Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to Can't tell if that post was wistful or not.......

Wistful of what?
SDAI-Tech1 — (archived)

A different outcome to history? A Germany that held Poland and Austria? A Hitler that wasn't so crazy?

None of those things would mean anything to me. The current timeline made it possible for me to be born and to see things from two quite disparate cultural points of view.

The point was if Germany was a threat to the US. Germany had no aircraft that could reach us, no fleet of carriers to take planes to us, no rockets that could reach our shores.

Germany was a threat to our shipping in the Atlantic, but not much else. After the Lend-Lease Act it can be argued well that our shipping to Britain became a legitimate target.

Most American businessmen were OPPOSED to entering the European War (as it was called between 1939 and 1942) and their opinions were recorded in a Fortune magazine poll in 1941. They argued quite successfully the US had absolutely no stake in the war and our participation would not benefit us or was worth US lives.

In retrospect, the political right of 1941 was wrong much as the political left of today is wrong. Both cannot see the benefits.

Industrialization and mass production really took off after the war was over. Hitler was a very bad man and the Nazi regime was worse than anyone knew. (much like Saddam) Was it worth 300,000 US lives to get rid of Hitler? That figure makes the 2,300 lives to oust Saddam seem like a wholesale bargain when viewed by numbers alone. But numbers only tell part of the picture. Sometimes waging war is necessary for the defense of others.

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