"The enemy of my enemy is my friend" - at least as long as the enemy exists. Adults understand this fact of life. Without the Russians consuming 2/3 of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, there is no way the Western Allies could have defeated Nazi Germany.

If you believe in the efficacy of Nazism and that the Eastern Europeans cared who enslaved them.

Having a capitalist foundation for its wartime economy made the Nazi economy by definition more efficient than Soviet central planning.

The Nazis were not going to enslave Eastern Europeans, they were going to exterminate them once they were finished with the Jews, Gypsies, gays and other undesireables. Genocide of teh Poles, russians and other SLavs was a prerequisite for the planned Germanic colonization out to the Urals.

The Nazis were socialists and commanded the economy from the top down. Their system was fatally flawed. There'd have been no noticable difference had we just let them slog themselves into exhaustion against the Soviets except that both regimes would have fallen in the 40's.

It's a sickening travesty that Bush is going to Moscow. Can't we have a party in London instead? Now that the election is over, Blair probably wouldn't mind being seen with Bush...

All wartime economies (America's included) were commanded from the top down. The capitalistic foundation of the German economy would have - by definition - provided a more stable foundation for the Nazi economy than Soviet central planning.

And it would have made a very noticible difference to those Eastern European civilians caught in the cross fire. And how do you know for a fact that they would have slogged each other into a stalemate of exhaustion? Where is your evidence for this claim?

The history of the Eastern front tells a different story. It's a story of Red Army recovery and ascending dominance on the battlefield, first by shear numbers (which the Germans could never hope to match)and later by improved tactics and experience. While it was a logistical impossibility for the Germans to conquer an empire to the Urals, it was very possible for the Red Army to take Berlin (perhaps in 1946 instead of 1945) and push on to Rhine for a link up with French Communist guerrillas (the only effective portion of the Maquis were the Reds). The result of just letting the two monsters duke it out would have been a probable Soviet victory and a Communist Europe to the English Channel.

And while we're focusing on Eastern Europe, why would it be a good thing for Western Europe to remain under Nazi domination? The post war division of Europe favored the US. Compared to the industrialized areas of Western Europe, the backward economies of Eastern Europe and the Balkans were mere scraps.

Insert the names of any two German cities in the place of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and there perhaps one could plausibly claim victory sans Soviet.

The cult of Russia in WW2 bugs me. It totally ignores the naval, air and industrial power of the US for starters. If the US had not supported Russia by supplies and opening second fronts, then Germany would have taken Moscow and the rest of European Russia. Stalin would have been killed by either the Germans or his own people and the Soviet system would have collapsed. The contribution of Russia was to enable the US to suffer relatively few casulties as we drove to Germany. Without Russia, we would still would have beaten Germany. It would just have been marginally more costly.

Even if the Russian on the Channel fanatsy came true, an exhausted Russia would have faced a totally untouched NUCLEAR armed US. I'd have like our chances.

Why would we have fought them?

daniel:

We were doing fine before we entered the war, arming both sides--the Brits and the Russians.

It doesn't matter whether one would eventually have emerged from the slog, they couldn't have dominated as much territory as you're suggesting they'd bite off.

We propped up Western Europe temporarily so we could defeat the Soviets. Now both are in the trash heap. There was no point.

Putin is getting Bush to join him cost-free. Bush should celebrate with the Estonians and Lithuanians, who are now free of both Nazis and Soviets.

What have we gotten from Putin in the last several months? He's saber-rattled in Ukraine and Georgia. He's aiding the Iranian mullahs in getting nuclear technology. He's helping the PRC militarists who want to jump ugly with the US over Taiwan. He has done nothing to deserve the honor of a Presidential visit.

What Russia has done doesn't matter. What matters is that if things got dicey we could count on them to use nukes.

OJ constantly shifts arguments on this because he hates FDR and can't admit he did anything right. Therefore, no matter what arguments you bring up, he'll find an excuse even if he it means changing the very basis of his argument.

Now he says we were doing fine sending Lend Lease to the Brits and Russia if only that fool FDR hadn't entered the war. Except that Hitler declared war on us, so we had no choice to enter the war. Which demolishes his whole argument. Perhaps we're to just let Hitler sink our entire merchant marine and not fight back.

No doubt he'll soon go back to his theory that Nazi Germany and Soviet Union would have destroyed each other even without any involvement by the US, i.e. no Lend Lease at all. That'd be wrong too because as Bob said without Lend Lease the Soviets don't have enough material to wage major offensive operations much less win the war. Hard to trap the German 6th Army at Stalingrad when you have no trucks to transport fuel or troops.

At that point OJ will fall back to his third position, that even a Nazi dominated Europe is doomed to collapse and no threat to us. Except now Hitler has control over the industrialized economy of Europe, and access to the Ploesti, Caucasus, and Middle East oilfields. He now has time and opportunity to build Raeder's Atlantic Fleet he always wanted, the Berlin-to-New York bombers the Luftwaffe had plans for, as well as advanced rockets and jet fighters and bombers. At some point Britain makes peace, but what happens to the Royal Navy? Is it scuttled or seized by the Germans? Moreover, just as victory in WWII made Communism attractive, the Nazi victory in this world inspires fascist movements elsewhere. How many Latin American countries align themselves closer to the Nazis? Just Chile and Argentina, or even more? How does a pro-Hitler regime in Britain affect Canada? Maybe the magical OJ Fairy comes along and waves his wand and the entire thing collapses immediately, but without that OJ Fairy things do not like good for the USA.

Regardless of which alternate reality exists, we can rest assured that the OJ of that world is still complaining about FDR.

"Rule 29: The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, no more, no less."

--7 Habits of Effective Pirates, Schlock Mercenary

chris, I couldn't agree more. OJ's hatred for a man now 60 years dead is one of his more bizarre obsessions. He really needs to get a life.

As for Nazi domination of Europe, when you get past all of his obsufucations and shifting arguments and blithely ignoring points he can't answer; what you have is a man who deep down inside would have preferred that the Nazis would have won.

Oh well, scratch an FDR hater and find a Hitler lover.

Chris:

None of those are mutually exclusive.

We should have stayed out of Europe unless we intended to end both Nazism and Bolshevism. It's unlikely either of them could have defeated the other and certainly doubtful that either could have proceeded to dominate the other after doing so.

There was nothing wrong with arming the Soviets to drag out their war with the Nazis and bleed both, though we should have extorted better terms while we had them over a barrel.

The idea that Nazism would have international appeal is risible, even the other fascists weren't Nazi-like. Indeed, a world of Franco's would have been vastly better than what we got and even one of Mussolini's beats it.

the real scandal of WWII, and one that fdr is responsible for (truman too) is that we did not make the soviets disarm, after it was over. we should have kept a nuclear monopoly and used it to enforce the conversion to deomcracy.

FDR correctly saw Nazism, which had plenty of support in the US during the 30s and early 40s, as a more serious short-term threat than Bolshevism. America's essentially religious culture made an atheistic polity a non-starter. OTOH, there were no shortage of fascist sympathizers like Lindbergh and Fr. Coughlin and Joe Kennedy. The racist and anti-Jewish aspect of American culture was at its zenith in the interwar period, the Depression having exacerbated status anxiety among white Christians living in precarious circumstances.

I won't bother going into all the logistical issues that made a military confrontation with the Soviets in the mid to late 1940s into a fool's errand that the US could never have won.

Nazism was going nowhere, nor was Bolshevism. That's just an extension of the canard that he "saved" capitalism. He was more anti-Semitic than Lindbergh was.

OJ,

On a personal basis, yes. But on a political basis, no. There was no shortage of Jews he respected and relied upon for advice, the same cannot be said of Lindbergh and certainly of a man who would happily have been an American Laval, Joe Kennedy.

FDR certainly did save capitalism, making it safe to be a capitalist once again. All you need to do is look at Argentina, another ethnically diverse nation with a high per capita income and a huge export economy in 1929, to see what could have happened had we taken missteps. We had FDR, they got Peron. I think it is safe to say that we got the better of the deal.

When it came to dealing with the Communist threat, FDR was clueless but Bob Taft was ostrich-like.

Yes, Joe Kennedy was an anti-Semite and pro-=Nazi. Lindbergh wasn't.

At the point where you say look at Argentina you've ceased talking about America and entered your own fever dreams. By prolonging and deepening the Depression FDR made it more difficult to eventually revert back to capitalism.

Taft was right--communism was no threat.

I have family throughout the 'cone' of Latin America and am utterly fascinated with the place and have visited there several times.

In 1929, the three nations in the world with the highest per capita incomes were the US, Australia and Argentina, not in that order. Due to America's decision to close the gates, lots of people who would have become Americans became Argentines, including some of my mother's family. Argentina is the precise comparison, an export-driven immigrant society, unless you want to make the claim that the fact that the vast majority of its inhabitants are Catholic predisposed it to fascism and that is an argument I don't think you want to make.

There was no historical experience with preserving a free market system through a worldwide depression, so every political figure was looked to for answers. And there were plenty of folks out there with simple, if absurd, answers. Argentina went in a fascist direction, and America had FDR. The results of the last 65 years or so are obvious.

Look, my maternal grandfather lost a lot of work to the WPA and the CCC so I should have a bitterness towards FDR(he thought less of him than you do) but I don't. What FDR did was keep the country together and stable at a time when things could have completely collapsed into racial and religious war. He also managed to preserve the democracy, which lots of other places did not. Was FDR a saint? No. But I certainly think that no serious person, and Ronald Reagan agreed, would not consider him one of our greatest presidents.

So your argument is that an America that protected its own cultural identity was identiocal to Argentina? You aren't even trying to make sense anymore.

Hoover and FDR were big government liberals and therefore exacerbated the problem. They were ignorant, not evil.

Not at all.

America and Argentina were presented with identical circumstances. America went with FDR. Argentina went with Peron. The rest, as they say, is history.

FDR didn't run against Peron. He'd have done Argentina no good either.

Certainly the nation was ripe for a 'national socialist' challenge to FDR. Do you really know what would have happened if Huey Long had not been assassinated? There was certainly 'prairie socialism' in places like North Dakota and Minnesota, with large state-owned enterprise. There was the EPIC campaign in California.

FDR had Americans feeling good enough about things that he could win overwhelming victories in 3 separate elections and win a fourth solidly when he was practically dead. That's a fact you simply cannot get around. He was not perceived as a failure by the electorate while he was in power.

campaign for. It was quite easily defeated by the money interests.

There was never even a remote threat of socialism here. It's a hysterical claim made to give FDR some accomplishment, since he so obviously failed to deal with the reality.

Yes, he made people feel better and women had been given the vote. He was Harding in a wheelchair.

FDR's electoral success does not mean his policies were successful. Jefferson, Madison, US Grant and others were successful in elections but their policies were not. Jefferson and Grant in particular could easily have been elected to 3rd terms.

I think it beyond reasonable argument that it was WW2 that ended the depression. FDR's policies at best provided "hope". Well, better than nothing but hardly the stuff of legend.

His decision to run again in 1944 was the most selfish, egotistical action in US political history. Only his cousin in 1912 is in the same league.