Posted on 08/16/2012 7:43:49 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War and its Aftermath.
As it turns out, Hoover stated what would be his central thesis in a conversation at a 1951 Manhattan dinner to a New York public relations man in language that history buffs who associate the former president with the high starch collars he wore would never guess that he would use. “When Roosevelt put America in to help Russia as Hitler invaded in June, 1941,” Hoover said. “We should have let those two bastards annihilate themselves.”
George H. Nash, no mean historian himself, supplied the above anecdote in his introduction to the presidential memoir published more than four decades after the author’s death. Nash edited the volume, which runs to more than 900 pages with footnotes and appendices.
“Hitler’s constant ambition, intention and preparation during eight years had been the conquest of Russia and Eastern Europe and the uprooting of the Communist Vatican in Moscow,” Hoover wrote in one of the notes which Nash appends to the text. “Roosevelt knew in December 1940 and more emphatically in March 1941 that Hitler had turned his military objectives to that purpose.”
“His State Department in mid-January had even warned Russia it was coming.” It turns out that Hoover had a really reliable source providing him with that last tidbit of information—Roosevelt’s Secretary of State, Cordell Hull.
“I met with Secretary of Hull in Washington during February, 1941, to discuss relief matters, subsequent to which we had a general conversation,” Hoover recounted. “In reply to my query as to what the Germans were doing against Russia, Hull told me that they had concentrated 1,250,000 troops along their eastern frontier, and at least 300,000 additional troops on the Bulgarian frontier.”
(Excerpt) Read more at academia.org ...
I have been a student of WWII for most of my 62-years,and I agree with Herbert Hoover!We needed to help the Brits,but we should have let the Nazis and The Soviets destroy each other!!
Monday morning quarterbacking at its finest. Suppose one of the "bastards" had scored a decisive victory over the other, then what?
Then either Stalin had all of Europe, or Hitler had all of Europe. Either way, very distasteful.
I might agree, but without the benefit of hindsight, it was easy to see how Stalin might have come to some sort of peace with Hitler and transfer a load of assets back west to take on Britain again, or take the Caucasian oilfields and be in a better position to fight the Western allies.
The clear implication is that Alger Hiss and the rest of the paid agents of the Soviet Union in the Stare Department engineered us into the war so that Stalin could retain power. If he had failed in his war with Hitler, Stalin would have been deposed and likely the USSR would have fallen.
There is evidence that Stalin was planning to invade Germany while the Nazis were attacking France & Britain, but that the quick collapse of France prevented that. If France & Britain had been able to stabilize their front as in WW1, then we might have seen Russians doing the attacking. Probably the Russians would have pushed the Cold War frontier somewhat closer to the Rhine in that situation.
Both the Nazis and Soviets were driving for total victory.
The UK could not have remained independent - either the Soviets would have defeated the Nazis and conquered Britain, or the Nazis would have defeated the Soviets and conquered Britain.
Whoever won would then have moved to consolidate the British Empire and have seized Canada, India and Africa and entered into an alliance with China.
The US would have wound up completely isolated, with no export markets and with its northern border a staging ground for invasion.
Hoover was a completely useless sack of dung for many reasons, but this kind of analysis underlines it.
Hoover was obviously no kind of a strategist.
For at least 400 years it has been British and then US policy to prevent any one tyrant from controlling all of Europe.
If he does, he controls massive economic and military resources and within a few years can put together a force capable of utterly overwhelming UK or USA.
This was even more important in the past, when Europe represented a much larger percentage of the world’s potential power.
Nukes have changed these calculations, but in 1941 nobody knew they would work.
Lol, don't know where you got that so called evidence. The reality is that Stalin decimated the Red Army, purging its generals in the 30's, cooperated with Hitler over the invasion of Poland and appeased Hitler up to point in time when the Wermacht invaded Russia.
So, instead of letting the Nazis and Soviets do 100% of the dying, we let them do 99% of it instead.
It is all Tojo’s Fault!
Stalin’s plan was to have the War in the West, which was his intent when he signed the non-aggression pact....that would buy him time to build up the Red Army, and be ready to attack in 1943, in the hope that by that time the British, French and German armies would be depleted....only one thing, the French surrendered in 6 weeks, which as it turned out, may have been a blessing in disguise.
Dunno. It might have been a practical decision as opposed to a moral one.
If we didn’t aid Russia, the Germans MIGHT have been able to take Russia. If the Germans took Russia, they might have been able to finish off the rest of Europe.
More likely, though, Germany and her allies (why do people forget that Germany had allies?) would have been so busy digesting the USSR, that war would have been put on hold for 10-20 years.
Actually, Hoover made this point before the fact.
Actually, Hoover was a great engineer and a selfless humanitarian. He just wasn’t a student of the free market. He was an implacable anti-communist and did have sources of information we don’t, at home and abroad.
My dad used to say about WWII that “Germany and Russia decided to split up Poland - and the entire world went to war to make sure Russia got all of it.”
Not entirely accurate - but amusing in hindsight - WWII as a ‘Polish joke’.
The reality is also that Hitler and Stalin both were double dealing tyrants. They each played events for a moment of their own choosing.
“why do people forget that Germany had allies?”
Italy, Spain, Romania are pretty forgettable as allies....
I think Stalin and the Bolsheviks were very close to being overthrown by their own generals...had Hitler taken Moscow, I could have seen that happening. That’s why Hitler should have focused on taking Moscow, to undermine the leadership, yes they would have retreated East, but I don’t think under those circumstances, Stalin’s rule would have lasted much longer.
...and then waited until December 8, 1941 to declare war against Japan...
...so as to induce Hitler to declare war on us on December 11...
...so that we, already at war with Japan (for three whole days) could finally turn around and declare war on Germany in order to help the USSR.
That FDR was one clever sumbitch, I'll tell you what.
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