Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > History
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Closed Thread Start New Thread
 
Old 02-14-2016, 08:32 PM
 
7,572 posts, read 5,286,500 times
Reputation: 9436

Advertisements

Quote:
Originally Posted by VM1138 View Post
I know this has been a super-long, extensive discussion and I'm not bothering to read it all, but in very simple terms I think the whole World War II thing could be described as this:

The US bailed France out, but Britain was holding her own. The US helped turn the tide and helped Britain finish the job. That's how I see it.
Then I suggest that you go back and read through the thread.

 
Old 02-15-2016, 06:00 AM
 
Location: Glasgow Scotland
18,439 posts, read 18,572,333 times
Reputation: 28485
I may be wrong here but wasnt Roosvelt and the US forced into the war when Germany declared war on them... and not until.... This isnt my words but what Ive read..

When Churchill asked for more help the USA demanded all the UK’s gold, as much money as the UK could borrow and insisted that all available public and private assets be sold. The Americans demanded entry to Britain’s export markets and Britain had to hand over details of numerous new British inventions (including the jet engine). These were goodwill gifts which the USA demanded not in return for helping Britain in the war against Hitler (they didn’t) but simply to agree to sell arms to Britain.
and another post from the site ..

Posted 25 January 2006 - 10:40 PM
Some time last year over here in the UK a programme was screened called the Warlords, this one episode which focused on Churchill and Roosevelt on the early war years. One clear thing came out of it America could not have given a damn, that was until Hitler declared war on America. I found it interesting viewing and it was something to think about, as for the article this was written by a Professor who has written many books. couldnt it be said that we won the war between us..
 
Old 02-15-2016, 07:09 AM
 
Location: rural south west UK
5,369 posts, read 3,548,191 times
Reputation: 6507
some people need to get that chip off their shoulder if they think Britain couldn't have survived without the Yanks. they obviously don't know anything about the British, especially the British of the 1940s.
and the answer to the thread title is: because you didn't.
 
Old 02-15-2016, 07:36 AM
 
Location: Type 0.73 Kardashev
11,110 posts, read 9,739,763 times
Reputation: 40160
Quote:
Originally Posted by dizzybint View Post
I may be wrong here but wasnt Roosvelt and the US forced into the war when Germany declared war on them... and not until.... This isnt my words but what Ive read..
It is true that the U.S. declaration of war upon Germany followed that of Germany upon the U.S., which occurred on December 11, 1941. This has led a lot of people to conclude that but for Hitler's ill-advised declaration of war in the United States, there would have been no war between the nations. This is wrong.

Between the attack on Pearl Harbor and the formal declaration or war, Secretary of War Stimson urged President Roosevelt to ask Congress for a declaration of war on Germany. Roosevelt decided to wait, not in order to avoid war but simply because he was confident that Germany would soon declare war, and he knew support for the war would be greater if he let Germany take the lead. Further, if you go back and look at newspaper editorials across the country from December 8th through 11th (the time period between the Japanese attack and the formal state of war between the U.S. and Germany) you will see repeated mentions of the fact that a state of war with Germany is imminent. In other words, the entire country knew that the Pearl Harbor attack signaled that the U.S. was about to be involved in both theaters of the war.

Quote:
When Churchill asked for more help the USA demanded all the UK’s gold, as much money as the UK could borrow and insisted that all available public and private assets be sold. The Americans demanded entry to Britain’s export markets and Britain had to hand over details of numerous new British inventions (including the jet engine). These were goodwill gifts which the USA demanded not in return for helping Britain in the war against Hitler (they didn’t) but simply to agree to sell arms to Britain.
This is nonsense.

The UK needed arms. The UK needed to pay for them. They used gold. And they used credit. This is how purchases work.

The UK began spending its gold reserves on rearming long before the U.S. began shipping supplies. That's what one does when one needs things - it pays for them. In the case of Congress, it wanted payment for services and goods supplied. And you find this unusual? The United States was involved in the war for precisely the same reason that was the UK - each nation decided it was in its best interest to do so. Neither was involved out of the goodness of its heart. If you want to be taken seriously, you can lose the white hat UK vs. black hat U.S. routine.

Furthermore, Lend-Lease items were generally sold at 10% of their value. And you're disgruntled because they weren't free? The Anglo-American loan was set at a rate of 2% repayment. Do you know why it was not fully repaid until 2006? Because the UK only made the minimum payments, for at that rate they were profiting more by holding unto cash rather than paying above what they had to pay. No problem - their own self-interest at work. But I can imagine the hew and cry were the situations reversed.

I've noticed that the U.S. is typically reviled for expecting payment (gasp!) for Lend-Lease supplies. But the same is never extended to Canada, which had similar programs, and which like the U.S. floated quite a large loan to the economically-devastated postwar UK. This loan, like those from Washington, was not paid in full until the early 21st century. But whereas the U.S. is styled a predatory lender for having the audacity not to simply give stuff away, Canada never is. Nor should they be - but the point is, apparently there's only interest in reviling the U.S., so Canada gets a free pass (to the extent that the accusers are even aware that similar aid flowed from Ottawa).

Oh, and the technology nonsense you're claiming? That was not 'demanded' - the Tizard Mission was dispatched to the U.S. because the UK simply did not have the capacity (mostly due to financial reasons, and because their industrial capacity was already devoted to immediately pressing issues relating to the war) to develop certain technologies that they wanted to see used in the war. The atomic bomb was one. So what the UK did was transfer technology - mostly research - to the United States. The U.S. then spent billions and billions of dollars building nukes, which finally knocked Japan - with whom the UK was at war as well - out of the war, negating the need for the UK and others to join the U.S. in Operation Downfall, the invasion of Japan in late 1945, which would have been extraordinarily costly for all involve. And this was a bad deal for the UK how, precisely? Of course, it wasn't. Nor was it wrong. The UK had interests. The U.S. also had interests. The UK managed to use the U.S. to effectively give the UK the results of having the bomb, without the UK having to go through the expensive and resource-consuming process of making one itself. I don't say that begrudgingly - that's how states with interests behave. Yet you point the finger when it's the UK having to pry open its wallet, as though they were innocent and good and being victimized. And that's the nonsense, because they weren't any such thing. As with the U.S. (and Canada, and others), they were a state advancing its own interests.

Quote:
"In a nutshell, everything we got from America in World War II was free," says economic historian Professor Mark Harrison, of Warwick University.
Quote:
It's easy to cough and splutter at the thought of our closest ally suddenly demanding payment for equipment rather than sparing a billion or two as a gift. But the terms of the loan were extremely generous, with a fixed interest rate of 2% making it considerably less terrifying than a typical mortgage.
Quote:
Yet for Dr Tim Leunig, lecturer in economic history at the LSE, it's no surprise that the UK chose to keep this low-interest loan going rather than pay it off early. "Nobody pays off their student loan early, unless they are a nutter. Even if you've got the money to pay it off early, you should just put it in a bank and pocket the interest."
BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | What's a little debt between friends?
 
Old 02-15-2016, 11:16 AM
 
Location: West Virginia
16,591 posts, read 15,525,079 times
Reputation: 10829
Quote:
Originally Posted by pbobcat View Post
And what's the main reason for your appalling lack of grammar?

Even if you could possibly, at a stretch, make a case for Britain speaking Russian having had no support from the US, how were we going to be forced to learn Japanese?
Quote:
Originally Posted by lucky2balive View Post
your instead of you're is "appalling" to brits??
No wonder you couldn't handle the Germans on yer own...



aw come on, I kid I kid
Quote:
Originally Posted by easthome View Post
Don't matter what I say how I say it or how I spell it, as I am English whatever I say and however I say it, it will be English, you on the other hand...........
Well, after the third report requesting that this thread be closed, and noting that the grammar police have invaded the discussion, let's just say that this discussion has completed the mission.
__________________
Moderator posts are in RED.
City-Data Terms of Service: //www.city-data.com/terms.html
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Closed Thread


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > History

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top