(April 28, 2011 at 12:31 pm)reverendjeremiah Wrote:(April 28, 2011 at 12:25 pm)Gawdzilla Wrote: The deaths were more important that the ship losses to public opinion. Firstly, the actual amount of material damage was concealed at first. Secondly, men vs. metal is not even a contest. It's incredibly callus to simply write those folks off.
..and for any side, wether Russian, American, or German. Massive deaths like that deserve to be approached with caution REGARDLESS of your personal or political feelings.
I get über pissed off when some conspiracy nut on the web posts that FDR would willingly kill so many people to get into a war on the other side of the planet. Because they're not only besmirching Roosevelt, but every other person who "knew about it and did nothing". It's coming up on the 70th anniversary this year, and we still don't have any evidence that FDR "just let it happen". But that doesn't stop people from claiming Bill Halsey, among others, allowed ships he had served on for years, and sailors and officers he had served with for the same time, to be killed on the off chance that Hitler would declare war on the US after the Japanese attacked us in a move that would have drawn the USN off the Atlantic and given der Führer a golden opportunity in the Battle of the Atlantic. Such logic is sick beyond my comprehension.
