#isolationist

I'm not even making an accusation of ideological inversion.

Most of The American Left in 1940 were with the Isolationists on the subject of entering the War in Europe. BreadTube videos want to focus only on the Right Wing Isolationists and pretend it was only a right wing phenomena among Nazi Sympathizers, but it wasn't.

The CPUSA took their marching orders form Moscow all through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but it wasn't just the same, it was the same with all three Trotskyist parties and the Socialist Parties that predated 1917 and the Anarchists including some who were Jewish (Emma Goldman and Paul Goodman) and everyone still alive who had been Anti-War during WW1 falsely comparing WW2 to that war just as people are now falsely comparing this to Iraq. That includes Suffragettes like the first woman ever Elected to Congress who even voted agaisnt the War after Pearl Harbor and Dorothy Day.

And even a revered Black Civil Rights leader who argued we should flat out root for Japan because they are resisting White Western Imperialism, his name was W. E. B. Du Bois.

Australia is faced with the reality of treasonous Trump’s America is no longer a reliable ally. Switching sides during a war is not the behaviour of the America we have come to know and rely on. The latest withdrawal of US support for Ukraine in its fight to resist the illegal invasion by Russia makes a mockery of the last 3 years. It also condemns the unwise decision by the Morrison government…

Big River Dream - Isolationist

HAVNrecords

The Isolationist

lost in a hollow

At home

Its more than geography but that is a big factor, like Pearl Harbor was the largest death toll on American soil during the war (discounting our colonies which oh yeah we had).  Like German had a few subs but what could they have done.  LIke for the US, this was almost entirely an offensive war, we attacked the Germans in North Africa and France, and we attacked Japan in the pacific so that was a factor. 

Another was that we weren’t really one of the main combatatns in the war at least inititally, the Pacific War was Japan’s attempt to conquer (i’m sorry “liberate”) China, whic hthe US had economic interest in but it wasn’t like..on our border.  And German’s genocidal war to take over Europe was kinda distant to us too, until Pearl Harbor our only main reason to get involved was moral, and we completely failed on that front (Don’t even get me started about the isolationist movement in the 30s it pisses me off).  But the United States just isn’t in the worse fighting until after 1941, its a war happening away from us. 

The second major point is....the contribution question.  God I hate this historical debate....basically lets be clear, the Soviet Union did the vast majority the killing and the dying against the Nazis.  Somewhere like 30-40 million Soviets Die in WWII and 90% of all Nazi losses happen on the Eastern Front (though the Soviet Union like the US took their sweet time getting into the war but that is another story).  So the worse of the fighting in Europe was not what the Americans were experiencing, like the Battle of the Bulge is a skirmish on the Eastern Front.  However, the US still did a lot of fighting in the war and were necessary for the Soviets to win when they did, because there is more to war than just body counts, but we have to be honest, the war in North Africa and the Invasion of France are just not the same level of bloody as the fighting in the Ukraine.   

Now the United States did do a lot of heavy fighting in the Pacific (fun fact, I have met actual Soviet Historians who didn’t know that the US entered the war only a few months after the Soviet Union because of Pearl Harbor), but the Japanese military was just...so utterly terrible at everything so while the United States suffered losses, the fight was so blatantly mismaged in America’s favor that losses weren’t...THAT...bad.  Relatively speaking, the United States still losses hundreds of thousands of lives.  And even then, the US joined the fight later so Japan was already bogged down in their losing war in China (Japan in WWII is just....ugg).  And in the last two years of the War, the US just has such air superiority that they can reduce losses even more.  

And in both Europe and the Pacific, the Fascists we were fighting had already...kinda burned out.  Like the Best German troops aren’t in Normandy, they are in the Ukraine.  The Best Japanese Troops...are already dead in Shanghai.  We joined late so (especially with Germany) we are fighting the left overs, we don’t fight any of the powers when they are fresh.  

Finally, the US’ greatest contribution to the war was not military (though again, did a lot there) it was in terms of stuff.  The US had the best industry in the world, greatest capacity for military outputs, and served as the primary producing of....STUFF in the war.  We made bullets, tanks, bombs, planes, guns, food, clothes, tents, boots, medicine, everything, America produced it.  So any time we fought hte Fascists, whose industry was just a complete joke, the American solider has this massive advantage in just...stuff.  The American soldier is better fed, unusually has a better gun, has more support, and often outnumbers their opponent.  Especially against Japan, whose army wasn’t even given a field kit, it was pretty comical.  

So I don’t want to say that the Untied States didn’t have to work to win, and a lot of Americans died and suffered, but the War is basically over for the Fascists once America enters the war.  Which meant that when the war was over...the Untied States was the only major country whose civilian economy was still working fine, which is why from 1945 onwards the United States was the world superpower.