World War II: the Moral Struggle

I agree with you. These ideas become even more clear when you take into account that many of the Nazi-party's worst crimes, like the holocaust and the medical tests on humans, were not known to the world until after the war was won by the allies.

Being as Britain was responsible for the deaths of more Indians during the war than the Germans were Jews. A totally overwhelming victory of allied proportions by the Axis powers would probably have brought about a similar good v bad post war historical interpretation.

Edited by Paul - 01-Aug-2006 at 15:32

In general, I agree with the argument that the so-called "moral justification" of most wars is ad hoc.

However, among the various examples of "complex ideals" that Genghis brought up (love of liberty, right of self-determination, notions of racial superiority), the notion of racial superiority cannot be separated completely from "patriotism, duty, hatred of a certain enemy, or simple revenge". Take Japanese patriotism during WWII as an example, it was a complex mixture of (1) revived Shintoism (2) militarism, and (3) racism. The success of the Japanese modernization gave the Japanese people a sense of racial superiority over their less developed Asian neighbours. In fact one could even evoke "racism" as an explanation for the excessive brutality the Japanese showed towards its neighbours - once you see someone less worthy than you or inferior to you as a human being, you do not want to just kill that person because he or she is your enemy. You torture them, inflict pain and conduct biological experiments on them as if they're animals. That's essentially what the Japanese did.

There is no such thing as good and evil, just different point of veiws. Though the nazi's were wrong, I don't think they could see it at the time, as many people cannot. The Nazi's felt that god was on there side. Of course so did the amercians. I think the US covers up many things, but the reasons for WWII are probaly not one of them. I think the nazi's and japenesse for that matter, were who they were. Doing what they felt was right. SO really can you define them as any worse then us? We did what we felt was right? No side felt they broke an moral boundries, a side from some germans. The goverment has great affect on people, thats no new suprise. I belive that the German goverment and jap goverment turned there people agianst the Allies as we did agianst the Axis.

You do bring up a good point that history is written after the fact by the victors. Unfortunetly that is all to true. We all amy be studying a lie written down by some crazy historian, in order to cover up the real truth. But, who knows?

Irrespective of all that, the reason the Allies won is fundamentally because there were a lot more of them. And, as a result, they were richer. And they had a secure manufacturing base out of range of any attack.

Hum as usual on WWII there are a lo of things to talk about.

@ Aef. : people knew what was going on in the concentration camps. Just yesterday a jewish hungrian who was lucky enough to be exanged against money in Switzerland in 1944 was explaining on the radio that when she had to go in the shower to get cleaned before the border, all of her friends were sure it would be some kind of gaz that would get off from the shower. So people who wanted to know knew, those that didn't know were whereas in very remote places or not interested.

Concerning the topic of this thread, I guess the historian Genghis is refering to at the begining is not that wrong after all. If you consider that a soldier that thinks his cause is fair is a better one on average that one that fights because he has to, that may mean that more American and Russian soldiers were convinced their fight was fair. On the other hand when you see how ferocely both the German and the Japonese defended themselves, that may indicates eventhough more of them were sure they were fighting for a just cause they didn't manage to overweight the two superpowers they were facing.

So paradoxally, not only fanatism doesn't help to win wars but it may as well contribut to your defeat.

M.