Posted on 05/08/2003 3:16:09 PM PDT by risk
I wonder if some of the Freepers that took part to this thread are - or were - fellow wargamers ?
That's an excellent series. I hope they make more episodes, it appears to be over for now.
The US initially lost quite a bit of its merchant ships to German U-Boat attacks but saved its escorts for troop movements. By May of 1942 over a 150,000 troops were shipped via the American navy. That's not to take anything away from the British navy, next to the US's and probably after Pearl Harbor there's was second to none.
Here's some great reading on the U-Boat attacks early in the war:
Wrong!
right up to Pearl Harbor there was a significant debate in the US about which side in europe was 'right' and what we should or should not do about it.
There was ZERO consensus right up until germany's ally bombed our obsolete navy, in a semi-colonial anchorage, and pissed off most of the American public.
Oh, and it took half of a year before we were even able to assume command of the AVG, there were no troops standing ready to invade anything, we'd have taken months to provide support to the Brits in any event..."before Hitler could blink..." does not even equate.
Of course behind the scenes we were providing lend-lease support (practically illegal in constitutional terms) to Russia and England. We were interdicting Japanese shipping, which was in a very real sense an act of war. Plenty of Americans understood what was coming and what we'd have to do about it. Much as has been the case today, the isolationists and pacifists were slow learners.
You say that as if it was fact, it's all a matter of speculation. In my opinion if Britain had been invaded the US would have significantly stepped up it's presence in the North Atlantic, perhaps sending large numbers of troops to either Iceland or Ireland or both. I'm not debating the pacifist movement existed in the US, only that the Roosevelt administration, for all its faults clearly understood the dangers of Hitler and fascism and would have taken appropriate steps to deal with it.
If Hitler had managed to take Britain then the U.S. government would have done nothing. Sorry to say but the fact was that most of the government was pro Nazi Germnay and not willing to enter the war. It was Roosevelt who was one of the few that would have backed Britain. I also have no doubt that with Britain beaten Hilter would have focused more on the bomb and would have won the race to building it and with the V9 rocket would have been unstopable.
The real threat for the US was in Russia, if the Nazis had taken that they would have had a base to attack North America.
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