Whoa!
Impressive.
Always reminds me of the little shock I had when I found out that the lend-lease to Britain was passed with a very little majority.
The arms most vital were escort DD's and then a ... lot.
But very much was obsolete, - would have been scrapped had no war on the USA occured, and for the rest, it was both under, at, and above standard.....
The "opposition" you speak about was opposition to involvement in another European war. The general public, and a pretty big chunk of congress, was against getting involved in another Euro-shenanigan where millions are killed over what? Dont confuse that sentiment with Pro-Nazism because very few Americans were Pro-Nazi. Americas Congress rightly saw passage of Lend Lease as Americas first actual involvement in the war and it didn't play out to well with the public who wanted none of it.
If I had to pick what slice of America had a pro-Nazi bent, at least in the early days, I'd probably pick big Industrialists like Ford who no doubt liked the way Hitler destroyed the German labor unions and enslaved the German worker to his Industrialist master. Then, like every other country, we no doubt had our Jew haters as well. I remember old man Kennedy was a Hitler admirer in the beginning. I dont know what that was about maybe as an Irish Yank he saw Hitler as an antagonist of England and welcomed it. There was fairly significant Nazi/Irish collusion in the war. Or maybe Kennedy was just a flake. Either way his early Pro-Nazi views killed his chances for later public office, tho he was able to later buy an ambassadorship to England.
You seem to state Ford ran its German outfit after PH as if a state of war didn't even exist between America and Germany. And then post evidence it was indeed taken over by the Reich. Which is it? And does anyone here really believe Ford Mo.Co. continued to do business building products for the German war machine even after a state of war existed between us? Such things are called "treason" and we put people to death for it back then.
So I dont know where this thread is going. Hitler had a lot of people fooled until he started persecuting the Jews, killing his own disabled citizenry, and then started a major war. There was no wide scale support for him in America at the time, simply wide scaled distrust at being drawn into another war. The neutrality acts themselves started off as vehicles to keep us out of the conflict, "of course later they became vehicles to lean towards the Democracies involved".
Dont forget that when bullets first started flying in 1938 the US army was only the 18'th biggest in the world. With only 175,000 soldiers all told. The German army had 1.5 million for the invasion of Poland. 2.5 million under arms for the attack on France. So America was hardly a world player at the time.
