The Real War 1939-1945, by Paul Fussell (1989)

If some people voted it up for Memorial Day, so much the better for an impassioned piece of good writing. Fussell obviously deserves to be better known.

It beat panzers the same way American tanks beat panzers --by swarming them. It's not like Americans didn't know about sloped armor --they did. We even provided the Russians with armor --if I recall my history channel stuff. Also, the Russian tanks were prone to quality defects but they made that up with production numbers. Also their effective firing range was dismal --but again, in a swarming tactic, range is unimportant.

    "The best US industry could turn out in 1941"

"They knew that their automatic rifles (First World War vintage) were slower and clumsier..."

This implies that the Axis had a better automatic rifle, which wasn't the case at all. The Wermacht didn't deploy an automatic rifle until the Stug44 in the last year of the war. Instead, they relied upon their bolt action rifles to provide protection to the core of the infantry unit, the MG34 and MG44.

The Japanese as well didn't use an automatic rifle in their infantry units, relying on the Ariska bolt action. The Italians too didn't use an automatic rifle to any extent.

If he wants to criticize the Army for using the BAR that's fine; but to imply that US weapons (other than the atomic bomb) were inferior to their counterparts is specious. The B-24, B-29, A/B-26 were far superior to any bombers the Axis ever deployed. The P-51, P-47, and P-38 were outstanding fighters.

The deuce and a half truck (that probably won the war) was far superior to any truck the Germans had.

And other than a crappy bunch of torpedoes throughout the war, the USN was equipped with excellent ships and aircraft. Sure in the beginning of the conflict there were issues with hardware (Brewster Buffalo, Devastator torpedo bomber, etc), but to make it as if the US equipment was trash is just mistaken.

For balance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt%27s_recor...

quoting the whole thing...

"Franklin's mother Sara shared anti-Semitic attitudes common among Americans at the time.[citation needed] Although anti-Semitism was common during the era, it is argued[citation needed] that FDR was not anti-Semitic. Some of his closest political associates, such as Felix Frankfurter, Bernard Baruch and Samuel I. Rosenman, were Jewish, and he happily cultivated the important Jewish vote in New York City. He appointed Henry Morgenthau, Jr. as the first Jewish Secretary of the Treasury and appointed Frankfurter to the Supreme Court. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin cites statistics showing that FDR’s high level executive appointments favored Jews (15% of his top appointments at a time when Jews represented 3% of the U.S. population) which subjected Roosevelt to frequent criticism. The August, 1936 edition of "The White Knight" published an article referring to the New Deal as the “Jew Deal.” Pamphlets appeared such as "What Every Congressman Should Know" in 1940 (featuring a sketch of the Capitol building with a Star of David atop its dome) that proclaimed that the Jews were in control of the American government. Financier and FDR confidant Bernard Baruch was called the “Unofficial President” in the anti-Semitic literature of the time. The periodical Liberation, for example, accused FDR of loading his government with Jews.[2]

During his first term Roosevelt condemned Hitler's persecution of German Jews. As the Jewish exodus from Germany increased after 1937, Roosevelt was asked by American Jewish organizations and Congressmen to allow these refugees to settle in the U.S. At first he suggested that the Jewish refugees should be "resettled" elsewhere, and suggested Venezuela, Ethiopia or West Africa — anywhere but the U.S. Morgenthau, Ickes and Eleanor pressed him to adopt a more generous policy but he was afraid of provoking the men such as Charles Lindbergh who exploited anti-Semitism as a means of attacking Roosevelt's policies.

In practice very few Jewish refugees came to the U.S. — only 22,000 German refugees were admitted in 1940, not all of them Jewish. The State Department official in charge of refugee issues, Breckinridge Long, insisted on following the highly restrictive immigration laws to the letter. As one example, in 1939, the State Department under Roosevelt did not allow a boat of Jews fleeing from the Nazis into the United States. When the passenger ship St. Louis approached the coast of Florida with nearly a thousand German Jews fleeing persecution by Hitler, Roosevelt did not respond to telegrams from passengers requesting asylum, and the State Department refused entry to the ship. Forced to return to Antwerp, many of the passengers eventually died in concentration camps.[3]

After 1942, when Roosevelt was made aware of the Nazi extermination of the Jews by Rabbi Stephen Wise, the Polish envoy Jan Karski and others, he told them that the best solution was to destroy Nazi Germany. At Casablanca in 1943 Roosevelt announced there would be no compromise whatever with Hitler. In May 1943 he wrote to Cordell Hull (whose wife was Jewish): "I do not think we can do other than strictly comply with the present immigration laws." In January 1944, however, Morgenthau succeeded in persuading Roosevelt to allow the creation of a War Refugee Board in the Treasury Department. This allowed an increasing number of Jews to enter the U.S. in 1944 and 1945. It also financed Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg's work in Budapest, where he and others helped to save 100,000+ Jews from deportation to death camps. By this time, however, the European Jewish communities had already been largely destroyed in Hitler's Holocaust.

In any case, after 1945 the focus of Jewish aspirations shifted from migration to the U.S. to settlement in British mandate of Palestine, where the Zionist movement hoped to create a Jewish state. Roosevelt was also opposed to this idea. When he met King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia in February 1945, he assured him he did not support a Jewish state in British mandate of Palestine.[citation needed]"