I have a friend who went to Paris recently. I believe a delagation of French officals met him as he came off the plane and surrendered to him. As to the comment about the American's not being involved and that it was all our faults save Eisenhower's...I'm not sure how to comment on that. At the start of the war, Eisenhower was a minor figure languishing on the general staff somewhere. The key person for persuading the American public that Hitler's agression was a large enough issue to predicate involvement was Roosevelt.
He clearly saw the threat that Fascism represented and took steps to make sure that America would be involved somehow. Technically the whole Lend Lease program and the Destroyers for Bases thing were a violation of America's delcaration of neutrality.
However, if one thinks about the concept of collective action against agresion, at least in terms of national entities, that is a fairly new idea. Woodrow Wilson proposed the Leage of Nations after WWI, and the Senate rejected it. However, that was more out of political spite than out of real isolationism. But that was the first time that real collective action was thought of in the world community.
If one takes the American Civil War as an example, that conflict makes the crisis in Kosovo look like a party on the beach. Over 600,000 soldiers and civilians died during those four years. And yet Britian postured and France rattled it's sabres, neither steped in to recognize the Confederacy or to send troops to stop the struggle. I think at one point Britian sent like 12,000 troops to Canada, and both Britian and France gave Confederate raiders freedom to use ports, but that was about all.
At some point we have to come to terms with what collective action really means. Do we as a community of nations need to get involved in every struggle in the world? Or does collective action come down to just what the rich and powerful nations who sit on the U.N. Security Coucil has come to define it as: "I'll use collective action only when it suits my national interest."
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That's it! You people have stood in my way long enough. I'm going to clown college!
~Homer Simpson