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"Evil versus Lesser Evil"?
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: "Evil versus Lesser Evil"?
    Posted: 12-Jul-2006 at 19:50
 
..Hello everyone...
 
..I was recently watching the tv programme 'War of the World' hosted by the historian Niall Ferguson.....this episode featured the issues connected to World War II....
 
..Niall discussed the idea that most perceptions of WWII see that conflict as a traditional 'good versus bad' scenario..Niall, using comparisons of warfare methods, proposed that the war was in fact a case of "Evil versus lesser Evil"...
 
...his point was that as the war strove on, the allies increasingly resorted to methods that seemed more 'appropriate' in the Axis powers..for example...the Nazi's targeting of civilian populations/exterminations of civilians were compared to the bombing campaign against Germany and the use of atomic weaponry against Japan.....the indescriminate killing of prisoners by the Axis armies was compared to the treatment meted out by American marines towards Japanese prisoners in the Pacific campaign.....
 
..personally, i felt Niall's position was not that original in thought....many of the above examples i remember being debated on this very forum....e.g..the 'rights' and 'wrongs' of the allies in determining the end of the war....there have been many arguments over the Allies mass bombing of German cities.....
 
..however, to repeat myself (sorry!)..the phrase 'Evil versus lesser evil' stuck out for me....is there really any other way to define a 'war'??...is there such a thing as a 'good way' to carry out a war??...or is it a case of that there is always a side that 'started it' and a side that was forced to 'defend itself'..even if the methods are similar in nature....so ultimately the justification is for 'defensive actions' in order to defeat the greater evil??...
 
...i am not sure there is much originality here to discuss except maybe for that phrase....?
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Posts: 1108 		  Quote ataman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Jul-2006 at 00:49
War is always evil  - less or more but evil. Even if you only defend, you have to kill enemy soldiers. You have to kill people. It is by no means evil.
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Posts: 4310 		  Quote Tobodai Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Jul-2006 at 02:42
As theres no such thing as a good nation, every war is evil vs lesser evil.  Or by what most people think of as evil I classify as idiocy, but that also is a universal human trait.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Jul-2006 at 07:41
 
 
...thank you for the above replies.....
 
.....although it seems quite simplistic, it is i feel, reasonably easy to accept that 'all wars' are 'evil', a strong term which defines destruction/death/chaos....
 
.....i just felt there was more to what Niall was saying in his programme....do we duly accept that actions performed by the allies to defeat the Axis powers are justified as long as  the outcome is the end the conflict?...the methods used by the Allies have been debated since the end of WWII, for good and bad....
 
....i cannot help remembering the much maligned Neville Chamberlain's position before the start of WWII.....he believed that it was necessary to hope for the best but prepare for the worst....he knew that such a conflict would indeed see the destruction in Europe we now know with hindsight took place....


Edited by Act of Oblivion - 13-Jul-2006 at 07:52
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Posts: 952 		  Quote Paul Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Jul-2006 at 07:58
I don't think every war is an evil vs a lesser evil.
 
For something like the second world this is a good description. The allies were far from angelic and had their own agendas, as Spain proved, however they were definately the lesser evil.
 
However with WWI who's the lesser evil? Surely everyone's as bad as each other. On the other hand it's very difficult to see the Timorese fighters as evil in anyway.
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Posts: 3387 		  Quote Aelfgifu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Jul-2006 at 07:59
Rabid nationalism, which is one of the causes of WW II, was not isolated to Germany in the years before the war. I think almost every country had a party or faction propagating nationalism in more or less extreme ways. After the war was over, and it had become clear to what horrors this nationalism had lead, people all over Europe quickly turned away from it, sometimes even to the point of denying it had existed. So with hindsight, no ones hands were clean before the war. The winners just got away with it a bit better.

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Posts: 165 		  Quote conon394 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Jul-2006 at 08:51

I have to disagree with the characterization strongly ("Evil versus lesser Evil"...).

 

Sure warfare tends to pull every participant down to the lowest common detonator, but unfortunately for Mr. Ferguson, that is hardly an original observation, being in print now for almost 2500 years.

 

Even if the Allies were reduced to fighting a war at the lowest level of brutality; a level the Axis rather consciously descended to form the outset, it seems disingenuous to ignore the outcome.  A Japanese victory in WW2 certainly did not involve a prosperous and democratic South Korea or an independent China with a permanent Security Council seat. A Nazi victory did not foreshadow a peaceful EU in Europe filled with democratic states, nor do I think it to far fetched that 50 years after a German victory one could likely find more Poles in Chicago than all of Poland and more Jewish residents in New York than Europe (or fill in the blanks with Romani, Russians, etc).



Edited by conon394 - 13-Jul-2006 at 20:45
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Posts: 1458 		  Quote Kalevipoeg Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Jul-2006 at 14:39
Wars aren't good, but i can't see the Estonians for example in the war of independence as a lesser evil to the extent you could with the Allies during WW2. A pure war of survival against the red plague. I don't recall terror tactics used by Estonians.

Maybe the uprising of sel in which the Estonian units killed some 80 reds(Estonian reds) and about the same amount through trials afterwards, but that was also the execution of a hostile element.

If i had to name Estonians the lesser evil in the war for independence i would give them an evil-score of 1 and the reds 100 atleast. Does that still mean Estonians in that war were EVIL?
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Posts: 4310 		  Quote Tobodai Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Jul-2006 at 00:00
Every single participant in a war is there for their own self intrest.  If they are not then they are fools.  Even a "good" victory was not won because one side was good or fighting for others prosperity, it is because that side is mroe compitent at post war construction and sees allies as a part of strategy.  There is no such thing as benevolence.
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Posts: 1458 		  Quote Kalevipoeg Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Jul-2006 at 16:37
"Every single participant in a war is there for their own self intrest.  If they are not then they are fools.  Even a "good" victory was not won because one side was good or fighting for others prosperity, it is because that side is mroe compitent at post war construction and sees allies as a part of strategy.  There is no such thing as benevolence."

Very true i suppose, to a large extent at least.
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Posts: 2394 		  Quote edgewaters Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Jul-2006 at 20:34
Originally posted by conon394

A Japanese victory in WW2 certainly did not involve a prosperous and democratic South Korea

    
Neither did an Allied victory. Post-occupation South Korea utilized most of the bureaucracy and infrastructure of the Japanese occupational government, including its brutal police forces who had been trained for violent suppression. South Korea spent most of its post-war years under a succession of repressive, authoritarian military dictatorships, which featured terrible violence against democratic agitators (eg the Gwangju massacre of 1980). It was not until widespread malcontent led to massive protests and civil revolt in 1987 that the presidential dictatorship was dismantled and free elections held for the first time.
    

Edited by edgewaters - 14-Jul-2006 at 20:35
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Posts: 165 		  Quote conon394 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Jul-2006 at 23:33

Neither did an Allied victory. Post-occupation South Korea utilized most of the bureaucracy and infrastructure of the Japanese occupational government, including its brutal police forces who had been trained for violent suppression. South Korea spent most of its post-war years under a succession of repressive, authoritarian military dictatorships, which featured terrible violence against democratic agitators (eg the Gwangju massacre of 1980). It was not until widespread malcontent led to massive protests and civil revolt in 1987 that the presidential dictatorship was dismantled and free elections held for the first time.

 

Very true I most certainly did mean to suggest the Allies were saints, but Allies were not fighting to impose direct empire on conquered territories. The world produced by the allied victory was by no means a bucolic wonderland, and that was obvious if for no other reason than the only thing keeping the USSR and the US/UK from coming to blows was the need to fight the Axis. But while the end may not always justify the means, it is also unfair to not consider the ends at all the world of in which the Axis was victorious would be a very hard place indeed. Was the US of 1945 something less than its rhetoric, sure and the same could be said the British Commonwealth; But I dont doubt that unlike the US and the UK Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan would have had much difficulty with Montgomery Bus Boycott or Gandhi -  just that much more sub-human machinegun fodder.

 

More to your point, yes the US did effectively support dictators in S Korea for rather a long time, but honestly put brutal police forces who had been trained for violent suppression in perspective More brutal than Stalins puppets in the North, than the Japanese occupation? Would Imperial Japan have dealt more softly with the uprising in Gwangju, perhaps they would have opened a dialogue and accepted the brotherhood of man and dismantled the East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere, but I doubt it or maybe (or rather certainly) they would have racked up a death toll that would have made Chun look like schoolboy.  



Edited by conon394 - 14-Jul-2006 at 23:35
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Posts: 2394 		  Quote edgewaters Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Jul-2006 at 00:09
More brutal than Stalin’s puppets in the North, than the Japanese occupation?

They were (in the immediate post war years) the very same individuals and police organizations that were around under Japanese occupation. The leadership was different, yes, but those forces were trained in a particular sort of policing.
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