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

mega48man

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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.
 

Valanthe

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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.
 

Neverhoodian

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No conflict between human beings is a clear "good vs. evil" fight, but World War II comes the closest. The governments of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and Imperial Japan committed truly heinous atrocities against soldiers and civilians alike. The defeat of such regimes was truly worthy of praise. However, your basic soldier, sailor or aviator was (usually) not guilty of such actions. Most of them were simply fighting out of a sense of duty and patriotism as well as for the safety of their fellow soldiers and loved ones back home. The Allies weren't exactly perfect either (Soviet atrocities in east Germany and Prussia, Japanese-American internments, American "Jim Crow" practices, etc.).

The Cold War was definitely more of a "shades of grey" affair. While I would argue that the initial mistrust in the Soviet Union was justified (Stalin wasn't exactly a paragon of virtue, after all), in the end both sides were guilty of acting in a less than satisfactory manner. The brutal Soviet suppression of uprisings in eastern Europe and the CIA supporting ruthless right-wing dictators like Ferdinand Marcos are just two of many examples of the various misdeeds committed.
 

mega48man

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Valanthe said:
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
 

Craorach

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The Nazi certainly had some ideals that I'd consider outright evil, but quite frankly.. we didn't know that at the time, and many of the countries involved didn't consider much of what they did evil until they realised the scale of it. World War 2 was the same as many other wars through history, it was between a nation that wanted to take over it's neighbours, and its neighbours who didn't want to be taken over.

Depending upon how you define good and evil, I suppose you could say that WW2 was... but the allies, and I say this as an Englishman fiercely proud of my nation and where we come from.. were far from the angels and innocent parties we tried to make ourselves out to be. Our actions at the end of WW1 were one of the direct causes of Hitler coming to power.

The Cold War wasn't a war at all, as Valanthe said.. it was a nuclear penis measuring contest that wouldn't have happened if either side was even remotely sane. If anything, it was Evil vrs Different Evil.

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
It's extremely easy to point to the atrocities of the losers in that war. So easy in fact that we are able to often ignore the things our nation's said before..and during the war... and the things we did during it.

The allied countries were not the nicest of places to be a jew, for example, before the war.. there were plenty of people who thought just like the Nazi party, even in power. Likewise with people of different races, homosexuals, the disabled, and outspoken political activists. I believe it was my own people, the British, who invented the concentration camp during the Boer War.

And at the end of the day, whatever the arguments for it's creation and use, Nuclear weapons have caused and will cause a great deal of suffering in future.
 

mega48man

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Craorach said:
The Nazi certainly had some ideals that I'd consider outright evil, but quite frankly.. we didn't know that at the time, and many of the countries involved didn't consider much of what they did evil until they realised the scale of it. World War 2 was the same as many other wars through history, it was between a nation that wanted to take over it's neighbours, and its neighbours who didn't want to be taken over.

Depending upon how you define good and evil, I suppose you could say that WW2 was... but the allies, and I say this as an Englishman fiercely proud of my nation and where we come from.. were far from the angels and innocent parties we tried to make ourselves out to be. Our actions at the end of WW1 were one of the direct causes of Hitler coming to power.

The Cold War wasn't a war at all, as Valanthe said.. it was a nuclear penis measuring contest that wouldn't have happened if either side was even remotely sane. If anything, it was Evil vrs Different Evil.
of course the cold war wasn't a war, it just had wars in it, or proxy wars. but was it a battle between good and evil? (US vs. USSR/democracy vs. communism). but however, without the threat of nuclear holocaust the cold war probably could have evolved into a full scale war anyway. it wasn't just about nuclear capabilities, those were just the threats in the shouting contest, but the shouting contest was more so about the disagreement between democracy and communism (FDR and stalin reeeeeeally didn't like eachother the more time the spent in the same room together)
 

Craorach

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mega48man said:
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 >.>
 

Valanthe

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mega48man said:
Valanthe said:
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.
 

Brawndo

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If you believe American entertainment culture, then yes they were. World War II was an ethnically diverse band of Jews, Poles, guys from Brooklyn, and country boys from Nebraska (no blacks or hispanics, we weren't that diverse) taking on Hitler and the super Nazis (every German soldier was in the SS of course). The Cold War was Republican God Ronald Reagan defeating the Evil Empire with the power of Jesus and capitalism.

I'm not a historical revisionist who tries to downplay the horrible crimes committed by Hitler, Stalin, and Imperial Japan against humanity, but there are always two sides to every story. And World War II was far closer to a war of "good and evil" than the Cold War was, at least in my opinion.
 

mega48man

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Brawndo said:
If you believe American entertainment culture, then yes they were. World War II was an ethnically diverse band of Jews, Poles, guys from Brooklyn, and country boys from Nebraska (no blacks or hispanics, we weren't that diverse) taking on Hitler and the super Nazis (every German soldier was in the SS of course). The Cold War was Republican God Ronald Reagan defeating the Evil Empire with the power of Jesus and capitalism.

I'm not a historical revisionist who tries to downplay the horrible crimes committed by Hitler, Stalin, and Imperial Japan against humanity, but there are always two sides to every story. And World War II was far closer to a war of "good and evil" than the Cold War was, at least in my opinion.
xD that's probably the best description of both events i've read of recent. i can tell your not from across the pond, so as a fellow american i think you should be educated of the african american soldiers who laid down their lives during WW2. google it, look it up in your local library, hell, watch the captain american movie, there's a black and phillipino guy in that. at the college i go to, there was an assembly held (not mandatory) where an african american veteran from the air force, who actually fought overseas, told the audience his war stories, what it was like, and african american right progress during the war through enlistment. some reeeeally dumb girl asked him during the Questions portion at the end "during the war, did you go overseas?" this was after he had explained, in detail, what he did and where he went during the war. luckily, he didn't hear her well and someone whispered in his a butchered version of the question "what was it like overseas in another country?". makes me cry how retarded my peers are.
 

mega48man

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Valanthe said:
mega48man said:
Valanthe said:
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.
oh i know, the bad things done by the allies is frequently brushed under the rug in light of things the nazis did likeThe Evil Dr. Joesf Mangele. some examples would be japanese internment (george takei not amused, he was in an internment camp, google it), the atomic bombing on japan (but that's debatable, it was either that or my grand uncle and my grandpa dies getting shipped off to japan), and soviet concentration camps (oh yeah, it happened, google it) are just a few examples.

(google josef mengele with the safe search off. he is, in my opinion, the sole manisfestation of pure evil. fuck Sauron's ring of power and charles manson. the ring and the forces of mordor were a metaphor for said nazis and charles manson was crazy. Dr. Mangele, however, was extremely well educated and therefore should know better than to perform pointless inhumane surgery on children without any anesthetic)

i reeeally like google :3
 

Valanthe

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mega48man said:
And here I thought I was the only one around who knew that name...

Yay Google, but anyway, he is the top if not nearly the only reason I'm comfortable calling World War Two a clearly defined fight of good versus evil. Yes we may not have been sunshine and roses, but the sick things that happened under the Third Reich have no equal.
 

Stalk3rchief

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mega48man said:
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
This blind and ignorant patriotism, plus a lack of historical knowledge, really does make us Americans look bad. Seriously, America bullied Japan into attacking us, but that was way later in the actual war. Before Pearl Harbor (if I remember correctly) Briton had already been pretty much leveled and France had been taken. When we were "forced" to join the war, it was almost over. And even THEN we may not have won if Hitler didn't pour so many troops and supplies into trying to take Russia (in the winter.) THAT, not the U.S., is what ruined the German army and ultimately lost the war.
 

enzilewulf

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This is how I see it:

World war two was a war for a cause. Hitler was allies with Japan. Japan attacked our Pacific fleet with out a declaration of war, so that took us by surprise. Then Hitler was killing every one who looked at him funny.

Cold war: Two ideological views. I can't say much for the USSR because I don't know what they did during it except for the Cuban missile crises and the Invasion of Iraq(or was it Afghanistan?). America wanted to spread Democracy (still do) and the USSR wanted to spread Communism, or promote it or what ever. This caused two proxy wars for the US. Both were pretty fucking embarrassing on our part (Love the troops who fought though, of coarse). This "war" was one of believes about government style. I think that most of the wars we have been in were unnecessary since ww2.
 

Erttheking

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Considering some of the shit the USSR did...no. America's hands aren't clean either. It was Gray and Black Morality.
 

Hazy992

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Valanthe said:
or, in the case of one particular country, rolled in late to the party and took all the credit.
You shouldn't downplay what the Americans did. Whether you like it or not, there's a good chance that without them the Allies wouldn't have won the war. At least not on the Western Front.
 

Valanthe

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Hazy992 said:
Valanthe said:
or, in the case of one particular country, rolled in late to the party and took all the credit.
You shouldn't downplay what the Americans did. Whether you like it or not, there's a good chance that without them the Allies wouldn't have won the war. At least not on the Western Front.
See my above quote.
 

Hazy992

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Valanthe said:
Hazy992 said:
Valanthe said:
or, in the case of one particular country, rolled in late to the party and took all the credit.
You shouldn't downplay what the Americans did. Whether you like it or not, there's a good chance that without them the Allies wouldn't have won the war. At least not on the Western Front.
See my above quote.
Sorry I kinda just skimmed over the thread. Didn't notice it.

Although my point still stands to people in general
 

Valanthe

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Hazy992 said:
Valanthe said:
Hazy992 said:
Valanthe said:
or, in the case of one particular country, rolled in late to the party and took all the credit.
You shouldn't downplay what the Americans did. Whether you like it or not, there's a good chance that without them the Allies wouldn't have won the war. At least not on the Western Front.
See my above quote.
Sorry I kinda just skimmed over the thread. Didn't notice it.

Although my point still stands to people in general
That's fair, while my statement was tongue in cheek, there are people who don't appreciate the American (and Canadian) sacrifices made. However the same could be said of any country, I've heard as many "took all the credit" lines as I have heard people making making fun of France for surrendering.