[mrick]

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[This is] very results oriented. FDR basically manipulated the Japanese into attacking in order to get into the war vs Germany, which is my main problem with it ... I've always wondered what would have happened if Hitler hadn't declared war on us.

[/ QUOTE ]You'd be very hard pressed to find serious support for the argument that the world would have been a better place if the United States had not entered World War II and the Axis had not been defeated. Even as things turned out in reality (Soviet Union taking over Eastern Europe, etc etc), only fringe eccentrics, loonies, and crypto-fascists would argue that having Nazism still around would be somehow better.

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And the results of WW2 weren't all that great. All of Eastern Europe (edit: and China) was lost to Communism. with millions killed by the Soviets when they won.

[/ QUOTE ] We would have one of two alternative conclusions to a World War II without America : Either the Axis would have won/drawn or it would still have lost. If the Axis had won (or achieved a stalemate/draw which would allow the Axis powers to remain in place, though weakened), this would have been a very bad outcome for humanity. I'll leave it to others to elaborate why the continuation of Nazi medical experiments on humans and the legitimisation of eugenics would be a bad thing.

However, if the Allies had won anyway but without America, the outcome would have been much worse than what actually transpired! The Soviet Union, which in any case carried by far the biggest burden of the war effort, would have been the prime factor in that victory and would have come out of the war as an undisputed world superpower, with regions conquered or under its influence in both Europe (not just Eastern Europe) and the Asian Pacific region (if also Japan had been defeated). Most of western Europe would've been "Finnlandized", at best. (Also possible would be an outcome whereby Japan and USSR would share in the spoils of the Pacific and Eastern Asia, with Germany and Italy defeated but Imperial Japan surviving.)

All these outcomes are blatantly worse for American interests than what actually happened. I.e. the U.S. did enter the war (through a forced Pearl Harbor), established itself in Europe, eliminated Britain's status as colonial superpower, created & led institutions that secured its leadership among industrialized democracies, and primed itself as the supreme economic powerhouse of the world. Recession ended with the war economy!

FDR was smarter than people give him credit for.