Eric Hill Quotes

Mussolini allied with Hitler. Ciano turned out to be right.

Halsey was a big supporter of the use of the Atom Bomb against Japan. His ships had battled the Japanese navy from Pearl Harbor to Japan’s eventual surrender and had seen the cruelty of the Japanese occupation and aggression throughout the Pacific. His ships were the first to be sunk by Kamikaze suicide pilots at the Battle of Leyte Gulf where over 3000 American sailors were killed in the battle that finally destroyed the Japanese Navy’s ability to wage war.

During WWII, Mauldin was at the front lines and in the fox holes with the troops getting ideas for his cartoons most of which were drawn on the battle field;

Under the Jay Peace Treaty for the American Revolution, the Iroquois were recognized as an Independent Nation. (5 of the tribes fought for the British and 1 for the Colonists which is why the Iroquois were one of the subjects of the peace treaty. In 1942. the Iroquois wanted to maintain their own sovereignty and so they made their own declaration of war in WWII. Then Iroquois men then enlisted in the American Armed Forces. The Iroquois had made their own separate Declaration of War in WWI as well.

Japanese military culture of the time was that a soldier who surrendered, even if wounded, was totally dishonorable and therefore could be abused and killed. The American marines then retaliated, and after that, the Americans also took no live prisoners contrary to American military regulations. This incident shows how difficult it is to maintain military professional standards and regulations if the other side does not. Similar situations existed in most American wars, but by the end of the 20th century, the all volunteer military had become much more professionalized and disciplined, and there were relatively few American atrocities despite many provocations.

Theodore Roosevelt was the Presidential nominee. Johnson was a leader of some members of Congress some of whom were extreme isolationists and some of whom were Nazi sympathizers and Hitler admirers. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor later that year, Germany, fulfilling its treaty with Japan, declared war on America, Johnson’s group no longer mattered. Before WWII most Republicans were opposed to Defense Spending and accused the Democrats of being war hawks. After WWII, they flip flopped and became more hawkish than the Democrats who they accused of being soft on defense for years thereafter. See {631380} for President Roosevelt’s different view.

There were a number of world leaders who were not happy about the German Reunification. See Henry Kissinger {610355} for another.

WWII has been remembered as a “good war” which had the overwhelming support of American at the time and in historical retrospect.

At first glance, the reader might think that this quotation in a leading university newspaper was from the Vietnam War era. However, it was argument against U. S. involvement in World War II. There was a very negative reaction to Wilson’s visions and claims for the First World War which never did come to pass that stuck with many.

This fact was one of the reasons that McCarthyism and HUAC were able to get traction. The Red Scare paranoids found something to really worry about. They overreacted, sensing the problem not as one of a large number of misguided and naïve people trying to help America do better, but as active spies controlled by the Kremlin who wanted to destroy the American way of life. There were two basic reasons these naïve officials acted that way. Many of them had not forgotten the devastation of the American people in the Great Depression and believed that capitalism had almost failed completely and the rough edge had to be taken off American capitalism by injecting some socialist principles such as stronger labor unions, ending racial and religious discrimination, controlling monopolies, and regulating critical industries. They also were mindful of the fact that the Russians were bearing the brunt of the WWII casualties—military and civilian—while killing more of the Germans and capturing more German occupied territory than the other allies together, yet they were not receiving the same level of assistance—technical, intelligence, economic and political as the British. They saw helping the Russians as saving American lives on the battlefield by making them more effective and keeping German soldiers and weapons away from the Western front and Americans. They also remembered that many in Congress were opposed to our entering WWII in Europe until Germany declared war on America. They had in many cases been apologists for Fascism and passionate enemies of communism. Some American industrialists like Henry Ford were anti-Semitic and overt admirers of Hitler. {586985} So these officials tried to redress the imbalance that existed while at the same time little was really known about Soviet Russia and the Stalin excesses that were as bad as some of Hitler’s. {634969} The only information Americans had were the terrible casualties the Russians were taking and the in kind that they were dishing out to the Germans. The number of Soviet spies in America were few and commensurate with the number of agents we had in Russia. But few Americans realized the difficulty the U. S. and the rest of the democratic world would have with Russia after the war was won.

The Germans had invaded much of Russia, and this was a month before Pearl Harbor so the Russians had no idea that the United States would actively enter the war although they were getting war material help from America.

There were other factors which Stalin did not mention. There was a major factor of revenge and retaliation. The Germans had killed 22 million Russians (many murdered deliberately), and forced millions of others into slave labor. They had looted everything of value, artistically or commercially from Russian, homes, churches and other buildings. Many of the Russian officers believed that treatment of the Germans was only just given the barbaric behavior of the Germans and applauded by most of the German population.

The Nazis occupied the cities, but the partisans survived in the mountains. The resistance was ferocious and very effective. From a German Soldier’s point of view, the Yugoslav front was the most dangerous assignment where his odds of being killed was even greater than the Russian front.

This historic speech is regarded as one of the most important in Australia's history, marking a turning point in Australia's relationship with its founding country, the United Kingdom. Many felt that Prime Minister Curtin was abandoning Australia's traditional ties to the British Isles. -- Wikipedia

This quotation is surprising in that Mrs. Roosevelt was a leading liberal and one of the leading advocates for peace. This quotation might have been authored by a right wing conservative of the early 21st century.