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Ongoing Discussion
As for military leadership and advice from the US, no, I'm afraid not, at least not prior to 1941. Although FDR was in contact with Churchill while Churchill was Vice-Lord of the Admiralty, and later Prime Minister, such correspondance, where it touched upon the war, was in finding inventive ways for FDR to defy the common, economical,political and legislative hurdles that barred the US from extending aid to Britain. The ability to extend military leadership and control to the UK was both legally impossible and militarily impossible for FDR. The Neutrality Acts provided the legal impossibilities (FDR was only able to defy the Neutrality Acts by taking what would have been the donation of 50 Destroyers to the UK and turning it into 'sale'), and of course, if the US had provided military leadership prior to them officially declaring war on Germany, then this would have been deemed an Act of War by the Axis powers and would have esssentially boxed them into the position of having to declare war against the US, which, interestingly, is something that the European based Axis powers wanted to avoid.[[User:Ieuan|Ieuan]] 01:49 4/Nov/08
As for military leadership and advice from the US, no, I'm afraid not, at least not prior to 1941. Although FDR was in contact with Churchill while Churchill was Vice-Lord of the Admiralty, and later Prime Minister, such correspondance, where it touched upon the war, was in finding inventive ways for FDR to defy the common, economical,political and legislative hurdles that barred the US from extending aid to Britain. The ability to extend military leadership and control to the UK was both legally impossible and militarily impossible for FDR. The Neutrality Acts provided the legal impossibilities (FDR was only able to defy the Neutrality Acts by taking what would have been the donation of 50 Destroyers to the UK and turning it into 'sale'), and of course, if the US had provided military leadership prior to them officially declaring war on Germany, then this would have been deemed an Act of War by the Axis powers and would have esssentially boxed them into the position of having to declare war against the US, which, interestingly, is something that the European based Axis powers wanted to avoid.[[User:Ieuan|Ieuan]] 01:49 4/Nov/08
::to clarify a few points. Lend lease in general was NOT paid back (except for some items that were delivered after the war, and for some ships). Second the US banks made heavy loans to Britain in 1939-40, which financed heavy exports of raw materials like steel used for munitions. As for the leadership, well the Brits were leading the war against Germany in 1939-41 all right, but they were "leading" because they were alone in the war--and they were mostly losing. I suggest the defeat of Germany --which is the point here--came in 1942-45 under US leadership. [[User:RJJensen|RJJensen]] 20:57, 3 November 2008 (EST)
::to clarify a few points. Lend lease in general was NOT paid back (except for some items that were delivered after the war, and for some ships). Second the US banks made heavy loans to Britain in 1939-40, which financed heavy exports of raw materials like steel used for munitions. As for the leadership, well the Brits were leading the war against Germany in 1939-41 all right, but they were "leading" because they were alone in the war--and they were mostly losing. I suggest the defeat of Germany --which is the point here--came in 1942-45 under US leadership. [[User:RJJensen|RJJensen]] 20:57, 3 November 2008 (EST)
Oh, yes, lend-lease was never meant to be paid back. Sorry, I should have clarified the sentence "Essentially, apart from offering moral support the US had very little to do with the European conflict prior to the final months of 1940.". The US in this context was meant to be the US Government, but I didn't make that clear. The loans made during the war by US banks were, of course, a private business matter, as opposed to US Gov Policy, at least officially. Of course it is extremely likely that FDR twisted a few arms to make sure that the loans were made, but from the point of view of history that, I'm afraid to say, hasn't been recorded as intervention made by the US Government in the European conflict (and now that it doesn't matter politically and if it can be shown that FDR 'persuaded' the banks to make the loans, then it should be recorded in the histories that the US intervened earlier in the European conflict).
Leadership '39-'41. We're back to that tricky one. As I've said, there were 21 countries and blocs of countries that formed the Allies during that period and while Britain certainly led the Commenwealth (or at least soon to be Commonwealth) and Empire countries from '39-'41, they didn't lead the other countries that were part of the Allies at the time. To say that Britian led the Allies or war effort during that time is as inaccurate as pointing to any single one country during that time and say that they led the war effort.
Mostly losing. Mmm, no, or at least, not in context. If Britain had fallen to Germany then yes, you could certainly say that they lost (and, of course, that would have meant that the US wouldn't have been able to intervene in the European conflict, the fall of Britain would have seen the fall of Western Europe and that, in turn, would have led to the fall of Africa and parts of the Middle East to the Nazis at the same time (because large swathes of both those areas were owned by the Western European powers). This would have meant that there was no point of entry into the European conflict that the US could use, apart from entry from the Soviet Union, but trying to fight in Europe using the Soviet Union as an entry point in 1941 would have been all but impossible from a logistical point of view, simply because it would have been immpossible to ship the heavy equipment needed by the US army to that entry point), but the concept of lose or victory '''during''' a war is almost always defined in terms of the strategy being pursued at the time. Britain's strategy at the time was to hunker down and hold on. It wasn't a brilliant strategy (because it cost a lot of civilian lives), it wasn't going to be a winning strategy in the long term provided that the circumstances of the war didn't change (it never is), but it was a strategy born of necessity (Britain didn't have the numbers, firepower or position to push back Germany and the only other option, apart from hanging on grimly, was to surrender to the Nazis). Instead, the idea behind the strategy was that war is an ever shifting morass of possibilities, changes and mistakes. In this case the mistake (and subsequent change in the overall picture of the war) made was that the German war machine believed that Britain was about to fall and so opened a second front against the USSR. This relieved the pressure on Britain, which allowed it to hang on until the second big change in the circumstances of the war, which was the US joining the European conflict a few months later. It is best to say that Britain pursued an exceedingly risky strategy that worked.
As to why this I feel this way about, what is after all, just a single sentence in the Nazi article is that I have always believed that encyclopedias, no matter what type they are, should always be as factually accurate as possible, even on the smallest of details. Just saying that the US led the Allies in WWII is accurate to a point but could be more accurate (by pointing out that the US led the Allied effort from '41-'45) but then you run into two pitfalls which are i) it doesn't say who led pre-end'41 and ii) the US led Allies co-ordinated and worked with the USSR-led Allies but didn't lead the USSR-led Allies. From there you run into the problem that SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) had a US Supreme Commander, a British Deputy Supreme Commander, 1 British and 2 US Ground Force Commanders, and of course the Air and Sea Force Commanders were both British. You start to fill in all those blanks, and all of a sudden what should be a single sentence turns into a nightmare of complexity, fact-checking and citations. That's why I like the compromise sentence, and I am very pleased that it is still there. Thank you.
At some point I would like to do an article on the political situatiions and decisions made during WWII, although it has to be said, don't look for it soon, entire shelves in libraries are dedicated to that single subject, so planning, typing and checking will take quite sometime. Still, I think it will be worth it. I have noticed that subjects like the Blitz (not necessarily here, but in general), give the facts but rarely a context. A simple example of that is the SHAEF decision to start bombing German towns once German forces had started to be forced back. Yes, the bombing did help reduce the German War Machine by hitting munitions factories and such like, but the fact is that there was no planned targeting, obviously no pin-point targeting because such a thing didn't exist, and very much a feeling of justified revenge for the Blitz from the British. What happened. 500,000 German civilians were killed in the bombing. That's a large figure. Now think of it as being one hundred and sixty seven government sanctioned 911's. Suddenly its a '''very''' big number, and that's what I mean by context. In fact, the bombing of German towns and the Blitz had a huge part to play in the Geneva Conventions ban on deliberatly targeting civilians. Yet you go into a pub and ask a young 20-something what they know of the Dresden bombings and see just how little they know.[[User:Ieuan|Ieuan]] 00:58 7/Nov/08 GMT