War with Germany inevitable?

[timshatz]

An avian flue virus passed to the pigs and then to people.
Steve

Stona and Mike, looks like you're onto something. And, as if that isn't enough, the Spanish Flu might've come directly from Birds as well. Here's a cutout from Wiki:

"Pandemic flu viruses have some avian flu virus genes and usually some human flu virus genes. Both the H2N2 and H3N2 pandemic strains contained genes from avian influenza viruses. The new subtypes arose in pigs coinfected with avian and human viruses and were soon transferred to humans. Swine were considered the original "intermediate host" for influenza, because they supported reassortment of divergent subtypes. However, other hosts appear capable of similar coinfection (e.g., many poultry species), and direct transmission of avian viruses to humans is possible.[10] The Spanish flu virus strain may have been transmitted directly from birds to humans."

The reference to the last line in the above paragraph is linked in below:

Influenza Book | Avian Influenza

While it says there was an Avian flu that migrated to Humans, called "Lombardian Disease" (identified in the late 1800s) because it centered in the Po Valley, it was not a pathogen to it's Avian host (wild water fowl) but affected humans (think about that the next time you have Fois Gras).

All that being said, I kinda doubt the Lombardian Disease was THE variation of the Spanish Flu we've been posting about and am more inclined to go with Mike's perspective of it being something that came from the Orient. For no better reason than the odds of it happening are highest in that realm and the large number of Oriental based troops that were running around France in 1914-1918.

 

[mikewint]

Diddy, please post what you find. you might also check Andrew Price-Smiths book Contagion and Chaos MIT press
i believe you'll find the Ft. Riley cases were in the spring of 1918 with cases appearing in Boston in Sept of the same year brought by returning troops. 1918 was the second wave of contagion

 

[The Basket]

I agree that fate may have been different.

But the u boat war would certainly have eventually sank enough American ships or killed enough American citizens to make USA enter war.

Hitler was well aware that America had been providing war material and foodstuffs for years to the UK. Without this aid...the UK would instantly have to sue for peace.

The fact that Hitler did not enough to stop America been his enemy was clear proof of his own meglomania and over inflated ego.

 

[mikewint]

[QUOTE=.

But the u boat war would certainly have eventually sank enough American ships or killed enough American citizens to make USA enter war.

again an example of hitler's phobic reaction to the british. the U-boats could have been placed under strict orders to not target american shipping. again it would have taken someone with a lot steader hand than the emotional hitler. the german had by-passed the maginot line why not treat the british islands the same way

 

[Njaco]

I believe that the Bird Flu (H1N1) thats been around the past few years is a mutation of that 1918 flu.

 

[The Basket]

It is almost impossible to not attack certain ships during u boat war.
Most attacks were at night and at distance...hanging around to see what's what is the best way to get killed.

The U boat war would simply have to be cancelled or.only attack unescorted non convoy ships to follow strict rules.

As in ww1...the u boat campaign was strict in early days but the rules got looser as war progressed.

Kinda like you can't make omlette without breaking eggs.

 

[stona]

Stona, agreed, and no reflection on british forces and yes, this is all "what if" speculation but considering what the afrika Korps did with what they had, can there be any doubt that if Operation Barbarossa had been aimed at africia the british would have been ejected.
that the germans felt that they had to deal with Britain was a hitler phobia. his failure to unleash the panzers against Dunkirk was more of his phobic response to the british. with the continent secured the british could have sat on their island. what could they have mounted against the germans? air raids are about it.
as i said originally we are lucky a moron was the german leader

Absolutely,I agree. Barbarossa was of course always the intention of nazi Germany. Nazi ideology always maintained that their living room was to the East. The entire early war in the west,leading up to Dunkirk, was merely an effort to clear the decks for this. Hitler believed he'd done it.
I think his military leadership were all too aware of the danger of leaving the British problem unresolved,commiting themselves to a war on two fronts,but the campaign in the East was driven by political expediency not military necessity.
Air raids were about all the allies in the West could mount against Germany right up until Overlord, much to the frustration of our Soviet allies.
The turning point in the war came ,I'd say, around the winter of 1942,the time of the battle of Stalingrad and had little to do with anything any of us were doing on the Western front.
I was told repeatedly,by young naval cadets, on a visit many years ago to what was then still the Soviet Union that they had won the second world war alone,they honestly believed this.Like any myth it has a footing in fact. None of them had heard of the vast amount of material shipped at considerable cost to their ports from the factories of the western world. Many assumed that Britain,as an evil imperial power,was on the side of the nazis!
Cheers
Steve

 

[Freebird]

How long could the US continue to loose men and ships in the Atlantic due to German subs?

What ships were being lost exactly? How many US ships were lost in 1941?
There were only a few US ships lost in 1941 (before pearl), and it could easily have been blamed on churchill British "Black Ops". Shipping losses weren't really on the radar in 1941, the prevailing public attitude was to stay out of a European war.

U.S. Merchant Ships Sunk or Damaged in World War II

And IMO, the U.S. had to support our allies anyway we could, and should have done more earlier in support of Europe.

What Allies? While Roosevelt was cozy with the British, the US public was by no means all sympathetic with the "British" cause. Remember, in 1941, 3 of the top 5 minority groups among the voting public were German, Irish Italian - most of whom were less than sympathetic to the British.

The casus belli was kinda where I was going with the OP. It seems to me that we had the irresistable force meeting the immovable object. FDR and the Atlantic Fleet were hell-bent on getting the convoys through.

Uh, not exactly. The fleet USN had major misgivings about committing ships to the Atlantic instead of facing Japan in the Pacific. Adm. King had no liking for the British either.

I think from 1776 right up to 1945, there was a strong feeling in the US that Europe was a failed society and that the best thing for America was to keep out of European affairs. This fueled public antipathy to American involvement in both 1914-1917 and 1939-41. I think if Hitler had not declared war on the US, American opinion would have favoured a war against Japan separate from the European war against Hitler.

Dead right.

Whether this would have been feasible with the Japanese rampaging through European possessions is debatable, but given that the Italians and Japanese did not join Germany in 1939, there was no good reason for Hitler to declare war on the USA in support of Japan, thereby uniting the two wars. So, the conflict was avoidable in the short-to-medium turn, and had Hitler been smart, he would have ordered Doenitz to keep the U-boats away from American forces and avoid provoking the US until he could reach a conclusion in the Russian theatre. [/QUOTE]

Correct, except that the British Dutch may not have been involved against Japan in the Pacific without the American quid pro quo.

 

[Freebird]

War with Germany was inevitable because - for Hitler - the USA was the single greatest threat to German hegemony and world order. The Soviet Union and the lands east were - in his mind - no different than the western frontier in the USA.

Huh? No not even close. Russian Bolshevism was the #1 threat, and the British blockade was #2. The US didn't really enter into his plans. (a major mistake obviously) Hitler didn't think much of the US (a "mongrel" nation) and had Japan not pulled the US into the war the level of US production would have been much less.

By late 1941, Britain was effectively bankrupt. Massive debts from WWI coupled with the costs of re-arming in the late 1930s and sustaining the fight alone had eradicated Britains financial reserves, hence the Lend-Lease act which only came into effect in 1942. Late 1941/early 1942 was a tipping point when Britain might have been forced out of the war had America not joined the fight - there was simply no way for Britain. There is an argument that the industrial capacity Germany used to build more fighters and defend Europe against British and American bombers might, if applied to the Eastern Front, have resulted in a very different outcome for Germany against Russia.

Actually Britain was not in that bad a position in Dec of 1941, it was probably the high water mark of the first 3 years of the war. They weren't going to go bankrupt. The US had already committed to Lend Lease, The British had pushed back Rommel, the Axis had been pushed back from Moscow, and Hitler had no hope of invading the UK. Had the US not entered the European war it wouldn't have really subtracted anything critical from the first 10 - 12 months of the war, and the Commonwealth would certainly been in a far stronger position, if they didn't send 8 - 10 divisions to the far east, and require huge amounts of air, naval shipping assets to be put against Japan.

Bottom line, America would have had to fight because the Axis powers would not have offered any other alternatives. Perhaps not in 1941, or even 1942 but ultimately she would have fought Germany because Hitler just didn't know when to stop. We can "what if" until the cows come home about how this might have been prosecuted - Germany using countries in South America to launch non-conventional psyops and other attacks, employment of the "Amerika-bomber" etc etc. However, America would have been dragged into some form of conflict with Germany.

Perhaps not in 1942 though. Germany might have tried to conquer all of Europe before the US had the chance to ramp up production.

I just do not believe the U.S. could sit out and let the whole of Europe suffer under German rule.

Why not? They didn't enter the war when Poland was attacked, or France conquered, or the soviets attacked. Why not let the Euopeans sort out their own affairs, and keep the US out of the horrors of war?
Remember there were apologists like Charles Lindbergh Joe Kennedy advocating against getting involved. Besides, why should the US help Britain, since it was a lost cause anyways since it was obvious

"In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken."

Also, Japan was not likely to stop it's conquests, and as war between Japan and the U.S. was unavoidable IMO, war between the U.S. and Japan would have brought Germany into the fray. Japan's expansion in the Pacific involved England and the US, and so too it would have brought Germany in no matter what.

Why would war with Japan bring the US into conflict with Germany?
Lots of folks in the US would have preferred the US to concentrate on Japan and leave the European war alone.

 

[mikewint]

Absolutely,I agree. Barbarossa was of course always the intention of nazi Germany. Nazi ideology always maintained that their living room was to the East. The entire early war in the west,leading up to Dunkirk, was merely an effort to clear the decks for this. Hitler believed he'd done it.
I think his military leadership were all too aware of the danger of leaving the British problem unresolved,commiting themselves to a war on two fronts,but the campaign in the East was driven by political expediency not military necessity.
Air raids were about all the allies in the West could mount against Germany right up until Overlord, much to the frustration of our Soviet allies.

You make my point for me. Wars are indeed often fought for political reasons and not what would be the best tactical plan. (i spent 6 years in just such a war). the outnumbered and undersupplied german divisions were winning in the mid-east and europe was conquered but not subdued. political considerations and ideology should have taken second place to the tactical considerations. it was time to consolidate regroup and resupply a mechanized force needs petroleum and it was there in the mid east for the taking had Rommel been supported.

 

[mikewint]

Freebird, triple excellent I could not agree more.

 

[Messy1]

I just feel war with Germany was inevitable. I do see in the first post of this thread I did forget the part about normal relations with Japan, but that is the biggest "what if" of this whole discussion. I just feel once the Tripartite Pact was signed, war with Germany was unavoidable.

 

[mikewint]

Messy1, agreed as long as we define "inevitable" which is why i have said many times "thank god for Hitler, the moron." the war was sooner rather than later when we would have had to face a stronger more prepared germany

 

[Messy1]

But giving this some more thought, if relations with Japan had not gone bad, then perhaps the Tripartite Pact would not have come about. I just think that if all of Europe (with or without England) was under German rule, sooner or later, war between the US and Germany was unavoidable.

 

[mikewint]

Messy1 agreed please read my previous post. war with Japan was a certainty once FDR cut off their oil supplies

 

[diddyriddick]

Diddy, please post what you find. you might also check Andrew Price-Smiths book Contagion and Chaos MIT press
i believe you'll find the Ft. Riley cases were in the spring of 1918 with cases appearing in Boston in Sept of the same year brought by returning troops. 1918 was the second wave of contagion

Actually, according to Barry, Ft. Riley was the second stage with Haskell county (300 miles west of Camp Funston/Ft. Riley) being the epicenter. Barry points out that there were documented cases in Haskell county in January of 1918. Additionally, Haskell Co. being small, and medical facilities being limited, it is certainly possible that there were unidentified cases in late 1917.

Significantly, the strain that Barry cited was H1N1 (Swine) flu. I found Price-Smith's book on-line, but maddeningly, it is truncated in places. But as I understand it, Contagion and Chaos proposes a European epicenter of H5N1 (Avian) variety. The possible implications of a recombinant "super flu" are interesting, to say the least.

"If the virus did not originate in Haskell, there is no good explanation for how it arrived there. There were no other known outbreaks anywhere in the United States from which someone could have carried the disease to Haskell, and no suggestions of influenza outbreaks in either newspapers or reflected in vital statistics anywhere else in the region. And unlike the 1916 outbreak in France, one can trace with perfect definiteness the route of the virus from Haskell to the outside world."

Thanks for the heads-up on Price-Smith. I'm gonna have to pick up a copy.

The site of origin of the 1918 influenza pandemic and its public health implications

 

[diddyriddick]

Uh, not exactly. The fleet USN had major misgivings about committing ships to the Atlantic instead of facing Japan in the Pacific. Adm. King had no liking for the British either.

You are absolutely right that the Kimmel in Pearl Harbor was against equipping the Atlantic Fleet at the expense of Cincpac. But Kimmel wasn't responsible for national policy. Roosevelt definitely had no reservations about "Europe first." Betty Stark would certainly have gone along.

As to King, I don't have any hard data at hand to say one way or the other. While I know he was stridently pro-Pacific as Cominch/CNO, I'd be really surprised if he had that view as Cinc of the Atlantic Fleet. At that time, the Pacific wasn't his worry-the Atlantic was.

 

[diddyriddick]

I just feel war with Germany was inevitable. I do see in the first post of this thread I did forget the part about normal relations with Japan, but that is the biggest "what if" of this whole discussion. I just feel once the Tripartite Pact was signed, war with Germany was unavoidable.

It is the biggest "what-if", but it is the fundamental question of my OP.

Fellas....Because of my poor choice of words, we are getting a little off-topic here. For the purpose of this thread Japan doesn't exist. There is no eastern front. And forget the Tripartite pact.

Was war between an isolationist America and a progressively more capable Germany inevitable based solely on the increased friction between the two countries. It doesn't matter who drew first blood-it is sufficient to note that they had fired on each other. Would public sentiment have turned away from the isolationists and toward the internationalists because of the undeclared war in the Atlantic? Would a hypothetical Lusitania II have changed the political landscape toward intervention?

 

[diddyriddick]

With this thread in mind, I've been snooping on Time's website archives. In reading the stories from 1941, I am struck by how interventionist the tone of the American Press was. I would have expected much more of an isolationist stance.

 

[mikewint]

It is the biggest "what-if", but it is the fundamental question of my OP.
It doesn't matter who drew first blood-it is sufficient to note that they had fired on each other.

Diddy, that changes everything. anyone who fires on the US we fire back. i.e. Pearl harbor