Bats - I think you're using a contemporary lens to look at the 1940's. You're underestimating how aggressive the Axis Powers were and how grandiose their goals were.

On education I'm backing off my pro-lecture all the time stance. I still think the current trend leans to far the other way, though.

The mixed approach is the best way to go about it imo. It's just a matter of finding the balance and that's part of what makes a good professor.

I know what the national reaction to Pearl Harbor was, but I doubt anyone in power who knew what the power disparity was between Japan and America was truly worried about invasion.

Agreed. There is an art to a well-presented, well-organized lecture.

They were fanatical about winning dominion over those "pissant" islands. If the Allies hadn't gone in with flame throwers and burnt them out after they were already hunkered down the Japanese would have developed infrastructure and Navy bases to further their agenda. They had Korean slave labor as well. If those islands were strategically irrelevant the Allies wouldn't have sacrificed so much to control them.

And Hitler was clear he wanted all non-Aryans dead. He wasn't particularly prone to compromise.

I'm not that up on Midway, but the Aleutians were definitely not important to anybody. Those Japanese soldiers were basically abandoned once they'd done their job, and America only bothered with them because it was their home territory. They were a symbolic conquest with no strategic benefit for the sake ****ing with us.

I doubt Hitler was particularly racially concerned with a nation of largely white Anglo-Saxons.

We were coming out of the Great Depression and the potential of our industry was uncertain. We were dealing with war in Europe and rations and female factory workers. Hindsight is 20/20. We couldn't afford to take victory for granted. The Japanese had defeated Russia in the early 20th century and were a serious imperial force in Asia. The had huge warships and the zero and deadly determination. We took it seriously enough to put Japanese Americans in internment camps.

You might want to ask the English who lived through it how serious he was. Or the Russians and the Poles. It's only speculation but the idea that a victorious Hitler wouldn't have expanded beyond Europe is inconceivable imo.

Most definitely. He probably would've taken South America first so he could have land access. Although you can never know, meth makes people pretty crazy, especially powerful ones.

As far as I know the Russo-Japanese war wasn't anything more than a generic war for stuff the same as so many wars that didn't end in ultimate capitulation. It's not like Russia was worried about the yolk of Japanese oppression and soldiers marching through the streets of Moscow. It was just an imperialist war. I know America took Japan seriously, but I don't imagine we had any illusions that they were doing anything but keeping us at bay until they could solidify their position in the Pacific.

Honestly, my knowledge of the time and place at the early stages of the war has mostly reached its limit, but you'd have to come with an argument including a reputable link to rock my world. Or just, you know, a really good argument.