Which do you think posed a greater threat to the United States, the Great Depression or World War II? Explain your answer.
DD - I didn't ask which one was worse, I asked which one posed a greater threat to the US. But I agree both were about the same on a level of worseness, I was just wondering what you guys thought posed a greater threat to the United States.
well this one is easy. no one expected the great depression to last forever. maybe a long time, but eventually we'd have muddled through. but WW2. had Germany or Japan or even the USSR beaten us to the Bomb... we'd probably all be speaking a different language right now. it would be a 1984 + Brave New World scenario, with totalitarianism + eugenics run rampant. to me that is easily more threatening. the great depression partly led to ww2. and ww2 partly ended the great depression.
Interesting question...Rather than try to argue the metaphysics of seperating two linked events, I'll just give the question due credit and play the ball as it lies. This will need some supposition, though. Premise 1) WWII did not represent an immediate threat to the US until Pearl Harbor, as we weren't getting into it until then. As such, we would need to assertain the threat from that point on. Japanese Threat: Extremely limited. They shot their load in Hawaii, at least until we took it to them. Their intention was to elimiate the deterent effect of theUSNPAC fleet on their expansion, but that expansion did not involve any significant US interests. Doubtless had they become the power in the Pacific on the weight of PH, and we hadn't stopped them, some sort of conflict would have arisen, but to what degree this confilct threatened the US is debatable. I would have to say that Japan represented no serious threat to the US, other than instigating the German declaration of war against us. German Threat: More serious, but requires significant intepretation. For one thing there is a significant body of military expertise ( lead most notablty by Eriksson at the U of Edinburgh probably the reigning expert on the Eastern Front ) who think that the Soviets would have eventually beaten the Germans by themselves. Certainly we didn't really have a choice, as Drumroll was attacking US naval interests all along the Eastern seaboard, including NYC harbor and the Gulf of Mexico...Now what threat beyond that Nazi Germany represented to the USis again speculation. Had they conquered Europe, would they have had real interest in us? Doubtfull, but not beyond reason. More realistic was the possibility of them developing the Bomb, and combining that with their incredibly advanced rocketry to hold us hostage, and become the reigning world power the way we did in the late 40's, on nuclear power. They were actually ahead of us, and under tougher conditions...had the suicide mission in Norway not knocked out their heavy water lab, there is much reason to suppose that they would have developed the A-Bomb earlier than we did. As such, there is every reason to suppose that a Nazi victory in Europe would have presented us with the situation Japan faced in '45...and enemy with a nuclear bomb, and no way to defend against it. Would the Nazis have used it as we did? really hard to say...they were erratic, as Hitler's chivalric treatment of the British before Sea Lion demonstrates, he was not beyond extending the olive branch when he had an enemy all but beaten...if he valued that enemy. He regarded the US as a 'mongrel' nation, but also respected it's place on the world economic stage. Tough call, but the worse case scenarions easily represent greater threats than the Depression. Oh, I forgot to mention the Italian Threat:................
Actually, WW1 caused the great depression as the restrictions we placed on Germany eventually hurt the world economy. The German economy being in the crapper for so long allowed Hitler to come to power. I believe that WW2 was a direct result of the sloppy end of WW1. To answer your question, WW2 was a much greater threat, though I don't agree with MacBeth's conclusions about the Soviets winning the war against Germany without our help. It was US steel and manufacturing might that actually turned the tide of WW2, being that we were protected by 2 oceans, and our industry was not being effected by the war, we simply out manufactured the axis. This is why Hitler was begging Mexico to attack us from the south. Mexico was smarter than Adolf. DD
I agree with you about the US manufacturing and steel as well as US scientists' laboratories that essentially won the war, but not on the German economy. Hitler was already gaining power before the economy went down and it was almost inevitable that economy or not, he would be the ruler of Germany.
MacBeth, If the Soviets had beaten the Facists without our help, would they then constitute a third threat as we would not be allied with them? I am assuming that America would not have begun the huge buildup of our military, incl. the development of atomic weapons since we would not be involved in the war. How do you think they would have rated as a threat? Would Socialism have spread over all of Europe? Would Britain have fallen to Hitler w/o our support, and then presumably to the Soviets after they beat the Nazis? Alternate history is an interesting thing to think about. So many ways the world could be better or worse, but also unpredictable how changing events would change the outcome.
I did a project once in high school where you had to talk to an older relative about events in their lifetime. I talked to all my grandparents. Every one of them, surprisingly to me at the time, said that the Depression was the most significant historical event of their lifetimes. That included a grandmother whose husband served in the army in the Pacific during WWII. Unfortunately, he was not alive to interview.
Right on DaDakota.....I have a recent BA in History and your contention is right in line with current historians. WWI and WWII were the same war with a break to rebuild and reload--a sloppy ending at best! The allies harsh reporations and economic abondment of the Weimar Republic nutured the seeds of discontent with the younger generation of Germans. They felt betrayed by Willhelm and his government--especialy those who had fought on the European battlefields, i.e. Adolf Hitler. Certainly WWII was a much bigger threat than the Great Depression--the two will always be linked. The Soviets would NOT have defeated Germany without a second front and our round-the-clock bombing in the Industrial heart of Germany.
World War II- If the other side had been victorious, we would have a much more dangerous world. The free and democratic Europe that we know of today would not exist. Totalitarian ideologies would be much more influential. Who knows how far it would have spread. The Great Depression- Also bad because it could have resulted in radical changes to the way we run our government and economy. It was an internal threat. We still have bad ideas (e.g. Keynesian economics) that we are still stuck with. But out Constitution and government were strong enough to withstand it.
you do know there are some who would disagree with this, right? the new deal era court radically altered the role of government in our lives. by making every piece of legislation viable under the commerce clause, the court, in my opinion, stripped the constitution of a good deal of its meaning. only recently has the court said that some legislation is just so unrelated to commerce as to not be justified under the commerce clause...U.S. v. Lopez comes to mind, where the court said that the relationship between guns in school and the economy are so distant that you can't use the commerce clause to justify FEDERAL legislation banning handguns on public school grounds.
Yeah, you're right. I agree with that. But I think we weathered the problems for the most part, and in the economy were able to reverse a large part of it. Allthough we still have the mentality that we have to spend ourselves out of recessions, even as debt on all levels piles up.
Why is it such a bad idea if it was government spending that got this country out of the Great Depression, spending on the war as well as public works projects? It was the private sector's over exuberance that got this country into the Great Depression.
I couldn't help but notice the number of posts you have and the subject of the Depression being discussed...
True...I was making a loose and somewhat incoherent reference to the number of posts you had at the time--1932--and that numner being consistant with the depths of The Depression....just a dumb joke.
One mustn't underestimate the Great Depression. It wasn't just a U.S. thing. It was worldwide. Every country suffered - Britain, France, Canada, Japan, Germany, Italy, etc. etc. etc. protectionism and competitive devaluation devastated world trade and massively lowered the real incomes of industrialised countries... leading directly to militarism, totalitarianism, and eventually WW2. so if you want, you could argue that WW2 was merely an extension or a consequence of the Great Depression, which makes it altogether more threatening. that being said, i still think WW2 was by far more threatening. simply because we came so close to losing on so many occasions. and losing a war to the likes of Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany is infinitely more threatening than being poor. another argument against the horrors of protectionism... http://www.ncpa.org/oped/bartlett/oct2999.html
Lil, Correct, but the depression was a direct result of WW1 and the sanctions we put on the losers. DD
The Depression was not a direct result of WWI. The fall of the German economy had something to do with it but it wasn't a direct result. It was a direct result of an over valued stock market and poor banking policies.
