In reading about World War II, I now understand that the U.S. involvement was much more uncertain and complex than I had known as a child. Perhaps, had I been an adult, I would have realized that our strength was in our industrial resources and our military success was, in many ways, as much fortune as design.
The United States entered World War I in the spring of 1917 and contributed to the Allied victory in November 1918. President Woodrow Wilson pushed the founding of the League of Nations, which was to function to avert other conflicts. But the U.S. Congress did not support him and the League of Nations never got any muscle. The peace treaty stripped Germany of most of its industry and resources. In 1933, the Nazi Party and Adolph Hitler were elected to power and began building a military machine. None of the winners—France, England, the United States—did anything to enforce the treaty terms against German rearmament. By 1938, Hitler began seizing territory and no one tried to stop him. Japan had invaded Manchuria in 1931 and China in 1937.
In the United States, there was a strong sentiment that our country should not get into foreign wars again. After all, we were protected by wide oceans and our growth to the biggest economy in the world.
When World War II started in September 1939, Americans were torn between a deep sympathy for our former allies and isolationist sentiments. President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized that it was impossible that we would be able to stay out of the war. In 1940, he proposed a selective service plan to draft 100,000 men for army training for a year. At the time, our army and navy numbered about a quarter million men. The congress approved the bill for only a year. When the president asked that it be extended in the summer of 1941, the renewal legislation passed by a single vote in the House of Representatives. By then, France had surrendered and we were helping the British with a “lend-lease” program that included obsolete destroyers from World War I to fight German submarines that were sinking supply ships from the Western hemisphere en route to Britain.
When the surprise attack on our navy base at Pearl Harbor happened on December 7, 1941, several battleships were destroyed. By chance, the several aircraft carriers were at sea and survived intact. Even now, there are arguments about whether we had cracked the Japanese code and knew that they were planning a sneak attack.
A friend who studies military history contends that the turning point in Europe in World War II was not our invasions of Italy and France but rather Hitler’s invasion of Russia in 1941. Millions died on both sides and the losses sapped the German army. This does not deprecate the bravery of American troops or their leadership nor, for that matter, the bravery of Russian and German troops. The Russians could not have won alone. Could the other allies have triumphed without the Russians? We have 60 years of speculation.
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