Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/06/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 12:26 AM 6/6/04 -0600, Tim Atherton wrote: >I certainly hope someone is going to put him right before he speaks to the >D-Day veterans. All I can say is that it certainly would have been news to >my Grandfather, under fire on the beach at Dunkerque in 1940, that the war >didn't start until a year and a half later... > >The idiocy is astounding For the US, the War DID start on 7/8 DEC 1941, and let there be no mistake about that. On the evening of 6 DEC 1941, my father (then, 1st LT James G Small, O384921, then XO of F/260th CA (AA)) almost was assaulted at the Fort Bliss Officers' Club in Texas when he suggested that the US would be dragged into World War II. His cronies got him out of there unharmed but it seems to have been a miracle that they did so -- the overwhelming majority of officers at the bar with him felt that the US had no business in the War and saw no reason for us to get involved. (Remember that the Congressional leadership -- the Speaker of the House, the President Pro Tem of the Senate, and the Democrat and Republican leaders) met with Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the afternoon of 7 DEC 1941 to advise him that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines and on Wake and Guam did not mean that Congress would pass a request for a declaration of war on Germany. It took Hitler's declaration of war on the US to get public opinion in favor of a US intervention in the European conflict. I do recognize that the outbreak of World War II can be dated to 1933 or 1937 in China or to 1939 in Poland. However, the average USian citizen did not feel that they were involved until the Japanese attacked us and until the Third Reich declared war on the US. That made it a whole different kettle of fish, and ensured that the US-UK alliance would, in due course, obliterate the Third Reich from the map. And, pray, do not allow your distaste for President Bush to overwhelm your normally sound attitudes. Bush is running for re-election this year and was speaking much more for a domestic audience than for a European one. Had he said anything differently, there would have been hell to pay with WWII vets in the US, all of whom regard the war as having broken out on 7/8 DEC 1941. If my Mother were still alive, she would be having you up one side and down the other, in slivers. And she was a pronounced Anglophile. But the US comes first in the attitudes of most of the US citizenry. Marc msmall@infionline.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!