both sides.
2. Look up the USS Panay. You'll find that Japanese air attack sunk this naval vessel (not a civilian fishing boat) in 1937, yet war with Japan did not come for four years. The difference from your example is that, in 1937, US leadership was not seeking excuses for entering war.

In your #53 you go on about Hitlers PLANS to exterminate 100 million. In the context of 1941 (this topic) how did you become aware of this?

Flight ops tomorrow- can not respond till at least Wed.
 
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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
 
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