Iata perspectiva lui Conrad Black, un membru controversat al elitei internationale, despre Razboiul Mondial din 1939-1945:
Let us recall that Roosevelt concluded in 1940 that if Hitler were allowed to make his conquests up to that point permanent (Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, most of France and Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, and Luxembourg), Germany would have as large a population and almost as great an industrial strength as the United States; most of the rest of continental Europe, as far east as the USSR, would remain German satellites (Salazar’s Portugal, Franco’s Spain, Mussolini’s Italy, Antonescu’s Romania, Horthy’s Hungary); Hitler, Stalin, and the Japanese would control the entire Eurasian land mass. This would be a mortal threat to democracy, specifically to the United States, which would become a “prisoner” in the Americas, “fed through the bars by the unpitying masters of other continents,” as Roosevelt said at the University of Virginia in June 1940. To address this extreme threat, he broke a tradition as old as the republic by successfully seeking a third term, extending territorial waters out into the Atlantic from three to 1,800 miles, and ordering the U.S. Navy to attack on detection any German or Italian ship while practically giving Britain, Canada, Australia, and eventually the USSR anything they asked for while calling it a loan. When Hitler did not treat that idiosyncratic redefinition of neutrality as an act of war, Roosevelt stopped oil sales to Japan, which imported 80 percent of its oil from the U.S., until it vacated China and Indochina, which he knew Japan would not do.
Since Hitler reckoned, after Lend-Lease in February 1941, that he was almost at war with the United States already, and that Roosevelt would somehow provoke outright combat when he was ready, at which time he could be attacked in the back by Stalin, his best bet was to attack Stalin preemptively.
Roosevelt concluded that if Stalin made a separate peace with Hitler, as Lenin and Trotsky had with Germany in 1918, it would be practically impossible to dislodge Hitler from control of continental Europe, and his best course was to provoke Japan into an attack that would galvanize a unanimity of opinion behind an American war effort and motivate Stalin to fight on and take the great majority of the casualties that would be incurred in subduing Nazi Germany. To avoid a German–Russian peace that would leave both dictatorships durably in place, it would then be necessary for the Anglo–Americans to invade Western Europe without undue delay. The Germans, given the savage ferocity of the war in the East, would fight much more fiercely there than in the West, as they knew that the Western powers would be comparatively civilized occupiers and imposers of post–war conditions. Roosevelt’s plan was for the Americans and British to occupy Germany, France, and Italy, as well as Japan, and integrate them into the democratic West, while Stalin, for all his vastly greater war-losses, would be squatting in Eastern Europe, inhospitable and comparatively uninteresting territory in strategic terms. All of these calculations were correct. Bringing them about required Roosevelt to get Stalin to help him at Tehran to require that the Western powers invade France and not Yugoslavia, which Churchill wished...
Let us recall that Roosevelt concluded in 1940 that if Hitler were allowed to make his conquests up to that point permanent (Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, most of France and Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, and Luxembourg), Germany would have as large a population and almost as great an industrial strength as the United States; most of the rest of continental Europe, as far east as the USSR, would remain German satellites (Salazar’s Portugal, Franco’s Spain, Mussolini’s Italy, Antonescu’s Romania, Horthy’s Hungary); Hitler, Stalin, and the Japanese would control the entire Eurasian land mass. This would be a mortal threat to democracy, specifically to the United States, which would become a “prisoner” in the Americas, “fed through the bars by the unpitying masters of other continents,” as Roosevelt said at the University of Virginia in June 1940. To address this extreme threat, he broke a tradition as old as the republic by successfully seeking a third term, extending territorial waters out into the Atlantic from three to 1,800 miles, and ordering the U.S. Navy to attack on detection any German or Italian ship while practically giving Britain, Canada, Australia, and eventually the USSR anything they asked for while calling it a loan. When Hitler did not treat that idiosyncratic redefinition of neutrality as an act of war, Roosevelt stopped oil sales to Japan, which imported 80 percent of its oil from the U.S., until it vacated China and Indochina, which he knew Japan would not do.
Since Hitler reckoned, after Lend-Lease in February 1941, that he was almost at war with the United States already, and that Roosevelt would somehow provoke outright combat when he was ready, at which time he could be attacked in the back by Stalin, his best bet was to attack Stalin preemptively.
Roosevelt concluded that if Stalin made a separate peace with Hitler, as Lenin and Trotsky had with Germany in 1918, it would be practically impossible to dislodge Hitler from control of continental Europe, and his best course was to provoke Japan into an attack that would galvanize a unanimity of opinion behind an American war effort and motivate Stalin to fight on and take the great majority of the casualties that would be incurred in subduing Nazi Germany. To avoid a German–Russian peace that would leave both dictatorships durably in place, it would then be necessary for the Anglo–Americans to invade Western Europe without undue delay. The Germans, given the savage ferocity of the war in the East, would fight much more fiercely there than in the West, as they knew that the Western powers would be comparatively civilized occupiers and imposers of post–war conditions. Roosevelt’s plan was for the Americans and British to occupy Germany, France, and Italy, as well as Japan, and integrate them into the democratic West, while Stalin, for all his vastly greater war-losses, would be squatting in Eastern Europe, inhospitable and comparatively uninteresting territory in strategic terms. All of these calculations were correct. Bringing them about required Roosevelt to get Stalin to help him at Tehran to require that the Western powers invade France and not Yugoslavia, which Churchill wished...
"Conrad Black mug shot" by United States Marshals Service - Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
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