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If

If it was Nazi Germany all over again, America should

  • Butt in

    Votes: 36 73.5%

  • Butt out

    Votes: 4 8.2%

  • Specifically ......

    Votes: 6 12.2%

  • No clue

    Votes: 3 6.1%
  • Total voters
    49
Viktyr Korimir said:
My apologies. I stand corrected. Reckon that balances out with all the trade our corporations were doing with Germany, so that made us neutral enough in Europe.

Doesn't change the oil embargo, though.
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Oh of course. Americans loved the Nazis. You can find Charles Lindbergh doing his nazi salute:

http://musasha.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/lindbergh.jpg
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Henry Ford, Mr. Captain of Industry and his "International Jew - The World's Problem" in every single new ford's glove compartment.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/19200522_Dearborn_Independent-Intl_Jew.jpg

We really did love our Nazis
 
Leo said:
Small correction needed here. The USA wasn't 'lending' Great Britain anything. You were leasing materiel - big difference, as we only finished paying off lend-lease debts a few years ago. :)
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Lend, lease,...whatever. The U.S provoked Germany by sending weapons and supplies to Britain and the USSR. This may have been understandable when it was Britain vs. Germany, but after the Soviets got involved, the U.S should have butted out. Britain should have made peace with Germany in 1940, and the Soviet Union should have fallen. We had no business sticking our noses in it. Hitler didn't want a war with the U.S, but he was basically given no choice. Listen to this speech. He explains the justification for declaring war on America, as America claimed to be a neutral power, but didn't act as such.

 
Graffias said:
Lend, lease,...whatever. The U.S provoked Germany by sending weapons and supplies to Britain and the USSR. This may have been understandable when it was Britain vs. Germany, but after the Soviets got involved, the U.S should have butted out. Britain should have made peace with Germany in 1940, and the Soviet Union should have fallen. We had no business sticking our noses in it. Hitler didn't want a war with the U.S, but he was basically given no choice. Listen to this speech. He explains the justification for declaring war on America, as America claimed to be a neutral power, but didn't act as such.

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wars need a winner .and america wanted to achieve victory .
 
I would "specifically" BUTT OUT in regards to all the internal political actions occurring within Germany prior to 1938.

I might BUTT IN during the anschluss of Austria if there wasn't a majority of Austrians supporting unification by plebiscite.

I would BUTT IN when they attempted to partition Czechoslovakia.
 
Graffias said:
Lend, lease,...whatever. The U.S provoked Germany by sending weapons and supplies to Britain and the USSR.
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I take your point, and I appreciate the fact that the Roosevelt administration (if not all Americans) was more supportive of Britain than Germany.

However, language is important, insofar as imparting precise information, and shades of meaning, are concerned, and there is a world of difference betwen the acts of lending and leasing.

E.g: If my neighbour's child is ill and he is without the means to transport him to hospital, I will gladly lend him my car. If I lease him my car, it becomes a commercial transaction and the act is dependent upon his having the money to pay the lease charge. In both cases, the child gets the medical treatment needed, but the altruistic nature of the loan is in stark contrast to the venal, and conditional, nature of the lease. :)
 
Viktyr Gehrig said:
My apologies. I stand corrected. Reckon that balances out with all the trade our corporations were doing with Germany, so that made us neutral enough in Europe.

Doesn't change the oil embargo, though.
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No apologies necessary. :)

I guess I am just a bit over-sensitive on this issue, as so many Americans (not you, I hasten to add) take the view that the USA joined battle with the Nazis for the sole altruistic reason of saving Great Britain from German occupation. I am not by nature a nationalistic person, but I tire of this repeated misrepresentation, and sometimes over-react. So perhaps it is I who should apologise.
 
Not surprising that most people ant to butt in. The only time I would support involvement is if we were to be provoked. We can't blow up every bad doer and unliked person in the world.
 
Your Star said:
I guess I just see them as innocent people, and don't consider nationalism when doing that kind of math.
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Maybe that makes you a better person or a more idealistic person, but I look at it like this. The American government, which is empowered to conduct foreign policy and wage war, was formed to look out for the liberty and best interests of American citizens. If there is not a pressing American interest in stopping this hypothetical nation, then American government should not spend American dollars and shed American blood. That is the responsibility of the nations who do have a pressing interest.
 
Your Star said:
And those battles would most likely have gone the allies way, the perfect time to jump in would have been after they attacked Russia, the Nazi's fatal mistake.
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From the standpoint of purely advancing American interests, I disagree. Doing so would have surely spared Russia much of the destruction they suffered and put them in position to counter attack much more quickly and drive even deeper into Europe, moving the Iron Curtain even further west. Pretty much we jumped in at the perfect time. The Soviets had been ravaged, but were still standing and inevitably going to turn the tide. They had absorbed the worst of the German offensive. The Germans had spent their best troops and most of the resources trying win in Germany. We were able to step in against a weakened foe who already had one juggernaught force pressing them from the east, and Germans still put up one heck of a fight. Imagine fighting them before they had been weakened at Stalingrad, Kursk, and the other major eastern battles.
 
apdst said:
If the Allies--Britian, France and The United States--had faced off with Germany in 1938, the war would have not only been shorter, but cost fewer lives.
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The problem is you're Monday morning quarterbacking now. Yes, the Allies could've strangle Nazi Germany in its infancy, but why would they have? By the 1930s many British leaders had come to realize that Versilles was a horrible treaty and Germany had many legitimate grievances. Many people were in favor of letting the Germany rejoin the Great Powers of the world and letting the Germa people that were seperated from the fatherland be peacefully restored. After all what allied interest is there in preventing Germans who want to be a part of Germany from rejoining Germany? Big issue Britain had with Hitler in the 30's wasn't what he wanted, but how he went about it. Any German nationalist leader would've had the same demands and aims - rearmament, anchuluss with Austria, the return of the Sudetenland, and the return of the Danzig corridor.

Its arguable that the west would've been best served by letting Hitler achieve those goals and then letting him and the Soviets have their inevitable confrontation - exhausting each other and allowing the West to step in at the end and dictate a peace that kept both Germany and Russia in check.
 
Are we forgetting about that other nation that had a part on WWII, you know, that island nation with imperialistic goals that attacked a US naval base in Hawaii?

Could we have appeased them as well?
 
Yes, if we had just let them have China and the rest of Southeast Asia - and maybe Australia and New Zealand - we probably could have at least temporarily avoided war. That's the true appeaser position.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Are we forgetting about that other nation that had a part on WWII, you know, that island nation with imperialistic goals that attacked a US naval base in Hawaii?

Could we have appeased them as well?
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Once we were attacked, the answer is obviously no. The only appropriate response was to mobilize the full weight of American military and economic power towards destroying them.

Prior to Pearl Harbor, that's an interesting discussion. Our polices towards Japan were very antagonistic and made conflict almost inevitable. Was that a wise policy? Would Imperial Japan have been content to carve out an empire within their natural sphere of influence on "their" side of the Pacific and leave American holdings alone? I tend to think not. I think that eventually Japan would try to push the US out of the Pacific and war would've been the result eventually, so our policies that hampered their expansion and pushed them towards war with us sooner rather than later were probably sound policies.

Though I might add this thread was about a hypothetical Nazi like regime rising up, not about the global stage and international politics of the 1930s.
 
Psychoclown said:
Once we were attacked, the answer is obviously no. The only appropriate response was to mobilize the full weight of American military and economic power towards destroying them.

Prior to Pearl Harbor, that's an interesting discussion. Our polices towards Japan were very antagonistic and made conflict almost inevitable. Was that a wise policy? Would Imperial Japan have been content to carve out an empire within their natural sphere of influence on "their" side of the Pacific and leave American holdings alone? I tend to think not. I think that eventually Japan would try to push the US out of the Pacific and war would've been the result eventually, so our policies that hampered their expansion and pushed them towards war with us sooner rather than later were probably sound policies.

Though I might add this thread was about a hypothetical Nazi like regime rising up, not about the global stage and international politics of the 1930s.
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True, hypotheticals historical facts are not the same.

Plus, I'm not so sure that there isn't a Nazi like regime already in the form of the Taliban. Where it differs from the hypothetical is that the Taliban hasn't taken over any modern powerful nations, nor is it likely to.

Further, there is another factor that wasn't present during the rise of the Nazis, and that is the reality of nuclear weapons.

So, we have an interesting conundrum, from an hypothetical standpoint at least.
 
Your Star said:
So you find no moral obligation to your fellow human beings to stop the merciless slaughter of millions of innocent people?
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I'm not saying yes or no yet, but millions had to die to stop it (WWII). We stepped in to stop the ambitions of Saddam Hussein, and look at the thanks we got. We knew about mass graves beforehand (and there were complaints); during WWII they didn't know about the mass killings till later in the war (but they were heroes). You can't have it both ways, care for your fellow humans in one case and not in another, can you? Data shows us that some can.

Just saying. :peace
 
It is in the strategic interests of the United States that no potentially hostile power become a trans-continental Empire. A Europe dominated by the Third Reich would have had enormous resources at its disposal. Assuming such a victory in this war it seems inevitable that Germany would have metastasized to North Africa and the Middle East as was their long term intention. Likewise an Imperial Japan that holds China, Indonesia, South East Asia, possibly India, and large swathes of the Pacific under its sway or thrall is an Empire that can shut the doors of trade to the United States and begin to infringe upon it's influence and reach.

Long term threats and the risks that you face when large tracts of the globe fall under the dominion of an ideologically incompatible or politically hostile power.

Trade does not flow freely, political good will does not flow freely. American non-interventionism was a policy dictated by our weakness in the very early stages of the 19th Century. Almost as soon as we gained a capably funded fleet arm we began defending our interests and stakes abroad, becoming involved in policing and fighting for a free slot in Asia by the middle of that century.

With the strength to intervene and prevent either a Nazi or Imperial Japanese dominated Asia and Europe it would have been ludicrous to allow that to come to pass uncontested. The consequences for American commerce and our political security would have been dire.

And of course the moral component of not allowing billions of human beings to be consigned to death, slavery, and oppression. But I've tried to avoid this as modern non-interventionists seem to take perverse pleasure in flaunting how little this matters to them.
 
Step in, without a doubt. They'll be coming for us next, also, we cannot wave off innocent millions being slaughtered.
 
Sherman123 said:
It is in the strategic interests of the United States that no potentially hostile power become a trans-continental Empire. A Europe dominated by the Third Reich would have had enormous resources at its disposal. Assuming such a victory in this war it seems inevitable that Germany would have metastasized to North Africa and the Middle East as was their long term intention. Likewise an Imperial Japan that holds China, Indonesia, South East Asia, possibly India, and large swathes of the Pacific under its sway or thrall is an Empire that can shut the doors of trade to the United States and begin to infringe upon it's influence and reach.

Long term threats and the risks that you face when large tracts of the globe fall under the dominion of an ideologically incompatible or politically hostile power.

Trade does not flow freely, political good will does not flow freely. American non-interventionism was a policy dictated by our weakness in the very early stages of the 19th Century. Almost as soon as we gained a capably funded fleet arm we began defending our interests and stakes abroad, becoming involved in policing and fighting for a free slot in Asia by the middle of that century.

With the strength to intervene and prevent either a Nazi or Imperial Japanese dominated Asia and Europe it would have been ludicrous to allow that to come to pass uncontested. The consequences for American commerce and our political security would have been dire.

And of course the moral component of not allowing billions of human beings to be consigned to death, slavery, and oppression. But I've tried to avoid this as modern non-interventionists seem to take perverse pleasure in flaunting how little this matters to them.
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I agree that allowing a belligerent power dominating Europe or the Pacific would not be in the US's best interests. Hence, I supported the antagonistic policies we had towards Japan. Germany however was a different case (prior to them declaring war on us). There were two belligerent powers in Europe at the time - Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. And the Soviets were the more threatening of the two - after all the Soviets did the heavy lifting in defeating the Nazi war machine, not Britain and the US. And Communism was a much more exportable idealogy than Nazism that was very nationalistic and therefore German in its outlook. So the Soviets were far more likely to be able to establish a world empire than the Germans, just on the basis of their ideology.

The best policy for the west would've been to "appease" Hitler by giving into his mostly reasonable territorial demands and then let the Soviets and Nazis pummel each other. With the West being able to step in at the end and dictate a peace that allowed neither nation to establish a hegemony that would threaten the west's preminence in the world. Both the British and French empires could've survived.

Failing that, things worked out pretty well. The US entered (or was dragged into it really by the attack by Japan and declaration of war by Germany) the war just in time to prevent a Soviet hegemony in Europe and Japan was beaten allowing the US to become the uncontested master of the Pacific.
 
BDBoop said:
If events were unfolding in a foreign land exactly as they unfolded in Nazi Germany, what would you recommend?
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"Butt in", definitely! And I hope my country would be at America's side.

I say that as a German, believing that America liberating (at least the Western part of) my country from Nazi tyranny and allowing us to rebuild it in freedom was the best thing that happened to my country in the 20th century.

That said, I think many people are a bit quick calling comparing certain regimes to Nazi Germany, and it's very unlikely we'll see an almost exact repetition of these events again anytime soon. Many tyrannies may share some similarities with Nazi Germany today, but none of them is one of the technologically most advanced and militarily powerful countries of our times, and none of them has the realistic prospect of conquering world domination.

IMO, the bigger threat we're facing today in the West is an erosion of our civil rights and basic values due to our own governments' actions and executive excesses -- extralegal detentions, denial of fair trials for suspects, massive wiretapping à la "Prism" and so on. Ironically, governments will even get support for such blatant attacks on freedom when the people is afraid of foreign enemies.
 
rathi said:
The danger of Nazism came from the fact they ruled an extremely powerful industrial nation with an excellent military. There have been plenty of rules as bad or worse who simply didn't have the power to cause the same kind of worldwide damage. The calculus requires two parts 1) the strength of the country involved 2) the aggression of the ruling power.
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They were also admired for their socialist thought in the 1930s by all of the usual suspects in England and the US. Their socialism led to national socialism by the mid-to-late 1930s.

Where are we today? Who will intervene? How is the fascism of Mussolini's Italy any different than our fascism? How is the National socialist socialism of Germany any different from our socialism today?

Our federal government is now the greatest threat to our freedom. How do we overcome it as we overcame NAZI Germany's socialism?
 
Misterveritis said:
They were also admired for their socialist thought in the 1930s by all of the usual suspects in England and the US. Their socialism led to national socialism by the mid-to-late 1930s.
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That is complete garbage. The Fascists were hated by the socialists so much that they fought against them in the Spanish civil war.

Where are we today? Who will intervene? How is the fascism of Mussolini's Italy any different than our fascism? How is the National socialist socialism of Germany any different from our socialism today?
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While our current violations of civil liberties are pretty terrible, they are not yet at the level of fascist counties of old. Our democratic structure remains intact and the people retain the power. The only problem today is overcoming apathy to actually change anything.

Our federal government is now the greatest threat to our freedom. How do we overcome it as we overcame NAZI Germany's socialism?
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The first step is to get rid of partisan nonsense. Your unsubtle attempts to blame "socialism" for the current situation is exactly the sort of reason we are in this situation. The fact is that the majority politicians from both parties have reached consensus in violating civil liberties. They maintain power because partisan divisiveness prevents any real opposition. Either a politician supports domestic spying on our citizens or they don't: doesn't matter what letter they have next to there name or what there ideology is. We have had 12 years of crap because people give their own group a pass for pissing on our rights and we aren't going to fix anything until that changes.
 
Totally different time now.

It's comparing apples and oranges, btw.


I will put it this way, America should have intervened in Rwanda in '94 the minute it was obvious what was going to happen.

Clinton was a pathetic coward to pull troops out and partially block the UN from going in.

You do what is right first, worry about the rest later.
 
rathi said:
That is complete garbage. The Fascists were hated by the socialists so much that they fought against them in the Spanish civil war.



While our current violations of civil liberties are pretty terrible, they are not yet at the level of fascist counties of old. Our democratic structure remains intact and the people retain the power. The only problem today is overcoming apathy to actually change anything.



The first step is to get rid of partisan nonsense. Your unsubtle attempts to blame "socialism" for the current situation is exactly the sort of reason we are in this situation. The fact is that the majority politicians from both parties have reached consensus in violating civil liberties. They maintain power because partisan divisiveness prevents any real opposition. Either a politician supports domestic spying on our citizens or they don't: doesn't matter what letter they have next to there name or what there ideology is. We have had 12 years of crap because people give their own group a pass for pissing on our rights and we aren't going to fix anything until that changes.
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Spot on! I can't "like" this posting enough! :)

I'd just like to add... the socialists did not just fight the fascists in the Spanish civil war. In Germany, the socialists of the Social Democratic Party were even the fathers of the 1919 Constitution and the republic, the strongest defenders of the republican system against commies, monarchists and Nazis alike, and the only party voting against Hitler's Enabling Act in 1933.

If there is one German party that can truly claim to have fought and died for freedom, republicanism and democracy, it's the (then) socialists of the SPD (they dropped Marxism in 1959 and became a mainstream center-left party later).
 
Earlier I wrote,"They were also admired for their socialist thought in the 1930s by all of the usual suspects in England and the US. Their socialism led to national socialism by the mid-to-late 1930s."
rathi said:
That is complete garbage. The Fascists were hated by the socialists so much that they fought against them in the Spanish civil war.
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Of course it isn't. The usual intellectual elites in England and the US fawned all over the German intellectuals who led socialist thought in the 1930s. Similar people with similar credentials fawned over the Soviets in the early days as well for the same reasons.

Fascism and national socialism are the consequences of socialism. They were not enemies because they were different. They were enemies because they were competing for the same things. One could easily move from socialist to fascist to communist to Nazi as they are all the same thing in their essence.

Obama's fascistic state has grown well beyond anything we have ever seen before here. And his socialist plans appear clear whether it is nationalizing the student loan programs, large chunks of the financial industries or creating a mess of medicine that will lead to a socialist, government run, single payer, tyrannical medical system. What do we do about it? The same kinds of people in both political parties who adored German socialists, and Russian socialists also adore Obama's fascists and socialists.

So what do we do?
 
rathi said:
The first step is to get rid of partisan nonsense. Your unsubtle attempts to blame "socialism" for the current situation is exactly the sort of reason we are in this situation. The fact is that the majority politicians from both parties have reached consensus in violating civil liberties. They maintain power because partisan divisiveness prevents any real opposition. Either a politician supports domestic spying on our citizens or they don't: doesn't matter what letter they have next to there name or what there ideology is. We have had 12 years of crap because people give their own group a pass for pissing on our rights and we aren't going to fix anything until that changes.
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Is it partisan because Obama is leading us into tyranny as fast as he can and you like his political leanings?

The establishment Republicans are nearly as bad as the Democrats. Both parties are relying upon growing government, centralizing power, and redistributing wealth under their control. We must destroy the socialists in both parties or liberty will be extinguished. My unsublte attempts are matched by your inability to see the situation as it is.
 
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