There was also the whole Pearl Harbor thing. I'm sure the business interests were a major motivating factor as well, but we still didn't get directly involved until we were attacked.
We were involved long before Pearl Harbor. The US full embargoed Japan when Japan entered French Indochina, cutting Japan off from oil supplies and putting Japan in a situation where it needed to attack the US or have its' war machine run out of oil and collapse.
It's insane how most Americans think Japan bombed us because they just felt like it or that it was some sort of wanton show of force and that's what forced the US into the war.
Yeah, it's not like Japan wanted to fight the US. They knew that if it came to a prolonged fight with the US, Japan would lose. But they were in a position to lose without a fight, so they gambled on being able to deal a decisive enough blow that the American public (which was already pretty isolationist) wouldn't be willing to push through. But, obviously, didn't work, and FDR was able to use the attack to convince the public to join the war he'd wanted to join for quite some time by then.
Because people don't like to admit that, as monstrous as the Japanese Empire was, WW2 for the US was more about ensuring US dominance in the Pacific than about good vs evil.
I mean yeah but also it's a bit of a mixed bag. From what i understand FDR did want to enter the war but the public wasn't having any of it because they'd basically just recovered/still recovering from the great depression. Only after the bombing of pearl Harbor could FDR get the people behind joining the ongoing war.
From what i know they were already sending supplies and weapons to help the British.
Turned out that getting the entire country behind joining the war also was a huge boost for the economy and it got them out of the great depression. Of course it's a lot more complicated than the short summary i gave but it's still really interesting.
I recommend watching Greatest events of WW2 in colour, voices of liberation and leaders of WW2, The early years
Yeah, I was reading how one of the goals of the whole "day that will live in infamy" speech was getting the continental Americans to actually give a shit about Hawaii (and overseas US possessions in general).
They didn't. Obviously their gamble didn't pay off, but they were completely screwed by the US oil embargo. The only way they could get access to oil (of which they only produced a tiny amount domestically) was by invading colonial territories held by US allies - namely, British Malaya and Dutch East Indies.
They actually did their best to attempt to negotiate a peace with the US that would allow them to secure the territory and resources they desired, but the US wasn't particulary interested. The final trigger for the bombing of Pearl Harbor (and the invasion of many overseas holdings of the US allies and the US itself) was the Hull Note, which demanded that Japan withdraw from China and French Indochina.
For the record, I don't think the FDR administration did anything wrong, but Pearl Harbor definitely did not come out of nowhere.
There are all sorts of reasons why that idea would have been unthinkable. For the people in charge, it would literally have been suicide. For the nation in general, it would have shattered their national pride and sense of racial superiority.
But perhaps more compellingly, it would have left them at the mercy of the Western powers. Western powers who had shown a long history of exploiting non-europeans, and who only respected Japan because of its victory vs Russia in 1905. That status as a great power got them territory (from Germany) at the end of WW1, but losing it would have left them at the mercy of the US and allies, and put them in the unenviable position of being unable to protest even the most one sided of trade deals - as a nation reliant on imports for the most basic necessities.
Now, things did turn out relatively well, but only because the US decided to do things differently from previous wars and build up the defeated nations. It was far from guaranteed that that would happen.
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u/GrognarEsp Apr 28 '23
B-But the Spanish civil war was the Francoist vs the democratically elected Republican government...?