Quote:
Originally posted by Captain
Well, since PBS had a special on it, it must be true.
Actually, there has been hot debate among historians, and so if it is "common knowledge" I would say the non-specialists know a lot more about it than the specialists.
There was a treatise in the early 80s on FDR and Isolationism by a guy named Cole that argued that the administration was intentionally seeking to shift public opinion away from isolationism so that intervention would be possible. My understanding is that recent scholarship is more of the view that FDR followed rather than led public opinion, and that he remained deeply torn.
While I happen to be of the view that he likely knew war was coming and so was trying to prepare public opinion for it gradually (in other words, that he was intentionally misleading), I won't say that I know this or that it is or should be common knowledge.
Though the PBS special did present it virtually as a fact - are you relying on PBS for your authority here?
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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.
