Americans Optimistic About WW2?

B

BIW

New Member
Hello,

Was having a discussion with my friend regarding WW2 and he told me it was his impression that ever since America entered the war, that the majority of people felt that we would win, and that they almost never doubted the outcome.

I was wondering if any old-timers on here could state rather that was generally true. I always thought that for the first year (1941-42) there was real concern, especially given our defeats in the Pacific.

Thanks in advance.
 
By 1942 the tide of battle had already turned, the Germans had been defeated in North Africa, and had taken huge losses in Russia. In the Pacific the Japanese advance had not only been stemmed but they were now on the defensive
 
LeEnfield said:
By 1942 the tide of battle had already turned, the Germans had been defeated in North Africa, and had taken huge losses in Russia. In the Pacific the Japanese advance had not only been stemmed but they were now on the defensive
Click to expand...

Very true, and Britain had been trying to get America to join the war since it started due to it's production and man power capabilities. And like in WWI, Germany was determined not to allow America to enter the war. That's why Hitler frowned upon Pearl Harbour. The Americans had every reason to be optimistic.
 
There was definite optimism in the US about winning the war. That is not to say there wasn't a lot of concern for the war in general. Europeans all ready at war had a different out look when the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was known. They probably celebrated realizing that now the US would have to fight.

To Americans it was more a wake up to realty call, no room for celebration.
If you ask anyone old enough to remember in the US where they were when they heard Pearl Harbor had been attacked, they will tell you where and what they were doing. There was great concern.

My mom was doing a friends hair at their sorority in Pittsburgh, Kansas when she heard it on the radio. Two of her sisters were driving from their folks farm into town. It is very interesting to ask older people, as you can feel the concern they had, by just how much detail they remember of that time.

At my moms sorority they even got a call from a guy who wanted to find someone to marry, he thought if he was married he would not have to go. But most of the men were wanting to join the Marines and fight the Japs. (Historical note: At the beginning of the War so many volunteered they had to stop accepting them. They used the draft instead so the could place men where and as they needed them.)
 
Pearl Harbour is one of histories most complicated and well planned attacks. I do really give the Japanese and general Isoroku Yamamoto cred for that.
Pearl Harbour was like the "Blitzkrieg" for Japan.

I think that the american people where concerned about the war in the beginning, the US got some really bad defeats in the Pacific, but then the tide turned and the US managed to counter. That gave the american people high moral which is really important in warfare.

Because if the war at home is lost, you will also fail in wars outside.
 
America's optimism was an understatement... "everyone knew," we would win. Sure, there would be set backs from time to time but, the ultimate victory was assured, in America's opinion. Remember, the war in the Pacific was nationalistic as well as racial! Americans felt it was better than Japan because Japan was an Asian nation. The Japanese felt they could win because of their racial purity, they were the best of Asians! Plus Asians were better than non-Asians, especially a mongrel nation such as the USA!

OPTIMISM??? in January of 1942 President Roosevelt ordered a committee to start the planing of what will be required to invade the Japanese home islands! That is why each island in the Pacific captured, was turned into a storage facility! The invasion of Japan would require a mass supply train. The American people at first wondered how long and how much time it would take to defeat the Japanese in particular and the Germans. The first string of victories by the Japanese showed this war would be difficult but, by June the USA had some victories. The Doolittle raid, the Coral Sea and, Midway Island... we had turned the corner and the USA was on its way.

A good example of the Japanese arrogance is, the USA told the USSR that we had broken some Japanese codes. A German spy in the USSR got that information back to Berlin, which informed Tokyo. The Japanese attitude was, "Occidentals have a hard enough time learning to speak Japanese, how are they going to understand Japanese that is coded? (How about having a cryptographer work with a translator??) :oops: The Japanese should have known their codes had been broken. American actions at Midway, Guadalcanal, the assassination of Adm. Yamamoto, etc. should caused all sorts of alarm bells to go off?
US Press Screw-Ups URL;
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20061201.aspx
The full and interesting story of the Chicago Tribune blowing the codebreakers is at http://www.newseum.org/warstories/essay/secrecy.htm. The actual headline was "NAVY HAD WORD OF JAP PLAN TO STRIKE AT SEA."
 
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