What were the main ideological causes of World War II?

LEARNING FRENCH THE FUN WAY !

That's the same stupid line of BS you boys tried to peddle after the French and Indian War, and you just couldn't let it drop, until finally you had a revolution on your hands.

Don't make us come over there and spank you boys ! ! !

I suppose your final, and lighthearted, reference here is to the Seven years War ( the French & Indian War here). However, I don't think the historical facts are with you. The Indian aspect of this struggle was mostly fought by the colonists: the French mostly by the British. The French interest in this struggle was mostly to oppose the expansion of British colonialism across the Appalachians and into the Ohio and Mississippi river basins. That expansion was mostly the natural action of the colonists: not the British. Take out the British and I believe you have taken out the key French strategic interest in the situation. Had British colonial governance in North America collapsed before 1750, I doubt very seriously if France would or could have long resisted. They would simply have reached the same conclusion Napoleon reached in 1813, a bit sooner.

I do agree that Britain certainly would have survived WWI and probably WWII (though that might have been close, given the massive support we were providing Britain and Russia as early as 1942), even without U.S. participation in these struggles. However, this assertion ignores some important facts. Most notably is that we had no national interest whatever in getting involved in WWI. That we did become so involved can be chalked up to some combination of British propaganda and American stupidity. In any event we had no selfish or self-serving objective in the war -- something that is very unusual in the modern era. Our involvement in WWI caught us up in the web of entanglements that led to our involvement in WWII - another conflict in which we had little natural interest (Hitler vs Stalin in Europe, and European vs. Japanese colonialism in Asia were more or less equivalent alternatives for us.).

The counter argument to this, of course, is that we did indeed have cultural and political obligations to the relatively 'liberal' Allied governments, relative to their darker opponents, in both wars. An interesting case. However, subsequent history has shown that those 'liberal' governments didn't emerge from all this with much affinity for us. Now it is all Europe for them. Our fault and our mistake to be sure.

WWII kickstarted the US economy from a severe slump and allowed it to dominate the postwar world, for half a century.
And militarily, with German scientists.
The spoils of war.

Small wages for a large effort. The details would have been different, but our status after the 1940s would have been much the same, if not far better.

So, if we didn't enter WWII and Russia (aka the Soviet Union) then defeated Germany single handedly, where would Europe be with a victorious Soviet Union in 1945? Is anyone giving credit to the forethought of our leaders that post war Europe should not be dominated by a victorious Soviet Union that Britain would then have had to be grateful to (I know; don't end a sentence in a preposition).

By the way, I am really only posting for the benefit of other Americans on this political forum. My views are conservative, hawkish, flag-waving American. Obviously that runs counter to many "international" views/opinions. So, rather than get mired down in silly ad hominems, I just post for the purpose of letting other Americans know my views, since we have a vested interest in what the U.S. does. The non-Americans have a vested interest from another perspective naturally. It just isn't of interest to me, since I believe much of that perspective is Eurocentric, whether it is admitted or not. I don't dislike any Europeans; I just don't want to mentally joust with them. It's not worth the effort, and is only possibly giving them the opportunity to annoy an American that subscribes to my conservative views.

Also, just on a personal note. Since my grandparents were happy to leave Europe 125 years ago, and get away from the life and people in Europe, I just believe that Europeans, even 125 years later, still harbor a mindset that made my family happy to become U.S. citizens. Why disrespect their insight?

Small wages? hardly. I'm not ungrateful. But many Americans (Foofie evidently included) seem to think that the USA's entry into the conflict of WWII was based purely on philanthropic motives.

I trust they may appreciate your efforts on their behalf.



And therefore as refreshingly rare here as snowballs in summer.

Just what the motives might have been is a very interesting and complex question.

As of 1914 we had fought more wars with Britain than any other country. Memories of England's support for the Confederacy had not yet dimmed (I suppose that in some quarters that might have been an advantage for England, but not most.)

By a large margin the largest single ethnic group in this country was German. The second largest was of Irishmen whose memories, at that time, of the political,economic, and religious oppression visited on them by Great Britain was very fresh, and augmented by the ongoing revolution in their former homeland. We also had many recent Polish and Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire, who had little love for that Regime. Taken another way, the the socially elite classes on the East Coast were largely Anglophiles while the much larger working classes there and in the Midwest were largely the opposite.

As you know opposition to the war was very strong here in 1914. While there was some support for the Allies in the East, it was matched by greater opposition in other areas, and the general opposition to our entry in the war was widespread and unambiguous. President Woodrow Wilson, first elected in 1912 enjoyed a successful first term, mostly based on some successful trade and agricultural reforms he initiated and successfully ran for reelection in 1916 (the campaign started as always in mid 1915) on a strong and unambiguous campaign of opposition to our entry in the war. (One of his chief slogans was, "He kept us out of War".)

Probably the principal factors that influenced Wilson and then the country to enter the war were the German policy, recently reinstated in 1916, of unrestricted submarine warfare, and the accumulated reports (mostly exaggerated, with more than a little help by the Allies) of German atrocities in Belgium. The British economic blockade of the War Zone around Germany had ignited old American concerns about British control of the seas and had adverse economic effects on our traditional trade as well. However increased trade with the Allies more than made up for the losses and the public outrage over submarine sinkings of merchant ships and others like Lusitania easily trumped all this.

So we got into the war in 1917, at a late moment that, nevertheless, still proved decisive. Two years later, in the largely unhappy outcome at Paris & Versailles, Wilson's unrealistic idealism combined with the realpolitik cynicism of Lloyd-George & Clemenceau and the greed & venality of the minor European actors to merely set the stage for the equally bad second act that was to follow less than two decades later.

There was a general regret in this country that manifested itself in the "Isolationism" of the interwar years and which in turn begat the much less effective "America First" opposition to WWII that followed.

The political struggle here, during and after the war, gave Birth to the inflated notion that this had been a "War to End all Wars".

To many here, Wilson's shallow (in my view) idealism shaped their perceptions of America's motives for getting into the war (and pursuing the League of nations afterwards). To them we were conferring the benefits of supposed American idealism on a disorderly world, caught up in struggle and suffering. To others here we were acting foolishly, forgetting the admonishments of our early leaders to stay out of the affairs of Europe. A mixed bag that produced decidedly mixed results. These attitudes, in a somewhat evolved form, persist here today.

As for WWI, I am convinced that our entry into it was bad for us and probably bad for Europe. Had we not got in, the War would probably ended in a stalemate among the exhausted major participants. The Germans might not have been in such a rush to finish off the Russians before we got in and perhaps the Bolshevik aspect of the Revolution might not have played out. The final resolution of the war would have been more equitable and the European map might not have gone so far to rationalize boundaries along nationalistic lines as to make the remaining violations of that principle the festering wounds they later became. Hitler's political foundation may not have existed in 1930s Germany and Europe might have been spared the horrors of Hitler & Stalin, WWII and the awful ethnic cleansing that followed in the decade after 1945.

Thus for some, there was an at least a primarily unselfish (if not philanthropic) motive (or, perhaps more accurately, explanation) for our entry into WWI: for others it was simply a mistake. Unsurprisingly both parties emerge with some resentments.

Leaving aside the revolution, we had not fought more wars with England than any other country. Even if you include the Revolution, we had only fought two wars with England. We went to war with the Barbary pirates twice, and were at war with them far longr than we were in the two wars with England.

England did not support the Confederacy in the American Civil War. Lord Palmerston certainly would have loved to have done so, because he was a rabid and irrational hater of the United States and of Lincoln and Stanton--but two factors determined his actual policy. One was the Royal Navy, which was not prepared to take on the United States Navy. Palmerston, as foreign secretary, had frequently bullied smaller nations with the threat of the Royal Navy--but the United States Navy was a different kettle of fish. To have fought the United States Navy would have meant fighting them in their home waters, with no large naval bases anywhere nearby, and no base of any appreciable size nearer than Barbados, which was many days sail, and at least two days steaming, from the littoral of the American South. There were no coaling stations then established in the West Indies which could have served the large fleet which the Royal Navy would have needed to assemble. Assembling such a fleet would have required England to abandon the Asiatic Station and the Indian Station, and to have stripped her European flotillas to mere skeleton forces, showing the flag and threatening no one. England was not prepared to fight the United States, even if the United States were engaged in a civil war. Lincoln and Stanton understood this equation clearly, and their casual response to Palmerston's hysteria over the Trent incident shows that Palmerston quickly saw just how the cards lay, and he graciously accepted the rather meaningless American apology because he had little choice. The United States Navy returned Mason and Slidell to an English bottom, but no English ship again attempted to transport Confederate envoys to Europe.

The second reason was the public opinion of England. Reverend Wilberforce had not labored in vain, and the English people were overwhelmingly opposed to the institution of slavery. The sentiment was so strong that mill workers who were thrown out of work because of the collapse of the cotton trade with the American South were nevertheless in favor of the war, and greatly admired Lincoln. The same was true in the mills of France, and Napoleon III was in little better position to intervene, for whatever his personal inclinations--and he had his silly little ambitions in Mexico to occupy him anyway.

The Germans have only become the largest single ethnic group in the United States in the latter half of the 20th century. Until that time, and from about 1845 onward, the Irish were the largest single ethnic group, and it was evident in many things. Not the least of these was the casual manner in which the American authorities dealt with the Fenian Brotherhood, and their newly minted Irish Republican Army, with which they three times invaded Canada from 1866 to 1870.

Don't make **** up, O'George.

Hitler's circumcision at the hand of his parent's vicious rabbi left him with emotional scars and a little dick.

I didn't read anything beyond the second post, but I believe it was the blockade, and Japan's expansionist culture.

This is new to me. Have you any sources to back this up, cj?

Setanta,

And don't overplay relatively minor issues, O'set.

In the first place, it is true that we fought two wars with the Barbary pirates, and only one with Britain - provided, of course that you ignore the Revolutionary war itself and, as well, the relatively minor disputes with Britain over freedom of the seas that punctuated the period from the revolution to the mid 19th century. My point was that, in terms of the associated public impact on Americans, Britain was far more of a threatening potential enemy than was any other nation -- particularly including the loosely organized Barbary pirates.

I agree with you that the domestic political issues in Britain that drove their policy with us during the Civil War was finally settled in favor of their acceptance of the Union, and not the Confederacy. However, it was by no means a certain thing, and the perception of British support of the Confederacy, whether it arose from vague political threats of intervention or alliance; outrages at sea such as the Trent affair; the construction of Confederate commerce raiders in England; or merely their continued operation of Bermuda as a well-defended point of illicit trade in essential goods with the South -- all had an impact on perceptions here. The perception of British support for the South was real enough here, particularly in the early years of the war. The "conversion" of the British on this question rather neatly followed their perceptions of Lincoln's likely success in the war.

Finally, with respect to German immigration -- I think there was relatively little of it after 1918. Most of the German immigration here was associated with domestic political issues in the 1840s and others that emerged to create a second, smaller wave soon after the turn of the 20th century. Nearly all of our German immigrants were here by the time our participation in WWI became an issue in 1915 & 1916. On this point you are simply wrong.

aside from shiksa and his small dick problem, this thread has been an interesting read.

The issue with English impressment of American soldiers was such a non-issue that Jefferson really missed the boat when he failed to react as the nation wanted to the incident between USS Chesapeake and HMS Leopard in 1807. The nation would willingly have gone to war then, but by 1812, "Mr. Madison's War" immediately became an unpopular political decision. Napoleon had wisely revoked Milan Decree soon after the "Chesapeake affair," and there was an English ship bearing the news of the revocation of the orders in council on the way to the United States at the time that war was declared in 1812. One could as well make the case that the "Quasi war" with France in the Caribbean from 1798 to 1800 was as significant.

I seriously wonder what you mean by "outrages." The "Trent affair" was an outrage to the English--and then only to the die hard Tories upon whom Palmerston relied. There were only two confederate commerce raiders built in England, the most famous originally known as SS Enrica, she was rechristened CSS Alabama--after she had escaped the British government agents who were coming to Liverpool by train to arrest the Confederate agents and impound the ship. The raider CSS Florida had been commissioned and purchased under false pretenses, and when she attempted to use Bermuda as a rendezvous with a tender ship, the Governor refused her entry to the port. The main reason that United States agents were able to convince the British authorities to take steps to prevent the delivery of SS Enrica to a Confederate agent (the uncle of Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., as it happens) was the embarrassment Palmerston's government had suffered over the affair of SS Oreto, which had become CSS Florida. SS Oreto had been commissioned in March, 1862, and SS Enrica (the future Alabama) was sailed away in August, 1862 before her final fitting out precisely because of the Oreto/Florida affair made it certain the British officials would attempt to interfere. After the war, the English accepted an adjudication tribunal, and $6,000,000 in damages were awarded, and paid for the depredations of CSS Alabama. There was no significant perception at the time that England would actively enter the war on the Confederate side, nor that she would give significant aid and comfort to the Confederate States. People aren't fools--they knew about Palmerston's attitude toward the United States and Lincoln and Stanton, and they also knew his hands were tied.

It was certainly no issue by 1914. You may as well invoke the 1905 Venezuelan dispute which brought England and the United States to the brink of war as to suggest that the hatred of Palmerston in the 1860s had any effect on American public opinion in 1914.

German immigration to the United States became significant after 1945, and it was not until then that people of German descent passed people of Irish descent to take honors (if honor it be) as the most numerous immigrant group. The flight of Germans after 1848 was largely among middle class men and their families who had supported or participated in the revolutionary governments which tried to break away from Prussia or Austria. German ethnicity was never an important issue in 1916--certainly not as it was with the German-American Bund in the 1930s.

On that point, you are simply wrong.

Good retort, though I am still skeptical on that point. I can't yet demonstrate that you are wrong, but am mindful of the extent of German immigration in the mid 19th century and at the turn of the 20th. I would be surprised to learn that we imported enough German rocket engineers after WWII to make a large difference. I will research the question.

The Trent affair involved the prior conspiracy by the Confederacy and the British government to transport Confederate envoys through the Union blockade to Britain early in the war. I believe they did this in a British vessel conveniently purchased for the purpose, and that they were later transferred to a British ship and after a stop in St. Thomas were on their way to Britain in yet another of their ships when they were captured.

At about the same time Britain made a Neutrality declaration that, in effect, constituted recognition of the Confederacy by giving it free access to British ports anywhere (Bermuda and St Thomas most notably) and all the other rights attendant to a lawful belligerent in a war among nations. This alone created the "issue" of British support in the public mind and within the Union Government, because we declared the war to be a purely domestic issue involving only dissident states that had no right to the independent existence as a new nation as they claimed.

I agree with your points about the internal political debate within Britain and their ultimate purposeful support for the Union. However in the early (and most desperate) years of the War Britain was clearly supporting the Confederacy, if for no other reason than to discipline the unruly (in their perception) government of this country. The fact also remains that the ultimate resolution of the internal political debate in England over the American combatants and the associated slavery issue followed amazingly closely with Union success in prosecuting the war. This was certainly how Seward and Lincoln's cabinet saw things and also how the union press reported the matter.

Well it usually gets interesting when Setanta is around and he gets challenged - even on a secondary point.

You too george. i just read and usually learn something i didn't know.

surely this is against the TOS

you have to argue pointlessly and without end. Thats a2k.