With US public opinion moving towards entering the war even those strict isolationists in Congress would be facing increasing pressure to support FDR. It's hard to guess how long it would take but it almost an inevitability. There are a lot of potential factors which would affect the timing too. Hitler is Hitler so there is the possibility he still declares war on the US at some point for their increasing support of Great Britain and the USSR. Japan is still itching to do *something* to secure resources for their empire and the Dutch East Indies is the most appealing target (although there is the problem for them of the US forces in the Philippines which leads us back to the strategy that led to Pearl Harbor).

There has definitely been a historical tendency to overlook some of the actions of Imperial Japan for the sake of geo-political reasons, while morally dubious it was probably the right decision at the time all things considered, same with Operation Paperclip which you bring up later.


Operation Paperclip is what it is. Both the US and USSR were looking for any edge in the coming race between what had become two superpowers. Unethical? Yes, but ethics are often overruled in the face of reality and I don't see that as something to be ashamed of in the context of WWII and its immediate aftermath.

I was not aware of that estimate of 10,000 war criminals who fled to the US but there is a big difference in the caliber of criminal. Generally didn't have the likes of Adolf Eichmann and Josef Menegele entering or sneaking into the United States under a new name. Those in the higher ranks couldn't as easily invent a new identify for themselves as many of the lesser criminals did. Excluding the Paperclip personnel I highly doubt there was any intention to bring war criminals into the country. By no means am I excusing the atrocities committed by those 10,000 yet their motivations must be examined. Most of would probably have been looking to leave a war-torn and divided nation to somewhere they could escape their past before it caught up with them. Most of those Nazis with real ambitions of creating some sort of 4th Reich would have gone to places like Argentina instead. Places where they were elements of government and population very much aware of the sort of new immigration from Germany they were receiving.


I don't think it says quite what you think it does. The vast majority of those who went to the US would have had no hope of recreating Hitler's Germany if they were "true believers". Some of those who went to Argentina for example did. Yes the United States had a very large German immigrant community but the vast majority were loyal to their new home and many joined the war effort against Nazi Germany. That does invite comparisons to the unfair treatment Japanese immigrants suffered for being seen as a more "distant" culture.


Indeed they definitely loathed each other outside of the time under the Molotov-Ribbentrop act. My point is the communists had already and would go on to do a whole lot of unsavory things as well. In a nation still recovering from the Great Depression there was opportunity for alternative political movements like both of them to grow. For awhile in the 1930s Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were seen as beacons of success. Mussolini hoped FDR's New Deal was a sign that America would soon embrace a fascist future.

I don't think Germany counted on somebody like FDR when they considered the strong isolationist sentiment in the United States. He deserves much of the credit for seeing the threat Nazi Germany posed and moving the US towards a wartime footing.


Douglas MacArthur was in charge as something akin to a shogun in Japan during the occupation so he is at least partly responsible for not as charging as many Japanese officials with crimes they could have been made to stand trial for. I don't think Dresden (which was for better or worse a victim of the total warfare conducted against Germany) or violations of conventions by US troops factored into it. It was all about the relationship with Japan and the developing situation in China which was considered a huge win for the USSR.


Yes where they went made sense depending on the individual. I'm sure many who recognized Nazism was a lost cause (regardless of their support for it) would have preferred to gone to the more prosperous USA than South America which was less developed. If any went to the US hoping to revive the ideology I don't think they had much success. Skinheads and American Nazis manifested themselves on their own and were/are probably motivated more by racist ideology than any specific preference for fascist government.


For most they went anywhere where they could escape their past and wasn't too foreign a culture. Many may have gone to Canada too but that doesn't mean that Canada was ripe grounds for Nazism. I'll admit I have no idea about the size of the German community in Canada though.


Well yes but at the same time the Soviet Union already had a paranoia about the western powers due to their invention in the Russian Civil War. It is indeed not surprising that there would be an effort to improve relationships and promote Soviet ideology so I don't see it particularly surprising that Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy tried the same thing pre-war either. I suppose in retrospect many would rather not admit it happened but considering the historical context I don't think it that photograph represents a great American sin of some kind. It happened in other countries as well. The British Union of Fascists for example.


I'm not all that familiar with such parties but obviously the one backed by the USSR would have been the most influential and largest. Chances are they probably tried to undermine the alternatives too. Part of establishing their legitimacy.

I know FDR was in office since 1933 but that doesn't mean that Hitler had a good understanding of the man's abilities. This is the same individual who said "kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down" in reference to how easy the USSR would be to defeat. So I think it's entirely reasonable to say that Hitler underestimated the ability of FDR to rally the country as effectively as he did.


FDR was quite adamant about the Europe first strategy. But even if the Japanese had not attacked events in 1942 would likely have shifted the public to support a declaration of war against Germany.


By all means MacArthur was acting on behalf of the US government but being in charge of the occupation force in Japan he had significant influence and a large degree of authority. He was adamant that Hirohito not be indicted for war crimes and that opinion had a lot of value in Washington. That protection extended to many others it shouldn't have. Of course there were multiple reasons for these decisions but naturally critics of the United States and/or Japan do use it against both countries.


One could argue that as the war was clearly lost for Germany by that point it was unnecessary but it was still considered a strategically viable target. It did have some industrial capacity that had shifted to building materials for the war effort as factories further to the west had been reduced to rubble. I don't know if the Allies were aware the majority of its air defenses had been repurposed in a desperate attempt to hold back the Soviet advance.

In retrospect it's very easy to say it shouldn't have been done but to the knowledge available to the Allied commanders at the time it wasn't such a clear decision. They wanted to bring the war to its end by any means and it was believed that was a viable strategy to do so. I'll grant you that it is was a tragedy but I don't think we'll see much agreement here beyond that.

Over on the other side of the world US casualty projections for the invasion of mainland Japan were enormous. Throughout the entire war in the Pacific the Japanese had fought with such ferocity and fanaticism that must have been a great doubt that diplomatic measures would succeed without that invasion of the Japanese mainland. It was President Truman's duty to serve the interests of the American people first and foremost so I can't fault him for using a new weapon that had the potential to bring the war to an earlier end. Were an invasion to occur Japanese casualties would have been catastrophic too, figures far greater than those caused by the atomic bombs. I've read the argument that the US should have given time to see what impact the USSR's offensive in the far east had but the Soviets but that would put Truman in the poor position of letting the Soviets acquire territory and consolidate power in the far east. There also wasn't the stigma associated with atomic weaponry that there is today. The decision to use those bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is in my mind significantly far less objectionable than Dresden.

Modern era? Are you referring to the strategic bombing of Vietnam? The whole Vietnam war was a brutal dirty affair for everyone involved. Strategic bombing was in effect the only thing that brought the North Vietnamese to the negotiation table. Lyndon Johnson's earlier attempts were hamstrung by all sorts of restrictions that also got a lot of US airmen killed. Richard Nixon's far more unrestricted campaign was more successful and actually produced the (very flawed) Paris Peace Accords. Had it been attempted earlier and if the North Vietnamese swiftly and severely punished for violations of the accords it *may* have resulted in a better outcome to for South Vietnam. Yet their government was so flawed and corrupt it probably would have still been all for naught.

Drone strikes up to today? I believe they are entirely justified in ongoing anti-terrorism efforts. Even Barack Obama thought that and he definitely had a less optimistic view of past US history than presidents prior to him. The sort of racialism we've been fighting... well the world saw its character in its full splendor when ISIS was being successful.


I'll admit I don't know much about the views of those sort on what the ideal government is, minus what they think it should be doing about the "lesser races". Generally they seem more obsessed with that side of Hitler's regime than anything else a government does. I would have to guess that the disillusioned class who find that Nazi ideology gives them some meaning probably discovered it through other means than genuine Nazis who had fled from Germany who would be far more likely to keep a low profile.


One thing to consider is the respective population of both countries in 1945 and later. Apparently Canada's estimated population in 1945 was a bit over 12 million versus over 139 million for the USA.

I shouldn't have to tell you there is a *huge* difference in Nazi Germany's concentration camps and the "interment camps" for illegal immigrants which seems to be the result of a system that is quite simply overwhelmed by the vast number of asylum claims, unaccompanied children, and attempts at illegal entry into the United States. Even the genuine internment camps for Japanese-American citizens in WWII were nothing like the conditions in Nazi camps where you'd starve to death or die from disease if you weren't chosen to be worked to death or just be sent straight to a gas chamber. It's apples and oranges if apples were just apples and oranges were some sort of tentacled monster that goes around murdering neighborhoods.


A lot of it is going to dependent on the underclass of disillusioned, usually out-of-work, usually poorly-educated people that pretty must exist in all nations in one form or another. Yes there would have been more individuals in the United States more receptive to the ideas due to the racial animosity that came to exist due to this nation's history, I'll grant you that. But even so I don't think there was ever what one could consider a vast Nazi presence here. You can probably find a number that seems pretty big when you write it down on paper but you'll find a infinitely greater number of American citizens who contributed to the war effort in whatever way they could, including countless southerners and others from places where there was a huge degree of racial animosity

Eugenics is its own whole can of worms. I know those deemed mentally handicapped and others were commonly sterilized but I'm not familiar how much racial tension came into play here. It does go to show though that the sciences can be corrupted and abused just as easily as any other human institution. Then again there is some degree to which such measures area good thing. I'd have to search if you wanted any details but I recall being told years ago of a relatively recent case where a court determined a severely mentally disabled woman should have her tubes tied because she had already had four or five kid and was simply incapable of providing for them in any form. There was a large objection to this but it was truly the most ethical course of action.


No I do not, but the former is almost a certainly considering the vast resources of all types the USSR had. I know for a fact that there are a lot of well documented cases of the sort of measures the USSR took to promote communist ideology in foreign countries. The whole "Russian interference" hype really nothing new either, it was so serious that at one point Ted Kennedy made an outreach to the Soviets when he was thinking of running for President, promising to be more agreeable than that cowboy Ronald Reagan. Of course he never ran for president since he killed Mary Jo Kopechne and that tends to hurt one's political aspirations.

The later is merely speculation on my part, but going off Russian history it seems pretty likely.

My great grandfather ( french resistant, there wasn't just jews in camps, but also gay, gypsie, mentally ill people, political prisonners etc ) went to Dachau.
And he did not die, but errr...He came back not the same, and one of the first thing he tried when he returned home was to put a bullet in his own head.

I don't know much about Japanese internment camp in the US, I doubt they were a walk in the park.
But in Dachau, the food given was barely enough, my great grandfather partly survived because he was working as an electrician sometimes, and one of the nazi guard who was looking after him during work took a liking to him and gave him often part of his lunch.
That's the nice part of the story.
The bad part is the torture and medical experimentation.
He got all of his teeth pulled out, and was sometimes put outside in winter into a barrel of freezing water.
That's the only things he was willing to talk about.
My grandmother had a whole collection of books about nazi torture and nazi doctors, trying to understand what they did to him.

Anyway not to say the US is doing good with their camps, and holding children and such.
There has been reports of abuse and trauma, although it is not a built in directive to torment people in there.
The minute you lock people into a bubble away from public view, you're asking for trouble.
There are always some guards or people in charge who will do some unsavory stuff.