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Originally posted by Spanky
Absolutely not. You are just way off here. Sometimes you need to think before you post. Now you are just disputing undisputed facts for WWII. I am sorry the facts don't favor your argument but that is life.
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Your Hank-described humility is overwhelming me.
This exchange about WWII is interesting to me because I like me a little bit of military history, but it has nothing -- nothing -- to do with any argument we are having. Whatever the reasons for our entry into World War II, the allocation of resources to various theaters has precious little to do with it.
And where did you get the 80/20 number?
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The Japanese were in New Guinea and were poised to invade Australia. Marshall recommended to Macarthur that he fortify Australia and wait for the Japanese because we were not going to send him the resources to attack. Macarthur, and the army, was in charge of Island hopping in the western pacific, and the navy and the marine had the central pacific islands. You can't take islands with Ships. As any marine will tell you taking islands is manpower intense. Macarthur, even though he didn't get the resources attacked anyway.
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All of what you say is true, but the numbers of soldiers on the ground in the Pacific were still much smaller than what was in the European and African theaters.
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Both the European war and the Pacific war started of with amphibious invasions. Landing men in the solomons and New Guinea for the Pacific and landing men in North Africa for the European theater. The overwhelming bulk of men, supplies, ships, planes and everything else was devoted to the Invasion of North Africa. After the successful invasion of North Africa the focus was then on assualting France. So the majority of supplies were sent to England, the rest to North Africa and then the Pacific got the scraps.
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At the risk of stating the obvious, because I know Hank doesn't like it when I do that, it took many fewer troops to occupy Guadalcanal than it did to invade Northern Africa. A little time pondering a globe should suggest why this was true.
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There were massive arguments over this strategy between Macarthur and Marshall. Macarthur never forgave him and his "Eurocentric collegues". That is one of the reasons there was such tension between Macarthur and the Truman administration. Marshall was the secretary of state an pretty much ran foreign policy and defense.
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OK.
