Should the US have entered WW2 Earlier?

[Torie]

FDR to his credit went as fast as he could given the political restraints, and did it with skill, and was effectively keeping Britain afloat for over a year prior to the US's formal entry into the war.

[traininthedistance]

Yes, of course (cares about human lives)

What possible justification would we have had? We were not part of the Anglo-French ultimatum to defend Poland, we were not allied with Britain, France, or Poland, nor were we allied with the Republic of China, despite our very warm relations with Britain, France, and China. The United States had an armed force in 1939 rivaling titans like Spain, and it would take two years of buildup between 1939 and 1941 before we were even on paper a serious military force again. Outside of economic pressure like the earlier embargoes I advocated, what position would we have been in to do anything whatsoever on the European front without over a year's worth of preparation?

The Pacific theater is a different beast due to the US Navy's still-considerable power, but then again, war with Japan not involving war with Germany and Italy is not exactly what this question is about. I could actually see that as a more plausible option, especially given America's massive financial and humanitarian and personal interests in China in the 1930s and Japan's naked coveting of the Philippines.

EDIT: War between the United States and Japan over dominance of the Pacific Rim was coming, coupled with WWII or not.

Well, obviously the US was in an isolationist mood back then and we didn't have formal treaty obligations, so to a certain extent this is 20/20 hindsight, but uh... what justification?  Defending the oppressed Poles is justification enough, to say nothing of the other atrocities and genocides that would come to light later (and, if we were better, more observant people back then, would have probably been able to bring to light).  Do they not count as victims to you?

I'm not saying that we necessarily could have jumped in immediately.  If we needed some months to ramp-up, then okay, fine.  We should have been in by the Battle of Britain, though.

Defending the Poles would take us into war, all right, but war with the USSR as well, and the Katyn massacre of tens of thousands of Polish political, economic, and societal luminaries is as egregious as anything the Germans were doing in the fall of 1939/spring of 1940.

From the perspective of defending beleaguered small states from aggression, what separates the German 1939 assault on Poland from the Soviet 1939 assault on Poland?

Edit: in general, war for humanitarian reasons/"responsibility to protect" isn't an international relations concept I'm comfortable with.

Edit 2: Let's make this easier. What sort of morality would dictate that the United States has a moral obligation to protect Poland from Greman aggression, but does not hold a moral obligation to protect Poland from simultaneous Soviet aggression? I've been flipping your post around in my head all morning and I'm puzzled, I really don't get what kind of moral code would say that one was a moral obligation to assist and the other was not.

Well, briefly, I think the moral code that would have us defend Poland in 1940 is basically the same moral code that has us defending the Kurds and Yazidis against ISIS today (and, FTR, I think the current strategy of air support but not ground troops is probably the correct one).  And when I say "us" I do not only mean the USA; I mean the international community in general.  If you think that we should just step back and let the Yazidis get slaughtered, then okay, fine, there are coherent arguments to be made for isolationism.  They just simply don't line up with the sort of rhetoric you've been using about victims of change/aggression lately.

Look, I don't think that we should be going out regime-changing willy-nilly.  I do think that we, as a species, have an obligation to protect people from imminent annihilation, to the best of our ability.

As for why Germany, why not USSR?  Sometimes there are multiple moral goods which are mutually exclusive, and sometimes there are real resource constraints that prevent us from doing all that we should.  I acknowledged that we probably couldn't have jumped in immediately in September 1939; this is a case where we'd have to pick our battles.  The reason why we'd pick the battle against Germany rather than the Soviets, I think, has to take in all the other awful things that Germany was doing– to the rest of the Continent, to the Roma and the Jews and other undesirables within its own borders.  And this is not to minimize how awful Stalin was on those fronts as well– but if you only have the resources to fight one evil at a time, the naked expansionism and eliminationism of the Nazis made it a clear choice.

[Cory]

Objectively yes, we should have entered the War in September of 1939. But that's with hindsight.

[The Mikado]

The language of moral obligation is tricky. It implies Kant's doctrines that if you are obligated to do something, you have to do it every time. That's my issue with obligation to protect:it's an open-ended misdion to perpetual war. Where does aggression stop? Is North Vietnam invading South Vietnam an act of aggression that must be defended against? The PRC's invasion of Tibet? The iraqi incasion of Iran? Congo's neighbors' invasions of it in the 1990s? An obligation to protect countries against aggression is an insane open-ended route to endless war.

Protecting countries not allied with us is not and should not be a controlling interest in the American decision to go to war.

That's not to say that, as stated before, the US did all it could. Earlier embargos (as said before, 1936 for Italy, 1937 for Japan, and 1938 for Germany), a Lend-Lease for China in 1937 and France and Britain in 1939, and a commencement of rearmament in 1937 rather than 1940 would be beneficial, along with more open refugee policies and increased aid to the Red Cross.

[RINO Tom]

I'm willing to bet that nearly all of you would have opposed it in 1939 given the comments I've read here about American interventionism.

Anyway, Yes (R)

[traininthedistance]

The language of moral obligation is tricky. It implies Kant's doctrines that if you are obligated to do something, you have to do it every time. That's my issue with obligation to protect:it's an open-ended misdion to perpetual war. Where does aggression stop? Is North Vietnam invading South Vietnam an act of aggression that must be defended against? The PRC's invasion of Tibet? The iraqi incasion of Iran? Congo's neighbors' invasions of it in the 1990s? An obligation to protect countries against aggression is an insane open-ended route to endless war.

Protecting countries not allied with us is not and should not be a controlling interest in the American decision to go to war.

That's not to say that, as stated before, the US did all it could. Earlier embargos (as said before, 1936 for Italy, 1937 for Japan, and 1938 for Germany), a Lend-Lease for China in 1937 and France and Britain in 1939, and a commencement of rearmament in 1937 rather than 1940 would be beneficial, along with more open refugee policies and increased aid to the Red Cross.

Well, I'm not a Kantian, I'm a pragmatist. Much of the time, the costs and benefits just won't pencil out.  However, I think the existential threat (to both their citizens and neighbors) that the Nazis posed was so extreme, and our unique position as a power with the natural resources to counter them sufficiently clear, that intervention was justified.  In many other conflicts, including most of your examples, that wouldn't necessarily be the case.  

As a practical matter, re-armament in 1937 (and an entry into the European theater around the time of the Battle of Britain) is the best we could have reasonably done.  And, yes, definitely better refugee policies.  

[Beet]

This thread is absurd - of course in retrospect, the West should have invaded Germany in 1933 to get rid of Hitler. I should have also played the Powerball numbers 1 12 32 42 58 12 last week.

At the time, the West behaved more or less reasonably.

[politicus]

This thread is absurd - of course in retrospect, the West should have invaded Germany in 1933 to get rid of Hitler. I should have also played the Powerball numbers 1 12 32 42 58 12 last week.

At the time, the West behaved more or less reasonably.

Not really, France could - and should in its own self intest - have invaded Germany in 1936, when they invaded the demilitarized Rhineland. They had every right to do it and - more importantly - very good odds for a successful operation, which should have been clear with the knowledge they had. Instead Hitler bluffed his way to success despite decent work by the French intelligence.

We now know the German generals were prepared to coup the Nazis if the French invaded, but even without that hindsight knowledge a strike before the German military got too strong made sense.