Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Thanks

And...
Larry J — (archived)

"Not to put too fine a point on it, but those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it..."

And those who do will find new ways to screw up.

Screw ups are almost a universal constant.

As for FDR and WWII, I don't know of any leading Republicans from the era who could've done nearly as good a job as he did. Even in late 1941, polls showed the vast majority of Americans opposed getting involved in the war. FDR knew that our involvement was inevitable and, starting in 1940, took many critical steps to get us ready. He pushed through the first peacetime draft in US history in 1940, beginning the long and difficult process of building up our military forces. Before this, the US military ranked about 15th in the world behind countries like Finland. He took major efforts to build up the industrial base, which not only began turning out the weapons of war but also ended the Depression. He also began the Lend-Lease program that provided much need support to allies like Britain and the Soviet Union. Had Britain been defeated, it would've been many times more difficult to dislodge Hitler from occupied Europe. Had the Soviet Union been defeated, victory in Europe would've been just about impossible.

The scale of the endevor is mind boggling, especially when you study it from a logistical perspective. During the course of the war, some 16 million men (and several hundred thousand women) had to be brought into the military, trained, housed, fed, equipped, and transported all over the world. Once there, they had to be supplied, have their wounds treated, and a host of other things necessary to keep them combat capable. I've read that for each soldier on the line, several tons of supplies had to be delivered to the combat zone such as bombs for planes, fuel, ammo, etc. The training aspect alone is hard to believe in retrospect. For example, some 500,000 men were trained as military pilots during the war and many more were trained as navigators, bombadiers, radio operators, gunners, etc. That's just for the Army Air Forces, too. Putting together all of the means for providing all of this took years. Our military forces struggled with shortages of just about everything in 1942 and even into 1943. Had FDR not started this buildup in 1940, the delay would've been much later, quite likely, too late to win the war.

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