Myths of the Golden Era -- Exploded!

[Shangas]

The wider international community was absolutely aware of the Sino-Japanese War of the 1930s. But a lot of those countries were licking their wounds from the Great War of 1914. They didn't want to get involved in another war so soon after the first one, and especially in a war which they felt, had nothing to do with them.

It was for these reasons, and not racism, that the Americans and the British (and other world-powers) stayed out. I believe America DID send China SOME military assistance, but it wasn't much...not enough by half, to help them win the war against the Japanese.

 

[Bluebird Marsha]

BTW Shangas, that was an impressive bunch of history classes that you had in high school.

 

[Shangas]

Oh thank you. Yes they were all very interesting. Especially German and Chinese history.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Yeah...the Flying Tigers in China come to mind...

 

[Stearmen]

Yeah...the Flying Tigers in China come to mind...

Yes, but that wasn't until 1941, and Roosevelt had to go behind congresses back. There was some equipment sold to China before then, but not given.

 

[jamespowers]

A few years ago, a friend of mine had a daughter in public school(yeah, go figure) their assignment was to interview a member fo their family and give a report. Her daughter interviewed her grandfather---who fought the Vichy French. The teacher said it never happened---we never fought France.:eusa_doh:
As Bill Engval would say: "Here's your sign."

 

[Shangas]

My knowledge on stuff like this is a bit sketchy, but I believe the U.S. sold China some weapons and other military hardware to fight the Japanese with, during the 1930s. The international community would've been well aware of what was going on in Asia. There were big Western expatriate communities in places like Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Saigon and Singapore. It would've been impossible to live there and not notice what the Japanese were up to. It's not that they just ignored the war and pretended it didn't happen, it's just that they didn't see it as being theirs to get involved in.

There are lots of myths about WWII and the French. Collaborationist myths and suchlike. The British sunk the French fleet in the Mediterannean because the French navy wouldn't send their ships to England (where they might be safe). Rather than risk them falling into the hands of the Germans, or being used by a German-collaborationist French government, where they might be used against the Allies, Churchill ordered the entire fleet to be fired-on by the Royal Navy to render them a negliable force at best.

 

[KayEn78]

I'll never forget that when I was in sixth grade, I remember flipping through our Social Studies textbook and discovering WWI and WWII in one chapter--the same one. In eighth grade, we did learn about WWII but it went very quickly. In high school (my junior year--graduated in '97) we took two weeks to study WWII. While I enjoyed it very much, I felt that we seemed to rush through other parts. Yet, during the first semester, you seem to never get out of the 1700s and 1800s. You only begin learning about the 20th Century in February.

It really is pathetic and disturbing at what some teachers tell their students about history. Truthfully, they're in the wrong profession if they teach it the way I read in a few posts above. When I went to college, I majored in History, with my focus on 20th Century History. I took entire semesters of classes dedicated to 1900-1945 and 1945-Present among others. There was even an entire semester of a WWII class, but I ran out of time and wasn't able to take that one. I do remember my Europe in the 20th Century class and was miffed when the professor skipped WWII entirely, figured we already knew it (yes, but not from the German perspective). Now, that would've been interesting.

Oh yes, I've heard over the years that there are people who believe that Roosevelt knew of the coming attack on Pearl Harbor. I really don't know how true this actually is though.

Still, it's awful what students are "learning" (or not learning) now and even a few years before.
-Kristi

 

[KayEn78]

A friend of mine is Jewish (in fact I seem to have a number of Jewish friends...I count three, so far...) and he said that holocaust deniers filled him with such rage, he wished he could give them all a shower.

I'll give you a minute to figure out what he meant.

It only took me a second for me figure out what that guy really meant. And I agree with him.

-Kristi

 

[KayEn78]

When listening to someone say, "Tomorrow morning I have to pick up my wife's car and sh-t, and then I have to go to the dentist and sh-t, after that I have to take my kid to soccer and sh-t..." I wonder, Doesn't this guy have a bathroom at home? And that seems to be a rather high frequency...

Tell me about it, many people tend to talk this way, whether in face-to-face conversation or on the internet (on Facebook and messageboards etc.) Do they feel more "adult" because they constantly talk that way? Perhaps, they just think its "cool" and probably feel "superior" or "smarter" because they can't say (or write) one sentence without an obscenity or explecetive in it). No way...it just makes them look stupid and very uneducated. It's too bad that most people don't have an ounce of respect or courtesy in them, let alone knowing how to act appropriately in public or with mixed company.

-Kristi

-Kristi

 

[MikeBravo]

I believe America DID send China SOME military assistance, but it wasn't much...not enough by half, to help them win the war against the Japanese.

It eventually took over three years to defeat the Japanese. I don't think America had much to spare at that time. In fact, America had smaller armed forces than Romania in 1940

 

[MikeBravo]

Myth: Jesse Owens** was snubbed by Hitler during the 1936 Olympic Games

Fact: Hitler snubbed everybody. On the first day he congratulated only German medal winners. It was suggested that it would be proper if he either congratulated everybody or nobody. Of course, he decided on nobody rather than come into contact with, shall we say, "non-Germans".


Fact: Jesse Owens was snubbed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Unlike white American athletes who won gold, he neither received a telegram or an invite to the White House.



** Jesse Owens was an African-American track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games

 

[Shangas]

I don't think anyone's mentioned this one yet, but it's one that I see constantly perpetuated on YouTube comments-lists and in IMDB.com forum-threads. The myth being that:

"America was raring to go and get into World War Two so that it could kick Germany's ass, send Japan packing, win the war on its own and show up the other Allies. It only entered the war when it was most convenient for it to do so, so that it could play the hero, save the day and take all the credit".

It's ridiculous, of course, but you'd be surprised how many people believe it.

Of course, everyone here at FL.com (or I hope everyone!) knows that this is false.

The U.S.A. was VERY against entering ANY war in the 1930s and 40s, that did not DIRECTLY affect it in some way or another. After the disaster of WWI, America was hell-bent on keeping out of 'European Affairs' and isolationism ran rampant in the United States. Famous aviator Charles A. Lindburgh was a strong isolationist...something that destroyed his previously glowing pre-war reptuation, when hostilities began in 1941.

America was not trying to show off, show up, steal credit, or prove anything. It did not win the war on its own and it did not jump in when it was most advantageous to IT.

The Americans were determined, come hell or high water, to stay out of the war unless they were directly attacked. They were backed into a corner and Pearl Harbor was bombed. That was what brought them into the war. That and almost assuredly nothing else.

Sorry for that little rant, I felt it had to be included...

On a related note, if Japan had never attacked P.H., would America ever have entered the war at all? And on which side?

 

[LizzieMaine]

A friend of mine is Jewish (in fact I seem to have a number of Jewish friends...I count three, so far...) and he said that holocaust deniers filled him with such rage, he wished he could give them all a shower.

I'll give you a minute to figure out what he meant.

I consider Japanese atrocity deniers to be on the same moral plane.

 

[Shangas]

I consider Japanese atrocity deniers to be on the same moral plane.

I wasn't aware that such deniers existed...But if they do, then I agree with what you've said.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I don't think anyone's mentioned this one yet, but it's one that I see constantly perpetuated on YouTube comments-lists and in IMDB.com forum-threads. The myth being that:

"America was raring to go and get into World War Two so that it could kick Germany's ass, send Japan packing, win the war on its own and show up the other Allies. It only entered the war when it was most convenient for it to do so, so that it could play the hero, save the day and take all the credit".

It's ridiculous, of course, but you'd be surprised how many people believe it.

Of course, everyone here at FL.com (or I hope everyone!) knows that this is false.

The U.S.A. was VERY against entering ANY war in the 1930s and 40s, that did not DIRECTLY affect it in some way or another. After the disaster of WWI, America was hell-bent on keeping out of 'European Affairs' and isolationism ran rampant in the United States. Famous aviator Charles A. Lindburgh was a strong isolationist...something that destroyed his previously glowing pre-war reptuation, when hostilities began in 1941.

America was not trying to show off, show up, steal credit, or prove anything. It did not win the war on its own and it did not jump in when it was most advantageous to IT.

The Americans were determined, come hell or high water, to stay out of the war unless they were directly attacked. They were backed into a corner and Pearl Harbor was bombed. That was what brought them into the war. That and almost assuredly nothing else.

Sorry for that little rant, I felt it had to be included...

On a related note, if Japan had never attacked P.H., would America ever have entered the war at all? And on which side?

It was politically impossible for the U. S. to enter the war in 1939-41 because of the strength of the isolationist wing -- isolationism had dominated American politics thruout the 1920s and 1930s in both parties -- which explains why the U. S. wanted nothing to do wiht the League of Nations -- and it was only after Munich that you began to hear meaningful interventionist arguments. Even after the truths of Japan's barbarism in China, Italy's adventures in Ethiopia, and Germany's rearmament were becoming common knowledge nearly 70 percent of the public insisted the U. S. should maintain strict neutrality in world affairs.

In Congress, Republican Senator W. E. Borah -- the American equivalent of Neville Chamberlain in failing to grasp the truth about Hitler -- was the leading, and most influential, exponent of this view. When Borah died in 1940, the America First movement was ready to take up his mantle, with a very broad cross section of support -- from right-wingers like John Flynn and Gerald Nye to old-time Democratic progressives like Burton Wheeler to Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas joining to endorse its program. Contrary to what people today believe, Intervention vs. Isolation was *not* a Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative, New Deal vs. Liberty Leaguers split. There were as many isolationist voices coming from the left as there were from the right, and in an environment like that there was simply no way intervention would be politically viable without an actual attack on the country. The mood began to shift somewhat after the fall of France, but 1940 was an election year, and there was absolutely no way any candidate would be elected on a pro-intervention platform. It wasn't until well into 1941 that Americans began to truly understand that our involvement in the war was inevitable.

An excellent paper on the pre-America First isolationist movement of the 1930s can be found here.

 

[Undertow]

Apologists for the epic crimes against humanity committed by wartime Japan are among those classes of people who fill me with blind, incoherent rage.

Mad enough to cuss? A few "F" words come to mind! (and I don't mean "funny" or "fantastic") lol

 

[LizzieMaine]

See my previous definition of the appropriate uses of swearing. Such would apply in this case.

Some such individuals have followings in Japanese politics even today. And then there's this monstrosity. Note the dateline.

 

[KayEn78]

I would take what people say on Youtube and the IMDB with a huge grain of salt. They have no idea how to have a decent discussion, like we do at the Fedora Lounge. Ignorance and total stupidity is rampant on both of those sites.

-Kristi

 

[Edward]

Youtube comments such as those referenced above are written, usually, by the same type of flag-waving ignoramus who knows nothing more about history than that "WE [the US] saved your a** in WW2, if it wasn't for US you would be speaking German today", and that the upshot of this "freedom" so generously granted us is that we are not permitted to hold "anti-American" views (i.e. any view which would conflict with the commentator's notion of what is best for the US and the superiority of US culture. lol You get the same sort of idiot the world over, really.

Chinese History. (From the Qing Dynasty up to the 1970s).

That must be fascinating. I spend a few weeks a year in China now, amazing country. I adore the place. I've visited all the imperial places in Beijing (especially fascinated by the Temple of Heaven - ritual always intrigues me, especially on that scale), and I really must read up on the history. One of the most fawscinating places there is the military museum. It is the history of the Red Army from 1929, and of course it presents the official story. Absolutely fascinating to see it presented through that filter (and to compare how similar official versions have appeared in our own cultures, albeit that in the West dissenting views are less open to legal sanction for the most part. ).

A friend of mine is Jewish (in fact I seem to have a number of Jewish friends...I count three, so far...) and he said that holocaust deniers filled him with such rage, he wished he could give them all a shower.

I'll give you a minute to figure out what he meant.

That reminds me of another myth: that only Jews suffered in the Holocaust. Certainly by far the biggest target group, but not the only one. This is very well brought out at Auschwitz in the information presented there. That Gypsies, black folks - and, indeed, any non-whites, gays, the disabled (mentally and physically), intellectuals, pacifists, Jehovah Witnesses, and Christians who refused to get in line with the Reichskirche, among others, were also systematically shipped off the the camps should not be forgotten.

There are lots of myths about WWII and the French. Collaborationist myths and suchlike. The British sunk the French fleet in the Mediterannean because the French navy wouldn't send their ships to England (where they might be safe). Rather than risk them falling into the hands of the Germans, or being used by a German-collaborationist French government, where they might be used against the Allies, Churchill ordered the entire fleet to be fired-on by the Royal Navy to render them a negliable force at best.

Wasn't this a big part of much of the post-war ill feeling towards the Brits from the French that led to deGaulle being instrumental in blocking early British applications to join the fore-runner of the EU?

Oh yes, I've heard over the years that there are people who believe that Roosevelt knew of the coming attack on Pearl Harbor. I really don't know how true this actually is though.

It's a long running conspiracy theory that suggests he allowed it to happen to have the excuse to go to war against Japan. I'm not convinced, myself, chiefly because I can't see what advantage it brought to the US. They were covertly supporting the Nationalist Chinese against Japan, which I think was more about trying to thwart Chinese communism than anything to do with Japan. Can't see how open conflict with Japan helped that. It did give them the chance to carry out a life test of the atomic bomb, and send a messge to Moscow in the process, but I don't believe that would have been part of the calculation in 1941.

Myth: Jesse Owens** was snubbed by Hitler during the 1936 Olympic Games

Fact: Hitler snubbed everybody. On the first day he congratulated only German medal winners. It was suggested that it would be proper if he either congratulated everybody or nobody. Of course, he decided on nobody rather than come into contact with, shall we say, "non-Germans".


Fact: Jesse Owens was snubbed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Unlike white American athletes who won gold, he neither received a telegram or an invite to the White House.



** Jesse Owens was an African-American track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games

I read an interview with Owes somewhere, years ago, in which he claimed that Hitler had looked right at him when he won, and smiled and nodded or acknowledged him in some such way. The British newsreel footage of the time had Hitler apparently looking furious, but it's possible this was done in the editing suite - who knows?

'36 was the only Games in their history (about 50 years at that point) at which the gold medals were solid gold, rather than gold plating over another metal. Intended as the top-quality prize for the Aran supermen....

I don't think anyone's mentioned this one yet, but it's one that I see constantly perpetuated on YouTube comments-lists and in IMDB.com forum-threads. The myth being that:

Similar to the idea that any Allies went into the war to fight evil Naziism because of its death camps... which of course weren't known about then. Sadly, while never exploited at the official level, some attitudes to Jews, gays and others across much of the rest of Europe wasn't an awful lot better at that time. Occasionally I do smell a strain of "yes, but they were more prejudiced than us!" which I find deeply unpleasant (log in own eye time...). I hate in general attitudes which suggest that everything done by Allies was perfectly justfiable under the "but Hitler was worse" clause.

On a related note, if Japan had never attacked P.H., would America ever have entered the war at all? And on which side?

Interesting..... as I understood it, the biggest political factor drawing them into the European war was Hitler, having realised his oopsy in opening up a second front ("Hitler never played Risk as a kid" - E Izzard), declared war on the USA in the mistaken belief that Japan would by return declare war on Russia. Had the US not come into the war in Europe, I think the Brits and Hitler would have reached some uneasy understanding (I have no doubt even Churchill would have done that deal rather than face invasion - for all his blustering rhetoric in the "fight them on the beaches" speech, with the mic switched off he acknowledged it wasn't realistic). Possibly the Brits would have offered covert assistance to Russia, somehow. Depending on how hard Russia pushed (remember, they got to Berlin first, though I'm sure that would have been harder without Hitler having to deal with a Western front too), maybe they would have triumphed and we'd have seen a much larger proportion of Europe as Soviet satellite states during the latter part of the Twentieth Century.

As to the "what if Hitler had won" game, I'd say I don't believe Nazism would have lasted this long. Maybe fallen, domino-like, as did Franco's Spain.... 1970s?