Who's Your Favorite Historical Figure?

[brewer]

Gregor Mendel.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

No prob. I just assume that when the quote is my own, the reply is directed at me. We're good.

It's nice when I can do that properly, but not always possible. Apologies in advance to any and all who are confused by poorly formatted posts.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

And to clarify a point I made earlier, now that I have a real keyboard under my finger tips, people constantly fish through the Gallup (and other polls from the era) looking for favorable numbers. "BUT 88% said they didn't want to go to war!" Yeah, what rational person does? But the same poll shows that 68% of the people said that war with Germany was inevitable. And 72% said the same thing for Japan. Very few said war with these countries was NOT likely.

When I was a grad student I looked at two college newspapers, a traditionally conservative school (Purdue) and a generally liberal school (Indiana U.) (because I could get to their papers easily). I had expected the liberal school to be less vocal about the need for intervention by the US. Didn't turn out to be the case, both school papers were giving generally the same responses to world events and the Op-Ed pieces were reflective of concern for democracy if we didn't come to the aid of the embattled Allied countries.

Then I did a gut check to see these papers were representative. I looked at newspapers from New York, Chicago, Miami, and L.A. I found that the same things were being said in those papers to a great degree. The Chicago paper was run by a FDR-hater and isolationist, but even they printed letters from prominent people calling for more active aid on the part of the US. This lead to another semester of work on why FDR wasn't responding to those calls as quickly as he could have. After looking at the records I decided that mind reading was needed to get a solid grip on Roosevelt's guiding policies. And that way lies madness...

[abaris]

But the same poll shows that 68% of the people said that war with Germany was inevitable. And 72% said the same thing for Japan. Very few said war with these countries was NOT likely.

War with Germany was inevitable. Hitler declared war on the United States. The one and only war he formally declared. Japan attacked the US, another inevitable war. The buildup to the war with Japan is another story.

And I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about here. What period of time. Are these contemporary polls from before december '41 you're quoting?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

But the same poll shows that 68% of the people said that war with Germany was inevitable. And 72% said the same thing for Japan. Very few said war with these countries was NOT likely.

War with Germany was inevitable. Hitler declared war on the United States. The one and only war he formally declared. Japan attacked the US, another inevitable war. The buildup to the war with Japan is another story.

And I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about here. What period of time. Are these contemporary polls from before december '41 you're quoting?

The polls I'm referring to are here: http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/Gallup/ The period is from Sept. 1, 1939 to end of 1941. 

The HTMLs have the questions related to the war broken out. The PDF has the whole set of questions for the period under question.

"The buildup to the war with Japan is another story."  My Ph.D. thesis would have been on this, so if you have any questions...

[abaris]

I can see the mindset that went into these polls, given the time and circumstances. In their overwhelming majority people didn't want to go to war. But at the same time the US stretched the term neutrality to it's limits right from day 1. By providing british naval forces with intelligence and similar actions. I can see why an observer might consider actual conflict to be inevitable. The situation with Japan was brewing since 1937 when they invaded China. So I'm pretty sure that was on the radar of the media and gave reason for concern too.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I can see the mindset that went into these polls, given the time and circumstances. In their overwhelming majority people didn't want to go to war. But at the same time the US stretched the term neutrality to it's limits right from day 1. By providing british naval forces with intelligence and similar actions. I can see why an observer might consider actual conflict to be inevitable. The situation with Japan was brewing since 1937 when they invaded China. So I'm pretty sure that was on the radar of the media and gave reason for concern too.

Regarding the Germans attitude at first was that this was just another round of the perpetual European civil war. The wild string of German victories up to and including the Fall of France caused a change in that. 

As for the China Incident T. V. Soong, Hu Shih and the Dragon Lady* kept the US informed about the aggressive natural of the Japanese foreign policy in their country. We were also getting reports of violations of the Nine Power Treaty, evictions and/or murder of our missionaries, and demand by Japan that US business (and all other "foreign" businesses for that matter) had to have a Japanese as the ranking member of the company and any profits couldn't leave the occupied sections of China. All in all, not good for the Japanese public relations efforts. 



*"The Dragon Lady" was the nickname for Mrs. Chiang, sister to the aforementioned Soong.

[abaris]

I was mainly referring to the polls. I can see, given the political situation back then, that Americans feared war to be inevitable although they didn't want to go to war. For me that's not a contradiction. It's a concern rather.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I was mainly referring to the polls. I can see, given the political situation back then, that Americans feared war to be inevitable although they didn't want to go to war. For me that's not a contradiction. It's a concern rather.

I agree. But if people want to quote mine the Polls that's a juicy target. It tells me much about their scholarship when they come out with this "argument". It usually begins with "America was strongly against getting into the war and FDR had to let Pearl Harbor happen to get the US properly riled up." They ignore the rest of the polls because they find them awkward.

[I_am_not_mafia]

I'd say James Clerk Maxwell. The man who invented the modern world and a genius to boot. And Emmy Noether. And yeah why not throw in Einstein as well who greatly admired them both. I'd say Marie Curie but she'd be radioactive so best not to invite her to dinner. Erwin Schrödinger would also do well in there because he had interesting stuff to say about the nature of life (and not just about zombie cats that are both alive and dead at the same time). I'd also like to meet Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer.