The World's Largest Army?

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Message 1155281 - Posted: 23 Sep 2011, 15:49:03 UTC

I received this e-mail this morning. Seems like spam. But, regardless of facts and opinions, one thing struck me as wrong. I don't recall the US already being in Europe fighting Germany before Pearl Harbor ... ?

" The Worlds Largest Army "
True story and most people will never know it.. Here is an interesting side bar. After the Japanese decimated our fleet in Pearl Harbor Dec 7, 1941, they could have sent their troop ships and carriers directly to California to finish what they started. The prediction from our Chief of Staff was we would not be able to stop a massive invasion until they reached the Mississippi River . Remember, we had a 2 million man army and war ships...all fighting the Germans. So, why did they not invade? After the war, the remaining Japanese generals and admirals were asked that question. Their answer...they knew that almost every home had guns and the Americans knew how to use them. The world's largest army... America 's hunters! I had never thought about this.... A blogger added up the deer license sales in just a handful of states and arrived at a striking conclusion:There were over 600,000 hunters this season in the state of Wisconsin ... Allow me to restate that number. Over the last several months, Wisconsin 's hunters became the eighth largest army in the world. More men under arms than in Iran .. More than in France and Germany combined. These men deployed to the woods of a single American state to hunt with firearms, and no one was killed. But that number pales in comparison to the 750,000 who hunted the woods of Pennsylvania and Michigan 's 700,000 hunters, Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia and it literally establishes the fact that the hunters of just those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world. The point? America will forever be safe from foreign invasion with that kind of home-grown firepower. Hunting -- it's not just a way to fill the freezer. It's a matter of national security. ************************************************* That's why all enemies, foreign and domestic, want to see us disarmed. Food for thought when next we consider gun control.
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Message 1155293 - Posted: 23 Sep 2011, 16:07:13 UTC - in response to Message 1155281.  

Obvious propaganda working off people's lack of historical knowledge to fight a political view against gun control.

Bravo on catching that we were not fighting Germany before Pearl Harbor. Unfortunately, how many people know this and would call BS on this spam? Not nearly enough...


For the record, I am against gun control, but I prefer one's platform to be based on fact, not lies.
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Message 1155304 - Posted: 23 Sep 2011, 16:23:33 UTC

The Worlds Largest Army "
True story and most people will never know it.. Here is an interesting side bar. After the Japanese decimated our fleet in Pearl Harbor Dec 7, 1941, they could have sent their troop ships and carriers directly to California to finish what they started.


No chance of the Japs doing this, they would have been sitting ducks for carpet bombing so would have been blasted out of the water.
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Message 1155311 - Posted: 23 Sep 2011, 16:40:26 UTC

Just one note. US intelligence OSS, now CIA had cracked the Japanese military code before Pearl Harbour, by coincidence all carriers where gone on manoeuvres before the attack (aka enterprise, Hornet and Essex).

This is still an issue for discussion, but before pearl harbour USA where very reluctant do declare war against Germany, as a lot of influent people in the Us where in favour of Nazi ideals.

When Hitler, declared war against the US it was a relieve for Rooselvelt. Please remember that in the south of the US there were still segregation laws.
I don’t like to make this kind of statement, but Pearl Harbour was a needed for the US to get in WWII
.
I don’t know how politics works, but I know they work by devious ways.
Now the US has one of largest and most effective armed forces in the world. I’m glad for it.

I know which values the US stands for, and they will never use the armed forces abroad unless they have a good strategic reason for this. We can agree or disagree, but this is another topic for discussion.
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Message 1155382 - Posted: 23 Sep 2011, 20:01:34 UTC - in response to Message 1155327.  

We didnt start fighting the Nazis until 1942. The statement that we had 2 million men fighting the germans when the Japanese attacked is whole cloth imagination. This seems to be another thinly veiled NRA mass posting to get people to love guns. The reality is that the Japanese couldn't have sustained a large invasion of the continental US. To much territory and to little resources to invade that far from the Islands. Had they taken the Hawaiian Islands they might have had a chance of stockpiling supplies needed for an invasion force.


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Message 1155392 - Posted: 23 Sep 2011, 20:31:48 UTC

After the Japanese

No where in the posted email does it say "before".

After means after. No date is given for after. It could mean after The US declared War on Germany. In fact, this is how I read it. How can it be read otherwise. Unless one has their Own Agenda or just plain can't read/comprehend.

Please show where it says Before. It doesn't.

After in the email does not imply or specifically mean immediately after Pearl Harbor. And to think so is Idiotic.

Dull

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Message 1155412 - Posted: 23 Sep 2011, 22:01:53 UTC - in response to Message 1155392.  
Last modified: 23 Sep 2011, 22:02:07 UTC

After the Japanese

No where in the posted email does it say "before".
did you miss this statement

The prediction from our Chief of Staff was we would not be able to stop a massive invasion until they reached the Mississippi River . Remember, we had a 2 million man army and war ships...all fighting the Germans
After means after. No date is given for after. It could mean after The US declared War on Germany. In fact, this is how I read it. How can it be read otherwise. Unless one has their Own Agenda or just plain can't read/comprehend.
after means after and before means before but the statement implies simultaneous action.
many things can be implied but no where does this say anything about action against germany after Japan. You've eitehr invented it or wrongly implied that on your own.

Please show where it says Before. It doesn't.

you do understand that a person can speak in more than the past and future tense. It's called talking in the present. Which this story implies. Men at war does not imply a declaration of war. Which Germany declared on us after Pearl Harbor. Americans didn't start actual "fighting" until 1942 in Africa.

After in the email does not imply or specifically mean immediately after Pearl Harbor. And to think so is Idiotic.

again the only idiotic thing is thinking that things can only happen before or after but not at the same time.

Dull

[/quote]
You've also missed the point that this is a Gun nut propaganda to get people to embrace guns and not their wives. Also the idea of people just being let loose into the woods is silly. they are highly regulated and under safe conditions. War is never safe


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Message 1155438 - Posted: 23 Sep 2011, 23:59:41 UTC - in response to Message 1155412.  
Last modified: 24 Sep 2011, 0:17:39 UTC

After the Japanese

No where in the posted email does it say "before".
did you miss this statement

The prediction from our Chief of Staff was we would not be able to stop a massive invasion until they reached the Mississippi River . Remember, we had a 2 million man army and war ships...all fighting the Germans
After means after. No date is given for after. It could mean after The US declared War on Germany. In fact, this is how I read it. How can it be read otherwise. Unless one has their Own Agenda or just plain can't read/comprehend.
after means after and before means before but the statement implies simultaneous action.
many things can be implied but no where does this say anything about action against germany after Japan. You've eitehr invented it or wrongly implied that on your own.

Please show where it says Before. It doesn't.

you do understand that a person can speak in more than the past and future tense. It's called talking in the present. Which this story implies. Men at war does not imply a declaration of war. Which Germany declared on us after Pearl Harbor. Americans didn't start actual "fighting" until 1942 in Africa.

After in the email does not imply or specifically mean immediately after Pearl Harbor. And to think so is Idiotic.

again the only idiotic thing is thinking that things can only happen before or after but not at the same time.

Dull


You've also missed the point that this is a Gun nut propaganda to get people to embrace guns and not their wives. Also the idea of people just being let loose into the woods is silly. they are highly regulated and under safe conditions. War is never safe


I also read the email in the OP as, "after Pearl Harbor why didn't the Japanese immediately mount an invasion as US land based armed forces were already fighting in Germany? Because the Japanese knew that those left in the US were already armed and would be able to repel such an invasion".

As Sarge rightly points out there was a better reason not to mount an invasion than a lack of US land based armed forces on the mainland, that being a full complement of US land based armed forces on the mainland.

Dull, Null and Void's interpretation of the email, that after US armed forces had left to fight in Germany would have to acknowledge that it was also after the US and Japan had become involved in a War in the Pacific, so would be, after Pearl Harbor and the Pacific War had developed, why didn't the Japanese mount an invasion of the US mainland? The simple answer to this is that Japan failed to make sufficient advances in the Pacific War to mount such an invasion, and it was irrelevant whether there was a full complement of US land based armed forces on the US mainland.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that ...

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Message 1155486 - Posted: 24 Sep 2011, 2:12:32 UTC
Last modified: 24 Sep 2011, 2:15:11 UTC

All I pointed out, implicitly, was that we (the US) were not explicitly at war in December, 1941. No declaration by us or against us.
That was my memory of history lessons. Posting it was essentially saying, can anyone confirm my correctness, or straighten out my memory? I think we have the answer to that from many thread contributors.
And how anyone could construe that as an agenda ... .
Now, feel free to discuss the gun control issue further.
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Message 1155545 - Posted: 24 Sep 2011, 7:10:59 UTC
Last modified: 24 Sep 2011, 7:13:59 UTC

Sarge, the US was not in a declared war with Germany, but was in the sort of 'war like' action we have come these days to call war. We had warships patrolling the Atlantic coordinating with the Canadians and the British. We had already had at least two ships attacked by German U-boats and one (the Reuben James) sunk earlier in the year.

We had American soldiers based in Iceland (freeing up British soldiers), had already sent 50 older destroyers (mostly WW I vintage) to the Brits. We also had sent and were continuing to send munitions, war planes and other military supplies to Britain and also some to the Soviets.

As to the premise contained in the email you received -- balderdash. The Japanese were not interested in invasion of the US -- that was (like the modern day - they are trying to disarm us' stories) pure alarmist drivel.

The Japanese Navy was considering an invasion of Hawaii -- but the Navy was not in control of Japanese war plans, but rather only implementing policies decided by an Army dominated cabinet.

The furthest the Japanese got in the Pacific was Wake Island -- and even in taking that island, the Japanese learned that Marines could fight effectively (the first effort to take Wake resulted in a bloody repulse of the naval vessels with one Japanese cruiser sunk and some destroyers damaged and no landing attempted).

Even had Japan's effort to take Midway been a success, the Japanese simply lacked the shipping to go further (taking an island is one thing, supplying it is something else).

What defeated the Japanese was (in addition to the Army, Army Air Force, Navy and Marines of course) was the productive capability of the US -- which those in the know in Japan were aware of (and one reason they favored NOT attacking the US as they knew that the US would be able to produce and supply a military might the Japanese could not come close to.

That being said, a fear of a countries ability to defend native soil effectively is a legitimate concern. The Germans learned that in the Soviet Union, the Allies learned that in bitter fighting to get to the German homeland. The US knew this regarding Japan, which is why their approach was first to starve Japan (destroying over 85% of its shipping capacity), along with destroying Japanese cities using B-29's flying at low altitude (10K feet instead of 30K feet) with fire bombing. The A-bombs destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in some ways simply a 'step up' in the bombing campaign -- far more Japanese were killed in the fire bombing from March to August 45.

As you might have gleaned, this is an area of interest for me <smile>
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Message 1155646 - Posted: 24 Sep 2011, 15:29:22 UTC

Not sure whether I've found the source of this misinformation, though I did find the same text added to the Pensacola Fishing Forum on May 31st 2011, where the source is given as "Frank H Comstock USMC", I have not been able to verify whether Frank is a real person, I suspect that like the rest of the email, he's a fictional character.

As for gun control, after invading France why didn't Hitler then go on to invade the UK? The distance between France and the UK is substantially less than that between Hawaii and the US mainland, and the UK, due to its strict gun control laws, does not have an armed citizenry to the degree found in the US. Perhaps there's more to repelling potential invaders than defending the 2nd Amendment?
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that ...

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Message 1155688 - Posted: 24 Sep 2011, 17:37:00 UTC - in response to Message 1155646.  

Ocean (or Sea) landings against opposition are rather more complicated than folks believed in 1940 or even today.

The Germans planned that out and realized that it required local air superiority at a minimum - something they were unable to achieve over southern England even with a fairly large air force -- in part because the operational range of their planes (like nearly all others of that era) was too short to stay over southern England long enough.

The Japanese success in landings (Phillipenes, Malaysia, Solomon Islands, etc.) largely was a function of the landings being unopposed. (MacCarthey's handling of forces in December 41/January 42 would have gotten a less political general cashiered). The first American landings (on Guadalcanal and Tulagi) were actually unopposed when they first happened and then the Japanese responded resulting in a 5 month long battle of attrition which the US (thanks largely to poor Japanese tactics) were able to eventually win. Subsequent American landings in the Pacific increasingly relied on overwhelming local force AND air dominance.

Landings in Europe had the same issues -- though the Americans took some time to realize this (they were pushing for a landing in France in 42 which would have been a disaster). The Normandy landings succeeded (but just barely at Omaha) because the Germans were unable to put forth significant naval or air resources to oppose the landings, and their was also some amount of disruptive help from the French partisans. Even so, the US/British/Canadian forces were locked in an attritional land war of limited gains for something like 7 or 8 weeks.

By the way, the Russians didn't understand opposed sea landings -- they thought the US/British aversion to early landings to be a demonstration of unreasoning fear. The Russians thought crossing the Channel was very much like the Russian successes in crossing rivers -- which was an entirely different kettle of fish.

The Russians actually learned a bit of the difference in their struggles at the end of the way in their invasions of some of the Japanese northern islands (which are now held by the Russians but under some degree of dispute).





As for gun control, after invading France why didn't Hitler then go on to invade the UK? The distance between France and the UK is substantially less than that between Hawaii and the US mainland, and the UK, due to its strict gun control laws, does not have an armed citizenry to the degree found in the US. Perhaps there's more to repelling potential invaders than defending the 2nd Amendment?


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Message 1155808 - Posted: 25 Sep 2011, 0:14:05 UTC - in response to Message 1155688.  

IIRC the landings were planned for the UK though the Germans were unable to build the necessary landing craft and muster the warships to protect the landings. Heck load up land in Scotland. Nobody would have expected that


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Message 1155859 - Posted: 25 Sep 2011, 5:45:50 UTC - in response to Message 1155808.  

A few problems there -- one, the Germans didn't have much of a surface navy. Their conquest of Norway resulted in a fair proportion of the destroyers and a couple of cruisers being sunk or taken out of action for a long time.

Two, without air dominance the British would not be surprised (landing as far north of Scotland would have taken quite a longer (and far rougher) sea voyage than crossing the channel.

Three, push to shove, the Germans (like the Russians) were a land warfare (and air) military. Sea warfare was not something they had much experience with.

Some historians have posited that the German preparations and planning for an invasion of Britain (Operation Sea Lion) was pretty much a bluff from the get go -- to encourage Britain to negotiate.


IIRC the landings were planned for the UK though the Germans were unable to build the necessary landing craft and muster the warships to protect the landings. Heck load up land in Scotland. Nobody would have expected that


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Message 1155962 - Posted: 25 Sep 2011, 13:50:00 UTC

Also, had Operation Sea-Lion commenced at the scheduled start date with those landing barges, they would have been ducks in a shooting gallery.
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Message 1155983 - Posted: 25 Sep 2011, 15:22:57 UTC - in response to Message 1155859.  

A few problems there -- one, the Germans didn't have much of a surface navy. Their conquest of Norway resulted in a fair proportion of the destroyers and a couple of cruisers being sunk or taken out of action for a long time.

Two, without air dominance the British would not be surprised (landing as far north of Scotland would have taken quite a longer (and far rougher) sea voyage than crossing the channel.

Three, push to shove, the Germans (like the Russians) were a land warfare (and air) military. Sea warfare was not something they had much experience with.

Some historians have posited that the German preparations and planning for an invasion of Britain (Operation Sea Lion) was pretty much a bluff from the get go -- to encourage Britain to negotiate.


IIRC the landings were planned for the UK though the Germans were unable to build the necessary landing craft and muster the warships to protect the landings. Heck load up land in Scotland. Nobody would have expected that


kinda the point I was making


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Message 1156049 - Posted: 25 Sep 2011, 18:30:36 UTC - in response to Message 1155983.  

A few problems there -- one, the Germans didn't have much of a surface navy. Their conquest of Norway resulted in a fair proportion of the destroyers and a couple of cruisers being sunk or taken out of action for a long time.

Two, without air dominance the British would not be surprised (landing as far north of Scotland would have taken quite a longer (and far rougher) sea voyage than crossing the channel.

Three, push to shove, the Germans (like the Russians) were a land warfare (and air) military. Sea warfare was not something they had much experience with.

Some historians have posited that the German preparations and planning for an invasion of Britain (Operation Sea Lion) was pretty much a bluff from the get go -- to encourage Britain to negotiate.


IIRC the landings were planned for the UK though the Germans were unable to build the necessary landing craft and muster the warships to protect the landings. Heck load up land in Scotland. Nobody would have expected that


kinda the point I was making


Or, indeed, the one I made:

Perhaps there's more to repelling potential invaders than defending the 2nd Amendment?
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that ...

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Message 1156184 - Posted: 26 Sep 2011, 3:39:40 UTC

Interesting developments in the discussion.
So, there's one definite factual error (despite Barry's indication that we had some involvement prior to Pearl Harbor and in an undeclared fashion) and major stretches of credibility in the rest of the spam e-mail I quoted?
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Message 1156199 - Posted: 26 Sep 2011, 6:28:23 UTC - in response to Message 1156184.  

Well, the spam didn't ask for a fund transfer to a bank in Lagos....

Interesting developments in the discussion.
So, there's one definite factual error (despite Barry's indication that we had some involvement prior to Pearl Harbor and in an undeclared fashion) and major stretches of credibility in the rest of the spam e-mail I quoted?


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Message 1157288 - Posted: 29 Sep 2011, 23:27:49 UTC - in response to Message 1156184.  

Interesting developments in the discussion.
So, there's one definite factual error (despite Barry's indication that we had some involvement prior to Pearl Harbor and in an undeclared fashion) and major stretches of credibility in the rest of the spam e-mail I quoted?


It would be nice to know which, if any, Chief of Staff made the comment that's attributed. I'd imagine that the reason no name is provided is to thwart fact checking, and that it's also a falsehood.

I'd agree, the general thrust of the email stretches credulity to its breaking point, if not beyond.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that ...

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