It a simple notion to compare the medial echo of Lusitania with the one received for the WW2 to events.
Even with the Lusitania, there is no straight, linear, inevitable, uninterruptible line from the Lusitania sinking in May 1915, less than a year into the war, and the US DoW in April 1914, 23 months, nearly two years, later, after several quite important intervening incidents and diplomatic impasses. Lusitania was not the last straw exciting America into a warlike frenzy or making war with Germany inevitable. Even Theodore Roosevelt, bully enthusiast, didn't suggest war in its near-term aftermath. He merely suggested seizing German ships interned in US ports as a way to force German compensation or whatever changes in policy or pledges of good behavior we in the USA wished. Lusitania was not the last straw. It was the first straw....the one that made the idea of the US having *any* stake in the ongoing war in Europe against Germany conceivable, even thinkable, in the first place. Before Lusitania, universal consensus in the USA, except possibly for some weird gadfly cranks, was the USA would not be a combatant and had no reason to. That is any criticism or condemnation of Belgium or Prussianism aside. That was all mere commentary, not calls for action, much less war.
As long as Germany keeps sinking shipping to the UK in the Atlantic then yes
Not.....freaking....at....all.
Months of submarine sinkings, since Nov. 1939, in the Atlantic, without a US DoW, 25 months, more than two years, attest to the possible coexistence of submarine warfare in the Atlantic, and US-German nonbelligerency, or official nonbelligerency, or quasi-nonbelligerency where US ground and air forces are kept away from fighting on other continents. So does the shorter period of over sixth months of unneutral American behavior and undeclared naval hostility and sporadic conflict in the Atlantic. That's not proof of inevitability of war, it is proof it was not.
I dislike people saying historical events or circumstances were inevitable. For me such explanations always try to simplify complex events or situations. The moment you actually look at these events they claim to be inevitable, you see that it is not the case. We are on a forum for alternate history and people still argue with inevitable events and predetermined things.
Thank you for your giving it a look and giving it a review, and fair consideration.
I am not necessarily convinced of the thesis. But it appears Simms and his partner assembled the recorded contemporary evidence that fits with all the buzz of activity that certainly makes the appearance of all this activity being relevant and decisive. My God people really were leaving diaries and written records very often in 1941! How did they ever find the time without the internet! [I suppose in the internet age we are leaving just as copious diaries of our thoughts, intentions, fears and decisionmaking].
However, in my view, and I say this from reading a lot of history, including diplomatic history. I do not believe a lot of activity and contemporary documentation of theories necessarily prove that those activities had the true driving force the historians relating them ascribe to them in their narrative. Larger structural issues may really be forcing decisionmakers' hands heavily, despite any doubts or speculations voiced out loud that are captured on paper. And sometimes historians "fall in love" with their sources. "I unearthed and organized all these documents and letters, they must be really important vital to our understanding of why things actually happened, dammit! Eureka dammit!" Historians sort of need to pitch the profundity of their primary research findings like that, even to get a leg up in publishing in academic journals, much less in pitching a book to a publisher or trying to sell copies to the public.
This item, first brought to my attention by the late David T, points to the possibility of much of the worry and activity possibly being beside the point of the ultimate outcome. As does the somewhat popular theory at the time that Germany, an ally of Japan at the time, participated in, directed, or approved of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Gallup took a poll on 8 December - the day after Pearl Harbor and before the US declared war on Japan. It showed over 90% support for declaring war on Germany as well.
The fact of the US and UK being fully cobelligerent against Japan would have increased the complexity and inconvenience to the USA of limiting the conflict with Germany below levels of full bell belligerency for any meaningful amount of time, because Britain's defeat at the hands of Germany, already deemed pretty unacceptable by the American public and governing elite, would be *extra* unacceptable with the British Empire as one of the USA's main fighting allies against Japan, logistically vital for the struggle in the southwestern Pacific, or any attempts to support our *other* fighting ally against Japan, China.
@Erzherzog_Karl - since you read the whole thing - and you are not obligated to give more spoilers if you do not want to:
1. Is Simms assertion that if Hitler had not declared war on the USA *and* not expanded the U-Boat warfare up to American and Caribbean shores (a *deadly* change in ROE time-coincident with his DoW) Roosevelt would have had difficulty, or been unable to declare war?
a) or could declare war but with more division/less support with vague negative effects
b) or could declare war but with political pressure for a strategically unsound Japan-first policy
c) Or, he could not declare war on Germany AND he would be forced by Congress and public to *cut off* Lend-Lease funding/support for the USSR (not involved in war with Japan) and British Empire ops, in Atlantic/Europe/Africa, at least.
FWIW, I find the last, patently unbelievable.
2. Is Simms assertion that Hitler could have expanded his U-Boat warfare up to American and Caribbean shores in December 1941 (a *deadly* change in ROE time-coincident with his DoW), but, if unaccompanied without a DoW from his on the USA, Roosevelt would have had difficulty, or been unable to declare war? Congress and the public would have swallowed it without rage or wanting counter-action, accepting it as "the cost of doing business"?
I find that pretty unbelievable, to the point of implausibility.
