TVA was the Tennessee Valley Authority. A effort to bring electrification and other modernizations to a heavily rural area. Primarily a Make work project for the depression era that was intended as an investment in the future. Many rivers were dammed to provide hydro-electric power, but it meant that a lot of people lost their homes that had been in the family for generations.
What's the topic? Myths about FDR? PH ? Whatever: a good one : the American people suffered more from FDR than the German people . Consider you lucky that the author is not (yet) posting here,although he is haunting a lot of forums .
But we may try to understand the background of this myth. Let us investigate this on another more revealing example; in his radio speech on December 29, 1940 Roosevelt boldly stated: We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as we would show were we at war. We have furnished the British great material support and we will furnish far more in the future. But, from an urgent cable from the Prime Minister Churchil to Roosevelt we may reveal the real nature of his relationship with Roosevelt: The moment approaches when we shall no longer be able to pay cash (*) for shipping and other supplies. What we may see is a large discrepancy between the wording of a public speech and reality of “cardial” relationships? Britain was begging for help and paying cash to get help to help other nations. This tells a lot. (*) for more on this subject see: Johnson Debt-Default Act
Note: The following is a humorous aside describing the above thread. Most of us (including me) have attempted to play the part of A at some point in this thread. Several of us (not resembling myself) have played B. One or two people might possibly have played the roll of the troll for this production. No offense is intended, even to the trolls. After all, I'm still on my first cup of coffee, so I'm probably still mostly troll myself. I showed this to a fiend and she reworded it roughly like this: Troll: Grrowr! A feeds troll. B: Don't feed the trolls! A: But they're hungry. I want to feed the trolls. B: No, really. Don't feed the trolls. A: They're hungry and they need to eat too! Troll: Grr! B: Sheesh! GD it already! Don't feed the trolls! A: I have to feed the trolls! Troll: Urp! Sorry. Sometimes we can't help ourselves. People are wrong on the internet and sleep is lost and trolls must be fed. Never a good idea, but hard to avoid sometimes.
You've really got the hang of this moderator lark aint yer Belasar? I'm glad I recommended you now...Oh no..I recommended Stalin...Or someone like that.
And yet, I’ve learned a lot here from other members even though it seems sometimes like everyone were wrong.
Well, I must admit, there are times when I have myself been wrong on the internet. Once at least. Surely. I have rarely learned so much as when researching when someone was "wrong on the internet." Sometimes I learn that I was wrong. Whenever my roommate gets into one of these . . . shall we say discussions? . . . she tends to say just that. It's surely one of XKCD's finest moments. (And they have many.)
There's a first hand account, in an old issue of AMERICAN HERITAGE perhaps, of a young man who took a picture of FDR backstage as he painfully made his way onto a stage or podium. According to the young man, a secret serviceman walked over, took the camera, and exposed the film. My take is that the courtesy of the press was real, but sometimes the young need to be taught manners.
Yes, it was, shall we say, a "Gentlemen's understanding" that the press did not take or publish pictures of FDR in his wheelchair. As a result, there are very few photos of FDR in a wheelchair that survive. "courtesy of the press"...How times have changed.
The Japanese were willing to reach an agreement with the US government as for the oil question, and the US government didn't accept it. "Oh, but we could not give oil to Japan, our allies had priority". Really? But how there was oil avaliable to fight a war with Japan?
Despite what I wrote in the last post, this subjective puzzles me. The USN was weaker in 1941, and the Japanese fleet could have sunk all of it's carriers, bringing serious problems to the Americans, specially if the USSR fell and Germany consolidated it's empire in Eurasia. Also, Germany represented much more danger to the US interests abroad. I found hard to understand how Democrats and Republicans were so eager in risk to provoke Japan and hence commit the US fleet to the Pacific, when it was better to leave it to face Germany.
The US didn't provoke Japan, which had been fighting China for years already and was trying to stop US aid to China. Japan forced the issue by occupying French Indo-China, which was a threat directly aimed at Britain. The US had no moral or legal obligation to sell Japan materials that were feeding its war machine.