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the "American public came around": NOT. Japan attacked, declared war. Then Hitler declared war too. The USA was (near) totally passive... Huge support was given to Hitler by Wall Street (when I say this I generally get mail denouncing me as zionist in denial)

Patrice Ayme Patriceayme.com Patriceayme.wordpress.com http://tyranosopher.blogspot.com/
by Patrice Ayme on Mon Jun 1st, 2009 at 06:54:53 PM EST
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I repeat, eventually, they came around. There was a general anti-semitic strain throughout all layers of society in America, true. However it largely disappeared after the war was over (too late, of course) - who is, after all, Israel's best friend in the world these days?

::

I've seen this figure elsewhere, and though I cannot speak to it's accuracy, I've no reason to disbelieve it either.

In the late 1930s, with the storm clouds of war again building up over Europe and Asia, the same drama was replayed. Conservative, small-town America could see that there would be another war and tried to keep the United States out of it. Kauffman concentrates especially on the America First Committee. "It was not in any way pro-fascist or pro-Nazi, though of course anyone who opposes a war in modern America gets tagged as an enemy symp," he writes. The America Firsters believed in the libertarian position that the country should be sufficiently armed to repel any attack on it, but stay out of the war unless attacked. Public polling in 1940 showed that about 80 percent of the people agreed. Kauffman doesn't go into Roosevelt's machinations to goad the Japanese into attacking, but once the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, war was inevitable. Once again, the "just leave us alone" instincts of most Americans were trampled upon.

And here as well:

But if most intellectuals and a few politicians identified powerfully with the plight of the Republicans, when Madrid finally fell to the Nationalists on April 3, 1939, most Americans who paid the moment much heed at all were just as relieved that the war was over as they had been saddened by its outcome. Rossevelt had been entirely correct in his assumption that there was a powerful antiwar sentiment in the country, one which would not have supported an overt act against the Nationalists or for the Republicans any more than it would have tolerated involvement in the Ethiopian conflict. The loss of democracy in Spain was not worth a war.

(Emphasis is, of course, mine.)

The US decided that the going to war was not the way out of the decade long depression. Call that passive if you like. I call it the realization that America didn't (yet) have a life-or-death stake in the madness spreading across Europe, Asia and Africa. Whatever business US companies did with the Nazis, the US carried on business with whatever allied countries were available as well.

America was more concerned at the time in rebuilding the economy (which might mean doing business with whomever could pay) and thinking, for example, about what kind of interstate highway system to build. Americans weren't as concerned about Europe in 1939 as they were wondering if mom and pop were going to be able to keep the farm (21% of the workforce in 1930 were farmers, so if you weren't a farmer, you likely had relatives who were) or if they were going to be able to find or keep a job (so they could send money back to mom and pop). Did it take an attack on the US to jar them out of this? For a sane person, why wouldn't it?

"It Can't Be Just About Us"
--Frank Schnittger, ETian Extraordinaire

by papicek (papi_cek_at_hotmail_dot_com) on Tue Jun 2nd, 2009 at 12:23:12 AM EST
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