And the idea of a demonstration was considered, but it was ultimately abandoned as it would most likely be useless. As Arthur Compton described it:
Note in slightest bit since since GB was still at war with Germany. America a sent a lot of aid to GB and Russia before America entered the war. But all during the time that GB was at war with Germany. If GB had NOT been at war with Germany, America would have sent no aid.
Of course they did. Lend lease was before America entered the war. Everyone know that. But it was primarily to aid GB. If GB was not in the war, America would not aid Communist Russia.
Nobody is arguing to the contrary. The fact remains, however, that the USA supplied aid to Russia before declaring war on Germany.
So, to answer your question one more time, it was to assist and abet Great Britain.
And so? No one said anything different.
Context dude, context. The context is that if GB signed a peace deal with Germany, America would not go to war with Germany nor aid Russia.
Um, you implied that the USA would not have supplied aid to Russia, without a declaration of war:
But I can see it’s pointless to continue this discussion.
I strongly disagree with this statement. If they had the legs needed to stay on station to back up their ships they would have used them instead of the hail-Mary boat flotilla.
they had the Junkers 87 which was a precision ground attack aircraft and they had superior fighter aircraft to back it up.
They’re not flying aircraft or running tanks on coal. If you take the UK out of the picture they have more of everything to attack Russia with.
The range of the RAF is not a matter for your personal disagreement, it’s a recorded fact. Of course Hurricanes and Spits based in southern England can get to Dunkirk, arguing otherwise is just making yourself look silly. The Hurricane’s range was 300 miles, Biggins Hill to Dunkirk is about 40 miles.
The RN stayed out for the same reason the RAF did, to preserve them for homeland defense.
Now here is where the range argument does come into play. In no way can the Germans use those tactical aircraft to achieve a strategic aim like prevention of moving factories. The bomb load a Stuka could carry was laughably small for that purpose, 500kg
If they could, why didn’t they historically?
No, they don’t. Where do more men come from? Where do the extra workers to mine coal, iron ore, grow food, run trains barges and ships, manufacture your mythical extra tanks and planes etc etc etc, come from, quite apart from the extra soldiers you posit?
And no matter how much you magic up, they cannot triple the resources they had historically which is what qualified historians of the period say was necessary. Cannot.
The small boats were needed to get the men from the beaches to the big ships. The problem was not having port facilities for big ships (and AIUI the RAF wasn’t just being held in reserve, there was also engagement further back from the beaches).
There were many other good practical reasons for avoiding using the larger navy ships and using smaller vessels but range of RAF support aircraft was not one of them.
Here’s a good account of what happened, the role that the RAF played and the problems they faced. Range and time on station is not mentioned. I live within sight of both the French coast and RAF Manston.
I’m not DrDeth. But I think the point he is trying to make is that if Japan had attacked the United States (as it did historically) but Germany had not declared war on us, the United States might have chosen to devote all of its resources to fighting against Japan and would have cut off the supply of resources being sent to the British and Soviets.
Maybe, maybe not. But my original point still stands: that the USA aided the USSR before the USA was officially in a war against Germany. Had things gone differently, what might have happened is pure speculation.
How things might have gone differently in WWII is after all the topic of the thread.
Even without US aid, and even if we accept Stalin claiming that he’d have lost the war without US aid, that doesn’t mean the Germans could have won. There’s no rule that makes it so that you always have a winner and a loser - it’s entirely possible for both sides to fail to achieve their strategic objectives in armed conflict.
Is it possible that, without distractions on the Western front and without US aid to the USSR, that Germany could have militarily defeated the Red Army? Perhaps. I still don’t see how Germany would stop the Soviets from moving their manufacturing capabilities East using only Junkers, though, or how they’d prevent their own logistical chain from completely falling apart the further into Russia they got.
But even if the Nazis DID strike a blow so damaging that it caused the Red Army to fall and the USSR to collapse, there are whole lightyears between tactically defeating the Red Army and managing to successfully occupy territory.
Look at the Japanese experience in China. China was in a much, much weaker position when Japan invaded. It was in the midst of a civil war between communists, nationalists, and seccessionist warlords. There really was no unified China for Japan to fight against, and yet despite this when the Japanese Empire tried to gobble up China, it choked.
Even if Germany’s assault destroyed the Soviet Union as a cohesive entity, there’s simply no way that Germany could have occupied and pacified a set of nations with twice the population spread across 20 million square kilometers - even if we ignore all the other countries they were trying to occupy at the same time.
Germany’s absolute best case scenario, where no one intervenes as they try to pummel the USSR, is a defeat of the Red Army and the overthrowing of Stalin, followed by years or decades of failure to control the occupied land. And even that isn’t a sure thing.
These discussions always remind of the immortal words of the late great Anna Russel in her definitive rendition of Verdi’s Hamlet, “Things would be very different if they were not as they are!”
Well, yes. But that was not my point. My point was that if GB had signed a peace treaty with Germany, the USA would not need to send aid to GB, and FDR would not ask congress to send aid to the USSR, since neither America nor GB would be at war with Germany, but later both with Japan.
Yes, and so? Only because GB was at war with Germany and FDR wanted to aid GB. But IF, note that IF , GB was no longer at war with Germany, America would never send aid at all, and would never be involved with any war with Germany. America only sent aid to Russia as it was GB’s ally.
This assumes that America didn’t have any of their own interests in preventing a Nazi victory, which is QUITE the assertion to make.
Quoting myself from upthread as a response to the US/GB/USSR aid triangle discussion. It seems my earlier comments fit here too.
No matter what in our timeline the moment Japan attacks the United States and Germany was allied with them fairly soon after Pearl Harbor somebody was going to declare war on one another. Germany already was attacking American warships guarding convoys in the Atlantic something was going to happen eventually.
The bigger what if I read is if the Americans detected the Japanese attack fleet before it actually launched the attack and the Japanese called off the attack.
Even if the task force was detected and the attack called off (unlikely), the attack on Clark Field in the Philippines would still have happened and we still would have declared war on Japan.