I wonder if the New Deal was responsible for us winning the Second World War?

[ThomWV]

Without the improvements in infrastructure, particularly roads*, that took place during and as a result of the New Deal one wonders if we would have been able to supply the machinery of war that allowed us to prevail in the Second World War. I think that The New Deal programs not only began to lift us out of the Great Depression but they can also be credited to a large part on our survival as a Nation during that horrible period of total war.


*approximately 500,000 miles of new road and road widening projects were begun and completed during the New Deal.

[treestar]

1. Very possible

Wingnuts would of course prefer to believe that wars cause prosperity. They do love destruction.

[KharmaTrain]

2. Of Course Not...We Lost That War, Too...

Look...there's Volkswagens all over our street, Japanese teevees invading our living rooms.

And while we're on roads, I guess Eisenhower's Interstate program (meant to transport nukes coast to coast) didn't create any jobs, either.

If you have the fortune to know or speak with someone who grew up during that era, you'll hear of a far different world than we have now. It was far more communal...families handed clothes down, people saved pennies for rainy days (that later went to scrap drives) and the focus was on the good of the country over the individual. A 180 degree mindset than what we saw over the past 8 years.

Many New Deal and NRA projects have provided decades of jobs...directly and indirectly.

Now when you build a road or expand one, that means new places for people to live which brings in businesses and jobs. But to the revisionists all this didn't happen...or if it did, Hoover or Eisenhower did it.

Could you imagine how boooshie would have handled WWII? Eeeeek. We'd probably still be fighting the damn thing 20 years later.

[Frances]

3. If W had been president when Pearl Harbor was bombed,

the U.S. would never have been able to build the planes and tanks and ships it needed to win. All the contracts would have gone to W's buddies who would have taken the money and built junk.

[90-percent]

4. GWB in WW2?

As I have read elsewhere on the Internets, GWB probably would have invaded New Zealand after Pearl Harbor.

(an analogy as to why the fuck he invaded Iraq)

-90% jimmy

[Greyhound]

5. If Idiot Frat Boy had been squatting in the White House when Pearl harbor was bombed,

we would have invaded Canada.

[ConcernedCanuk]

6. Personally? - I think it was the atom bomb - that simple

.
.
.

just plain old firepower and the ability to instill fear . . .

that's my opinion anyhoo . .

[eppur_se_muova]

7. Enriched uranium provided by Oak Ridge, powered by TVA. nt

[Thothmes]

11. Plutonium provided by Hanford

[Frances]

8. Germany had been defeated and Hitler had committed

suicide before the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

If you watch Ken Burns' history of World War II, you will get an overview of all the fighting that was going on in the world during WORLD War II.

Those of us who had immediate family members fighting in the Pacific thought their lives were so important that we accepted the dropping of the atomic bombs as necessary. We also knew that the Japanese would fight to the last person and that more Japanese lives would have been lost without the bombs than with them.

[ConcernedCanuk]

10. USA "saved" Hiroshima and Nagasaki for targets just for the "bomb"

.
.
.

USA fully intended to kill masses of civilians, and did bomb the shit out of them

and still are

sick nation

[Frances]

19. I don't think you saw Burns' films from the fighting in the

Pacific. And, of course, you never met my first cousin who was a radio man in the Pacific. He was only 18 when he went into the military, and, as my mother who spent all her summers with him said, "He was never the same after that war."

Maybe you had to have a personal connection with people who were in the Pacific to understand that part of the war.

[Rage for Order]

32. Fuckin' Aye!

Go USA! :) Glad we did it the first time, and would do it all over again given the chance :hi:

[ThomWV]

9. Actually if you were to give it good consideration you'd see that the bomb ended it but Radar won it

[JVS]

17. Nah, it was the Red Army! Those dudes fucked people up!

[Thothmes]

22. They did have some outside help.

[Occam Bandage]

23. Precious little for years. nt

[JVS]

25. There is a reason that Spam became known as 2nd Front as a joke among the Russians.

We fed them, but they did the fighting. It has also been suggested that the atom bomb was used because Russia had agreed to join the war in the East by mid August and the USA and UK were not eager for the Red Army to sweep into Japan and its occupied Asian mainland territory.

[Thothmes]

28. We shipped them a little more than spam

What we gave the Soviet Army in 1944 was the capability to resupply large armored formations. At the end of the day when Konie'v 3rd Guards tank army halted at the end of the day, after tearing up 25 kilometers of German lines. The first thing that happend were long lines of Dodge, Chevrolet, and Studebaker four wheel drive 2 1/2 trucks trucks pulled up laden with fuel, ammunition and replacement infantry for the tanks. We shipped over 400,000 of these trucks to the Soviet Union. The Gorky Automobile Factory could only manufacture one ton two wheel drive trucks. There production for the was was 190,000 vehicles. By 1944, the Gorky factory shifted to weapons production because we were meeting the mobility needs of the Soviet Army. There was a good chance that the 3rd Guards tank army commander, General Rybalko commanded his army from a American made jeep or Dodge scout car. We shipped them over 60,000 of these type of vehicals. When the replacement infantry jumped off of those trucks, the first thing to hit the grour were most probably American made combat boots, we sent the Soviet Army, 15,000,000 pairs. And of course, the odds were that most of the men in the 3rd Guards,dined on spam. Also, very good chance when the train left Cheylabensk (tankograd) the locomotive that pulled the long train of new replacement T-34 tanks was Amercan made. We shipped them 9,000 locomotives. The Soviet Army prefered their own weapons, which were in most cases better than what we shipped them. They could build 40,000 T-34s because they did not have to divert industrial capacity to build trucks or locomotives. There can be no denying that the Soviet Army did the vast majority of fighting and dying duing war. Their sacrifices destroyed the German Army. What we did for them was to give them the resupply capability needed for fast moving armoured warfare. Without that resupply mobility it may taken the Soviet Army an additionl year or 18 months to get to Berlin.

[Thothmes]

12. I doubt if that broad a statment is valid.

Where were these roads built? Roads constructed between Buffalo Chip Montana and Mule Shoe Wyoming, while no doubt worth while, probably did not win WWII for us. Would rather think that the many millions of American that fought in our armed forces and the many millions of Americans that built the tools of war were responsible for favorable outcome of WWII. JMO.

[H2O Man]

14. I have relatives

who worked on the roads in upstate New York, thanks to the New Deal. These roads (including one railroad) allowed the transport of weapons made at one of the largest defense contractors in the nation. Though the community where the defense plant is relatively small, a national magazine did a feature article on it, saying it was the single town that the US "couldn't do without."

I think the OP is valid.

[Thothmes]

20. We built the Alcan highway (1500 miles) in 8 months

we built dozens of shipyards in a years time. If it did not exist in 1942, and was needed for the war effort, it would have been built.

[BlooInBloo]

13. I would have thought that trains were the primary method of transportation...

for materials, parts, and what-not, back then.

[Kaleva]

15. An example of how the New Deal prepared the US for war

"Merchant shipbuilding mobilized early and effectively. The industry was overseen by the U.S. Maritime Commission (USMC), a New Deal agency established in 1936 to revive the moribund shipbuilding industry, which had been in a depression since 1921, and to ensure that American shipyards would be capable of meeting wartime demands. With the USMC supporting and funding the establishment and expansion of shipyards around the country, including especially the Gulf and Pacific coasts, merchant shipbuilding took off. The entire industry had produced only 71 ships between 1930 and 1936, but from 1938 to 1940, commission-sponsored shipyards turned out 106 ships, and then almost that many in 1941 alone (Fischer, 41). "

http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/tassava.WWII

I don't think one can claim that it was the New Deal itself that was responsible for us winning WWII but one can certainly argue that it did help.

[Frances]

16. One of my uncles was in the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps)

during the 1930s. The CCC did lots of good work in the national parks and other places.

The young men lived in camps and received decent food. I think that the way the young men were paid was that a check was sent home to their families and the young men received an allowance in addition to their room and board.

Many young men (not my uncle who came from a farm that produced plenty of potatoes, vegetables, ham, and turkeys to feed the family) were malnourished. The food the CCC gave the young men was important because many Americans were malnourished. Maybe someone else can provide the statistics for the men who were turned down for service in World War II because of malnutrition.

[Thothmes]

21. Agreed.

[Occam Bandage]

18. No. The Second World War wasn't that close.

The European theater was won at Stalingrad. The Pacific theater was won December 8th, 1941, when America committed itself to the unconditional destruction of the Japanese empire despite the loss of the bulk of its Pacific fleet.

[coalition_unwilling]

24. The USSR lost 20 million, the USA

lost . . . 250,000.

The USSR fought and defeated Nazi Germany along a 2,000-mile front, while the Brits and Yanks were dicking around . . . in North Africa!

Q.E.D.

[Occam Bandage]

26. Indeed. I believe D-Day was a front against the Soviets as much as it was against the Nazis;

we could hardly sit by and let them roll over Europe entirely.

[coalition_unwilling]

27. I hadn't thought of that -- you may have a point, at

least when it comes to the rabidly anti-communist Churchill. FDR's motives are more inscrutable, imho.

The standard historiography argues, based on the public record, that Stalin constantly pressured FDR and Churchill to open a 2nd front in the west . . . when it might have actually made a real difference in 1942-43.

Somehow, the Brits and Yanks didn't get around to it until . . . June of 1944!

Oh well, Americans must have their myths. It's not called the United States of Amnesia (Gore Vidal) for nothing!

Off topic, but is your screen name an allusion to the medieval philosopher William of Occam (famous for the logical trope known as "Occam's Razor")?

[Frances]

29. The U.S. wasn't militarily ready to open a front in the west in 42

After watching Ken Burns' mini-series, I don't think there is any chance we would have succeeded on D-Day if we had attenpted it in 42. The U.S. soldiers needed that time in Africa to learn how to fight.

[coalition_unwilling]

33. All well and good, I suppose. Except that the soliders of the USSR

did not have the luxury of a 2-year junket in North Africa to "learn how to fight." The course of the war in the European theater was already decided long before June 1944.

[ThomWV]

30. Your sense of histroy doesn't agree with any other I've ever been aware of

[Evoman]

31. From what I learned playing Call of Duty 2, we won the war because our soldiers had the ability to

take about a hundred bullets, and to respawn if they died. The germans, however, had really bad AI and would stay dead after they were shot.

:shrug: