Since we’re talking about America’s choice here, the plausible outcomes of the Lindbergh America-First strategy (rather than starting to help the Allies even before Pearl Harbor) look like a Nazi-dominated Europe, possibly including Britain, and a Japanese-ruled China. Germany-USSR was a wild card in any case, but you have to acknowledge the possibility of atrocities on even a wider scale than we saw.
Of course, World War II was almost certainly worse for the world than what would have happened if the Nazis had never tried to conquer Europe. But the choice of whether to fight seems to have been made correctly on the part of the US and UK.
I would go further than that. As I recall, in Mein Kampf, Hitler laid out the expectation that the next stage of the Third Reich, to be carried out by his successor after Europe was pacified, was to make war on the United States to establish global domination. Given that Hitler more or less actually did the stuff he wrote that he was going to until he was stopped, it seems reasonable to conclude that the alternative to US/Allies v. Germany in Europe was US v. Germany/puppets in North America a decade or two later.
The US froze German and Japanese assets a few months before the bombings in Pearl Harbor—even this was just one in a long-series of actions that declared the US as an Allied power before Congress allowed it to be involved in the shooting war.
It seems to me like that fits into my narrative, as elsewhere on the page I said:
The United States imposed a gradually more strict embargo of military and dual-use materials, including eventually oil. This precipitated the Japanese invasion of the oil rich Dutch East Indies and the attack on Pearl Harbor to cover for it.
Thank you for adding that fact, as I didn’t know it, but if you mean to disagree you’ll have to elaborate.
I would argue that the US, Germany and Japan were on a path to war without more choice for any one of the parties. Both sides were making overt hostile actions, which provoked escalating responses. I think freezing a country’s assets is as blatant an act of aggression as interdicting shipments of material aid to Britain. I don’t know if we disagree, but I disagree with your wording. I’d say the US, Germany and Japan all chose to fight.
I’m not suspending judgement. My judgement is that leadership in the US, Japan and Germany all intended to be at war with each other for a long time before they made it come about.
leadership in the US, Japan and Germany all intended to be at war with each other
You should unpack this. Surely it was always conditional. Had all nations disbanded their armies and surrendered to Germany, you think they would have declared war on the United States, their tributary?
Once we’ve established that each was willing to go to war contingent on the actions of other nations—exactly like every nation I can think of in the history of humanity—we can compare the conditions each had. I agree that categorizing those three nations together is connotatively wrong because all nations belong in the group you describe, membership in it signifies nothing. This is the fallacy of gray.
It is not clear to me that the US would have intervened had Japan attacked the Dutch East Indies or even Australia. If this is true and Japan had thought it likely that the US would not intervene, I think US paticipation could have been avoided.
I’d say the US, Germany and Japan all chose to fight.
All chose to fight contingent on certain actions of others, but the same is true of Ghandi “I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence,” and basically every other entity. Each just had different conditions of others before it came to that action from them.
For Germany, if adjacent countries had certain territory and did not surrender it, they would invade. For Japan, they would rather not invade the Allies in the East, but would if the US cut off oil. For the US, if Japan waged sufficient amounts of aggressive war, military supplies would be cut off. If more aggressive war was waged, even oil would not be traded.
I’d say “the US, Germany and Japan all chose to fight,” and this bare fact is of basically no importance. “Both sides were making overt hostile actions,” is a type of thing that is true whether one country decides to only import product X when its manufacture complies with sufficient environmental and labor protections or one country demands the cession of most of another’s territory on threat of invasion, whether a country wages restricted war by blowing up imports to a country but nothing in the country doing the exporting, or it freezes certain foreign assets suspected of facilitating money laundering.
Since we’re talking about America’s choice here, the plausible outcomes of the Lindbergh America-First strategy (rather than starting to help the Allies even before Pearl Harbor) look like a Nazi-dominated Europe, possibly including Britain, and a Japanese-ruled China. Germany-USSR was a wild card in any case, but you have to acknowledge the possibility of atrocities on even a wider scale than we saw.
Of course, World War II was almost certainly worse for the world than what would have happened if the Nazis had never tried to conquer Europe. But the choice of whether to fight seems to have been made correctly on the part of the US and UK.
I would go further than that. As I recall, in Mein Kampf, Hitler laid out the expectation that the next stage of the Third Reich, to be carried out by his successor after Europe was pacified, was to make war on the United States to establish global domination. Given that Hitler more or less actually did the stuff he wrote that he was going to until he was stopped, it seems reasonable to conclude that the alternative to US/Allies v. Germany in Europe was US v. Germany/puppets in North America a decade or two later.
Not necessarily so.
In all cases, Germany and Japan chose to fight.
The US froze German and Japanese assets a few months before the bombings in Pearl Harbor—even this was just one in a long-series of actions that declared the US as an Allied power before Congress allowed it to be involved in the shooting war.
It seems to me like that fits into my narrative, as elsewhere on the page I said:
Thank you for adding that fact, as I didn’t know it, but if you mean to disagree you’ll have to elaborate.
I would argue that the US, Germany and Japan were on a path to war without more choice for any one of the parties. Both sides were making overt hostile actions, which provoked escalating responses. I think freezing a country’s assets is as blatant an act of aggression as interdicting shipments of material aid to Britain. I don’t know if we disagree, but I disagree with your wording. I’d say the US, Germany and Japan all chose to fight.
This strikes me as an example of the fallacy of gray together with a slice of pretending to be wise by suspending judgement.
I’m not suspending judgement. My judgement is that leadership in the US, Japan and Germany all intended to be at war with each other for a long time before they made it come about.
You should unpack this. Surely it was always conditional. Had all nations disbanded their armies and surrendered to Germany, you think they would have declared war on the United States, their tributary?
Once we’ve established that each was willing to go to war contingent on the actions of other nations—exactly like every nation I can think of in the history of humanity—we can compare the conditions each had. I agree that categorizing those three nations together is connotatively wrong because all nations belong in the group you describe, membership in it signifies nothing. This is the fallacy of gray.
It is not clear to me that the US would have intervened had Japan attacked the Dutch East Indies or even Australia. If this is true and Japan had thought it likely that the US would not intervene, I think US paticipation could have been avoided.
All chose to fight contingent on certain actions of others, but the same is true of Ghandi “I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence,” and basically every other entity. Each just had different conditions of others before it came to that action from them.
For Germany, if adjacent countries had certain territory and did not surrender it, they would invade. For Japan, they would rather not invade the Allies in the East, but would if the US cut off oil. For the US, if Japan waged sufficient amounts of aggressive war, military supplies would be cut off. If more aggressive war was waged, even oil would not be traded.
I’d say “the US, Germany and Japan all chose to fight,” and this bare fact is of basically no importance. “Both sides were making overt hostile actions,” is a type of thing that is true whether one country decides to only import product X when its manufacture complies with sufficient environmental and labor protections or one country demands the cession of most of another’s territory on threat of invasion, whether a country wages restricted war by blowing up imports to a country but nothing in the country doing the exporting, or it freezes certain foreign assets suspected of facilitating money laundering.