Quote:
Originally Posted by Botnst
Who defines a moral war? In 1940 the USA believed that we had no part in the conflict (isolationists): it was just another European fratricidal event that we should stay out of.
The war didn't get a moral parameter until the Janaese attacked on Dec 7, 1941.
Even then, a large minority thought the war should be fought exclusively against Japan and let the Europeans deal with their own problem. It took an awful lot of masterful propaganda by Churchill and Roosevelt to change that. Was the persuasive propaganda moral?
It's always clearest in hindsight.
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I think the tide was turning on Europe well before Dec 7 and the majority of Americans had come to the realization that we had to ally with Britain, up to and including going to war with Germany. December 7 changed all that.
Things like the
City of Flint taken as a merchant war prize in
1939, and the USS Rueben James torpedoed and sunk by a U-boat in
Oct. 41.(100 of the crew lost.)
We were coming around. Too slow no doubt for Winnie and his "old naval friend" probably. But public opinion was turning away from isolationism.
(Without the Royal Navy, what was left to stand in the way of the German Navy.)