Quote:
Originally posted by Spanky
I am relying on the fact that in 1940 part of his platform was that he would do everything in his power to keep the United State out of the war, while he was doing all sorts of stuff to provoke Germany. He had US destroyers protecting british and US shipping halfway across the atlantic. They had orders to shoot anything that shot a them. Someone who was trying to avoid getting us in a war would have have simply let british shipping be on its own in international waters.
The Lend lease was purely designed to help Britain and was not an act of a neutral. Same with the rest of the Atlantic charter.
Roosevelt was not doing everything he could to keep us out of the war and was lying when he said he was. I am glad that he did. I don't know anything about that PBS special, and there may be some argments about what Roosevelt did and didn't do, but I have never heard anyone (except Ty) state that Roosevelt did not lie when he said that he would do everything he could to keep us out of the war.
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I agree with you completely on the substance: I think FDR intentionally misled Americans to play to popular opinion.
I just disagree that this is common knowledge; I think that the position only gained wide acceptance in the 80s and has come under considerable attack. So I don't mind a request for more information or someone challenging what I view as accepted.
The interesting thing is how the idea of misleading the public is perceived: some have criticized FDR for not being enough of a leader and confronting the public, others for not following what the public thought. In hindsight, few disagree that war was inevitable, or that the American people were not fully prepared to fight until attacked.
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