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Real World >> History >> A date which will live in infamy /yabb?num=1354862091 Message started by Webb on Dec 7th, 2012 at 1:34am |
Title: A date which will live in infamy Post by Webb on Dec 7th, 2012 at 1:34am Quote:
Within an hour of the speech, Congress passed a formal declaration of war against Japan and officially brought the U.S. into World War II. The address is regarded as one of the most famous American political speeches of the 20th century. |
Title: Re: A date which will live in infamy Post by Apex on Dec 7th, 2012 at 7:37am
It was a dark day in American History and the history of the World.
As my father was at Saipan and Okinawa, I still mark each Pearl Harbor Day with thought, never forgetting it. He was one of the first inducted, with lottery # 158, into the Infantry, but somehow got transferred into the Combat Engineers in 1943; that might have saved his life. Ironically, when he married after the war, his house number was also 158. |
Title: Re: A date which will live in infamy Post by Webb on Dec 8th, 2012 at 3:43pm
Busy week.
December 8. Japan declares war on the United States and the United Kingdom (Nice timing guys) December 8. The United States and the United Kingdom declare war on Japan. December 11. Germany and Italy declare war on the United states. December 11. The United States declares war on Germany and Italy. August 8, 1945. The Soviet Union declares war on Japan. A little late to the party but they were occupied with building slave labor camps and fighting invading Nazis. |
Title: Re: A date which will live in infamy Post by ViperPilot on Dec 10th, 2012 at 10:13am Apex wrote on Dec 7th, 2012 at 7:37am:
And it got a whole lot worse before it started to get better... both overseas and on the home front. :'( |
Title: Re: A date which will live in infamy Post by C on Dec 13th, 2012 at 5:15pm Apex wrote on Dec 7th, 2012 at 7:37am:
Depends on how you look at it. I suspect a lot of occupied Europe, and Britain (and the Empire) were quite relieved that the United States was forced into full scale war (stepping up from the "neutral" - used in the loosest possible terms - role beforehand). Without the US' hand being forced by the Japanese assaults, the world could have ended up a far worse place. Certainly Europe probably would have been very different. So although a dreadful human tragedy, and military disaster of sorts, in the big scheme of things the overall benefits to mankind due to Uncle Sam entering the war were probably positive, even if it took a further 3.5 years to end the conflict itself. |
Title: Re: A date which will live in infamy Post by Apex on Dec 14th, 2012 at 5:05pm
C has an interesting point. Britain certainly welcomed the U.S. into the war, despite the forced reasons for our entry. We could wonder what the U.S. would have ultimately done without the attack as provocation. Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia by the Germans, had begun in June 1941, even before which the Russians already had their eyes on Europe.
If the the U.S. fully comprehended this, it would have been wise to secure Europe, or at least western Europe, with an invasion initially meant to free France, with the idea being that it might be better to take on the German Army, or what was left of it after Barbarossa, and knowing that the Germans would be pinched by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., rather than the Russian Army directly, or rather than letting the U.S.S.R. occupy and control all of Europe. Or course, the question of how prepared the U.S. was for an invasion earlier than D-Day is also key to this. Ultimately, inaction by the U.S. would have carried a price, conversely, had the U.S. gotten involved sooner, Britain and Europe would have been much better off. Wikipedia has an extensive article on Barbarossa. |
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