Peter Wiley wrote:

This is another occasion where I agree with you, Oz. I hate that.

Ole Thom, the rest of the world knows full well that the USA sat on its
hands while Europe got turned to trash.

That's not a fair statement at all. The USA hardly "sat on it's hands." Ever hear of
Lend-Lease? The strategic planners in the US were getting prepared to fight WW2 as
early as 1936.

Nazi sympathirzers and isolationists in American politics tried very hard to tie
FDR's hands, and to some extent they succeeded. But, would the US Army Air Corp have
bought the B-17 Flying Fortress in depths of the Depression, if somebody didn't see
a big need for it on the horizon?


The only reason you guys
entered the war at all was because the Japanese were foolish enough to
attack you. If they hadn't, you'd have done nothing for years more,
maybe forever. The first bit's fact, the last is speculation based on
your behaviour at the time.

IMHO that's even more ridiculous than any 'Murrikun claiming that the US of A won
the war single-handed. There is no way the United States would have avoided entering
the war on the side of the Allies.



However, you never had your people killed in things like the Sandakan
death march, Changi or a lot of other places. You sat all that stuff
out. We have long & bitter memories of WW2. The Japanese treated our
POW's atrociously. You guys let a lot of them off after the war was
over because the politics had changed.

And possibly, by sidetracking this darker side of human nature, we averted an even
more disastrous WW3. Revenge and reparations are what brought on the Depression and
WW2.

I'd prefer to not see two sets of blindly patriotic brinksmen shout at each other,
the facts are both more interesting & more useful.

Regards
Doug King