Posted on 03/08/2009 8:06:05 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Today’s post is everything on page 10 of the news section.
A constitutional amendment that would require a national referendum to go to war. I never heard of that.
Me neither. Interesting idea, if impractical.
Also, do you have an opinion whether Fall of the Third Reich is a creditible resource? I think I will buy it soon.
The amendment never passed, of course, and we can see that as fears of war in Europe increased, support for it was already falling.
After Pearl Harbor, 12/7/41, the whole issue became moot, because now it was no longer a "foreign war."
Can anyone verify that the naval exercises these reports talk about included a US Navy "attack" on the fleet sleeping at Pearl Harbor?
I know there were several similar exercises, any one of which put the lie to claims that "no one expected" such an attack. In fact, by December 1941, our Navy had been practicing these for many years.
I should put an explanation on my profile page - both where the articles come from and what my crazy project is all about.
I find all the articles on Microfiche at U.C. Santa Cruz. They have files full of reels for the New York Time, San Francisco Chronicle, L.A. Times, and more. I stick to the NYT because they have the broadest coverage. The microfiche readers are connected to printers that the public can use for no additional charge. (Parking is $6, however.) I can sit and run through the reels for about 6 hours before I get too punchy to continue. That gets me through about one to one-and-a-half months. I take all my copies home and do a cut and tape process to put the articles in 8 1/2 X 11 format for scanning. I upload the images to photobucket and then generate links for posting here. Those I download to Word documents, which I post when the big day comes. I estimate conservatively that I spend about 20 hours to get one month's worth of articles ready to post.
As for The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I think it is an amazing eyewitness account by a trained journalist. Shirer was in Europe for all during the thirties (I think) and spent the war years in England. He was in the audience when Hitler made some of his major speeches. On rare occasions Shirer lapses into the first person when he wants to relate his personal memories or relate what was in his diary. Third Reich is really thorough. Shirer might have a left-leaning bias, but it doesn't distort his reporting enough to diminish its value. He is clearly anti-Nazi. I don't recall him showing such hostility to Stalin or the Soviet Union. But the book is not about Stalin so it doesn't bother me. Other freepers may have a different opinion based on more knowledge. Anyhow, the book is 1143 pages of fascinating history.
March 1939?
Grumman F3Fs, Douglas TBDs, Curtiss SBCs against Mitsubishi A5Ms, Makajima B5Ns, Aichi D3As
Add combat experience, there's a clear winner here.
I know there were several similar exercises, any one of which put the lie to claims that "no one expected" such an attack. In fact, by December 1941, our Navy had been practicing these for many years.
I am in the middle of At Dawn We Slept, by Gordon Prange. He describes the war games simulating a Japanese attack on Hawaii in the May 1941. The problem was that General Short saw it as an assault on the islands and not the fleet. He saw his mission as defending against an amphibious attack backed by surface ships.
I tried googling up reports on US Navy exercises during the 1930s.
According to this link: Admiral Yarnell attacked Pearl Harbor with Lexington and Saratoga, February 1932.
According to Wikipedia there was a 1933 US Navy exercise attack on Pearl Harbor
This report: 1933 & 1939 Naval exercises says: "The Navy held similar games involving a Pearl Harbor attack by enemy aircraft carriers in 1933 and in 1939. In the 1939 exercise, aircraft from the carrier USS Saratoga succeeded in a surprise attack on a Sunday morning. The attacking aircraft “sank” several ships at anchor in Pearl Harbor and attacked Hickam, Wheeler and Ford Island airfields before returning safely to their carrier."
This link says, Admiral Kimmel sent Fleet to find Japanese on November 23, 1941 but was ordered by Washington to return to Pearl Harbor.
Somewhere else I read that the US Navy practiced attacking Pearl Harbor every year during the 1930s. Seems pretty clear that the idea of such an attack was not so far from the thinking of top US officials.
If you are speaking of 'Rise and Fall of the Third Reich', as long as you are aware of the author's bias, it can be an excellent source of information. It's a very good place to start for an overview of the period.
Thanks.
And thank you HJS for your hard work.
ping
I highly recommend “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” by William Shrier. Like Par says he can be biased, but I cant think of an author that is not. In the forward of his book he even admits that there is a degree to bias to it since he lived many of the events. However he does for the most part report factually and does point out in his text when his opinion is involved. If you read objectively you will get a lot out of this book. I also recommend the “Berlin Diary” by the same author.
I can understand why Leahy and Roosevelt chuckle about their own ship being “sunk” from under them in these exercises, but I would bet that behind the scenes this would be very alarming at least to the admiral. The command ship and the central control point was wiped out at the onset of the attacks thus cutting the head off the operations. Not a good thing and a fine example as too how dangerous air power is to naval fleets when properly employed.
Not to mention that P-40 and the P-38 are just barely comming off of madien flights and there are not deployed units of either yet.
I’m just about to finish up “An Army at Dawn” myself and then I need to review Shrier again in preparation for the end of Czechoslovakia here in a few days. I’m thinking that the next book will have to be “The Day of Battle” to continue the trilogy and hope that Atkinson has the third one done by the time I finish it. It can be a hard read since at least with “An Army at Dawn” U.S. troops are surely not shown at its finest. There was a lot of learning through big mistakes in the African campaigns.
I appreciate the feedback. I’ll check out the Berlin Diary as well.
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