The Brits put Germany under a far more effective blockade even earlier.
Actually Hitler and Stalin might have been happy carving up the Balkans, Poland and etc. It was actually quibbling over who got what they led to Barbarossa. If Molotov had been more conciliatory, perhaps Barbarossa might have been put off for years.
Yes, you are correct. Operation Sea Lion would have failed. But a few mistakes on the part of Goering cost them the Battle of Britain, and if Doenitz had gotten his way with more subs, Germany could have starved Britain into submission. Churchill himself said it was close there for a while.
No Miracles. A little better Diplomacy, two minor tactical and one strategic blunders undone.
Hussein had tonnes of WMD. He killed plenty of Iranians (1980s Iran–Iraq War)and even his own Kurds with them.
Taha was working on weaponizing Anthrax, Botulism, and other germ warfare agents.
Now yes,* after* the The Gulf War (2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991), aka Operation Desert Storm , etc, the Allies destroyed most of the WMD. Quite a bit was unaccounted for, however. Blix was concerned about this, which is why he demanded to be let back in. It turns out the "“unaccounted for” WMD was actually lost in the desert, and by the time of GWB and 2003, they were more a danger to the environment than to Husseins foes. Certainly Hussein had been looking into making new stuff, but when Blix got back in Saddam had moved what little he had to Syria, and there were no significant CBR WMD left in Iraq by the time the Shrub demanded we invade again. Still, quite a few rockets had been modified for longer range, making them technically “WMD”. They found a small amount of other stuff, i.e.:
50 deployed Al-Samoud 2 missiles
Various equipment, including vehicles, engines and warheads, related to the AS2 missiles
2 large propellant casting chambers
14 155 mm shells filled with mustard gas, the mustard gas totaling approximately 49 litres and still at high purity
Approximately 500 ml of thiodiglycol
Some 122 mm chemical warheads
Some chemical equipment
224.6 kg of expired growth media
But to say that Hussein didn’t have WMD is false unless you include a specific timeline and add the words “significant CBR”. SH had no significant CBR Weapons of Mass Destruction in 2003.
Months earlier we werent free to trade as we liked with Germany due to our ships being boarded and interned at gunpoint by the RN, and the extensive minefields they laid in the North Sea.
Your link says it wasn’t “trade” but mail.
That makes it an even more serious point. The mail getting through is one of the cornerstones of running a state. That’s how you go about collecting taxes, you see.
The Mail was what the US was protesting about. We accepted the RN had the right to block contraband. US ships were still caught trying to smuggle contraband in.
*The day after the declaration, the British Admiralty announced that all merchant vessels were now liable to examination by the naval Contraband Control Service and by the French Blockade Ministry, which put its ships under British command.[22] Because of the terrible suffering and starvation caused by the original use of the strategy, a formal declaration of blockade was deliberately not made,[23] but the communiqué listed the types of contraband of war that was liable for confiscation if carried. It included all kinds of foodstuffs, animal feed, forage, and clothing, and articles and materials used in their production.
This book lists many American ships detained by the British:
and here:
The British Minefields sunk quite a few US ships, but none before the US entered the war.
Well, that’s just a shame.
Excuse me while I look at photos of my grandad building an Anderson shelter in the garden shortly before some Nazis twats blew up half of Battersea.
Yes they did…and that deterred our freedom as well. What they didn’t do, however, was start deliberately sinking our merchant or warships to enforce the blockade of ‘clothing, jewels, securities, cash, foodstuffs, chocolate, coffee and soap to Germany through the post’. I think it was foolish and even dangerous for the Brits to take this line with the US at that time (wasn’t the first time they did silly shit like this when trying to deny US trade to the continent either…recall the Napoleonic Wars, for instance), but I’m unsure what point you are trying to prove here. The US certainly was trading with all sides. The Brits attempted to blockade the Germans which cut into our trade. The Germans in tern blockaded the UK and the Russians and started unrestricted submarine warfare against the US before we were even fully in the war (which was definitely stupid of them). All of this basically were threats against our interests and the US government attempted to ‘protect our freedom’ by protesting against the British actions and by what amounted to a covert war against Germany for sinking our ships through most of 1940.
Ok, let us say a RN Cruiser hails a US flag merchant ship, ordering to pull over and be searched- and the captain just sails on? Warning shot. Then "SHOOT! and a US ship hits the bottom.
The British just had the luxury of stopping our ships with surface warships.
That’s just not true. On the contrary German subs were sternly directed to not, under any circumstances, pull any shenanigans that might pull the US into the war.
While it is true that German subs on occasion fired torpedoes on a handful of US warships before the formal declaration of war, in the cases I’m aware of it was in sort-of-self-defence in that said US warships were actively tracking and pinging the tubs and broadcasting their locations for nearby RN and Canadian ships to sink. Which is pretty much an attack in and of itself, even if the US destroyers didn’t directly fire weapons of their own. On at least one occasion, the US destroyer dropped depth charges on the German sub before it had taken any hostile action at it.
US civilian shipping on the other hand was strictly verboten (although some may or may not have been blown the hell up through the fog of war - I’m not well-read on the details), if only because Hitler and Dönitz remembered the Lusitania and the William P. Frye and, up until Japan did its thing, were none too keen on prodding the bear. Which is why, in turn, a number of non-US merchant captains opted to fly the US flag while in hot zones or after receiving reports of u-boot sightings in their general vicinity.
Hell, for that matter the Nazis in general weren’t really keen on prodding the bear *after *Pearl Harbour either - the declaration of war was pretty much Hitler’s own 'tarded whim. For which Churchill no doubt quietly but profusely thanked the little creep.
[QUOTE=Kobal2]
That’s just not true. On the contrary German subs were sternly directed to not, under any circumstances, pull any shenanigans that might pull the US into the war.
[/QUOTE]
You are right…my use of ‘unrestricted submarine warfare’ was incorrect. Still, they did sink quite a few US flagged ships. Here’s the list…note particularly the ones from 1939 to December of '41. Not just one or two ‘accidents’ on that list, and certainly more than the UK sunk in their own blockade of US shipping from the continent.
It was more than a handful, and it heated up pretty steadily through '40 and into '41 and became the next best thing to a full on covert naval war between the US and Germany well before we formally entered the war. If you are interested, this was the first incident where a US warship engaged a German submarine.
Well, the NAZIS were keen to do it, but the German military was less so (just like they were less keen on many other things that idiot Hitler got them into).
[QUOTE=DrDeth]
Ok, let us say a RN Cruiser hails a US flag merchant ship, ordering to pull over and be searched- and the captain just sails on? Warning shot. Then "SHOOT! and a US ship hits the bottom.
[/QUOTE]
Again, what point are you trying to make here? The Brits didn’t shoot at our ships and didn’t sink any. They did curtail our freedom, however, even if it was less than what the Germans started doing a few months later.
Are you seriously excusing the Germans behavior in sinking US flagged shipping?? I really, truly don’t see what point you are trying to make, but whatever it is you aren’t doing very good at it since it seems to me you ARE trying to excuse the Germans behavior. In the context of this thread, are you saying that because the Brits stopped our shipping that gave the Germans the right to do it to (taking it up a notch because subs can’t stop merchant ships without shooting at them…or something, since they actually can and did) and therefore the US wasn’t fighting to ‘protect our freedom’?? 
Only a few. Most which were in war zones (and likely not properly IDed), (unless you count those flying the Panamanian flag). I could find almost no US flagged merchant ships sunk by a Uboot outside a warzone. So yes, Doenitz tried pretty damn hard to not sink US merchant ships.
Here’s one:
and another “After mistaking the neutral American steamer Lehigh for a Greek vessel 100 miles West of Freetown, Sierra Leone, U-126 sinks SS Lehigh at 10.51 AM (all 34 crew and 4 Spanish stowaways escape in 4 lifeboats).”
Another:
From what I can see, German Uboots sank exactly one US merchant ship on purpose, and that was after stopping it, finding it carried contraband, and putting the crew in lifeboats. The SS Robin Moor.
What I am trying to say is that the British would have sunk our ships, had we not rolled over and cooperated. Both sides said they had the right to sink ships carry contraband in a warzone. In the end, the Germans sank one on purpose, and the British none on purpose (but several thru mines).
The cite you gave above is the one I gave here. It lists Panamanian ships lost also, and ships attacked by the Japanese.
I count 10 “torpedo” or “torpedo and shells” total in the Atlantic 39-November 41 period, plus one capture (with prize crew ! I’m sure they were all wearing peg legs, too). I count 17 in December 41 alone. So, a clear shift.
I admittedly don’t know that all 10 were definitely positively accidents/misidentifications but even if none were that’d be a rather low tally for close to 24 months of “hunting” at a time when u-boots were still king shit of the waves.
Cool data though, thanks for sharing.
How easy is it to debate someone who gives you all the data you need to undercut his position?? 
Yeah, it wasn’t as many as I thought when I was looking at that cite on my iPhone. I suppose a ‘handful’ is actually a pretty good description. For some reason (probably my own History Channel informed ignorance) I always thought it was a lot more.
Indeed, and it looks quite a bit like the link I posted in Post #67. :p:D
I’ll be honest, I could get used to that sort of thing :).
So it does :o
Oh, he did.
Winston Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 3. London: Cassell, 1948-1954, p. 540