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The American View on the Second World War

post #1 of 14
10/11/08 at 5:39pm
Thread Starter 
Now this is kind of a cumbersome question so you'll have to bear with me.

I was recently watching Saving Private Ryan, to discuss how Historically Authentic it was, and it dawned on me that all of the guys dying on the Beach probably have no vested interest in the European leg of the war. They're getting butchered in Omaha, because Japan attacked them.

What I'm trying to work out is how the average joe felt about the war against the Nazis. Obviously there wasn't an ideological conflict as such, like I said Pearl Harbour brought you into the war, and as a country America was only just getting over a massive depression and near famine. It must have felt to the soldiers that they were stepping into this hellhole to deal with Europe's mess and that their real fight was with Japan. Or maybe I'm talking out of my ass.

Thoughts?
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post #2 of 14
10/11/08 at 5:48pm
Interesting question. My Dad was training to be a bomber pilot when WW2 ended, and my uncle was a fighter pilot in the Pacific (he just died 4 months ago). Conversations with them and others from their age bracket indicate to me that WW2 was a very patriotic event for our country.

How did they feel abut the war with the Nazis? They thought that the Nazis represented pure evil, even though they didn't know about the holocaust aspect until AFTER the war. Many Americans had relatives over in Europe (England and Sweden for my family), so there was quite a bit of concern for our extended families. My dad would have been stationed in Europe had the war gone on. There was also a strong sense/fear that the Nazis wouldn't stop if they conquered Europe.

How did they feel about the war with Japan? That was certainly more personal, considering the fact that they actually attacked US. I know that my uncle was proud to be a pilot in the Pacific (he had GREAT stories) and be fighting the 'revenge' war against the Japanese.

Does that help?
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post #3 of 14
10/11/08 at 5:52pm
Thread Starter 
So there was a perception of European Fascism then. Y'see that's interesting because a lot of the books I've been reading suggested that America had reverted to vaguely isolation stance by the mid 30s
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post #4 of 14
10/11/08 at 5:52pm
I was under the impression that there was already a very significant movement within the country to get involved in the European theater before Pearl Harbor. At the very least, everyone knew that we had a dog in the fight, and it weren't the brautwursts.
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post #5 of 14
10/11/08 at 5:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spike Marshall View Post
So there was a perception of European Fascism then. Y'see that's interesting because a lot of the books I've been reading suggested that America had reverted to vaguely isolation stance by the mid 30s
We had our own issues with the Great Depression; Europe was pretty much left to fend for itself. It wasn't until the war broke out that the real concern grew...as I said, we had relatives in Europe. That gave it a more personal stake.
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post #6 of 14
10/11/08 at 6:01pm
Also, bear in mind that once we entered the war, the government did everything in its power to get us motivated. War bonds, propaganda films, you name it. I never got the impression, based upon what my family told me, that there was any resentment over the fact that we were dying in Europe.
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post #7 of 14
10/11/08 at 6:45pm
Here are two Vanity Fair covers with negative portrayals of Hitler on them from 1932 and 35:
http://www.whosdatedwho.com/what/pho...5142579U7X8T1P
http://www.condenaststore.com/Vanity...x?prodId=16820

And two Washington Post articles detailing censorship of a "March of Time" newsreel titled "Inside Nazi Germany" in 1938:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA04/woo...canceledwp.pdf
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA04/woo...azigermany.pdf

And an account of people yelling "Heil!" and "Phooey!" at each other when it did get shown:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA04/woo...ifilmshown.pdf

(At the basic URL there's an overview.) Papers William Randolph Hearst owned played down German fascism during the 30's, but others didn't. Chaplin's The Great Dictator was in 1940.
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post #8 of 14
10/11/08 at 7:17pm
Imagine years of Anti-Nazi news reels, all the newspapers constantly reporting about Nazi expansion, the Jewish community fleeing from Europe and it gets pretty obvious why the Average Joe had enough hatred for ZE GERMANS to enlist.
take the Anti-Arab/Al Quaida threat & propaganda of nowadays and multiply it by 10 and you have your motivation.
German subs attacked US freighter ships in the Atlantic before the war too.

What would interest me a lot more than the motivation of GI Joe is the goals of the leaders of the US. Did they know that it was a pretty winnable conflict there in Europe and that this "low hanging fruit" would guarantee them decades of hegemony over Europe?
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post #9 of 14
10/11/08 at 7:35pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spike Marshall View Post
So there was a perception of European Fascism then. Y'see that's interesting because a lot of the books I've been reading suggested that America had reverted to vaguely isolation stance by the mid 30s
That's very true actually. WWI was viewed very much as Europe's war after the armistice and America turned inward beginning in the 20s (Mainly due to war fatigue and the whole League of Nations debacle) and was especially isolationist by the mid 30s. It was certainly a tightrope walk for Roosevelt during the 1940 election who knew he had to win but not say he was going to take on Hitler. Many people at the time viewed that as Europe's problem and some (Charles Lindburgh) supported it.

There's actually a pretty interesting book about the 1940 election from the view of the Republican candidate Wendell Wilkile's view called Five Days in Philadelphia and a pretty good explanation as to why FDR ran for a third term (According to that book, there wasn't really any successor)
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post #10 of 14
10/12/08 at 5:22pm
Another point of view is that America entered the war to protect its economic interests and wanted to expand the scope of its influence over Asia and Europe and protect it's closed door policy in Latin America. It really isn't as cut and dry as the Nazi and Japs were bad so we fought 'em. There was a lot of geo-political and international economic considerations that went into it.

What the U.S. was good at, maybe just as good as the Germans, was the propaganda war and the way they manufactured support for the war.

Here's an interesting bit of trivia: There were three times the number of C.O.'s (conscientious objectors) in World War II as in World War I.
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post #11 of 14
10/12/08 at 5:54pm
With the exception of the first Gulf War, WWII was the last war worth fighting for America.
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post #12 of 14
10/12/08 at 10:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spike Marshall View Post
So there was a perception of European Fascism then. Y'see that's interesting because a lot of the books I've been reading suggested that America had reverted to vaguely isolation stance by the mid 30s
The American government claimed to be isolationist but they sent plenty of covert economic and military aid to the British before they formally declared war on Germany and Japan.
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post #13 of 14
10/12/08 at 11:39pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bancroft Agee View Post

Here's an interesting bit of trivia: There were three times the number of C.O.'s (conscientious objectors) in World War II as in World War I.
Of course there would be. Isolationism was at a high point, people remembered the sheer horror of World War I and weren't going to blindly fall into nationalism and I assume that a larger number of people were called into service.
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post #14 of 14
10/12/08 at 11:46pm
Also, Germany declared war on the US before the US declared war on Germany. It's a simple thing, but it kinda matters, and if nothing else, is a good excuse to take to the American people.
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