So, basically, you're saying you don't want to hear the opinion of people who you disagree with? That sounds really, really closed minded to me.

I think many people here have totally lost the object of an argument. The point is to kindly state your position, and to try to convince the other of your position. Here the objective is just to do as much damage to your opponent as possible, with-out trying to convince them at all. Remember that just because you have difference of opinion, is no reason to hate that person. I have not said anything that is mean, hurtful, or hateful. I'm just stating my opinion. If you don’t like it, the object it to try to convince me otherwise, not to just ignore it. Ignoring things doesn’t make them go away. The purpose of a debate is to gain a brother, not make an enemy.

Unfortunately, you neglected to insert the qualifier "some" into your original post:

"Don't forget how after WWII, after liberating the French from fascist rule, how they were hoping the Soviets would conquer them so they could enjoy the benefits of the communist iron fist."

I'm sure there are "some" Americans who would have also welcomed communist rule. This doesn't condemn the whole country, though.



So, basically, the USA gave "tentative and non-reliable support" up until they were directly attacked? France assisted the USA in their Revolution WITHOUT being attacked. My entire point here is simply to show the hypocrisy of expecting other countries to be there for you when you want them to but not feeling the need to be there for them.

n. ad·ver·si·ty
n. pl. ad·ver·si·ties

1. A state of hardship or affliction; misfortune.
2. A calamitous event.

Debating is good. Debating to cause above definition, bad. If you would look at the other's posts pertaining to you, you would see a trend. I think you need to do something about that.

Actually, one of the largest reasons that French helped the U.S. was to help weaken their long-standing enemy, Great Britain.

That's another thing I find funny, on the one hand Americans will play the argument that "oh so maybe we shouldn't have liberated everyone in WW2 after all ".

And when it suits them they'll play the other side "well we saved everyone in WW2, you all owe us".

Gratitude must be in the American dictionary somewhere after "gimme" and "gotcha".

Of course it was. And the US's involvement in WW2 (in Europe) was entirely due to Hitler's generosity in declaring war on the US along with Japan. If he hadn't (and it's strange that he upheld THAT agreement, when he had just violated his one with the Soviet Union) it's not all that likely that the USA would have continued after beating Japan. And if Japan had not attacked the US (though it was kind of forced to) then it's doubtful the USA would have done anything other than issue economic sanctions.

Countries act in their own interest: thus my point about it being silly to expect help whenever it is asked but not to give it unless there is a compelling personal reason.

*BEEP* *BEEP* GRAMMER NATZI ALERT *BEEP* *BEEP*

Wasn't my post



The US government gave as much support as it could get away with given the public's lack of interest in the war. Roosevelt wanted to start sending troops from day 1, but he had no support for that on the home front



As I said before, it took the US being attacked to get the public behind the war. If the US didn't want to help at all, the US certainly wouldn't have been sending aid to the aliies on the Western front. Roosevelt recognized that Hitler was a threat and spent years trying to get more involved, but he lacked the public support. You're failing to understand the general mood of the US at the time. The US was extremely isolationist after having comitted troops to WWI. Then, the Great Depression hit, which left people worrying more about their next meal rather than what was happening across the Atlantic.



Why don't you jsut stereotype all Americans there. Oh wait. You took care of that jsut fine



Do you even know what a grammar nazi is?

It's "Nazi".

And "grammar".

And he wasn't correcting your grammar...

Yes.

Way to generalize, buck-o.



Freelancer touched on most of what I wanted to say; your hypothesis on whether or not the U.S. would have engaged Hitler after Japan's defeat is entirely without base. And why was Japan "forced to" attack America? Because we wouldn't supply them with oil why they attacked China?

That's priceless considering how many times you've ignored posts that refute your arguments.

Geez, what happened to this thread. I say that this discussion is officially over. No one doubts Obi's level of intelligence, so leave him be. Stop hijacking my thread.

<3 Dj Yoshi
That is great!

/me looks at crowbar.

What?

Um... Prussia basically raped France each time they fought. i dont know where you got the idea that France won territory from Germany. The only time that happened was after WW1 & 2.

Cinco de Mayo: many mistake this day as the day Mexico gained its independence. That is a common mistake. It is, in fact, the global celebration of the beginning of a long series of French losses.

Indeed. Mexico defeated the French and expelled the from Mexico

Ever since the end of World War II. You know, when they had the Soviets breathing down their neck and they needed us to build a base at Ramstein in order to help deter a Russian invasion.



But when we did join the war, the scales very quickly fell in Allied favor. We kicked some fascist arse. On the other hand, the French only joined the Revolution when the scales has already tipped in our favor at the battle of Saratoga. It wasn't a mission of goodwill on their part, but more of an opportunity to take part in the beating of their long-time enemy.

Except, of course, for LaFayette. He had it going on!



Actually, they lost quite a bit of territory to Germany before the war, which was one of the big causes of the tension between nations at the time. They did fight pretty well in WWI, though. I'll give you that.



Of course it was their fault. They had the world's largest army at the time, but they completely lacked the foresight to ever even counterattack the blitzkrieg assault. De Gaulle almost held the Nazis back, but the French Army command never got around to reinforcing his position, so he was forced to withdraw and allow the Germans to march into Paris relatively unopposed.



The Dutch didn't have nearly as powerful an armed forces as France supposedly did, either. Remember, at the time, France was still considered a world power.



Those "some" Americans never installed a socialist government in Washington, either.



And there exactly is the short-sightedness of Europe. The war on terrorism is not an American conflict. It is a Western conflict. America is simply the most powerful Western nation, and is therefore a juicier target. But surely I don't need to remind anyone of Madrid, or the French hostages taken in Iraq a few months ago. Terrorists hate Europe just as much as they hate us. And, as demonstrated by the Spanish, Europeans tend to be more likely to buckle under pressure than we do, making them at the very least more amusing targets for sadistic terrorists.



Should we not have acted in Somalia or Bosnia? I'm not sure what America gained by trying to feed starving Somalians, but I remember there being no objections to the U.N. efforts to bring peace to the region. (Until it started getting a little hard and Clinton decided to pull the plug on the operation...)

Woops! Sorry 'bout that!



No, I understand. I'm not criticising the US for not joining in WW2 earlier; obviously FDR's hands were tied. I'm criticising whoever it was who complained that France didn't immediately jump to the USA's assistance, when the USA couldn't and didn't do the same for France.



Pretty much. Obviously, the USA was justified in not supplying it to them, but it left Japan in a bind.



I confess to not being an expert, but as far as I'm aware there was only a single Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), after which Germany formed their Empire in Versailles to humiliate France (and probably why Versailles was chosen after WW1 as revenge). France was a monarchy under Napoleon III at the time.

After Germany united, it far out-populated France, and population during the late 19th/early 20th centuries pretty much decided wars.



That's not what I was arguing with; and nice to see that the stereotype of "Americans thinking they won WW2 by themselves" that someone complained about has no basis in fact.

My point was that IF THEY JOINED EARLIER the war would be OVER, EARLIER.

Anyway, it took over three years from when the USA joined to the war being over. Closer to four.



Blitzkrieg was a brand new stratedy., and they had no idea what it was, or how to counter it. France also had a population about 2/3rds of Germany, and had not been gearing up for war at the same rate Germany had. Additionally, Germany had recent military excursions in Poland and Yugoslavia to warm them up. At any rate, all this does is paint a couple of Generals as incompetent. Custer was a bit of a chump, too. Doesn't make Americans burger-chowing pulling-out monkeys, except when it comes to Korea and Vietnam, of course.



When was there a communist government in Paris?



I'm not very familiar with the conflicts, but if it's U.N. supported then obviously a bunch of countries feel it's important, rather than just one. And there's a difference between "peace-keeping" and "peace-destroying", which was obviously done in Iraq (though NOW it's moved on to attempted peace-keeping, just not very successfully).

Fair enough. I've had my share of WWII debates on the subject on Band of Brothers and other similar boards and kind of kicked into automatic




There's never been a full blown communist government in France, but the communist party is fairly strong. They always have seats in the French parliment (they have 5 or 6 parties that win seats fairly evenly over time). When I was taking Comparative government in highschool, close to 20% of the French parliment was communist.

Vietnam was a disaster. All the history I have read suggest that was a BAD DECISION. If it were 1965, I probably wouldn't have sided with the pro-war folk. And the use of the draft was folly. A draft is used when you REALLY NEED IT. The Second World War can be used as an example of an acceptable use of the draft. Hitler's strength was not to be underestimated and we were fighting on two fronts so definitely man power was needed. But Vietnam was just fighting a rag-tag group of fighters for what...stop communism? I really do not see what viable services/materials that the Vietnamese can provide other than man-power to the Soviet Union. Oh yeah, thank you France for dumping that problem on us.

We made great headway in Korea during the latter half. We had pushed the N. Koreans all the way up to the Chinese border, but the Chinese got involved and pushed back to the 38th parallel where the peninsula is still divided. Why did we go through that anyway? Reasons being just red scare of the 1950s?

Well the main road in Alsace did get re-named to the Rue de Napoleon during the early 19th century. Stayed that way until the Germans re-named it after Hitler when they took Alsace back. Incidentally it's now named after de Gaulle.




Oh come on, now how many times have I heard both those arguments in Iraq-debate threads?

Look at this poor feller, what is he trying to do?!?! Prove me right?...

Sure, there are so ignorant people who express that, but that hasn't happened here. The US entered the European front and that's when Germany was sent into retreat in the West.

You can't argue with history, GHORG, even if it paints a picture that you don't like. It has nothing to do with jingoism, just a general knowledge of military history. No one is saying America won the war by ourself, but certainly our entrance changed the direction of the war considerably.

You mean when we occupied their nation?..

The Germans wanted US occuapation for the sole reason of protecting them from the Russians. Hell, the regualr German army was willing the join the Allies to fight the Russians in the closing days of the war. The Allied "occupation" of Germany was hardly an occupation in the sense that you are thinking.

I'd also like to point out that communism does not equal socialism. France never had a communist government, but it could now be considered socialist, or at least heavily socialist-leaning. Chirac himself was a member of the Communist Party early in his career.

Was out last night so I couldn't reply earlier.


Strawman fallacy, I was never discussing whether or not America won the war by itself(which it pretty much did), but instead some modern American's political views.

Ok, now that was trolling. Too bad it was accedental.

Accidental? Ha!

It didn't even apply to what he said to you

GHORG, if you yourself are saying that America pretty much won WWII by itself, what are you even complaining about? America's entrance into the war wasn't even brought up to talk about modern political views. It was brought up to compare American assistance to the pseudo-assistance that France provided in the Revolution.

Either I'm missing something from not having reviewed the previous posts in this thread in a while, or you're trying to fight an argument that hasn't been started yet. Frankly, I consider either one to be just as likely.

Fun Fact: Alan Turing broke the Enigma.

:\

Slight hijack in response to fun fact:
Have you read Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson? Alan Turing is one of the characters in it.

Cryptonomicon is an excellent book

Explain how the US won the war by themselfs.

It's rather obvious that the U.S. won the Pacific theater on its own (with a bit of Australian assistance). Europe, however, would have been impossible for any single country to try. The U.S., however, did strengthen exponentially Allied forces on the western front, forcing Hitler to divert resources from the eastern front.

The United States could not have won without the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union could not have won without the United States. World War II was a joint victory made possible only by the contributions of every ally.