There are a few similar threads in the past, but I'm still trying to learn. I recall FDR telling Britain that he wouldn't give them any more foreign aid without having them secure Poland's independence, and that led them to declare war on Germany. And then I recall hearing that FDR purposefully intensified and created conflicts in Europe with which he had no business dealing, but I can't find any specific information.
Also, why do some people say WWII wouldn't have happened without US involvement in WWI?
I think it is easy to understand why the US did not need to get involved. It did not need to get involved because it was in no way threatened, and could not ever be threatened. I think the argument that the whole WWII ordeal was avoidable centers rather on the actions of Britain. The point of view that Britain also did not need to fight. AJP Taylor in Origins of the Second World war in my opinion conclusively showed the war breaking out was a consequence of a confused, indecisive policy in London, that alternated between appeasment and containment. Either approach would have probably worked, but because the Brits did not know what the hell they were doing and which of the two they were attempting Hitler misread them and worked himself into a corner from which he then wasn't willing to back away from. You can get the book here: link And acess a favorable LRC review here: link
Marko: I like what Caley McKibben wrote here (I can't activate links or make paragraphs for some reason): http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/23524/408264.aspx#408264 "The Nazis and the Soviets wearing each other out seems like the best possible outcome." Obviousology 101. The least that people arguing for the utilitarianism of World War 2 could do is get the analysis right, that FDR was a communist agent trying to destroy the regional buffers against the USSR and Communist China, nothing more, nothing less. If you are going to intervene in interstate affairs, you go by the rule of at any given point aiding the side that appears to be losing. Had that been done imagine how much better the map of Eurasia would have looked, not just a big Red blob So how are you an anarchist libertarian? How am I not? Check out my video, Ron Paul vs Lincoln! And share my PowerPoint with your favorite neo-con | Post Points: 20
I like what Caley McKibben wrote here (I can't activate links or make paragraphs for some reason): http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/23524/408264.aspx#408264 "The Nazis and the Soviets wearing each other out seems like the best possible outcome." Obviousology 101. The least that people arguing for the utilitarianism of World War 2 could do is get the analysis right, that FDR was a communist agent trying to destroy the regional buffers against the USSR and Communist China, nothing more, nothing less. If you are going to intervene in interstate affairs, you go by the rule of at any given point aiding the side that appears to be losing. Had that been done imagine how much better the map of Eurasia would have looked, not just a big Red blob
The part where you collectivize people to the extent you greet an outcome that means tens of millions of deaths. Obviously the best possible outcome would have been that which preserved the greatest number of people. Eg, the war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union never even breaking out.
Marko: The part where you collectivize people to the extent you greet an outcome that means tens of millions of deaths. Obviously the best possible outcome would have been that which preserved the greatest number of people. Eg, the war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union never even breaking out. Oh I see. I agree with you. The McKibben quote is in the context of "If you are going to intervene in interstate affairs..." In other words, the war wasn't prevented and is now progressing. As a libertarian, I wouldn't want Washington to get involved. As a hypothetical utilitarian, I wonder if supporting the loser at any given moment might have created the fewest deaths. Both sides will realize exactly what you did, that if they continue the war with the mighty industrial US backing up whoever is losing at any moment, it will drag the war on forever and mean the death of tens of millions. Hence they will realize the futility of such a pyrric victory and agree to a peace settlement. Has any country ever supported the loser in such a manner? Check out my video, Ron Paul vs Lincoln! And share my PowerPoint with your favorite neo-con | Post Points: 5
Oh I see. I agree with you. The McKibben quote is in the context of "If you are going to intervene in interstate affairs..." In other words, the war wasn't prevented and is now progressing. As a libertarian, I wouldn't want Washington to get involved. As a hypothetical utilitarian, I wonder if supporting the loser at any given moment might have created the fewest deaths. Both sides will realize exactly what you did, that if they continue the war with the mighty industrial US backing up whoever is losing at any moment, it will drag the war on forever and mean the death of tens of millions. Hence they will realize the futility of such a pyrric victory and agree to a peace settlement. Has any country ever supported the loser in such a manner?
Marko:Well the OP verified a post in this thread, so at least he must have felt he had received his answer.
I thought I made it clear in my bump that I have the same question, and that verified post is not anywhere sufficient in my opinion. Personally I don't really give a shit if the OP felt he received his answer. I don't see what relevance that has to my request.
I'd say that a question of "Why didn't the US need to get involved" is a little bit strange. [...] To even begin contemplating this I would have to know why someone feels that Joe needs to go to the store. Can you first say why anyone thinks the US needed to get involved?
Sure. They say "Hitler would have continued to build an army and bring more death and destruction to the world, and at some point pose a serious threat to the United States." I thought that was pretty much commonly understood. I don't think I've ever met anyone who wasn't at least aware of the "common wisdom" on any subject. Especially not something as well-known as The War.
Personally I don't really give a shit if the OP felt he received his answer. I don't see what relevance that has to my request.
I thought that was pretty much commonly understood. I don't think I've ever met anyone who wasn't at least aware of the "common wisdom" on any subject. Especially not something as well-known as The War.
They say "Hitler would have continued to build an army and bring more death and destruction to the world, and at some point pose a serious threat to the United States."
Marko:I thought you were going to give some humanitarian interventionist argument about saving the Jews
Well, there's that too....
1. How was Hitler going to do anything like that when Germany was going to lose the war against the Soviet Union whether the US foght the Germans or not?
(a) How do you know that?
(b) even if that were true, we're just supposed to hope some other country jumps into war and defeats the dictator?
(c) What about those Jews? Is there no moral obligation to try and defend them against an aggressor?
2. How is this an argument in favour of any intervention post-1945? Has there been a dictator who launched a comparable attempt at conquest? So, if Saddam grabbed Khuzestan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia he would now be able to swim the Atlantic and hit Savannah beach? The scales are nowhere comparable.
What does this have to do with getting involved in WWII?
3. Hitler didn't care about the US. The Nazis cared about expansion into Eastern Europe only.
And you know this because...you were him?
But of what concern were Nazi fantasies about Germanization of Eastern Europe to the US I fail to see.
How far do you apply this? If you saw a man beating a child to a pulp, you would do nothing?, as it "doesn't concern you?"
Nazi ideology (as stated in Mein Kampf, by Nazi leaders, by Nazi documents and by their actual historical demands and actions) involves the removal and elimination of significant parts of the population of Eastern Europe and European Russia to create a Lebensraum (living space) for the Aryan master race. It states nothing regarding the Americas (US of or otherwise), other than a few strange comments from Heinrich Himmler regarding the Aryan heritage of the Sioux. It doesn't state anything about anything other than Eastern Europe and European Russia. Furthermore, the US holds significant responsibility for creating the conditions that led to Hitler via it's intervention in the First World War.
The "humanitarian" argument holds no water. Taken to it's logical conclusion, would you advocate that the present day US invade Zimbabwe, Cuba, North Korea, Myanmar, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Bolivia and Uganda (to say nothing of the human rights violations committed by Canada and the EU, vis a vis Block's analogy of France invading New York City to eliminate that polity's rent control legislation), in spite of the colossal bloodshed and cost to both countries that would cause? The "beaten child" analogy is fallacious, as it conflates an individual person with an entire country, the exact same nonsense social democrats engage in when they pull out the "we are all part of society" bovine excrement. Assuming you believe Guantuanamo Bay to be a US human rights violation, does Britain have the right to invade the US to stop that? What boundaries are there in this logic to prevent it justifying such belligerence?
If the army weren't collecting compulsory taxes for a collective deed, it would be alright under AnCap. And an army's invasion of one of those countries seems to be entirely possible under AnCap (the army likely is controlled by a head, which acts as a court which declares there have been human rights violations).
Because by the time the US opened the Second Front and became a major factor in WWII in Europe German defeat was no longer in question.
When talking about an expansionist power that has no designs on your territory absolutely.
No, there are no positive obligations.
It has to do with your comment that you are interested in this because Hitler is always on the tip of everyone's tongue when they are arguing for interventionist foreign policy. I take it to mean we are not talking about US participation in WWII in a vacuume, but more widely the usefulness of Hitler analogies for interventions post 1945.
I'll say that the burden of proof where it comes to Hitler's interest in the US is on you. I don't know of any evidence of Nazi interest in the US. On the other hand there is plenty on their obsession with Eastern Europe. When you see what their internal debates centered on and which parts of the Nazi empire they kept a minimal presence and maintained an indirect rule, and where they were very hands on and were carrying out massive programmes of social engineering it becomes pretty obvious where their interests lay.
Well first of all it would be good if we recognize this argument represents a widening of the argument presented initially. Initial argument was concerned with threat to the United States only and nothing more. Secondly, how exactly would we square an American bleeding heart for Eastern Europeans under German rule with the enemy status of the Communist USSR, Czechoslovakia and Poland after the war? How would something like this be sincere when we know that a few short years after the war United States was allied with these same Germans against Eastern Europeans and kept atomic weapons in a state of readiness to drop them on Eastern European targets? I would say there was a strong negative, albeit indirect, impact of American participation in WWII for Eastern Europeans. Yes, by contributing to the defeat of Nazi Germany its defeat came sooner and at a lesser cost to the Soviets, the Poles etc than would have otherwise been the case. However WWII also transformed the US into a global empire that went on to needlessly confront the Eastern Bloc. A confrontation that could have resulted in annihilation beyond even what the Nazis fantasized about. Helping to remove one threat only to set up your own doesn't sound hugely beneficial.
Didn't property interests legitimize American intervention (disregarding the NAP violations of a compulsory army + tax system of the US)?
What intervention?
Well, any in history, really. I am sure the US had investments in France and Hitler violated them. This validates some form of intervention. Now, ignoring the fact that the existence of the US army as it was at the time was itself an aggression, there was a right for those property was violated to come in with a private army.
To clarify, I mean private US investments.
That would be an empty excuse. How much private property did US Armed Forces damage in carrying out their war?
We can reject their methods, but can we agree that there was legitimacy in some form of invasion?
1. How was Hitler going to do anything like that when Germany was going to lose the war against the Soviet Union whether the US fought the Germans or not?
So the whole position is based on this? Germany would have lost to Soviets anyway? Both Nazis and Soviets sought for world domination(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Order_%28Nazism%29) in one way or other, in one year or in hundred. This is what general portion of people think and it actually seems that it was what leaders of the Nazis and Soviets at the time wanted(Hitler and Stalin). SO if A) Nazis would in any case have lost to the Soviets B) what would have happened to the West-Europe? I don't think that Red-Europe, especially Red-Germany, would have done any good to the global distribution of labor.
WW2 is not a simple case! If you say that US should have passed WW2 and let Hitler to do what he wanted, you must understand this: People think you are claiming that US should have not to do anything against the Holocaust and Nazi-order/Soviet-order in Europe, and those weren't little things. I'm not surprised that Mises supported intervention to the WW2.