Poll: were world war 2 and the cold war clear cut battles between good and evil?

[davidmc1158_v1legacy]

I am definitely willing to claim WWII as a good/evil fight. Yes, the Allies' hands were not completely clean, but the Nazis and the Japanese military were quite a bit further along the evil scale than we were.

As for the Cold War. . . . eh, that's a little tougher. For the first few years, YES. Stalin made Hitler look like a rank amateur when it came to being an evil bastard. After that, it starts to fall into the grey zone.

 

[Lilani]

so escapits, i have a debate question! i'm having a hard time choosing a side to argue for in this question: were world war 2 and the cold war clear cut battles between good and evil? why or why not?

it's the cold war part that gets me, i started off thinking that it wasn't clear cut, but i'm beginning to think the opposite.

if want to make an essay of it, please use supporting arguments with citation of your sources, you don't have to of course.

World War II--probably the most recent cut-and-dry war we've had. The Nazis of course were pretty bad, but we screwed Germany over pretty hard after WWI, so it's not like our hands were totally clean either.

The Cold War, however, is a bit different. The Cold War was pretty much based on paranoia, brought on by both the nuclear arms race and the unreasonable fear of communism Americans had at the time. And by "unreasonable" I mean "an absolutely batshit crazy fear over something that literally did not exist." Sure, communism SEEMED to be on the rise, but the idea that it was taking the world like some sort of pandemic, or the idea of the domino effect that if one nation fell they all would were just insane. They literally thought communism was like a disease, which is where you get the second Red Scare and McCarthyism.

So in conclusion: WWII was pretty cut and dry for the most part, but the Cold War was simply fear and paranoia put into overdrive.

 

[Bobbity]

While the Nazis were certainly evil, that's not to say that the allies were good. Rather, they, or the nations which they were bound by treaty to aid, were attacked by the axis powers. It was more Evil vs. Normal/Standard/Whatever than anything else. That the Allies were fighting bad guys is not necessarily to say that they were good.

The Cold War was just a pissing contest though.

 

[Veylon]

No. Very much no. Stalin was nearly as much the villain as Hitler. He split Poland with the Nazis, conquered the Baltic countries, took parts of Finland, and provided supplies for Hitler's war machine. During the war, when the Nazis invaded the USSR, they were greeted as liberators by many of the people there. After the war, he installed Communist puppet governments in most of the places the Red Army reached and gave the go-ahead for the Korean War. In all these places, the camp system for grinding down state enemies through slave labor was put into place. The only reason we haven't marked the guy down as history's evilest dictator is because he lived between Hitler and Mao, who were even worse.

In the Cold War, America, while never quite as bad as the USSR, gradually ceded it's claim to be the friend of the oppressed by taking a more aggressive approach of invasions and coups. I'm split on whether that was a necessary evil or not, but it was definitely an evil.

 

[crudus]

Well if you just look at WWII without looking at anything before that, then yes WWII was a clear-cut battle of Good vs Evil. Germany had its reasons for starting WWII which you start to see the logic behind if you look at post-WWI Germany. It is one of those "yeah they had a point(at first) but went about it the wrong way". The Cold War was just a clash of ideals and extreme prejudice. It would be like you feuding with your neighbors because they had an open marriage. I mean sure Stalin wasn't a good guy, but that was because of Stalin rather than communism (though a dictator position didn't help).

 

[Canadamus Prime]

WWII was. Rounding up an exterminating an entire group of people for no good reason (not that there ever could be a good reason for doing that) is unquestionably evil. However the Cold War on the the other hand was much different. Both sides, as Yahtzee so eloquently put it in one of his reviews, were being dicks to exactly equal degrees (about an inch and a half, judging by how much they had to compensate with nuclear weapons).

 

[Commissar Sae]

In before some clod tries to look smart and say it's all a matter of perspective.

World War two was fought because Germany and it's allies started attacking and conquering their neighbours, and those neighbours had allies who came to their defense (or, in the case of one particular country, rolled in late to the party and took all the credit. Whereas the Cold War was two global super powers engaged in a nuclear penis measuring contest, with some proxy wars funded among.

So in my opinion, WWII was, and the Cold War was not.

i'm surprised you didn't bring up the holocaust, gestapos, or japanese atrocities on chinese + korean cities. (and we might of showed up late, but like in superbad, we had this other problem to deal with (fighting the japanese in the pacific) and when we did show up, we brought the keggar...then threw up on berlin and didn't get laid) thanks for your opinion though, this is really helping me arugue my way through my essay

My comment about the US was partially made as a joke, though I perhaps it was in bad taste. On the topic of the atrocities however, notice how I also didn't mention the atrocites the Allies committed upon Garman/Austrian/Oriental immigrants. Granted we weren't gassing/massacring prisoners, but we had labour camps, and they weren't resorts.

Actually the allies killed their fair share of prisoners. Japanese POWs got tortured or shot more often than not and the Canadian army actually made a pretty regular practice of killing German POWs on the frontline. Likewise the Allies killed plenty of civilians in outright brutal practices. American fighter planes machinegun straffing Japanese children isn't exactly something you write home about.

Were the intentions of both to have good Vs. Evil battles, yes. WWII comes closer to such a battle but as others have said, the Allies were hardly good, more like Lawful Neutral Vs. Neutral Evil than Good vs. Evil.

 

[Frankster]

I'm not quite sure about ww2 as though i don't view every german soldier to have comic book villains, the nazi policies certainly quialify as top hat and twirly moustache evil.
And its worth mentionning allied conduct was hardly noble and virtuous all the time either despite what films been trying to tell us.

Cold war though is easier, both sides were shades of dark grey, no way in hell you can argue either side was a "goody".

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

While I hesitate to say 'clear cut war between good and evil', WW2 definitely seems a bit clearer. While the war wasn't necessarily fought because of the atrocities that the Nazi party or Japanese Empire perpetrated, it was fought because those two powers and their allies invaded nations for gain. Can't say that the Allies were totally 'good' though. They were fighting due to alliances and to protect themselves partly. And it's not like they were angels on the battlefield either. I'm sure there were plenty of war trophies or plunder taken by the Western Allies. And the Soviets unleashed about the same brutality upon the German civilians that the Germans unleashed upon Soviet civilians not a couple years ago.

The cold war was much less so. While the Soviets certainly weren't that nice, the US and its allies once again can't really be described as 'good' either. We were willing to put dictators in power and fund radical movements simply because they said they were fighting communism. Which is definitely biting the States in the ass right now.

 

[CrystalShadow]

of course the cold war wasn't a war, it just had wars in it. but was it a battle between good and evil? (US vs. USSR/democracy vs. communism)

I voted that it was, but I refuse to be drawn on which side was which. Despite what I and many people feel Democracy is not an inherently better system of government than Communism. Both can lead to massive corruption and abuse... Democracy is, in essence, simply mob rule.

Communism has been shown not to work because of wide spread corruption and it's insistence on going against territory and ownership instincts. But Democracy has it's flaws as well.

Both the US and the USSR are/were massive nations that are/were willing to do anything to protect their perceptions of their nation's rights, and to suggest that the US was good and the USSR evil ignores this fact.

Edit: We really must stop editing posts while others are responding to them >.>

I'm sorry, but I really take issue with the 'democracy VS. Communism' thing.
Why?

September 11th. !973 is why. (The issue of that date's significance being drowned out by the much, much later 'september 11th' terrorist attacks might be worth noting, but for the fact that it's what led me to discover this earlier atrocity.)

Anyway, to summarise, in 1970, a democratically elected socialist government came to power in Chile.
Fearing this would turn into a communist regime (they were starting to take control over privately owned resources after all...), the US government backed a military coup, and this directly led to a military dictatorship taking control, which remained in power until 1990.

If this was really about democracy that would not have happened.

Communism isn't something that goes against democracy.

Communism is a form of government. (It claims to be an economic theory, which is why you get capitalism Vs. Communism, but Communism isn't actually an economic theory, neither is capitalism a form of government.)

It is quite possible to have a democratically elected Communist government, and I'd have to say anyone that actually thinks there was ever a conflict between Democracy and communism is the victim of propaganda.

Communist Russia had a lot of problems, but many of these were due to being run by an unaccountable dictatorship, and pretending to have a workable economic theory when in actuality they frequently failed to produce anywhere near what they needed to look after their own population.

Whether you believe in Capitalism or not. Economics is really quite simple. You need to have enough resources to go around, and you need to get those resources to the people that actually need them. And unless you have way more of a resource than you could possibly use, you have to do so as efficiently as you can.

Capitalism manages at least some of those things. Communism seems to fail at almost all of them.


As for the second world war... In isolation, yes. It looks like a very obvious good vs. evil thing. But if you look at in context... It's almost possible to argue that Germany's evil acts are a direct result of what others did to them beforehand.
(Also, even the nazis themselves did quite a few good things, which proves that at the very least, evil people don't spend all their time doing exclusively evil deed.)

 

[Azahul]

Every side on both wars were evil bastards. Yes, the Nazis and Japanese did awful stuff. However, I refuse, absolutely refuse, to call any nation that commits an atrocity on the scale of Nagasaki, Hiroshima, or Dresden for that matter, "good". To top it off, the allies were on the same side as Stalin, a guy that made up for his lack of imagination when compared to the Nazis by beating their bodycount. Not to mention various small-scale atrocities committed by allied soldiers against their enemies. Seriously, calling any side in World War II "good" would require me to change my views on good and evil to allow for good guys willingly and willfully obliterating the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children (and some estimates put that at just the deaths in the Dresden firebombing).

As others have said, the Cold War was all shades of grey and a bloody awful business. There's no way I can look at either conflict and call any side good. One better than the other, maybe, but certainly not good.

 

[crazyarms33]

In before some clod tries to look smart and say it's all a matter of perspective.

World War two was fought because Germany and it's allies started attacking and conquering their neighbours, and those neighbours had allies who came to their defense (or, in the case of one particular country, rolled in late to the party and took all the credit. Whereas the Cold War was two global super powers engaged in a nuclear penis measuring contest, with some proxy wars funded among.

So in my opinion, WWII was, and the Cold War was not.

Scuse me good sir, I agree that we Americans came late to the party in that we didn't fight until Pearl harbor, but the Lend/Lease Act was signed in 1941...9 months before Pearl Harbor occurred. If you are not familiar with it, I would suggest reading up on it. In a nut shell it basically was: America began shipping war material(ammunition, vehicles, POL, guns etc) to the UK, USSR and China. It is estimated that fully 1/4 of British munitions were furnished by Lend/Lease program as well as up to half of their aircraft. By the end of the war over half of the logistical trucks in the USSR were American. America built 2000 train locomotives and over 11,000 rail cars and sent them to the USSR. Considering this is how supplies were moved at the time, that is one hell of an accomplishment. The list goes on and on but I get really tired of this bullshit that "America took all the credit" and "didn't really do that much" in WW 2.

Where, EXACTLY, was England or Europe for that matter, before US intervention? OH right! They were the only country in Europe not conquered. Silly me, the English were CLEARLY doing so well at that point. They were certainly giving the Nazis what for and holding them back. The only reason that England even lasted as long as they did is the miracle fog at Dunkirk and Hitler attacking the USSR too late in the year. If Hitler had allowed his generals to use their panzers to hit the Brits instead of demanding that the Luftwaffe get all the glory most of Britain's troops are gone. Wiped out. Killed or captured. Puts England at an even more severe disadvantage wouldn't you say? And let's talk U-Boats. How deadly were they? How many did the UK have? How effective would they have been if say, the US hadn't shipped tons of food and other material to the UK, and the UK had been forced to fend for itself? Devastating would be my answer as England simply would have been unable to feed itself much less wage a war. Yes, the Battle of Britain was truly inspiring, and good for them but its kinda hard to fight without bullets or planes. What decisive battle did the English ever win by themselves in WW2? The Battle of Caen? It only took them a month to take it, AFTER the US forced a withdrawal by continued attacks in the south. Yup those Americans sure did suck. Who would even have wanted them on their side?
Wait you say, the African campaigns! I want to talk about a battle the Americans lost? Kasserine. It was a disaster and it wasn't even CLOSE to a victory. Monty drove the Nazi's back! Freely granted, at least the Battle of Kasserine. What was the next big (land) defeat for the Americans? I can't think of one, unless you count the Battle of the Bulge(I do not due to the defense of Bastogne, which by the way effectively ended any real hope Germany had on the Western front). And as for Monty driving the Nazi's back, its pretty easy to drive an armored force back if they don't have any gas. Or ammunition. And he lost all of that area before he retook it (with American help I might add).
In short, this idea that the US came late and did nothing is utter crap. I will end with a quote from Stalin at the Tehran conference of 1943 "Without American production the United Nations could never have won the war."

OT: WW2 was absolutely a battle between good and evil. The Cold War was a dick measuring contest.

 

[Yopaz]

I would say this is a straight no. Hitler can certainly be called evil, but the opposing forces were neither good nor evil.

If we go back to the first world war that is the cause of world war 2. Germany wanted to expand as a nation and started to try to take over territories that were already occupied by other countries to get a part of the wealth they had. Of course this wasn't appreciated and then there was world war 1 with all the stuff that happened there.

After Germany had been declared the losers of that war they were broken as a nation. Their pride had been in their strong military, however they were refused to expand their military and had to do a lot of downsizing. The finance crisis struck and they were broken even farther. The situation in Germany was pretty screwed up. They needed a miracle to get back on their feet. That's when Hitler showed up. A charismatic and most likely incredibly intelligent man. He worked on capturing the hearts of the population and undercutting the opposition with sly tactics. Now Hitler was batshit insane, but he had the hearts of the people and that's what matters in an election.

When Hitler had secured the country he began doing what they were not supposed to. After expanding the military he went straight to invading other countries. Now what did the "good" countries do? Nothing. They let Germany do their thing in peace. The allies stood by and watched as Germany expanded their reign. Which is why I doubt we can call the "good guys" good. They only engaged Germany when they realized they would have to in order to secure their own interests. Not what I would call good.

Now why are we calling Germany evil? Pretty much because of the whole racism and the concentration camps. Now mention one country in the 30's and 40's that weren't racist. Jews were refused to move to some countries. After a lot of effort with getting every Norwegian citizen freed from concentration camps the Norwegian Jews were still imprisoned because they were no longer accepted as Norwegians. Oh, but you might say that Germany had concentration camps. Well they weren't the only one to have them. Sure we might not have had as excessive concentration camps as them, but we all have patches on our record. Germany is evil because they lost and the history is written by winners.

The cold war is a lot easier to work on. The situation after world war 2 was the source of a whole lot of suspicion. Soviet's communism was a threat to our capitalism. With the invention of nuclear warfare and the bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki everyone had a lot to fear from whoever had the knowledge to make these bombs. Making sure to make alliances so you would have a tactical advantage in case of a new war became essential. Getting tactical advantages became a source for more suspicion. A vicious cycle in the making right there.

For those not willing to read a wall of text. Neither is a clear cut good vs. evil.

 

[Whateveralot]

Does saying no imply I agree with the nazi's? I think so..well, I guess I agree with the nazi's then.

But no, I think germany has done a great job with their economy, it's just a bit.. touchy on the jew-thingy subject.

 

[ShindoL Shill]

WW2: Nazis took over Germany, started invading the fuck out of central Europe. Started the Holocaust. Britain and a bunch of it's allies invaded. America stopped Japanese supply ships, Pearl Harbour happened, America hops in.

If we go back to the first world war that is the cause of world war 2. Germany wanted to expand as a nation and started to try to take over territories that were already occupied by other countries to get a part of the wealth they had. Of course this wasn't appreciated and then there was world war 1 with all the stuff that happened there.
After Germany had been declared the losers of that war they were broken as a nation.
Now why are we calling Germany evil? Pretty much because of the whole racism and the concentration camps. Now mention one country in the 30's and 40's that weren't racist. Jews were refused to move to some countries. After a lot of effort with getting every Norwegian citizen freed from concentration camps the Norwegian Jews were still imprisoned because they were no longer accepted as Norwegians. Oh, but you might say that Germany had concentration camps. Well they weren't the only one to have them. Sure we might not have had as excessive concentration camps as them, but we all have patches on our record. Germany is evil because they lost and the history is written by winners.

and this stuff. WW1 was blamed mostly on Germany (despite the fact that it was all Serbia's fault, and Germany was protecting an ally) which gave Hitler the path to power by promising making Germany good again. In WW1, every non-Central Power except Britain was evil (seriously, Russia and France were defending Serbia against Austria-Hungary. Because Serbia helped assassinate the Archduke of Austria-Hungary. Britain was defending neutral Belgium).
not to mention the fact that, yes, were were all pretty anti-Semitic (which can be traced back to the Crusades... Britain, France and Italy mostly). So it's less good v evil than 'formerly evil' v 'youre being more evil now'

the cold war? that was america being paranoid about the Commies.

 

[cahtush]

Theres never clear cut good vs evil, ww2 for example the bombings of german and japanese cities with huge civilian casulties, the american consetration camps for people of japanese decent. Yes, the allies were the better side but not by any means perfect. In the cold war, mass persecution of communists and suspected communist and the bring down of third world goverments becouse they werent supportive of you, like Chile for example, where a democraticaly chosen goverment eas brought down in favor of a brutal dictatorship. You might argue that one side is better, bur theres never such a thing as pure good vs pure evil.

 

[Khada]

snip

Always nice to see a thought out, open minded approach. Frankly, I would say that most parties involved could be classed as evil... Just some more than others.

 

[Hadrian Barnes]

Thought I'd jump in here as a History Student and echo some of the thoughts here and address other issues. Niether war was clear cut, for the simple reason that the sides never remained constant and countries joined for completely differant reasons. Niether side could claim the upper superiority and neither was 'good' or 'evil'. Whilst Germany committed a lot of what would later be defined as crimes against humanity, the allies were also guilty of this too. See Goring's defence in the Nuremberg Trials. The Russian Army raped and pillaged its way to Berlin, the allies relentlessly bombed civilian targets and the Americans dropped the atomic bomb. In the cold war, America almost lost her democracy in order to defend it and the USSR persued technological advancement whatever the cost in lives, morality and the enviroment.

I also want to respond to crazyarms. American intervention and help was desperatly needed and victories had been short coming. Except of course for the Battle of Britain. Blitzkrieg relied upon air superiority, no air, no control. You also need to remember that the Royal Navy was still one of the most powerful in the world. Germany would have been hard pushed to make an invasion. But without Britain, America would have been hard pushed to have any involvement in the European Campaign. The ability of the code breakers at Bletchley Park are also not to be forgotten, America made a smaller contribution, especially in the capture of German Enigma machines, and then made a Hollywood film claiming it was all their work. The war wouldn't have been won without that small victory at Bletchley. Britain also made large contributions to the Manhatten Project and then effectivly America shut us out. Lend-Lease did keep us in the war and I am grateful for that, however, America loses its moral superiority here. Immediatly after the war, you demanded a bankrupt nation pay you back immediatly. In the intitial years of the Atlee government, the country almost suffered a famine and mass starvation because America demanded re-payment and refused to help. They only gave a damn, when the crisis got so bad that we announced we would be pulling back all troops as we could no longer afford to pay them. Then Marshall aid came along.

As is most cases like this, Britain cannot forget the contributions America made to our past and the help it has provided. But America needs to remember that Britain suffered massivly and provided the spring board and some key skills and extra firepower that was necessary to bring the war to an end when it did. I think the continuing friendly relationship between the US and UK and our decision to join you in Afghanistan and Iraq have foundations in this idea.