Historically stupid people

I’d like to address the first of the two points you’ve raised. Below is material from Herbert Hoover’s book Freedom Betrayed, p. 846.

The third wrong turning was the imposition of the economic sanctions in July. That was undeclared war on Japan by which starvation and ruin stared her in the face and if continued would soon be war, for the simple reason that no people of dignity would run up the white flag under such provocation. It could effect no strategic purpose in the protection of the United States or China or even the British Empire. The fourth wrong turning was certainly the rejection of the Konoye proposals of September and the Emperor’s proposals of November. . . . Konoye had begun his negotiations two months before the sanctions. . . . It can never be forgotten that three times during 1941 Japan made overtures for peace negotiation. America never made one unless a futile proposal to the Emperor the day before Pearl Harbor could be called peace.

Page 833:

[MacArthur] said that Roosevelt could have made peace with Konoye in September 1941 and could have obtained all of the American objectives in the Pacific and the freedom of China and probably Manchuria. He said Konoye was authorized by the Emperor to agree to complete withdrawal.

If Japanese withdrawal from China could have been achieved through negotiation, then why did the FDR administration refuse to negotiate? Why did FDR want to provoke a Japanese attack?

War with Japan was intended to achieve two important strategic objectives. The immediate objective was to tie down the bulk of Japanese military strength in a war against the U.S.; thereby preventing Japan from launching an invasion of the Soviet Union. This would allow the Soviets to concentrate their strength on their western front, while avoiding a two front war. The second objective was to get Germany to declare war on the U.S. By the end of 1941 FDR had achieved both these objectives.

Apparently there’s a new version of Roots coming out soon.

Wonder if it’ll repeat the lie about white slavers “capturing” Africans, or show the reality of slavery already being big business in Africa.

….but I can still say I am an European American ?

Zooey - being neither African nor American I would nevertheless suggest that the term is not used by stupid, lazy people to delineate their origins.

The aim of the term is instead to create a common bond across all those of African descent, regardless of specific country or tribe. Avoiding the fragmentation that would result from a focus on tribe or nation rather than continent seems pretty smart to me.

I would call the historically stupid people those who base all of their beliefs on what they have seen in Hollywood movies and allied produced news and literature. I use to be stupid like that, but not any more!

We’re all of African descent if you look far enough back.

Very few “African” Americans are of purely recent African ancestry; but is fashionable for them to ignore their European antecedents; similarly many more supposedly “White” Americans have a dash of African blood than realise it.

Personally, I find any system or practice that arbitrarily divides people into neatly segregated “races” to be offensive, unhelpful and just plain inaccurate.

Having separate “Black” and therefore presumably “White” history is among the most ridiculous examples.

@Flashman:

We’re all of African descent if you look far enough back.

Very few “African” Americans are of purely recent African ancestry; but is fashionable for them to ignore their European antecedents; similarly many more supposedly “White” Americans have a dash of African blood than realise it.

Personally, I find any system or practice that arbitrarily divides people into neatly segregated “races” to be offensive, unhelpful and just plain inaccurate.

Having separate “Black” and therefore presumably “White” history is among the most ridiculous examples.

The idea that there is no such thing as race, or that race is a “social construct,” is a flat-out lie. One of many lies told by the Establishment.

I’m not accusing you of being dishonest. The majority of people of people who deny the existence of race are sincere in their expressions. They have been lied to, they have swallowed those lies, and now repeat them with earnest conviction. That in no way alters the fact that the Establishment’s position on race, like all its positions, is based on deception. One almost needs to coin a new term–such as hyper-deception–to describe the Establishment’s factual claims, its ethos, and its ideology.

What I object to is making race the most important thing about people; the sole basis for a person’s identity. It’s simply inverted fascism. Divide people into separate races and you divide families.

I’m outwardly European but have a dash of Asian ancestry (Indian, Chinese, whatever); it doesn’t effect who I am.

Quite right Flashman!

Ah KurtGodel… I love you man!  You are so crazy!  :mrgreen:

Yeah, I’ve read parts of that book by Hoover… you might want to check up on its reputation as an actual respected historical work because its roundly considered hack history, a revanchist piece of writing by a guy who lost an election to the guy who ran the war.

I agree with Zooey72, the idea that “THE US FORCED JAPAN INTO WAR!” has no basis. The logic goes as thus:

1. Since 1937 Japan has waged a massive war of aggression against china.

2. Belatedly, in 1941!, the US says stop or we will cut off oil. (There is no “duty” for one country to trade with another anyway, the US just had a great reason to stop)

3. Japan’s response is, ok, we will continue our war and but also attack you and other allies against whom we should have realized we had no chance of winning! YAAY!

Wouldn’t the logical choice have been, um, maybe scale back your aggression? If Japan had agreed to pull out of, say, most of China/French Indo, but kept Manchuria, they maybe, maybe, could have pulled it off. But the reality was there was no going back by 1941.

I’ve read up on Japanese pre-war history, and its pretty dark.  Assassinations, political instability, economic chaos, earthquakes, etc, slowly driving the county into the arms of the militarists, who it might be added acted somewhat independently of any civil authority. The country was careening to some hard landing of one kind or another, and they crashed the plane all by themselves.

@Flashman:

What I object to is making race the most important thing about people; the sole basis for a person’s identity. It’s simply inverted fascism. Divide people into separate races and you divide families.

I’m outwardly European but have a dash of Asian ancestry (Indian, Chinese, whatever); it doesn’t effect who I am.

I agree 100%.

@Karl7:

Ah KurtGodel… I love you man!  You are so crazy!  :mrgreen:

Wouldn’t the logical choice have been, um, maybe scale back your aggression? If Japan had agreed to pull out of, say, most of China/French Indo, but kept Manchuria, they maybe, maybe, could have pulled it off. But the reality was there was no going back by 1941.

Good points but IMO FDR would have gotten this war through whatever means necessary, perhaps a Gulf of Tonkin Incident sort of thing. So let’s say Japan pulls out of China and loses all initiative and position there. Then US “finds” its reason(I’m sure Japan understood the intentions of the US/Great Britain when launching Lusitania in 1915) to declare war and now Japan is in the worst poisiton possible.
  The best chance for a peaceful route to peace(as opposed to the “Arsenal of democracy” dropping the hammer) was Hitler’s efforts to unite his allies of Nationalist China and Japan. Sad that Japan was unwilling as that cost a countless number of lives. I’m not saying Japan didn’t commit evil atrocities- they very much did- but unless the people of the United States burn with war fever, the US has no responsibility to help the people of China by sanctioning Japan, especially if doing so would engulf the US people into another devastating war, as the US gov gleefully knew it would.

There is evidence that Roosevelt purposely drew Japan into the war. One example would be moving the Pacific fleet to Hawaii when it would have been safer to remain based on the West Coast. Another is that none of the USA’s most modern vessels were moored in Pearl harbor on December 7th. The latest equipment, including all carriers, just “happened” to be elsewhere that day.

@Der:

There is evidence that Roosevelt purposely drew Japan into the war. One example would be moving the Pacific fleet to Hawaii when it would have been safer to remain based on the West Coast. Another is that none of the USA’s most modern vessels were moored in Pearl harbor on December 7th. The latest equipment, including all carriers, just “happened” to be elsewhere that day.

Just going by battleships alone, the evidence doesn’t really support the implication that the US Navy kept its most modern units away from Pearl Harbor (deliberately or otherwise).  The most modern fully-operational battleship in the USN at the time was the brand-new North Carolina, which at the time of Pearl Harbor was in the Atlantic for the good reason that she had just completed her shakedown cruise there (specifically in the Caribbean).  The next most modern (which in this case means of early 1920s vintage) fully-operational battleships in the USN at the time were the three completed units of the Colorado class: Colorado, Maryland and West Virginia.  At the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Colorado was in Puget Sound where she had been undergoing an overhaul since the summer of 1941.  Maryland and West Virginia were both at Pearl Harbor during the attack and were both damaged.  In other words, of the four most modern fully-operational battleship in the USN at the time, half of them were at Pearl during the attack, and the other two were away for reasons that had nothing to do with any contrivances by FDR and company.

@Karl7:

Ah KurtGodel… I love you man!  You are so crazy!  :mrgreen:

Yeah, I’ve read parts of that book by Hoover… you might want to check up on its reputation as an actual respected historical work because its roundly considered hack history, a revanchist piece of writing by a guy who lost an election to the guy who ran the war.

I agree with Zooey72, the idea that “THE US FORCED JAPAN INTO WAR!” has no basis. The logic goes as thus:

1. Since 1937 Japan has waged a massive war of aggression against china.

2. Belatedly, in 1941!, the US says stop or we will cut off oil. (There is no “duty” for one country to trade with another anyway, the US just had a great reason to stop)

3. Japan’s response is, ok, we will continue our war and but also attack you and other allies against whom we should have realized we had no chance of winning! YAAY!

Wouldn’t the logical choice have been, um, maybe scale back your aggression? If Japan had agreed to pull out of, say, most of China/French Indo, but kept Manchuria, they maybe, maybe, could have pulled it off. But the reality was there was no going back by 1941.

I’ve read up on Japanese pre-war history, and its pretty dark.  Assassinations, political instability, economic chaos, earthquakes, etc, slowly driving the county into the arms of the militarists, who it might be added acted somewhat independently of any civil authority. The country was careening to some hard landing of one kind or another, and they crashed the plane all by themselves.

I don’t know, and don’t care, what the Establishment’s opinion is about Herbert Hoover’s book. I do not respect the Establishment’s position on this issue, or on any other issue. The first question the Establishment asks on any politically sensitive issue is always, “How much deception can we get away with?”

That said, I know enough about WWII to be reasonably good at detecting errors an author might make. I’m not claiming perfection in that regard, and it’s quite possible for an author to make errors which slip by me. In the case of Hoover’s book, I detected very few errors. The few I did detect always made the Allied cause seem more favorable than it actually was. If the Establishment is representing Hoover’s book as revaunchist history then, as usual, the Establishment is lying. If they are suggesting that it was written in bitterness, in an effort to discredit the man who’d beaten Hoover in an election, then that’s their usual tactic of attacking a message they don’t like by attacking the messenger.

That the U.S. deliberately pushed Japan into war has been established, and not just by Hoover. Other authors have delved into the subject in more detail, and have presented a larger body of evidence than that which Hoover presented. (Although Hoover’s evidence, by itself, is quite compelling.) Diana West, for example, has focused on the treason which existed within the FDR administration, and on the large numbers of people within that administration who owed their loyalty first and foremost to the Soviet Union. The war against Japan was intended to serve Soviet objectives, by allowing Stalin to focus on his west front only. The United States would keep Japan busy–too busy to launch any kind of serious invasion of the U.S.S.R. from the east. (That was also Stalin’s reason for promoting war between the Chinese nationalists and Japan.)

Diana West points out that Japan had taken aggressive action against China in 1937. But it was not until 1941–shortly after Germany invaded the Soviet Union–that FDR did anything about it. FDR’s action was not limited to the oil embargo only; although that alone would have been sufficient to force Japan to either conquer the Dutch East Indies or face military and economic collapse. (The U.S. had somehow persuaded the Netherlands to join in the embargo, even though provoking Japan in that way was clearly not in Dutch best interests. Not when the Dutch East Indies were just sitting there, ripe for the taking.)

FDR also embraced a series of actions which seemed intended to produce an emotional response among Japanese leadership. A warlike response. These steps included moving the Pacific Fleet from California to Hawaii, basing strategic bombers in the Philippines so that they’d be able to bomb the Japanese homeland, “pop-up cruises” in which U.S. military ships deliberately and repeatedly violated the integrity of Japanese territorial waters, etc. On the other hand, FDR consistently refused to meet with Japanese leaders, or to discuss with them what actions he’d wanted them to take in order to get these warlike measures to stop. None of the actions FDR actually took bear any relationship at all to his claimed objective, of wanting to promote peace between Japan and China. On the contrary: he “acted as if” his goal was to get exactly the response Japan gave us on December 7th. The U.S. had broken Japan’s diplomatic code well before the Pearl Harbor attack. We knew our actions were pushing Japan into war, and we even had an approximate timeframe as to when the attack would take place. Given these data, FDR chose to keep pushing, keep provoking.

For anyone interested in a summary/review of Hoover’s book look here: http://www.claremont.org/crb/book-review/221/

Kurt, I have disagree with your basic history here:

1. Japan and the Soviet Union clashed in 1939, and Japan’s conclusion was that it couldn’t fight the USSR and instead should expand in the Pacific: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Khalkhin_Gol#Japanese_assessment_and_reforms

2. The idea that after you, i.e. Japan, have been waging a massive war of aggression and just invaded another neutral territory, i.e. French Indo China, threatening even greater territorial expansion, another regional power moves to beef up its military presence in the region is “provocative” is ridiculous. That’s like saying, “Even though I’m out raping and pillaging my neighbors, how dare the people down the street arm themselves! They are provoking me to attack them!”  Your entire argument here makes no sense.  Once a major power engages in unilateral acts of aggression, it must expect the possibility that others may intervene.  If not, then you are being naive.

3. Finally, I get the sense you need to equalize the moral standing of Japan and the US, like: “All powers are corrupt and self interested and thus no one power can be judge to be better than another… yada yada yada…”

Well, I am here to tell you, sure the US of the 1930s wasn’t perfect, i.e. segregation, but was morally superior to the fanaticist, racist, fascist, expansionist Japanese Empire. There was no moral equivalency between the two.

I mean, what are you saying?  By 1941 you had two major powers running wild across the globe, killing and invading without accountability. In 1941, Germany was beyond the pale, but do you think Japan could have been brought back into some sort of international accord by a negotiated settlement?

I seriously ask you Kurt: What negotiated settlement in 1941 do you think Japan would have agreed to? Withdrawal from Indo China and China? Any such settlement would have discredited the militarists, and they knew they could never agree to it. By 1941 Japan’s leaders had navigated itself into a position where war would be inevitable no matter what the US did or didn’t do. They deludedly thought they could win, that they were superior. Again, with such an attitude, how can think that what the US did or didn’t do would have any real effect on Japanese planning?  To them, they were the divine people, entitled by heaven to rule Asia!

@Karl7:

For anyone interested in a summary/review of Hoover’s book look here: http://www.claremont.org/crb/book-review/221/

Kurt, I have disagree with your basic history here:

1. Japan and the Soviet Union clashed in 1939, and Japan’s conclusion was that it couldn’t fight the USSR and instead should expand in the Pacific: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Khalkhin_Gol#Japanese_assessment_and_reforms

2. The idea that after you, i.e. Japan, have been waging a massive war of aggression and just invaded another neutral territory, i.e. French Indo China, threatening even greater territorial expansion, another regional power moves to beef up its military presence in the region is “provocative” is ridiculous. That’s like saying, “Even though I’m out raping and pillaging my neighbors, how dare the people down the street arm themselves! They are provoking me to attack them!”  Your entire argument here makes no sense.  Once a major power engages in unilateral acts of aggression, it must expect the possibility that others may intervene.  If not, then you are being naive.

3. Finally, I get the sense you need to equalize the moral standing of Japan and the US, like: “All powers are corrupt and self interested and thus no one power can be judge to be better than another… yada yada yada…”

Well, I am here to tell you, sure the US of the 1930s wasn’t perfect, i.e. segregation, but was morally superior to the fanaticist, racist, fascist, expansionist Japanese Empire. There was no moral equivalency between the two.

I mean, what are you saying?  By 1941 you had two major powers running wild across the globe, killing and invading without accountability. In 1941, Germany was beyond the pale, but do you think Japan could have been brought back into some sort of international accord by a negotiated settlement?

I seriously ask you Kurt: What negotiated settlement in 1941 do you think Japan would have agreed to? Withdrawal from Indo China and China? Any such settlement would have discredited the militarists, and they knew they could never agree to it. By 1941 Japan’s leaders had navigated itself into a position where war would be inevitable no matter what the US did or didn’t do. They deludedly thought they could win, that they were superior. Again, with such an attitude, how can think that what the US did or didn’t do would have any real effect on Japanese planning?  To them, they were the divine people, entitled by heaven to rule Asia!

The link you provided was not so much a book review of Freedom Betrayed, as it was a broader description of both isolationist and interventionist forces in American politics. The article’s author writes from a pro-interventionist perspective. But the specific arguments Hoover made against our interventionism in WWI and in WWII are not addressed in the article. Without even attempting to refute a single anti-interventionist point Hoover had made in his book, the author presents the case in favor of interventionism using standard-issue talking points, and by arguing that the United States is now so committed to interventionism that to change course could lead to very serious consequences.

You are correct to state that Japan and the Soviet Union waged an undeclared war in 1939, and that the Soviets emerged the victor. That was a point Victor Suvorov emphasized in his book. Suvorov also mentioned the fact that both sides had remained silent about this. Japan, because they didn’t want to publicize what they probably saw as a humiliating, shameful defeat. And the Soviets, because Stalin didn’t want to alert potential future victims to what his army had done to Japan.

However, Stalin could not be certain that Japan would not launch an invasion against the U.S.S.R., to go along with the German invasion. To guard against that possibility, he stationed a large part of his army on his eastern front. But after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Stalin sent 100 divisions west across the Trans-Siberian railway. They arrived in the middle of winter, and took the Germans completely by surprise. (The initial German invasion force consisted of 100 divisions. While a German division was somewhat larger than a Soviet division, we are still talking about a major reinforcement of the Soviet western front.) While pro-Soviet traitors such as Sorge and others did their best to guide Japanese foreign policy away from anti-Soviet aggression and toward anti-American aggression, Stalin could not be sure those efforts would succeed. Not until after the decision to attack Pearl Harbor had been made.

Not only did the Pearl Harbor attack assure Stalin he’d get a one front war, it also helped FDR achieve his goal of getting the U.S. involved in the war in Europe, on the side of the Soviet Union. U.S. government documents leaked in the weeks leading up to Pearl had led Hitler to believe that it was only a matter of time before the U.S. declared war on Germany. Those documents also made the case that the U.S. could not fight a two ocean war–at least not any time soon. If it was at war against Japan, its navy would be so busy in the Pacific it wouldn’t have the ships it needed to protect Lend-Lease transports in the Atlantic. By declaring war sooner rather than later, Hitler could deprive the Soviets and the British of a large portion of the tanks, artillery pieces, military aircraft, and other weapons the U.S. was sending them. Those leaked documents were instrumental in Hitler’s decision to declare war against the U.S. after Japan had launched its Pearl Harbor attack.

As for morality: the Allies murdered more people than did the Axis. That remains true even if you subtract Soviet mass murders from the Allied total. (Why anyone would subtract those murders is not clear, considering that in the '30s and early to mid '40s all the major Western democracies deliberately embraced pro-Soviet foreign policies.) Western democratic mass murder consisted of the food blockade imposed on Germany during the war, which resulted in millions or tens of millions of deaths. It also consisted of JCS 1067, which resulted in an estimated 6 million deaths in postwar western Germany. Further there was Operation Keelhaul, which resulted in the deaths of unknown (but very large) number of refugees from the Soviet Union. And finally there was the treatment of German POWs, which again resulted in large numbers of deaths. The claim that the U.S. was somehow morally superior to Japan can be made only if we are willing to sweep all those mass murders under the rug. One must also sweep under the rug the fact that FDR deliberately, happily embraced a pro-Soviet foreign policy.

As an American, I firmly believe my nation’s political and plutocratic Establishment is evil, and is not morally superior to anyone. That Establishment’s grim and shameful track record of mass murder during and shortly after WWII is proof that this evil goes back at least half a century.

@Der:

There is evidence that Roosevelt purposely drew Japan into the war. One example would be moving the Pacific fleet to Hawaii when it would have been safer to remain based on the West Coast. Another is that none of the USA’s most modern vessels were moored in Pearl harbor on December 7th. The latest equipment, including all carriers, just “happened” to be elsewhere that day.

Good sir, this is not evidence at all. At best it could only be circumstantial, but I think even that would be pushing it.

I’ve been reading up on this “U.S. provoked Japan to attack U.S”-theory, as it was rather new to me. I don’t find it convincing.

My general impression of the theory is that is seems very much based on a U.S. point of view. Which can be OK, but it becomes too narrow. Thinking Japan had no other option that attacking after the embargo was at force, seems to generally underestemate the value of diplomacy and international trade.

Also it seems based almost entirely on hindsight. FDR did this or that, which led to certain consequences. Accordingly, the consequences were wanted. Isn’t this too shallow? It almost looks like conspiracy theories, everything is part of someone’s great plan. Nothing happens by coincidence and the other party’s actions are always anticipated and desired…

For example Hoover’s book, which I only know through the article. Hoover seems to argue it was a waste for U.S. to get involved in the European theatre, since Nazi-Germany never could conquer the Soviet, because of the vast distances, hard winters, mud on the Eastern front and so on. Sure, it is easy to say after the war, when the outcome is well known. But I strongly doubt the common understanding late 1941 or even early 1942 was in line with that. At that moment Nazi-Germany had conquered half of Europe, practically never lost any considerable battles or failed hugely in any way yet - maybe apart from battle of Britain, if the Sealion-threat even was off by then.

And Hoover seems to argue that the U.S. should only send enough material to U.K. to neutralize the Sealion-threat. Well, who during the war knew exactly the amount of required materials? Tranferred to the conflicts of today, the question would have been how much materials and men the U.S. would need to defeat the taliban 15 years ago. Or to stabilize Iraq? Maybe some skilled military official could give an estimate. And still be completely off, as he would of course fail to predict the firing of the Iraqi army and the consequences thereof. Or fail to see the Arab spring, which led to the civil war in Syria, which made room for the ISIS, which destabilized half the Middle East including Iraq. It is easy for someone to come up with the answer in 10 or 50 years time. But when the heat is on? Hindsight!