Slightly on topic from before:

How to raise the national alcoholism rate of:

Canada: Bacon-flavoured beer

Cuba: Black-bean Mojitos

United States: Fast food-flavoured light beer

Australia: Vegemite-flavoured beer

England: Curry-flavored Pims

Ireland: No need to raise it any further

Sweden: Lutefisk vodka

Nigeria: Yam shots

Mexico: Pepper-flavoured tequila. Oh wait. They have that.

Dude. Cool. That's at least two topics from earlier today, with bonus lutefisk mention.

I have a history question: most of my...okay, all of my formal exposure to WWII (which is minimal) came when I lived in the UK.

What's the question?

ION, I totally forgot, but tonight there's this dating for single nerds thingie: [link]

Which starts in 15 minutes. I'm so not in the mood to go. There's board games and trivia, neither of which I'm in the mood for. Oh well. Maybe the next one only the hardcore undateable nerds will be left, and I'll fit in better....

Well, I bought new glasses. I will have to take pictures when they come in, because they're all crazy modern and BLUE.

What's the question?

I forgot that too, didn't I? Well, the voiceover for War made it sound like the US had been in there from the very start defending the world's liberty against a heinous attempt at oppression.

Which is me overstating. But what it didn't sound like is the US coming in all "Okay, now it's personal" and blowing the shit out of Germany et al. From the perspective I got in the UK, that was how it was--Nazism wasn't a big problem until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and then it had to go.

How is the delay in the US entering WWII presented in the US?

How is the delay in the US entering WWII presented in the US?

I'd say it is presented as "What delay?"

Okay, megan, you made me laugh when I probably shouldn't have.

I just noticed this article on Bush misspeaking in a Jamaican newspaper.

"I heard somebody say, Where's Mandela?' Well, Mandela's dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas," Bush, who has a reputation for verbal faux pas, said in a press conference in Washington on Thursday.

Which prompted this magic:

"It's out there. All we can do is reassure people, especially South Africans, that President Mandela is alive," Achmat Dangor, chief executive officer of the Nelson Mandela Foundation said as Bush's comments received worldwide coverage.

But what it didn't sound like is the US coming in all "Okay, now it's personal" and blowing the shit out of Germany et al. From the perspective I got in the UK, that was how it was--Nazism wasn't a big problem until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and then it had to go.

How is the delay in the US entering WWII presented in the US?

There was a strong isolationist movement prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt bent US law pretty far to aid the UK while the US was neutral. Roosevelt was of course committed to fighting Germany (with that fight getting priority over fighting Japan) but once the war started most Americans were far more eager to get back at Japan for Pearl Harbor then they were to defeat Germany. I think maybe there was some post-war revisionism over the importance of defeating Germany. Then of course, Americans liked to take credit for defeating Germany, when in fact the Soviet Union deserves most of the credit.

Anyway, the delay in the US coming to the aid of the UK is usually expressed as, "We saved their asses." The whole delay thing isn't talked about that much.

OTOH, the major reason Japan attacked the US is because we cut off oil in steel exports to Japan in response to their occupation of China and the atrocities committed there. So we were in a sense aiding China before we actually got into the war.

Lutefisk vodka

Aqvavit.

What megan said. (ETA - And what tommyrot said too, esp. about the ass-saving. The focus is on what we did when we got in the war, not how long it took us to show up.) There was a strong isolationist movement in the US. We had our own troubles. Per the wikipedia entry on President Franklin Roosevelt:

Foreign policy, 1937–1941

The rise to power of dictator Adolf Hitler in Germany aroused fears of a new world war. In 1935, at the time of Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, Congress passed the Neutrality Act, applying a mandatory ban on the shipment of arms from the U.S. to any combatant nation. Roosevelt opposed the act on the grounds that it penalized the victims of aggression such as Ethiopia, and that it restricted his right as President to assist friendly countries, but public support was overwhelming so he signed it. In 1937, Congress passed an even more stringent act, but when the Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, public opinion favored China, and Roosevelt found various ways to assist that nation.[40]

In October 1937, he gave the Quarantine Speech aiming to contain aggressor nations. He proposed that warmongering states be treated as a public health menace and be "quarantined."Meanwhile he secretly stepped up a program to build long range submarines that could blockade Japan. When World War II broke out in 1939, Roosevelt rejected the Wilsonian neutrality stance and sought ways to assist Britain and France militarily. He began a regular secret correspondence with Winston Churchill discussing ways of supporting Britain.

For foreign policy advice, Roosevelt turned to Harry Hopkins, who became his chief wartime advisor. They sought innovative ways to help Britain, whose financial resources were exhausted by the end of 1940. Congress, where isolationist sentiment was in retreat, passed the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941, allowing the U.S. to give Britain, Russia, China and others $50 billion of military supplies 1941–45. In sharp contrast to the loans of World War I, there would be no repayment after the war. Roosevelt was a lifelong free trader and anti-imperialist, and ending European colonialism was one of his objectives. Roosevelt forged a close personal relationship with Churchill, who became Prime Minister of the UK in May 1940.

In May 1940, a stunning German blitzkrieg overran Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France, leaving Britain vulnerable to invasion. Roosevelt, who was determined to defend Britain, took advantage of the rapid shifts of public opinion. A consensus was clear that military spending had to be dramatically expanded. There was no consensus on how much the U.S. should risk war in helping Britain. FDR appointed two interventionist Republican leaders, Henry L. Stimson and Frank Knox, as Secretaries of War and the Navy respectively. The fall of Paris shocked American opinion, and isolationist sentiment declined. Both parties gave support to his plans to rapidly build up the American military, but the isolationists warned that Roosevelt would get the nation into an unnecessary war with Germany. He successfully urged Congress to enact the first peacetime draft in United States history in 1940 (it was renewed in 1941 by one vote in Congress). Roosevelt was supported by the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, and opposed by the America First Committee.

Roosevelt used his personal charisma to build support for intervention. America should be the "Arsenal of Democracy," he told his fireside audience. In August, Roosevelt openly defied the Neutrality Acts by passing the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, which gave 50 American destroyers to Britain in exchange for base rights in the British Caribbean islands. This was a precursor of the March 1941 Lend-Lease agreement which began to direct massive military and economic aid to Britain, the Republic of China and the Soviet Union.

Oh, one thing that's interesting is that after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Germany was under no obligation to come to its Japanese ally's aid and go to war on the US (because Japan, not the US, was the aggressor) but they did anyway. Hitler's declaration of war against the US confused a lot of people....