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How terribly amusing and racist.

Fortunately for Europeans the Americans were able to find their way onto the beaches at Normandy in yet another war in which they could easily have pled "no national interest".

smasher, the americans were courageous in WW2, though they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into that legitimate war. I don't think Roosevelt or Truman would approve of what Bush is doing to the reputation of America abroad. That's the point!

Hello smasher lagru,

I think you'll find that the idea of the Soviet union overrunning the whole European continent meant that the US had a very strong interest in liberating part of Europe and re-establishing regimes there that were well-disposed toward the US.

But even if you had been right, bringing up the US role in liberating western Europe is a slightly old and rusty one.

It may be that many American high school students probably can't find America on a map of the world, but American military planners have no trouble finding any target they want to destroy. If they only knew which cave Osama Bin Laden was hiding in it would be just a matter of a few minutes before he'd become a vapor trail. I guess the next notch up will be to put weapons in space, probably orbital platforms with lasers, microwave weapons, or even missiles possibly with nuclear warheads. The Pentagon is never at a loss for ideas for new toys for the boys.

Peter Klaver, while Americans may not know geography, I think at least more than one European doesn't know history. It was Hitler who overran Europe, not the USSR and frankly if the US hadn't opened up a fighting front first in North Africa and Southern Europe and then in Western Europe while it supplied the USSR with enormous quantities of armaments and other materials it needed to fight, Nazi Germany would have won the war in Europe. And even with all that, it almost did anyway. The Germans weren't defeated on the Eastern front by the Russians but by the Russian winter, just the way Napoleon was. Had Hitler bypassed Moscow, he might have won there too. Yes in the aftermath, the USSR would have been only too happy to occupy all of Europe had the US left. They lost 26 million in the war (it started out at 18 million when I was a kid, went to 22 million and now the myth has grown to 26 million) but Stalin is believed to have killed 40 to 80 million Soviets in his purges and reigns of terror. He'd have fought to take the rest of Europe if it cost every Soviet life to do it. BTW, Britain like France lost the Second World War...in more ways than you can count. The Second World War was for France and Britain what the defeat of the Spanish Armada was for Spain, the end of being global powers.

Hello Mark,

Yes, I do know history. Please note that I spoke of the IDEA of the Soviets taking all of Europe that worried the Americans, not the Soviets actually achieving it. As you yourself said, after the war they would have been happy to take the rest of Europe.

But while your reply perhaps sprang from misreading a part I think we agree on, we can go into friendly disagreements on several other points.

I don't think the opening of the US front in Africa is what contributed to the downfall of the Third Reich that much. By the time the Americans landed there, Rommel was already in retreat against the British army in Africa, which logistically had means the Germans could only dream of. And earlier on the British in Africa has suffered badly at the hands of the Germans and had learned from the beatings they had taken. Rommel was happy to merely slow the British a bit to withdraw, and in the meantime aim his last attacks against the inexperienced American forces. They inflicted far more losses on them than they did against the British for the same amount of effort they could still muster. Sorry to burst your bubble, but what is shown in the Hollywood movie of Patton (the one where Patton is played by Scott) is glorification of Pattons role. And by extension, the role of the US army in Africa. It was British victory with the US joining in when most of the work was done.

You're right in saying that the USSR came close to collapse and that aid from the West was helpful in avoiding it. But by the time of the landing in France, the USSR was already driving back the German armies and would have done so (albeit slower) if the Normany landing had not taken place. Saying that without it (or without the relatively small-scale operations in Italy) Germany would have won the war in Europe, is incorrect I think.

Peter Klaver;
The opeining of a second front in North Africa as a way to ultimately build a beachhead on continental Europe instead of attacking on the Western front directly was the British strategy which the Americans went along with. It may have been the only one which would have worked as a direct assault on Western Europe immediately might have ended in a failed campaign.

My point is that the entrance of the US into the war in a major way in supplying both material and military force diverted German resources which could have been applied on the eastern front to fight the USSR. The US supply of bombers, munitions, and its own air force bombing Germany in both its civilian and military industrial heartland day and night along with the RAF also made a major difference in the outcome while the convoys of supply ships which kept Britain fed was another crucial component. This is why the Battle of the Atlantic was so important. It should also be remembered that at the same time, the US was fighing another major war in the Pacific the British had lost. It wasnn't clear until the Battle of Midway that the US would win but there were many major defeats and setbacks along the way. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki mercifully put a quick end to it at the savings of many American lives. Had the US not entered the war in Europe, I say again the Nazis would have won.

The US entered World War II with an insignificant military force compared to the major powers of the day. Small, ill equipped and inexperienced, it used its vast industrial might which was largely beyond the reach of attack from the Axis to shift gears quickly to produce war materials. American management and Yankee ingenuity was largely resopnsible for the success. The US built four liberty ships a day. At the beginning, it took many months to build just one but I think they figured out how to build them in a matter of a couple of days or even hours. War may be God's way to teach America geography but it is also America's way to teach the rest of the world not to mess around with it. Even in Vietnam which the US nominally lost, Vietnam paid a terrible price, one it is only starting to recover from now nearly two generations later. The US learned the lesson from World War II that the oceans which protected it from attack in prior eras were no longer adequate and that it needed a powerful military to act as a deterrant and failing that as an effective way to eliminate any threat to it that ever arises. To that end, the US has built and will maintain the most powerful military force in history. It probably spends more money on its military than the rest of the world combined. People just don't seem to get it yet. Saddam Hussein didn't get it. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad doesn't get it. Kim Jong Il doesn't get it. If the US is ever attacked with a nucler weapon even by terrorists, it will quickly vaporize any and every possible place the attack might have originated from whether they were the ones responsible or not. The cold war and the American policy of MAD should have taught the world another lesson, that the US is prepared to kill every last person in the world to prevent being enslaved again as it was by the British Crown before the Revolution. This is why the US is the most dangerous and frightening thing on earth and there is nothing anyone can do about it except to just leave it alone. Going to war aginst America overtly or covertly is certain suicide.