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Comment by neffy | Hacker News Reader

To be completely fair about this, the US was ramping up a long time before Pearl Harbour. (This is part of the extended discussion around the attack itself, and whether it should have been anticipated.) British rearming began in 1936, the US was certainly planning in the late 30´s, actual spending began in 1939, and ramped up quickly after that during 1940.

In war, as in many other things, if you want to ride the wave, you have to be ready long before you see it coming.

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It is good policy for any military to work out plans for various kinds of war. Even during extreme pacifism days in the 1930s, the US had contingency plans for wars with Germany (War Plan Black), Britain (War Plan Red, with different shades of red for different colonies), Japan (War Plan Orange).

In WWI, it took about a year for the US army to ramp up involvement in the war effort following its entry. There was thus a recognition by 1939 that the US needed to prepare for war or similarly spend a long time ramping up. In 1940, FDR authorized the draft, and throughout 1940 and 1941, the US strained the definition of neutrality to its breaking point, particularly as cash-and-carry (we'll only sell to people who can pay in gold) gave way to lend-lease (we'll only sell to countries named Great Britain or the Soviet Union, and we offer a 60-year payment plan).

Roosevelt definitely saw the war coming and prepared for it. He was hampered by the strong isolationist feelings at the time but he never gave in to them, and was careful never to run too far ahead of public opinion.

The Washington Naval Treaty [1] was also in effect until 1937, limiting new naval construction.

I think the original point is valid, subject to the vagaries of international agreements at the time.

The production dates and rate of the Essex class [2] were simply ridiculous... (said as someone whose grandfather worked at Newport News during the war)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Treaty

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex-class_aircraft_carrier#S...

I read that we stopped supplying steel to Japan which caused them to attack us.

Caused? No. It was one of the reasons they chose to do so, but that's not the same thing.

And why did we stop selling them steel? Because we didn't approve of them invading China and massacring people.

So if I slap you in the face and you punch me...my slap didn’t cause it? K.

In wartime, when your neutral, you’re supposed to supply all sides or nobody. Who made US protector of the world?

Meanwhile George Bushes grand daddy was funding the Nazis with his bank.

You mean in retrospect? Or was that the prevailing opinion of citizens at the time that had anything to do with trade or total war?

Roosevelt saw the war coming because he wanted it to come and engineered a way for the US to be attacked (the US way of war has alway been to provoke and goad the other side into firing first [or outright faking such a provocation] then feigning moral outrage) and overcome these (sensible) sentiments. The "isolationist" strain of US diplomacy was part of its founding ethos and WW2 was responsible for obliterating it from the American identity. Was this really a good thing?

You’re right, we should have just let Germany, Japan, and maybe Stalinist Russia split up the rest of the world between themselves. That definitely would have worked out fine and they never would have bothered us. Hitler’s not so bad once you get to know him...

Well look how communism in Asia played out over the ensuing 40 years. Would it have been such a horrible idea to let Japanese boys die fighting off communists? And why are 50+K American lives still at stake (and billions of dollars in defense spending) policing the region?

We should have worked with the Japanese and had them mostly run the place.

> Hitler’s not so bad once you get to know him

Agreed.

I feel compelled to point out that I was being sarcastic about Hitler.

Would there have been a "Holocaust" without the war? What would the fate of the interned Japanese in the US have been should the mainland have come under massive bombardment and firebombing that left the populace barely able to eat?

Seeing as those same America First party people are the same strains of America trying to sell the upside of neo-nazism, I’m going to go with yes? Sorry I’m not edgy enough to sell myself on the upsides of racial and ethnic cleansing...

Seeing as how those America First people are the ones who came around to fighting and defeating the Nazis, that's quite a disgusting and loaded remark. It is a shibboleth among the alt-right that they are called Nazis by people like you for sharing beliefs of their grandfathers who fought Nazis and you are reinforcing that perception.

But not a disgusting remark like when you stated that 'the "genocide" of native Americans was a result of European diseases, not barbarism' in another thread and argued that evidence of deliberate killing was more like a "rounding error". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17023220 Not disgusting like that, right?

Yes, that's right.

Not just ramping up, but we also had fairly direct involvement. 'Lend-Lease' occurred before Pearl Harbor providing large amounts of military and non military aid and had a significant impact.

Very much so. In Churchill's war diaries there's this great begging letter to Roosevelt early on in the war, which basically says, for God's sake, send rifles now. After Dunkirk, the UK didn't have enough to even arm the men they had in the army, never mind the home guard and reserves. Then there were the shipments to Russia. The Allies could never have won the war without the US's incredible production capacity.

It's pretty interesting actually - I'm reading The Last Lion (a biography of Winston Churchill), and it's amazing how much the British appeased Hitler and neglected to rearm, while the Nazis built out a serious army. But then to imagine the current mood for American intervention in Syria being championed by someone like Donald Rumsfeld and it's perhaps a little easier to understand, with Churchill being blamed for a lot of the loss of life in WW1.

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