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Comment by travmatt | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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...

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.

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?

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