re: Could almost anyone born after 1940 fight in WWI

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I’d like a link on this.

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I assume he is referring to the work of Laurel Leff. It is an interesting view but Leff's positions come across as very angry. It all revolves around Sulzberger's (NYT publisher during the war) positions on Zionism.

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I assume he is referring to the work of Laurel Leff. It is an interesting view but Leff's positions come across as very angry. It all revolves around Sulzberger's (NYT publisher during the war) positions on Zionism.

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Only 26 times did they mention the Holocaust from 39-45

The problem is WWII had nothing to do with morality. It was fought due to international politics and it's outbreak occurred fundamentally outside the influence of the United States at all. It was a European power struggle that was a direct extension of the unification of Germany following the Franco-Prussian War. Framing the war's outbreak and policies following the outbreak on a "moral" basis is simply revisionist and false.

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Well were we not attacked first in that war? Did Japan not bomb Pearl Harbor? Did the Nazis not declare war on us shortly after Pearl Harbor, I would most certainly argue that in this instance, it was a justifiable war but a war against good and evil.

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The war of course broke out long before either of these events. The war in Europe occurred because Germany sought to revise the European order and those who were well served by maintaining that order were unwilling to relinquish their advantageous power balance. The war was fought on the basis of political theory, not morality. Hitler's prewar geopolitical aims, particularly as it pertained to regaining Germany's European possessions stripped following the First World War, were broadly shared throughout Germany, even amongst his political rivals. His "evilness" was of no relevance to the outbreak of the war as none of his warcrimes were existent or made evident until after the war's widespread outbreak.

Yes, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and directly brought the United States into the war. This was after a series of events in which the United States interjected itself into the Chinese-Japanese conflict and squeezed the Japanese into a position fight or flight. It's a matter of simple rational foreign policy predicament. The Japanese didn't attack Pearl Harbor in a vacuum.

And yes, Hitler's declaration of war against the United States likewise made FDR's case all the easier. Hitler's decision also did not occur in a vacuum. FDR's government was very proactively supporting Great Britain and waging a propaganda war at home and abroad drumming up anti-German sentiment, much as occurred prior to U.S. entry in the First World War. I won't run down the litany of events but Hitler rationally feared U.S. entry on behalf of the British was inevitable. Neither the Japanese nor the Germans viewed war with the United States as desirable.

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The argument could be made that our trade with the Brits and Soviets before we got over to the continent quickened our march towards Hitler declaring war on us but the Nazis were not our allies, the British were.

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The United States has no permanent allies, only permanent interests. Or so our great statesmen once believed.

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It's not a romanticization to say that the Imperial Japanese and the Nazis were evil. Can you point me in the direction to where you could make a case that they weren't? I would argue that had Britain done more to thwart Hitler in the years before the conflict that history may have been different and less people would've met an early grave.

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Again, the U.S. nor Britain nor France entered the war on the basis that the opposition was evil. Plain and simple. That language only serves the purpose of justifying or rallying public support for war endeavors. In the case of Britain and France, and Germany for that matter, all would have been better served by avoiding a war with one another. The problem is that their perceived national interests all conflicted and events snowballed to war. Germany is viewed as the main impetus for this outbreak on account that they were the party attempting to break the status quo power balance on the continent, which was not in their favor and appeared to perpetually be against them unless they were able to maneuver politically or succeed militarily. This is the driving force behind foreign policy, not narratives regarding morality.

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More dead Fascists and Communists, what's not to love?

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This scenario could have unfolded without American involvement in the war. The war was principally begun by British, French, and German power struggles. The war also could have been settled in the West WITHOUT an unwavering commitment to unconditional surrender, which prevented the war from being resolved in a more rational, sensible, and humane fashion. Much like the First World War should have been. All parties are to blame but when it comes to the Second World War, because of it's widespread identification and propagation as "the good war," this reality is taboo in Western nations to this very day.

We knew about Nanking and how they were treating the Jews and other minorities. The Japanese it was a certainty they were doing their worst with the Chinese, but logically it doesn’t make sense for the Nazis to be killing off the Jews and other populations when instead they can throw them on the front lines, not to mention the people who ran the camps could be put to better use.

The Holocaust is so evil because no matter how you slice it, it makes no logical sense on what they were doing. I can see the Japanese sense in mindlessly butchering the Chinese as evil as I see it, but the Holocaust directly undermined their war effort. It takes such a degree of evil to stand by those evil principles to ensure that you lose the war. The Holocaust was pretty much unthinkable at the time and really is to this day.

Ya I could easily fight in WW1 and so could anyone else who is a man....what a dumb question.

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It was fought due to international politics and it's outbreak occurred fundamentally outside the influence of the United States at all.

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Yeah I get that, but that doesn’t mean for America, which is who we’re talking about here, that it wasn’t in essence a battle of good vs evil which came to light even more in the waning days of the war.

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WWII is great and a war that is easy to romanticize given the evil we were facing, but WWI was the real hardcore war.

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Tell that to the soldiers at Stalingrad

I admit, that I just gave it a skim. There were a lot of words in there

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It's lazy analysis IMO that leans heavy on propaganda narratives and light on meaningful policy measures and issues that were the actual cause of the war. People fall for this same lazy, one dimensional morality rhetoric in wars today as well.

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Can you explain why we chose to side with the british? I would argue that up until that point in history we had a better relationship with Germany.

If it had nothing to do with morals, why did we choose the side we did?

I understand your point that the world wars didn’t start because of morality, but I think OM is referring to why the US got involved with them.

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was won over by Churchill and British intelligence efforts to convince the United States that Germany posed an existential, autocratic threat to Western democracy.

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And you don’t think that they did?