Brave Sir Robin

[el cid again]

Except - of course - when they DO cut the heads off the former rulers. The French Revolution comes to mind - but there are other cases. Its just that that one had so many heads cut off...eventually even including the original "new" rulers - by their replacements - in what became a nightmarish cycle.

Democracy is messy (quoting Colin Powell). Churchill said "Democracy is the worst form of government ever devised. It is also better than any other yet concieved."

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid

ORIGINAL: Nomad

It was not really an anti-war sentiment but isolationist. Many did not want to enter another European war. But, when Japan attacked the fleet at Pearl Harbor without declaring war - it was war until the end.

If it is true that U.S. society during 1941 to 1945 was untroubled by flagging war spirit, then why propagate the myth about Captain Colin P. Kelly heroically suicide crashing his damaged B-17 into the Battleship Haruna and sinking it off Lingayen on about Dec 10, 1941? Why the Doolittle raid? Why the huge propaganda effort, including the Flag Raiser Bond Drive, even in the last months of a war whose outcome was a 'foregone conclusion?'

It is absolutely false. Gen Marshall and FDR worried about it - and conspired to address it - continually. There are elements in the movie about the raising of the flag on Iwo - about how the war bond effort was dangerously close to failing - and the extreme measures used to keep it going. The nightmare concern was casualty count (which sounds very plausable to a veteran of later US wars - and the basis of current Chinese military policy - quoting a PLAN general "we will just inflict casualties until they withdraw - I estimate 5000 is enough - if not we will keep shooting until it is enough"). It is also interesting that PTO featured some very unimpressive frontal attacks - including at least one major one that seems to have served no strategic or operational purpose (Palau) - whch of couse inflated casualty counts.

It is quite true that the Isolationists were had a powerful political movement and probably controlled Congress until the attack on PH changed things.

And remember - it is not at all clear PH could justify declaring war on Germany. What DID get Germany into war was not PH directly - but indirectly: Hitler - in one of his most foolish moves - reacted to the news by declaring war on the USA. It is like the war with Spain - the US went to war only AFTER Spain declared war on the USA.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

ORIGINAL: herwin
An armistice is where the two sides agree to stop fighting, usually on the current lines. An armistice in India would allow the side accepting the armistice to withdrawn and redeploy the troops currently fighting in the Indian area. Similarly for an armistice in China. Japan might accept an armistice in either area to be able to redeploy to face the USA. Attack is any air/land/sea attack.

Sorry Herwin..., usually I'm with you---but this is a silly notion. On 1/1/43 the US alone had a larger fleet than Japan would ever produce in various states of production, not to mention a huge Air Force and significant land forces---plus enough supply to keep all of it going and help it's Allies as well. Does the phrase "We have not yet begun to fight!" ring a bell?

You might discuss "war weariness" by 1945---but in 1943 the Allies were just getting ready to start dealing with Japan, so why would they "throw in the towel" before they'd even brought their forces to bear? It's a "gamey cop-out" 2by3 came up with to make JFB's happy...

The entire situation of PTO is very complex and hard to understand. Traditional US accounts ignore significant dimensions of it. For example, Japan - with a smaller population - fielded a bigger army - and that does not count vast numbers of Axis allied troops. It is fortunate for us that the Japanese did not elect to fight with its army - in 1945 the IJA as a body was undefeated and it was anything but clear it would accept national defeat? A player who actually USES the army is going to find the entire war situation has changed - and that is the main thing driving Japanese success in games: players are NOT limited to 15 divisions (that is 10 per cent) of IJA spread from Ceylon to Alaska. Another dimension is the extent of anti-colonial sentiment in the area - and if you believe the only scholarly history of WWII by academics from both sides (Total War) - in particular the implications of this in India.

In my view - Japan defeated itself by adopting a host of inefffecient, ineffective or counterproductive policies and strategies. It never implemented its own plan for autarky, nor did it consistently exploit anti-Allied sentiment which could have and probably should have given it a significant strategic advantage in manpower and local security. This in spite of remarkably good planning and poliical advocacy by a number of Japanese - including officials - as high in rank as Prime Minister Tojo (who was a true believer in Asia for the Asiatics - not as a puppet thing - but as a cooperation thing). Japan was an extraordinarily divided society - it was always so and remains true now - not a mololithic dictatorship like we assumed (and mostly still believe) it was. Different choices were possible - and if these were made rationally - it is not clear we could have stayed in the war long enough to win it? Fortunately - Japanese bad choices were on a scale that dwarfed our own bad choices - so even though we never did adopt a unified command - or even obtained a unified international policy - we never were in danger of losing after Guadalcanal (which itself was a battle that should probably not have been fought when and where it was - which we might have lost - and which we never were so foolish as to attempt anything similar again).

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Roger Neilson II

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

That is overstating the case, I believe.

The historically minded crowd just wants to have the same abilities the original commanders had, and not more. When our forces have abilities they did not have in real life there is less of a feeling of satisfaction that we have outperformed history.

This is an important point. WITP is more historical than many games, that's the reason why some of us play it to the exclusion of most other games. I bow to other's knowledge of the detail but I do think that generally the game seems to have the feel of the period. That's not the same in other games. I once played with a science fiction one and left that very quickly, I don't play games that have formations of war dogs, I don't like games where 15 nations will all gang up on you siply because you are inthe lead.... I could go on.

Roger

WITP - and its parent UV - are vast improvements over the grandparent - PACWAR - which I refused to consider playing. It is also possible to do in an hour or two a move that takes a week or two in a mechanical system of comparable complexity (which I know a lot about having done more than a dozen such mechanical and computer aided WITPs). We can get a lot more play with computer generated results. For which I give up a lot of detail - although someday I would like to get all that detail too. And WITP DOES have a lot of detail.

I find the engine is remarkably good - IF you play historically you get plausable results 95 per cent of the time or more. Not bad at all. IN fact quite good.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid

ORIGINAL: Nomad

It was not really an anti-war sentiment but isolationist. Many did not want to enter another European war. But, when Japan attacked the fleet at Pearl Harbor without declaring war - it was war until the end.

If it is true that U.S. society during 1941 to 1945 was untroubled by flagging war spirit, then why propagate the myth about Captain Colin P. Kelly heroically suicide crashing his damaged B-17 into the Battleship Haruna and sinking it off Lingayen on about Dec 10, 1941? Why the Doolittle raid? Why the huge propaganda effort, including the Flag Raiser Bond Drive, even in the last months of a war whose outcome was a 'foregone conclusion?'

It is absolutely false. Gen Marshall and FDR worried about it - and conspired to address it - continually. There are elements in the movie about the raising of the flag on Iwo - about how the war bond effort was dangerously close to failing - and the extreme measures used to keep it going. The nightmare concern was casualty count (which sounds very plausable to a veteran of later US wars - and the basis of current Chinese military policy - quoting a PLAN general "we will just inflict casualties until they withdraw - I estimate 5000 is enough - if not we will keep shooting until it is enough"). It is also interesting that PTO featured some very unimpressive frontal attacks - including at least one major one that seems to have served no strategic or operational purpose (Palau) - whch of couse inflated casualty counts.

It is quite true that the Isolationists were had a powerful political movement and probably controlled Congress until the attack on PH changed things.

And remember - it is not at all clear PH could justify declaring war on Germany. What DID get Germany into war was not PH directly - but indirectly: Hitler - in one of his most foolish moves - reacted to the news by declaring war on the USA. It is like the war with Spain - the US went to war only AFTER Spain declared war on the USA.

Jim Quinlivan once pointed out to me that an order of magnitude increase in the number of casualties converted to a 15% decrease in support for the current war (Rand study of the support for various wars in American history).

[Nomad]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid

ORIGINAL: Nomad

It was not really an anti-war sentiment but isolationist. Many did not want to enter another European war. But, when Japan attacked the fleet at Pearl Harbor without declaring war - it was war until the end.

If it is true that U.S. society during 1941 to 1945 was untroubled by flagging war spirit, then why propagate the myth about Captain Colin P. Kelly heroically suicide crashing his damaged B-17 into the Battleship Haruna and sinking it off Lingayen on about Dec 10, 1941? Why the Doolittle raid? Why the huge propaganda effort, including the Flag Raiser Bond Drive, even in the last months of a war whose outcome was a 'foregone conclusion?'

It is absolutely false. Gen Marshall and FDR worried about it - and conspired to address it - continually. There are elements in the movie about the raising of the flag on Iwo - about how the war bond effort was dangerously close to failing - and the extreme measures used to keep it going. The nightmare concern was casualty count (which sounds very plausable to a veteran of later US wars - and the basis of current Chinese military policy - quoting a PLAN general "we will just inflict casualties until they withdraw - I estimate 5000 is enough - if not we will keep shooting until it is enough"). It is also interesting that PTO featured some very unimpressive frontal attacks - including at least one major one that seems to have served no strategic or operational purpose (Palau) - whch of couse inflated casualty counts.

It is quite true that the Isolationists were had a powerful political movement and probably controlled Congress until the attack on PH changed things.

And remember - it is not at all clear PH could justify declaring war on Germany. What DID get Germany into war was not PH directly - but indirectly: Hitler - in one of his most foolish moves - reacted to the news by declaring war on the USA. It is like the war with Spain - the US went to war only AFTER Spain declared war on the USA.

Once again Cid, you are full of BS. [&:]

[Anthropoid]

It would be neat to see that Rand study if you can dig up a link or something without too much trouble [:)]
 
What is 'PTO?'
 
Fellow on another game board I frequent, retired economist who lived through WWII (probably a boy at the time, but not sure) stated confidently that "war weariness was NEVER a problem" for U.S. society in one discussion. I find that level of confidence difficult to accept, given that, it is a serious empirical social-psychological effort to confirm or disprove an hypothesis of 'war weariness'  right now! with respect to the war on terror. Most of the historians I've read seem to think (or at least imply) war weariness was a non-trivial challenge for the U.S. in WWII; but maybe those historians have just done the same thing I'm doing which is simply to infer that: if the democratic powers continually conspired to put considerable effort into things that would tend to foster esprit du corps (e.g., propaganda) and thwart 'war weariness,' then it must have been 'a problem.'
 
Obviously we can be a bit more confident that 'war weariness' (or if you prefer anti-war sentiment) was a major factor in the U.S. withdrawal from the Vietnam conflict. Also the incredible scale of de-militarization b/w WWII and Korea (which some have argued precipitated that second conflict) lend credence to the idea that there was a pervasive desire in U.S. society to NOT serve in the military, and/or fight in wars. My sense of what I have read about the American Revolutionary War and Am Civil War is that war weariness were also a problem for the Colonies and the Union. But when it comes to WWII, and in particular the WiTP, the question does seem more debatable precisely because of the issue of "Remember December Seventh!"
 
Having said all that, I doubt FDR et al. were fools, and if they conspired continually and expended resource to prevent war weariness then it seems it must have been a serious threat to U.S. achieving final victory. Thus, I conclude that the auto-victory from skewed losses is not gamey, but a reasonable mechanism for representing this real life issue.

[John Lansford]

From the various historical accounts I've read of the late 44/early 45 Pacific battles (Palaus, Iwo Jima, Philippines, Okinawa), the rising casualty level alarmed the military and civilian leaders, and there was a lot of press about how bloody the assaults were becoming.  I don't know if that translated to the public, though.
 
I have never read that the US civilian population were becoming "tired" of the war to the point that they would demand an end to the fighting before Japan was defeated.  It may have been that the US leaders were projecting their fears onto the public because THEY were concerned over how bloody the battles had become.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: Nomad

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid



If it is true that U.S. society during 1941 to 1945 was untroubled by flagging war spirit, then why propagate the myth about Captain Colin P. Kelly heroically suicide crashing his damaged B-17 into the Battleship Haruna and sinking it off Lingayen on about Dec 10, 1941? Why the Doolittle raid? Why the huge propaganda effort, including the Flag Raiser Bond Drive, even in the last months of a war whose outcome was a 'foregone conclusion?'

It is absolutely false. Gen Marshall and FDR worried about it - and conspired to address it - continually. There are elements in the movie about the raising of the flag on Iwo - about how the war bond effort was dangerously close to failing - and the extreme measures used to keep it going. The nightmare concern was casualty count (which sounds very plausable to a veteran of later US wars - and the basis of current Chinese military policy - quoting a PLAN general "we will just inflict casualties until they withdraw - I estimate 5000 is enough - if not we will keep shooting until it is enough"). It is also interesting that PTO featured some very unimpressive frontal attacks - including at least one major one that seems to have served no strategic or operational purpose (Palau) - whch of couse inflated casualty counts.

It is quite true that the Isolationists were had a powerful political movement and probably controlled Congress until the attack on PH changed things.

And remember - it is not at all clear PH could justify declaring war on Germany. What DID get Germany into war was not PH directly - but indirectly: Hitler - in one of his most foolish moves - reacted to the news by declaring war on the USA. It is like the war with Spain - the US went to war only AFTER Spain declared war on the USA.

Once again Cid, you are full of BS. [&:]

I'm afraid Cid is with the mainstream view of historians. Germany did solve a nasty problem for FDR and Marshall by declaring war.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid

It would be neat to see that Rand study if you can dig up a link or something without too much trouble [:)]

What is 'PTO?'

Fellow on another game board I frequent, retired economist who lived through WWII (probably a boy at the time, but not sure) stated confidently that "war weariness was NEVER a problem" for U.S. society in one discussion. I find that level of confidence difficult to accept, given that, it is a serious empirical social-psychological effort to confirm or disprove an hypothesis of 'war weariness'  right now! with respect to the war on terror. Most of the historians I've read seem to think (or at least imply) war weariness was a non-trivial challenge for the U.S. in WWII; but maybe those historians have just done the same thing I'm doing which is simply to infer that: if the democratic powers continually conspired to put considerable effort into things that would tend to foster esprit du corps (e.g., propaganda) and thwart 'war weariness,' then it must have been 'a problem.'

Obviously we can be a bit more confident that 'war weariness' (or if you prefer anti-war sentiment) was a major factor in the U.S. withdrawal from the Vietnam conflict. Also the incredible scale of de-militarization b/w WWII and Korea (which some have argued precipitated that second conflict) lend credence to the idea that there was a pervasive desire in U.S. society to NOT serve in the military, and/or fight in wars. My sense of what I have read about the American Revolutionary War and Am Civil War is that war weariness were also a problem for the Colonies and the Union. But when it comes to WWII, and in particular the WiTP, the question does seem more debatable precisely because of the issue of "Remember December Seventh!"

Having said all that, I doubt FDR et al. were fools, and if they conspired continually and expended resource to prevent war weariness then it seems it must have been a serious threat to U.S. achieving final victory. Thus, I conclude that the auto-victory from skewed losses is not gamey, but a reasonable mechanism for representing this real life issue.

Again, sorry--we're talking about 1978 or 1979--check the Rand catalog for studies in the 1970s. I think it was open-source; the discussion was (supposedly) unclassified. We were looking at models of engagement termination and the supporting data. RL Helmbold might have been one of the authors.

PTO was Pacific Theater of Operations.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid
What is 'PTO?'

If you don't know what the "Pacific Theatre of Operations" was, you make it difficult for anyone to take your notions about American War Support during 1941-45 very seriously...[:D] You are trying to graft Vietnam Era Feelings onto a an older generation.., and it doesn't work.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid
What is 'PTO?'

If you don't know what the "Pacific Theatre of Operations" was, you make it difficult for anyone to take your notions about American War Support during 1941-45 very seriously...[:D] You are trying to graft Vietnam Era Feelings onto a an older generation.., and it doesn't work.

Please lay off him. PTO is an acronym I should have defined. Viet-nam is ancient history for the generation I'm now teaching. WWII was the generation before mine, and a lot of these things aren't taught anymore.

[mdiehl]

In short, if you do not perform well enough, as represented by the ratio of victory points, your society loses the will to fight, no matter how much skew there is in available or potential kilojoules of explosive power.

I really do not think that assessment is correct. It was the premise of the Japanese during WW2 and they more or less "ran the table" through March 1942, but it got them nowhere. It was the premise of the rebellion during the American War of the Rebellion and despite casualties that absolutely dwarfed American losses during WW2 in raw numbers (much less proportion of population and proportions of combat units engaged) it availed the "old south" nothing at all.

Americans willingness to fight has ALOT to do with perceived injustices foisted on Americans. The Viet Nam war became politically unpopular because of a popular perception (I make no assessment here as to its truth) that the US Citizenry had in essence been "duped" into an "unnecessary war." The same now holds true of the Iraq, errrrm, Occupation. But polls of the US public even now find massive support for continued US Presence in Afghanistan because, I suppose, Americans really aren't irrational. Terrorists in Afghanistan, willingly supported by the then de facto Afghani gov't, attacked the US, and Americans are really really good at and willing to stay committed to vengeance when they feel it has been earned.

I do not think there was ANY set of circumstances, short of Japanese troops occupying Capitol Hill, that Japan could ever have worn down the US populace enough to get the US to agree to an armisitice much less an actual negotiated peace that left Japan rewarded for her expansionism.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: herwin

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid
What is 'PTO?'

If you don't know what the "Pacific Theatre of Operations" was, you make it difficult for anyone to take your notions about American War Support during 1941-45 very seriously...[:D] You are trying to graft Vietnam Era Feelings onto a an older generation.., and it doesn't work.

Please lay off him. PTO is an acronym I should have defined. Viet-nam is ancient history for the generation I'm now teaching. WWII was the generation before mine, and a lot of these things aren't taught anymore.

But anyone interested enough to post constant opinions about it should have spent some time in a library. It's not as if the subject has been ignored by writers since 1945. You and I have probably gotten through 1,000 or two books on the topic in forming our opinions---so what's the harm in asking him if he's "done his homework" before posing as a knowledgable expert? [:)] Anyone who has would reccognize PTO, ETO, and MTO at least. Wasn't trying to offend him, mearly pointing out that his "opinion" would carry more wieght if he could show a good basic knowledge of the subject.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

In short, if you do not perform well enough, as represented by the ratio of victory points, your society loses the will to fight, no matter how much skew there is in available or potential kilojoules of explosive power.

I really do not think that assessment is correct. It was the premise of the Japanese during WW2 and they more or less "ran the table" through March 1942, but it got them nowhere. It was the premise of the rebellion during the American War of the Rebellion and despite casualties that absolutely dwarfed American losses during WW2 in raw numbers (much less proportion of population and proportions of combat units engaged) it availed the "old south" nothing at all.

Americans willingness to fight has ALOT to do with perceived injustices foisted on Americans. The Viet Nam war became politically unpopular because of a popular perception (I make no assessment here as to its truth) that the US Citizenry had in essence been "duped" into an "unnecessary war." The same now holds true of the Iraq, errrrm, Occupation. But polls of the US public even now find massive support for continued US Presence in Afghanistan because, I suppose, Americans really aren't irrational. Terrorists in Afghanistan, willingly supported by the then de facto Afghani gov't, attacked the US, and Americans are really really good at and willing to stay committed to vengeance when they feel it has been earned.

I do not think there was ANY set of circumstances, short of Japanese troops occupying Capitol Hill, that Japan could ever have worn down the US populace enough to get the US to agree to an armisitice much less an actual negotiated peace that left Japan rewarded for her expansionism.

From page 29 of Miller, War Plan Orange, ""The prime uncertainty was whether the American public would tolerate a lengthy war, say of a year or two years' duration, for goals not vital to national survival."

Lincoln nearly lost the 1864 election due to war weariness.

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: herwin

ORIGINAL: Nomad

ORIGINAL: el cid again


It is absolutely false. Gen Marshall and FDR worried about it - and conspired to address it - continually. There are elements in the movie about the raising of the flag on Iwo - about how the war bond effort was dangerously close to failing - and the extreme measures used to keep it going. The nightmare concern was casualty count (which sounds very plausable to a veteran of later US wars - and the basis of current Chinese military policy - quoting a PLAN general "we will just inflict casualties until they withdraw - I estimate 5000 is enough - if not we will keep shooting until it is enough"). It is also interesting that PTO featured some very unimpressive frontal attacks - including at least one major one that seems to have served no strategic or operational purpose (Palau) - whch of couse inflated casualty counts.

It is quite true that the Isolationists were had a powerful political movement and probably controlled Congress until the attack on PH changed things.

And remember - it is not at all clear PH could justify declaring war on Germany. What DID get Germany into war was not PH directly - but indirectly: Hitler - in one of his most foolish moves - reacted to the news by declaring war on the USA. It is like the war with Spain - the US went to war only AFTER Spain declared war on the USA.

Once again Cid, you are full of BS. [&:]

I'm afraid Cid is with the mainstream view of historians. Germany did solve a nasty problem for FDR and Marshall by declaring war.

No, actually Sid is full of BS. But Nomad and Anthopoid are quite right in their appreciations.

The political psychology of the pre-war US was so complex that historians are still publishing books that deal with it. We, today, have the benefit of socio/political analysis promulgated by contemporary ‘experts’.

This was the America of 1940. Nobody cared about Hitler, nobody cared about France, those things were happening a continent away. Some, of course, did, but in a world where the newspaper was the only source of information, and was beholden to the publisher’s political perspective, how do you communicate?

Isolationism and “war spirit” have to be taken in context. This, too, is complex. Woof!

[mdiehl]

From page 29 of Miller, War Plan Orange, ""The prime uncertainty was whether the American public would tolerate a lengthy war, say of a year or two years' duration, for goals not vital to national survival."

All exec admins in every nation were always concerned with domestic morale. This was as true in Japan, the Soviet Union, Britain, and Germany, as it was in the US. Ironically, Britain and the US admins felt the least inclined to shield their populations from the reality of the war. So, while it was ALWAYS true that during WW2 the US Admin monitored morale on the home front, the plain fact is that US morale never came close to faltering. There were plenty of opportunities for it to do so... the loss of the Phillippines, the debacle at Savo Island, the casualty rates at Tarawa, Pelelieu, Saipan, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, the losses in the 8th AF bombing campaign in Europe, the debacle at Kasserine, the near-debacle at Anzio, the horrid Atlantic shipping loss rates in 1942. The US public never came close to throwing in the towel. Hitler certainly hoped that with enough "bloody noses" he could get the US to back down, as with his Ardennes Offensive of 1944. Didn't work. The whole Japanese theory of how to win the war was based on that premise. Didn't work.

Lincoln nearly lost the 1864 election due to war weariness.

Yes, but, Lincoln DIDN'T lose the 1864 election despite casualties that far exceeded those of WW2. The "south" based it's war strategy on the "repeated bloody nose" theory, and as with the Third Reich and Imperial Japan, their theory proved wrong.

Americans seem to like their elective wars to be brief and successful. The unelective ones get pretty much unlimited tolerance.

[Anthropoid]

Mike and Mdiehl, do you guys work for the government? I remember a few years back when I was getting ready to start a postdoc, I was a bit sick of academia so I checked some jobs with the Feds; intell type stuff . . . They had some initiatives to 'bring new perspectives' into the intelligence community, and shake up the dogma a bit, so they were _supposedly_ interested in Ph.D.s in behavioral, social and psychological sciences in particular.
 
So I went through the big rigamarole to get all their forms filled out, etc., etc.
 
Didn't get a single offer, and the consensus on all the application reviews I got back was "Very impressive . . . unusual candidate . . . you don't see this type of researcher applying very often . . . but without a background in military intelligence, he [and I paraphrase here] won't understand all of our dogma and how is he going to be able to act as a proper bureacratic flunky!?" [:D]
 
Anthropology certainly has its fill of dogma, which is extra ironic cause they think they're so enligtened and open-minded. But I've come to conclude that (some, not all) WiTP players can present some rather dogmatic caricatures.
 
The idea that 'war weariness' is something unique to the late 1960s, and simply did not occur in 1864 or 1944 is absurd. Certainly the frequency, etiology, intensity, etc., might have had different distributions in the populations in question during those different time periods, but to argue that it simply is incommensurable makes about as much sense as to argue that they are equivalent!
 
 . . . anyway, 'the good guys' won and that is the main thing . . .
 
But then arguing on the internet is like running in the special olympics, so don't expect me to flail too much. You guys are certainly entitled to harbor nostalgic notions that 194os U.S. society was orders of magnitude more solidary and homogeneous in its devotion to the national cause if you like.
 
The facts still remain: the boss of the U.S. at that time seems to have been very concerned about the risk that the national will to prosecute the war with vigor would flag if lots of special efforts were not made to bolster morale and fighting spirit.

[herwin]

Anthropoid,

In my experience, tolerance for diversity in the American military-industrial complex has varied quite a bit over the last forty years. Currently, it's rather low, but when I first worked in the field, a majority of my colleagues were female or from racial or other minorities--talent was the primary consideration at that time.

Those organisations most assuredly run out of ideas after a while. However, they desperately need good ideas--which are rare and precious--and the narrower the talent base they draw on, the faster they run out.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid

Mike and Mdiehl, do you guys work for the government?

Everybody in America works for the Government until mid-May each year---we're called taxpayers. [:D]
But no, I never worked directly for them. My studies were in Military History, not Political "Science" (now there is a joke for you). I'm from the generation just after the one that fought WW II, and grew up hearing about it from them directly. Which piqued my interest in finding out just how "tall" the tales I'd heard might be.

What I've discovered was that they were usually under-stated. And the idea that these folks would "throw in the towel" after suffering less than the British really suffered in the way of set-backs is absurd. By 1945 they were ready to have it "over and done with" and get back to their lives---but only on their terms. This was one of the things that led to the Japanese being able to keep their Emperor (a small "condition" in the Unconditional Surrender, if you will). But to even think they would be forced to give up in 1943 or 1944 (when they were just getting started) is silly and unjustified.