To stop people who were even worse.

The fascists were worse than the Stalinists? Homocidal maniacs are homocidal maniacs, no? Is murder based on ethnicity worse than murder based on some fantasy class distinction?

No. But the fascists were interested in murdering us. Soon. The communists weren't in as much of a hurry to begin murdering us.

Stop them from what? Killing each other?

Hitler would have turned on us as soon as he got the chance. Had we let Germany and Russia fight it out, Russia would have lost. The Hitler could have launched a one-front war against us with Russian resources and V-2 rockets and, just maybe, atomic bombs.

WWII was not a guaranteed win for our side.

It's easy, now that the US bestrides the world, to look back and think that it should have been obvious in 1940 that Nazi Germany would collapse, if left alone, or that a 1945 US invasion of the USSR would have been child's play.

However, when making real-world decisions, we don't have the luxury of hindsight, and in 1940 Germany looked like a world-beater, and the US Army was roughly the size of present-day Spain's. Even after the US entered the European war, American forces suffered many defeats, and Pyrric victories. There were many times that it looked like the Axis powers would prevail.

In 1945 we had a total of *two* atomic weapons, an American populace sick of war, and a Russian Army that had just swallowed the bulk of the German Army, and spit out the bones.
Also, FDR died on April 12th, 1945, and Germany didn't surrender until May 7th, 1945, so even if America's political leaders had wanted to wage war on the USSR, their most effective domestic political persuader was gone.

To save the Poles.

Didn't work, but it had some other beneficial results.

None.

Michael:

Not only is hindsight 20-20, but the argument that no one could have accurately predicted events and therefore no one can ever be held responsible is 20-20 too. It is to argue that history was inevitable.

Brandon:

Totalitarianism is such a successful system in our dreams. It's only in reality that it always fails miserably. How many Germans would have been required to administer Russia and quell the populace?

There wouldn't have been all that much of a populace to administer. The Einsatzgruppen would have simply murdered as many Russians as necessary to keep them under control. But how long would Nazi Germany have needed before it failed miserably.

And Hitler would not have been willing to fight a cold war with us. Hw would have insisted on a real war. We would have had to fight Germany eventually. And do you think that would have been simply without the Russians to help?

I beleive we will eventually redeem the world. But it's foolish to think that it all has to be done at once, either now or in 1941.

The point of the Second World War was to complete the job of the First, which was not properly done. Russia left the game early, Germany was still on the field, and France, Italy, and Japan didn't know which side to go to when the gun sounded. This incompleteness made the Second much worse.

Nations don't launch armies across borders for the vague and meandering reasons that Orrin advocates.

Germany attacked Poland in order to seize Poland. Britain and France guaranteed Poland because after Munich they realized they were facing the death of a thousand cuts.

It was a world war because some of the participants owned world empires.

There wouldn't have been any western civilization left if Orrin had had his way.

I was under the impression (taken from Manchester's Churchill bio) that Britain guaranteed Poland because Chamberlain thought Hitler was after Romania, so making a pact with Poland was a risk-free way to gain back some of the prestige lost after Munich.

I can't tell from news reports what is likely to happen in the Spanish elections. If the train attack benefits the leftist opposition even slightly, then Europe truly is dead already.

oj:

Held responsible for what ?

Not being able to see the future ?

The choices that were made seemed reasonable at the time. They were reasonable at the time.
Just as Bush the Elder decided not to go to Baghdad, for eminently sensible reasons. It was the wrong decision, but how easy would it have been to pursuade the American people to continue prosecuting the war, after Iraq was kicked out of Kuwait, and if all the Arabs pulled out of the coalition and protested any further action ?

Even events that have a clear ending don't necessarily inspire action. The US knows SS is in trouble, but we don't act. The last time reform was tried, seniors rioted in Florida.

Double that for Europe, where the pension problems are much bigger, and so are the riots when changes are attempted.

In any case, to get back to WW II, it's also conjecture to decide that Nazi Germany would have folded once they had an Empire. No doubt the economy would have collapsed, and there certainly would have been widespread and prolonged social unrest, but they might have pulled through, especially without the extreme outside pressure of fighting the US.
The same pressure, by the way, that you advocate applying to China, now.

Why apply political pressure to China now, and stay out of the second European war then ?
Also, what's the difference between going to war with the USSR after WW II, and pre-emptively going to war with the German Empire during WW II ?

Michael:

You too see the future: "No doubt the economy would have collapsed, and there certainly would have been widespread and prolonged social unrest,"

I don't think we should fight China--I think we should nuke their nuclear facilities and missile bases if they won't voluntarily give them up.

Harry:

You are likely the last person left that I know who thinks Stalinism was a workable system.

Brandon:

I get how 76 million Germans killed 6 million Jews, but how were they going to kill 190 million Russians, while simultaneously oppressing every nation from France to the Baltics?

They would have gotten hold of atomic weapons and ballistic missiles. That's how they would have killed 190 million Russians. We would never have put the effort into an a-bomb if we were not at war. (Without a war on Germany, we wouldn't have needed one to beat Japan. A Pacific-only war would have been over in 1943 or early 1944).

So there we would have sat in 1946-47. Having defeated Japan a few years before, mostly disarmed (like we did after WWII anyway) facing a Germany with atomic weapons. Not a nice situation, is it? Tell me how we would have "inevitably" won the new war that the Nazis could have forced on us?

They were nowhere near having nukes and Heisenberg was leading them astray.

We shouldn't have fought the Japanese either.

I don't think Stalinism was a workable system, in the long run. Neither was Christianity.

Christianity was saved from itself by secularism, a gentler teacher than German militarism.

Polities evolve. They have more options the more resources they have.

You assume that Hitler's Germany would not have had any better options after it had swallowed Poland peacefully than it did after it had swallowed Poland while earning the enmity of Britain. That's wrong.

It had other options--none good.

Try to think strategically. Assume Britain stays out in 1939. France would have if Britain had.

That means no Italian adventures in N. Africa in 1940 and, almost certainly, none in Albania either.

Therefore, Germany attacks Russia at its leisure, and with 4 to 6 weeks of good weather extra because of not having to take time out to conquer to Balkans.

The German assault is stronger by two luftflotten, at least one panzerarmee, a fallschirmjaeger corps and something like 30 or 40 infantry divisions.

Instead of bogging down in front of Moscow in October, the German army invests (or perhaps overruns) Moscow.

It then proceeds to organize all Europe east of the Rhine for military purposes.

Maybe in the long run, that doesn't work, but it doesn't leave much behind it in the short run.

Organizes? What, the Soviets decide to help them? The Poles too? And thenm they take France and the French decide to help too? And then they do a reverse D-Day, despite the British navy and air force and the British fall and decide to help too? And then they attack the U.S. and we fall? Why don't we become Nazis if the system is that invincible?

OJ, your alternate history of WWII has one major flaw - you imagine national will to be an inexaustible resource. It was something that we were short on from the beginning, requiring the attack on Pearl Harbor to get us into the fight. Our war was with Hitler and Tojo, not Stalin, and the war effort was able to go all out for the period that it did because the public could see that our victory against these foes was do-able (but just barely). With those victories won, do you really think that an exhausted American public would go along with a declaration of war on the Soviet Union?

National will is by far the most decisive resource in a war.

Robert:

No, I think it would have required some showy provocation, a la Pearl Harbor, like racing our troops East so that got into a shooting war with the Soviets and then just naturally escalating from there. Once you've got troops in theater the American people don't really have a say.

We were barely able to re-enter Europe even with Russia pinning down 90% of the German forces. Germany could have organized Europe at its leisure if it hadn't had to weaken the campaign against Russia to deal with the British Empire.

That would have turned the conundrum of the 1930s on its head. Instead of wondering whether it was possible to have communism in one country, the question would have been whether it was possible to have capitalism in one country.

The U.S. could not have defeated Russia by a land campaign. Germany might have, if Britain hadn't interfered.

Who had capitalism?

Who indeed, after Coolidge prosperity wiped out 84% of the market capital in the U.S.?

Capitalism was hanging by its fingernails.

In Nazi Germany?