Current Events > if the USA got involved in wwii earlier could more Jews have been saved?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Like holocaust numbers are around 6 million.

Could that have been cut much lower?

It possible. They could have also saved a lot of the other groups targeted by the nazis

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IIRC the United States banned Jews from entering & would send them back.

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yes. We even turned some away. There was at least 1 incident in which German Jews made it to the US on a boat, and they ended up getting deported back to Germany

The US never got involved to save Jews. They got involved after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and then declared war. The US responded by declaring war on Japan, just Japan. It was Germany that declared war on the US.

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ssjevot posted...

The US never got involved to save Jews. They got involved after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and then declared war. The US responded by declaring war on Japan, just Japan. It was Germany that declared war on the US.

Lol Hitler was like... "We're fighting Japan's enemy so in return they would fight the Soviets"

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ShineboxPhil posted...

Lol Hitler was like... "We're fighting Japan's enemy so in return they would fight the Soviets"

Germany and Japan were absolutely terrible allies, same with Italy and Germany. Germany supported Ethiopia against Italy and China against Japan. Germany assumed Japan would also declare war on the Soviet Union but they didn't. Japan declared war on the US because they wanted to invade a variety of territories the allies possessed in East Asia to secure oil, which was only a problem because Germany refused to share knowledge on how to make synthetic oil with Japan.

Also the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy hated each other as they were in constant competition for control of the government and would literally avoid sharing information, and technology with each other, as well as outright trying to force the other into disasterous operations they didn't want to take part in. Germany also had a number of factional rivalries but not to nearly that degree. The reality of these authoritarian regimes is much less efficient and effective than the propaganda would have you believe.

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ssjevot posted...

Also the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy hated each other as they were in constant competition for control of the government and would literally avoid sharing information, and technology with each other, as well as outright trying to force the other into disasterous operations they didn't want to take part in.

I read an interesting alternative history novel by Harry Turtledove called Days of Infamy, in which the Japanese Navy and Army manage to set their rivalry aside, and it results in a conquest and occupation of Hawaii

Not much would have changed. The US was already prepping for war before Pearl Harbor happened, we knew war was pretty much inevitable.

Even with that, the US army was way smaller than it is today, and needed years to gear up for an invasion of Europe. D Day was the start of the counter attack and Europe invasion, and that wasnt till June 1944 (Germany declared war on the US in 1941).

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Zikten posted...

I read an interesting alternative history novel by Harry Turtledove called Days of Infamy, in which the Japanese Navy and Army manage to set their rivalry aside, and it results in a conquest and occupation of Hawaii

Hmm, I just can't see how that could come about. You should read about the political situation after the Taisho democracy ended. We're talking people literally assassinating each other for control of the government. Additionally even if they got along Japan had no chance against the US long term, which was correctly identified by the Navy, but as they didn't control the government they were forced to go along with what they considered to be an unwinnable war. Although Japan had a sizeable empire and by far the largest GDP in the region, the US had more natural resources, better technology, a better industrial base, and was already the largest economy in the world. There was simply no way to compete with America once it turned to a wartime economy. Not only could they not make enough equipment, they also didn't have enough soldiers to replace losses. And the technology disparity quickly became massive. They had no radar until it was reverse engineered, their cryptography was cracked very early, their planes and ships quickly became outdated. And of course Germany despite having leading edge technology was largely uninterested in sharing any of it.

It's a cool premise for a book, but the only way Japan wins is by convincing Germany to go ahead with letting the Soviet Union into the Axis instead of Hitler deciding to invade instead. Then they can get oil from the Soviet Union and never declare war on the US until after they finish carving up Asia with the Soviets and Germans.

Though such cooperation would never happen or last if it did because again, authoritarian regimes are not the effective, efficient machines the propaganda would have you believe. Infighting and irrational decision making going unchallenged is par for the course.

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Duncanwwii

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By the way the US narrative largely throws everything on Hideki Tojo, but this dude is the main one responsible for the invasion of China (the start of WWII in Asia), and then the later overthrow of the pro-America/British Naval faction's control of government and the institution of Army control of government and then war with the US.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fumimaro_Konoe

I think because he killed himself the Americans felt they needed to pin everything on someone and Tojo was the logical choice being he was PM for most of the war, an obvious war criminal, and blaming the emperor was the last thing the US wanted to do.

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this hypothetical takes for granted that the US would have fought against the Nazis. it's not entirely clear to me that they would have. it might depend on how much earlier you mean.

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The US spent damn near all the Atlantic half of the war fucking around in Africa.

If Americans didnt praise the Nazis so much and if American companies didnt sell stuff that the Nazis needed, like oil for their airforce, then USA would have entered the war earlier and the Nazis would have had less resources.

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iPhone_7 posted...

IIRC the United States banned Jews from entering & would send them back.

Jews fleeing from Nazi occupation in boats were pushed away from Britain and the U.S. They both knew what was happening way before they got into Germany and didn't give a fuck. In fact, the U.S. was still supplying machinery and other goods to Germany under the Nazi regime at least a year or so before entering the war, even sending engineers to fix the IBM machines that were bought before the war from the U.S. that the Germans didn't know how to fix.

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USA officials and its allies knew about what Hitler was doing to the Jewish population before soldiers found the concentration camps in 1945.
They didn't care

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Big_Nabendu posted...

USA officials and its allies knew about what Hitler was doing to the Jewish population before soldiers found the concentration camps in 1945.
They didn't care

It would not surprise me at all if our children or grandchildren eventually make serious threads and movies asking why our generation (this current one) did not do shit to stop what is going on in China with the Uyghur population. It probably wont look good for us to tell them the truth that we really, really liked having cheaper phones and other products, so wed better start figuring out what to deflect to.

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Questionmarktarius posted...

The US spent damn near all the Atlantic half of the war fucking around in Africa.

I'm not really sure what you mean by that. The US landed in Morocco and Algeria in November of 1942 and the last remnants of the Afrika Korps surrendered in May of 1943.

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The fate of the Jews weren't of major concern to any of the allies during WW2. They all knew, but their main focus was defeating Germany militarily. Stopping a train reaching a concentration camp doesn't bring Germany closer to surrendering.

UnholyMudcrab posted...

The US landed in Morocco and Algeria in November of 1942

And struck a deal with Darlan, the de facto head of the Vichy government in North Africa, that left his administration intact, its personnel and policemen still in a job, and its anti-semitic legislation still in force. While US troops were garrisoned there they stood by and watched pogroms and Jews being dragged off to detention camps in the Sahara, and didn't lift a finger to stop it. The camps weren't liberated until over 10 months after the Allied landings and it was the newly arrived de Gaulle, not the Americans, who released the inmates.

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Trelve posted...

The fate of the Jews weren't of major concern to any of the allies during WW2. They all knew, but their main focus was defeating Germany militarily. Stopping a train reaching a concentration camp doesn't bring Germany closer to surrendering.

Towards the end they made some efforts. The US was a bit involved in Raoul Wallenberg's work to try and save the Jews of Budapest. Only slightly though.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raoul_Wallenberg


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I mean possibly but the USA wouldn't have joined the war to save them.

#1 we didn't know until we got there what was going on

#2 America hated everyone then. Jews, Irish, Italians, Blacks, Mexicans, Chinese, etc. We weren't exactly knights in shining armor

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ScazarMeltex posted...

Towards the end they made some efforts. The US was a bit involved in Raoul Wallenberg's work to try and save the Jews of Budapest. Only slightly though.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raoul_Wallenberg

Small payback for bombing the Swedish White Buses that saved thousands of concentrate camp inmates.

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I don't know but it seems too late to speculate about it. The United States only got involved in the war because of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

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