World War 2, was it a War between Good versus Evil or Evil Versus Evil?

Riddle101

I look back at WW2 and i think to myself. Which side really was the good side in that war. I mean in my opinion there was no good side, it was just a conflict between Evil.

This is why i think there was no good side:
-Germany started the war not to mention the holocaust
-Italy was really in in the war for greed and to take over lands
-Japan attacked cause just as much if not more atrocities then Germany
-France and Britain allowed Germany to invade half of Europe before doing anything to stop Hitler and even then they did little, not to mention they refused to recognise Tito as leader of Yugoslavia even though he led Yogoslavia to Indepedence.
-Stalin murdered 20 Million Russians in atocities and Russia of course was known for it's ruthlessness
-USA dropped the Atom Bomb on Japan and invented Weapons of Mass destruction

To Be Honest, I have lost faith in the idea that the Allies were doing a good cause in WWII by starting and is why i prefer the countries who stayed Neutral in the War like Ireland, Spain and Switzerland. What do you think?

luckylucky

I think it's a very simplistic analysis tbh. Certainly the allies were not always whiter than white, particularly Stalin who killed so many of his own, even the allied bombing of some of the occupied French towns during the liberation of France killed tens of thousands of French civilians. Still I think there's no denying that the basic philosophies of Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy and Hirohito's Japan were evil. And of all wars I think it was perhaps the clearest line of all between a good and an evil side.

There were other agendas going on of course, America solidifed itself as the main world power. Britain although one of the victorious allies was no longer a main player after the war. America's dominance as a main power manifested itself clearly after the war, some might say for positive, others for negative. I think a bit of both, almost totally negative under Bush i would say.

As for countries neutrality, be it Ireland, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden...let's be honest here this was for survival purposes. If Ireland went on the side of the allies, I think we would have been very exposed to attacks from Germany, and I can't see that the defense of Irish lives would have been a priority for the British. Imo we had already suffered enough as a people , cannon fodder for our imperialist masters in the Somme 20 odds years earlier I'd say was very much in the mind of our government at the time.

Saying that I would still regard WW2 as Britain and the US's most heroic time and I think in the former case it was perhaps one of the few times they were on the side of good.

TerrorFirmer

I think bad vs evil is more apt, if even. Hitler's regime was downright evil to the core; deliberate extermination and aggressive, violent expansion with little regard to displaced peoples was an integral part of their policies. It would be naive to think that the western Allied powers waged war completely innocently, but they generally did it for both the right cause and with the right post war ideal in mind for Europe. The Soviet Union however was a different kettle of fish, it's dictator a mirror image of Hitler with regards to outlook on power and it's consolidation, including the same utter disregard for circumstance. Stalin had no qualms about the extermination of not only opposition but of minorities deemed a potential threat and the Red army plundered it's way across their own homeland, the Baltic's, Prussia and eastern Germany in the most violent, abusive way possible that reflected the behavior of the invading armies themselves. But of course, none of this is, even in todays educated world, even general knowledge. The perceived formula remains unsurprisingly unchanged...

Germany = Bad, and was defeated by the USA and the United Kingdom....oh, and that other country, the Soviet Union.

FiSe

My opinion?
In general as it stands, good vs evil. Oversimplified, but simple answer on simple question.

I will not go into such a things like comment on bombing of this or that town or analysing who fired that one extra bullet during the war.
I think, that we have to look at the WWII as a direct consequence of WWI and sanctions against Germany and generaly bad policy of the allies after the Great War.
Nazi regime was evil to the core, so was the regime in the Soviet Union and this combined with traditional medieval Japanese outlook of the world gives one horrible scenario.

So my conclusion: thanks God for the good side /no matter how bad it may seem/ winning over the evil one. But it took too long and ended too soon.

PDN

A mixed bag of good, evil & plain old incompetence versus evil.

The winning coalition were certainly no angels, but compare what happened in reality after 1945 with any imaginable scenario that would have ensued if the Nazis had won.

Thank God.

brianthebard

luckylucky wrote: »

I think it's a very simplistic analysis tbh. Certainly the allies were not always whiter than white, particularly Stalin who killed so many of his own, even the allied bombing of some of the occupied French towns during the liberation of France killed tens of thousands of French civilians. Still I think there's no denying that the basic philosophies of Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy and Hirohito's Japan were evil. And of all wars I think it was perhaps the clearest line of all between a good and an evil side.

Saying that I would still regard WW2 as Britain and the US's most heroic time and I think in the former case it was perhaps one of the few times they were on the side of good.

I'd pretty much agree with you opinion, however I prefer to think of WW2 as a sequel to WW1; because the allies never entered German soil in 1918 and because the harsh terms of the Versailles treaty were to a large degree what fueled the German lust for a second war. Obviously its impossible to say with certainty what would've happened if things were different but I think if Germany had felt defeat in WW1 in the way it did in WW2 then there may not have been a second war.

Fratton Fred

Can we just dispel this myth of neutrality.

Yes Ireland, Switzerland etc were neutral, but I' prety damn sure most of europe would have chosen to be as well. Britain and France tried (too) hard to stay out of a war but were more or less forced into it. I'm pretty sure Holland, Belgium and Sweden didn;t want to get involved but had o choise and if Hitler had made it over the channel would he have left Ireland alone? probably not.

Good v evil is a completely wrong analogy, it was an evil regime trying to take over europe and europe et al fighting back, that's all.

darkman2

All the players had there own selfish motives. The USA was not intending on interferingin Europe at all during the war. They seemed quite content to see the UK and France getting battered safe in the knowledge that they could not be touched. But for the attack by Japan on Pearl Harbour Britain would have been defeated.

I think it was definately a good v bad battle though. Ther is no doubt that America's selfish motives would be preferable to Hitler's!

Capt'n Midnight

Fratton Fred wrote:

Can we just dispel this myth of neutrality.

Operation Emerald was the german plan to invade Ireland , The UK also had plans to invade us, how far they got beyond plans is a matter of conjecture.

if you like we were neutral on the allied side, spain was neutral on the axis side

we gave weather reports to the allies, allowed overflights (so shannon is nothing new there) , "released" many allied internees but kept the German ones. Like Sweden we sold goods to the nearest belligerent.

FiSe

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Operation Emerald was the german plan to invade Ireland , The UK also had plans to invade us, how far they got beyond plans is a matter of conjecture.

if you like we were neutral on the allied side, spain was neutral on the axis side

we gave weather reports to the allies, allowed overflights (so shannon is nothing new there) , "released" many allied internees but kept the German ones. Like Sweden we sold goods to the nearest belligerent.

I think that Spain was more "neutral" than Ireland and Switzerland was even more "neutral" than Spain.
For example there was no German internee ever released from Ireland as far as I know /could be wrong/, but releasing of Allied soldiers from Spain was happening all the time, Switzerland kept all the internees locked up /think/ and there was no handing over of allied/axis equipment, but this was siezed and was used to protect Swiss neutrality...
But I'm not argueing your point, it's more for illustration purposes only...

Plans are made every time and all the time. And there probably was a plan what Ireland should do in that case, I believe, that Britain would play big role in this scenario.
In my opinion, I can't imagine Germany to invade any country from the sea. With nonexistent Navy to supply and transport troops and equipment. With nonexistent top cover to ensure their safety...
I think that all the talk about Germany's seaborn operations are belogning to the same book as flying saucepans and transatlantic bombers. There were plans to build them and put them into service, but it was impossible to do it. /I know, I know.../

Red Hand

FiSe wrote: »

In my opinion, I can't imagine Germany to invade any country from the sea. With nonexistent Navy to supply and transport troops and equipment. With nonexistent top cover to ensure their safety...
I think that all the talk about Germany's seaborn operations are belogning to the same book as flying saucepans and transatlantic bombers. There were plans to build them and put them into service, but it was impossible to do it. /I know, I know.../

They invaded Norway from the sea, though, didn't they? Plus North Afrika.

Capt'n Midnight

Had they invaded the south west of Ireland they would have been out of air cover.

Then again Iran (Persia) , Iraq, Syria , Madagasgar , were all invaded by the allies too

In the pacific to some extents to the US it was a racial war plenty of stories of people collecting ears, american submarines regularily shot survivors,
While it is true that some proximity fused shells were marked "for use against jap personnel only" this was mainly because they were less concerned about the shells being reverse-engineered by the japanese than the gemans. One reason being that in the pacific dud's would be much more likely to belost in the ocean / unpopulated / heavily vegetated areas.

TerrorFirmer

FiSe wrote: »

In my opinion, I can't imagine Germany to invade any country from the sea. With nonexistent Navy to supply and transport troops and equipment. With nonexistent top cover to ensure their safety...
I think that all the talk about Germany's seaborn operations are belogning to the same book as flying saucepans and transatlantic bombers. There were plans to build them and put them into service, but it was impossible to do it. /I know, I know.../

Non-existant navy? Germany's navy might have been inferior to the Royal Navy but it was far from non-existent.

FiSe

...not bigt enough to carry full scale "D - Day" landing as it would require when invading your arch-enemy backyard, think.

Norway, OK, but I think that you're missing my point here.
And Africa? Germany didn't invade hostile territory there, they used friendly harbours to build their army, but could be wrong in both cases :cool:
And they had an air support there as well

Snickers Man

Jeremiah 16:1 wrote: »

They invaded Norway from the sea, though, didn't they? Plus North Afrika.

Well they invaded Norway with a seaborne force of less than 10,000 troops. And Norway, with a population of about 5 million and a pretty lengthy coast line, was a) much closer to Germany and had a tiny navy compared with the Royal Navy. So it was a much less challenging target than invading the UK across the English Channel faced by the Royal Navy.

Also, Germany didn't "invade" North Africa. She sent a small force to a friendly destination to help out her ally Italy who was trying to extend her North AFrican empire by gobbling up the British posessions there. That's hardly an invasion, with all the difficulties landing in a hostile territory implies.

I don't think Germany had serious intentions of invading Britain or Ireland. Her strategic goal in the west was to put such enemies as she had there back in their boxes and secure her base for the duration of the real war, ie the one in the east.

On the real question about who were the goodies and who were the baddies? The Nazi regime was abhorrent but a question to ponder might be, what if the Germans were led by a non-racist, non eugeniscist political ideology? Would there have been a war anyway?

I suspect there might have been. Nobody in Germany accepted the eastern boundaries imposed on it after WWI. Not even Stresseman, the inter-war chancellor who won the Nobel Peace Prize for promising never to go to war with France again. The loss of Elsass/Loringen (Alsace/Lorraine) they could live with. The partition of Prussia and the theft of Silesia they could not and would not.

Given the high-minded pronouncements at the end of WWI that "national self determination for all" was to be the guiding principle of setting state boundaries, how could one argue that these largely German territories did not belong in a German state? One couldn't. One could only rely on the ad hominem arguments that the Nazis were a dreadful shower. Which of course they were.

Riddle101

Snickers Man wrote: »

Well they invaded Norway with a seaborne force of less than 10,000 troops. And Norway, with a population of about 5 million and a pretty lengthy coast line, was a) much closer to Germany and had a tiny navy compared with the Royal Navy. So it was a much less challenging target than invading the UK across the English Channel faced by the Royal Navy.

Also, Germany didn't "invade" North Africa. She sent a small force to a friendly destination to help out her ally Italy who was trying to extend her North AFrican empire by gobbling up the British posessions there. That's hardly an invasion, with all the difficulties landing in a hostile territory implies.

I don't think Germany had serious intentions of invading Britain or Ireland. Her strategic goal in the west was to put such enemies as she had there back in their boxes and secure her base for the duration of the real war, ie the one in the east.

On the real question about who were the goodies and who were the baddies? The Nazi regime was abhorrent but a question to ponder might be, what if the Germans were led by a non-racist, non eugeniscist political ideology? Would there have been a war anyway?

I suspect there might have been. Nobody in Germany accepted the eastern boundaries imposed on it after WWI. Not even Stresseman, the inter-war chancellor who won the Nobel Peace Prize for promising never to go to war with France again. The loss of Elsass/Loringen (Alsace/Lorraine) they could live with. The partition of Prussia and the theft of Silesia they could not and would not.

Given the high-minded pronouncements at the end of WWI that "national self determination for all" was to be the guiding principle of setting state boundaries, how could one argue that these largely German territories did not belong in a German state? One couldn't. One could only rely on the ad hominem arguments that the Nazis were a dreadful shower. Which of course they were.

I would say even without Hitler, Germany still would have begun the war. It seems Germany were already building up their military at the time of the Stressman era, they knew a war was inevitable. Also i believe Russia would have started it if Germany hadn't

TerrorFirmer

Riddle101 wrote: »

I would say even without Hitler, Germany still would have begun the war. It seems Germany were already building up their military at the time of the Stressman era, they knew a war was inevitable. Also i believe Russia would have started it if Germany hadn't

I doubt it, before the Battle of France, most senior German staff were entirely dismayed to hear Hitler intended attacking and believed they would loose.

Fratton Fred

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Operation Emerald was the german plan to invade Ireland , The UK also had plans to invade us, how far they got beyond plans is a matter of conjecture.

if you like we were neutral on the allied side, spain was neutral on the axis side

we gave weather reports to the allies, allowed overflights (so shannon is nothing new there) , "released" many allied internees but kept the German ones. Like Sweden we sold goods to the nearest belligerent.

My point is that Ireland had the luxury of neutrality, most countries did not. OK Ireland was neutral with a Bias towards the Allies, but it was never going to throw it's lot in behind Germany, that could have brought a fledgling democracy to an abrupt end.

brianthebard

Fratton Fred wrote: »

My point is that Ireland had the luxury of neutrality, most countries did not. OK Ireland was neutral with a Bias towards the Allies, but it was never going to throw it's lot in behind Germany, that could have brought a fledgling democracy to an abrupt end.

I think it would be more accurate to say that Ireland wasn't going to join the axis cause it wasn't a facist country??

If Ireland had been part of the war on the allies side there would have been a large amount of trade possibilities, munitions factories could've been set up (might have had to change the constitution but still). Staying out of the war meant Ireland had to set up Irish shipping which cost Ireland quite a bit I imagine, especially given the delicate state the economy was in after the thirties. It also meant that trade with Britain was curtailed to a large degree due to German U-boats. In short there were some cons to neutrality, and it was by no means a "luxury".

jmayo

Riddle101 wrote: »

I look back at WW2 and i think to myself. Which side really was the good side in that war. I mean in my opinion there was no good side, it was just a conflict between Evil.

This is why i think there was no good side:
-Germany started the war not to mention the holocaust
-Italy was really in in the war for greed and to take over lands
-Japan attacked cause just as much if not more atrocities then Germany
-France and Britain allowed Germany to invade half of Europe before doing anything to stop Hitler and even then they did little, not to mention they refused to recognise Tito as leader of Yugoslavia even though he led Yogoslavia to Indepedence.
-Stalin murdered 20 Million Russians in atocities and Russia of course was known for it's ruthlessness
-USA dropped the Atom Bomb on Japan and invented Weapons of Mass destruction

To Be Honest, I have lost faith in the idea that the Allies were doing a good cause in WWII by starting and is why i prefer the countries who stayed Neutral in the War like Ireland, Spain and Switzerland. What do you think?

Everytime you think there was no difference put on the Schindlers List movie and imagine what would have happened if the Axis powers had won.
The Allies, apart from Stalin's USSR, had at least some democracy.
The Germans and Japanese treated defeated nations and peoples with contempt and had no qaulms about exterminating people.

Anyone that thinks our neutrality would have protected us if Uk had fallen must have thought Hitler for a complete fool.
The West coast of Ireland would have been dotted with U boat pens and Shannon would have been huge Luffwaffe base patroling the North Atlantic.

Also IMHO the best nation to have first developed the atom bomb was the US.
Imagine the consequences if it had been developed by Germany, Japan or the USSR ?

A pet hate of mind is how people view Switzerland as some neutral mecca, they greedily accepted Nazi confiscated gold\loot, indeed refusing to release funds to descendents or holocast survivors and supplied intricate instruments to the Reich to keep their war machine trundeling on.

PDN

jmayo wrote: »

A pet hate of mind is how people view Switzerland as some neutral mecca, they greedily accepted Nazi confiscated gold\loot, indeed refusing to release funds to descendents or holocast survivors and supplied intricate instruments to the Reich to keep their war machine trundeling on.

+1

Zebra3

To describe the Allied side as "good" is absolute madnesss.

The USSR, which really defeated Germany (killed 3,600,000 compaared to 200,000 killed by US/Britain/France), was a nightmare state as bad, if not worse, than Germany.

The USA went on to carry our out horrendous genoicial attacks on Vietnam and Nicaragua after defeating Germany, and propped up, and still does, some of the worst regimes on the planet.

Britain, which Hitler admired so much (he loved their concentration camps in Africa) had raped its way around the world long before Germany wanted to do it more locally. Showed total disdain at the idea of independence/democracy for its non-white colonies and happily locked up Kenyans in concentration camps in the 1950s.

France, like Britain had invaded countries all over the world and treated their occupied peoples with contempt. not surprising the first thing France done after WWII was to re-occupy parts of the globe and brought terrible misery to the peoples of Indo-China and Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s.

FiSe

Zebra3 wrote: »

To describe the Allied side as "good" is absolute madnesss.

The USSR, which really defeated Germany (killed 3,600,000 compaared to 200,000 killed by US/Britain/France), was a nightmare state as bad, if not worse, than Germany.

The USA went on to carry our out horrendous genoicial attacks on Vietnam and Nicaragua after defeating Germany, and propped up, and still does, some of the worst regimes on the planet.

Britain, which Hitler admired so much (he loved their concentration camps in Africa) had raped its way around the world long before Germany wanted to do it more locally. Showed total disdain at the idea of independence/democracy for its non-white colonies and happily locked up Kenyans in concentration camps in the 1950s.

France, like Britain had invaded countries all over the world and treated their occupied peoples with contempt. not surprising the first thing France done after WWII was to re-occupy parts of the globe and brought terrible misery to the peoples of Indo-China and Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s.

A bit of propaganda above?

No country in the world, I mean: "no country", would let go its territory just like that, so after the war everybody tried to get into their old shoes...
Soviet Union grabbed a big piece of Poland and pretty big part of Czechoslovakia dissapeared in Stalin's throat as well.

Yes, the Soviet state did defeat the Germany, but not without a vital help and huge sacrifices from UK and USA /those countries get the Red Army motorized, equipped and airborne/ and with absolute disregard to human life as a such.
And as many people, who remember Soviet liberation, would say, no matter which army, they're all the same.

McArmalite

Zebra3 wrote: »

To describe the Allied side as "good" is absolute madnesss.

The USSR, which really defeated Germany (killed 3,600,000 compaared to 200,000 killed by US/Britain/France), was a nightmare state as bad, if not worse, than Germany.

The USA went on to carry our out horrendous genoicial attacks on Vietnam and Nicaragua after defeating Germany, and propped up, and still does, some of the worst regimes on the planet.

Britain, which Hitler admired so much (he loved their concentration camps in Africa) had raped its way around the world long before Germany wanted to do it more locally. Showed total disdain at the idea of independence/democracy for its non-white colonies and happily locked up Kenyans in concentration camps in the 1950s.

France, like Britain had invaded countries all over the world and treated their occupied peoples with contempt. not surprising the first thing France done after WWII was to re-occupy parts of the globe and brought terrible misery to the peoples of Indo-China and Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s.

Agree with you there Zebra. And of the 200,000 killed by US/Britain/France, I don't know if anyone could produce the stats, but since 40,000 innocent civilians were murdered in Dresden alone, I'd say the majority of the 200,000 were innocent civilians and not German military.

Also, it's been portrayed that reason for going to war with Germany was to save mankind from concentration camps etc. The concentration camps and so on were only discovered in the last few months of the war. Jewish people who told US/Britain/France asking them to bomb the railways etc bringing people to them were refused as they said there was higher military/factories etc targets to be bombed first. So much for the great crusade to save mankind.

An Fear Aniar

It makes more sense to a kind of Marxist view of it as a war between the ruling classes of each nation. The ruling classes tend to do evil, they cna't help but do otherwise.



,

brianthebard

McArmalite wrote: »

Also, it's been portrayed that reason for going to war with Germany was to save mankind from concentration camps etc. The concentration camps and so on were only discovered in the last few months of the war. Jewish people who told US/Britain/France asking them to bomb the railways etc bringing people to them were refused as they said there was higher military/factories etc targets to be bombed first. So much for the great crusade to save mankind.

Thats not really accurate, the reason for going to war was always the agreement between Britain and France to defend Poland, I've never seen/heard anyone (other than you) suggest that the war was started to save people from concentration camps.

And don't you thikn that bombing military targets would also lead to a reduction in the capacity of the Nazi army to kill people?

Zebra3

brianthebard wrote: »

Thats not really accurate, the reason for going to war was always the agreement between Britain and France to defend Poland, I've never seen/heard anyone (other than you) suggest that the war was started to save people from concentration camps.

The only reason Britain went to war was as part of its foreign policy for mainland Europe that had been in existence for a couple of centuries or so. To prevent one state (and in 1939 that state was Germany) dominating mainland Europe.

If Britain really gave a toss about Poland it failed to prove it in 1945.

States only go to war out of self-interest.

dresden8

Zebra3 wrote: »

States only go to war out of self-interest.

And all beyond that is ****e. Higher motives attributed to states are all just propaganda.

We all trade with China, they're up to their necks in slavery, politial repression, oppressio0n of the poor, land seizures and all kinds of crap. But hey, at least their runners are cheap.

There is no high ground. Politics is dirty but international politics is a sewer.

Lockstep

*points shamelessly to his own signature*

McArmalite

brianthebard wrote: »

Thats not really accurate, the reason for going to war was always the agreement between Britain and France to defend Poland, I've never seen/heard anyone (other than you) suggest that the war was started to save people from concentration camps.

And don't you thikn that bombing military targets would also lead to a reduction in the capacity of the Nazi army to kill people?

I've never seen/heard anyone (other than you) suggest that the war was started to save people from concentration camps. Jayus, is it ever portrayed as anything else ??

And don't you thikn that bombing military targets would also lead to a reduction in the capacity of the Nazi army to kill people?[/ I would have thought that bombing the railways etc carrying people to the concentration camps couldn't possibly more obviously have reduced the capacity of the Nazi's to kill people ?? :rolleyes: Rather than massacaring tens of innocent German civilians in cities like Dresden fleeing wrath of Stalin's Red army ?

PDN

McArmalite wrote: »

I've never seen/heard anyone (other than you) suggest that the war was started to save people from concentration camps. Jayus, is it ever portrayed as anything else ??

Anytime I've heard it portrayed it is as something else. Good grief, even Basil Fawlty portrayed it as starting because Germany invaded Poland (don't talk about the war!).