Originally Posted by
Denflnt
I want to apologize to others on here for my first post being as it is. I stewed a bit about the post I am responding to and finally decided I had to respond.
Denfint,
while your narrative is possibly true from the US citizen/soldier point of view, there is a bigger picture why exactly the US got involved: technology and power.
Germany at the time had really good war technology. The clearest example is V1/V2 rocket, which "just so happens" was the basis of the Saturn program after the war. Imagine a different reality where that technology and knowhow falls into russian hands, and you get a pretty good motivation to get involved in the war.
It was not just the rockets, Germany also had the first jet powered fighter (Me 262), as well as.
Second very important item for the US was Russian influence in Europe. Germans actually helped deflecting Russians from occupying (larger part of) Europe. The clearest example is Finland, which fought Russians with German support (yet, they were not considered Axis). Were it not for Germany, Finland would share the fate of the Baltic states.
Strategically it was very important for the US to prevent Russia access to warm water harbours (hence cut them away from the Mediteranian Sea) so that they would not become too big of a superpower.
In essence, US nuclear program (funded on Germany imigrated knowhow) + German rocket technology (Saturn) + Iron Courtain in the Eastern Europe (and not further to the West) helped the US maintain the balance in the cold war era.
History would have been different also for the US had they not get involved in the "European" WW2.
PS: despite my username, I'm not German.