WW2, we only joined because Japan attacked. Otherwise, there were elements of the US population that were cheering for Hitler.
We also nuked two cities, for reasons much less honorable or necessary than the one we are told.
Don´t tell that to the average US American though, they really hate hearing this truth.
People don’t realize that the US used to see fascism as a sort of white utopia. It was really popular up until WW2 when they hard turned on it. Kind of like what happened with communism, actually. It was seen as a revolutionary form of democracy up until the cold war, now people only know it for all the propaganda that came out of the era. (most of which was flat out lies made up on the spot by actual nazis)
It’s a lot of the reason why the modern day liberal is so staunchly both-sides when it comes to anything geopolitics.
Well, that and Japan was actively murdering massive amounts of people in China.
It was a calculated strategy to stop supporting the Japanese genocide machine.
The Rape of Nanjing made international news. That turned the average US voter against Japan, but the embargo (not a blockade) started after Japan invaded French Indochina (Vietnam) in 1940.
The Embargo was just the US saying that no US owned oil would be sold to Japan.
Well that and the fact that there was a huge Irish-American population that was hostile towards the UK in ways that I think a lot of younger people and non-historians have really lost sight of because it’s not really a thing anymore. The idea of taking sides with the British Empire was a very tough pill for a lot of Irish-Americans, most of whom, unlike today, still had direct connections to Ireland. The famine was no longer really in living memory, but the children of the famine survivors were definitely still alive and influential and they absolutely despised the British for understandable reasons.
History is always way more complex and nuanced than some half-baked one-liner trope on social media.
Yeah, but look how it started. You need to look at the WW1, when both USA and Japan were among the victors and had the same area in their expansion view. For example Lenin predicted in 1918 that the Pacific war will eventually happen, though it ultimately started later than he thought because invasion of China occupied Japan attention.
Interestingly enough for the same reason US-Japan war could be avoided for more time, but it’s actually the US who decided the time, note how they established the embargo on Japan in late june to 1st august 1941, in the exact moment when Japanese military was occupied, their nazi ally pour all effort into invading USSR and Japan even refused to join that war basically breaking that alliance. Said embargo was absolutely devastating for Japan, it would force them to grind their entire empire to sudden halt in half year, so they have a choice between collapse and war on USA. The only thing US was mistaken about was how competent the Japanese military actually was (not weird considering the racism in US) which led to their their initial string of victories in 1942.
So yeah, that was the one time US was on the correct side of history but the motivation was to gobble up the Pacific for their empire, and they pushed up pretty cold bloodedly for it.
In ww2 the Russians did most of he dirty work anyway. When the USA joined the war it was already clear the axis had lost.
When the USA joined the war it was already clear the axis had lost.
While I agree that that it was the Soviet and Chinese people that absorbed the greatest part of the Axis’ powers warmaking ability (which western historians are apt to ignore), it’s not true that the Axis had already lost the war by 1941. It’s accurate to say that the US joined the war at a moment when the Axis forces had hopelessly overstretched themselves.
By the winter of 1941, Barbarossa had failed. By the time the Western Front was opened in 1944, Army Group South had collapsed, Army Group North was failing, and Army Group Center was in the process of being encircled. Germany had lost, it was just a question of when. In the meantime, the entire North African campaign cost the Germans less resources than the Dnieper-Carpathian Offensive.
Friendly reminder that prior to Pearl Harbour, the US was sponsoring Japan’s war crimes in China. The US made up the bulk of Japan’s iron, copper, oil, steel, and wheat supply… Essentials for industrializing and waging war. Even with this massive economic power backing them, Japan had been fought to a standstill by 1940. By 1944, the Nationalists were more concerned with containing the Communists than they were with containing the Japanese.
In the case of both Germany and Japan, powerhouses at the peak of their power were ground down to a stalemate against a rapidly industrializing nation.
Typical oversimplified tripe. Soviet bodies played a huge role, but US and British mechanized force projection, naval power and industrial capacity were at least as important.
It’s also just bullshit that the Axis had already lost. That’s the worst kind of historical revisionism. It might be obvious to us looking back, but it wasn’t even remotely obvious to anyone alive then.
Lol no it wasn’t clear. And you’re forgetting about the entire Pacific.
Russians trying to rewrite history, forgetting who supplied half their army while also joining a war against their enemy on another front (at great cost to western lives), overall saving lives as the Germans had to divert resources and ending the war in Europe sooner.
Neither of you are wrong, but Americans should understand that the USSR suffered over twenty million deaths vs ~117,000 Americans on the Western Front. They had their own western cities & infrastructure invaded/destroyed. The undertaking & sacrifices are hard to compare.
Russians trying to rewrite history
Okay my bad: you actually are wrong.
Russians trying to rewrite history,
TIL… western historians deliberately glorifying the US and Britain’s role in WW2 = “Russians trying to rewrite history.”
Operation Barbarossa had stalled by the time the US entered the war. German logistics were overextended, they were out of oil, and they were against a larger, rapidly industrializing power defending their homeland.
By the time D-Day rolled around, Army Group North and Army Group South were taking loss after loss and the USSR had reclaimed a significant chunk of the land lost during Barbarossa. The Germans were in collapse. Roosevelt had promised a second front in 1942 but couldn’t deliver until 1944 (when it was clear that the Soviets had a clear shot at Berlin and had the momentum to keep going).
The Dnieper-Carpathian Offensive put Army Group Center in an increasingly precarious position even as Russia continually gained ground in Byelorussia.
We were that one time, and we’ve been milking it ever since.
Only until 2006 which is when the UK finally managed to pay the US back the “lend lease” debt it racked up in WWII
Wonder how long it will take for Ukraine to pay back theirs, they’re on a Lend Lease from the US right now.
You & I are the only people who seem to know this. Everyone else is busy arguing whether we can “afford” to give Ukraine “free stuff”, when in reality none of it is free, and whatever few Ukrainians are left alive after this war will be paying onerous debt for generations. They’re already auctioning off many public assets to mostly foreign buyers at fire sale prices, up to and including seaports.
Yeah it’s crazy. Ukraine is a fire sale and the debt will be on the US govt books as an asset.
Makes me realise, a lot of things we read in history books that seem cut and dried, were probably not at all obvious to the people who lived at the time because their perception of facts was probably as skewed as our societies’ perceptions are now.
