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

[Akyho]

WW2 came down to a fight of survival for Britain that turned into a major push liberating occupied allies. For years Britain held the line, when American came it pushed.

While its a concept about good and evil that varies from person to person. I only say WW2 was since Hitler had the concentration camps with the sole person of wiping our a people. Take that out and they are just the same.

Britain had concentration camps for Germans. Britain invented them back in the Boar wars.
America had their concentration camps for Japanese people. That was alot worse that the British treatment of Germans. However not ovens, gas chambers and firing squads.

 

[Bakuryukun]

how can this even be debated? No war is clear cut good and evil. There are too many factors involved for it to be at all clear cut. To think otherwise is pretty delusional.

 

[darthmocha]

I just want to clear some things up that a lot of people get wrong about the Enigma Code and Bletchley Park.

It wasn't the code breakers at Bletchley Park that broke the Enigma Code, but rather Polish Intelligence with their mathematicians and cryptographers. It was the Polish whom were being overrun smuggled their people and their documents out at the last minute that saved the British. While they had shared some information with the British and French it wasn't until late 1939 when all was lost they turned over all their data to the Allies. So we really owe Poland for that one and several other things during the war.

I am also not Polish and biased. I am an American of German-Hungarian decent so I am just speaking facts.

 

[mega48man]

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?

huge ass snip

oh don't be a ponce by trying to defend nazi germany. i already knew practically everything in that first essay about germany (except for the bit about ghandi). what you failed to mention was that the german people were totally okay with killing jews, hitler's propaganda instilled hate for the jews long before the war. in addition to that, many other of Hitler's ambitions make him out to be a mad man, i.e. his plans to reconstruct berlin with buildings so large they shouldn't be architecturally sound but the somehow the blue prints made it work. the war of course undermined his plans to make berlin the largest city in the world.

Hitler had plans for world domination and ethnic cleansing of millions of people. that's not even just evil, that's Cobra Commander's daily routine but with a grim twist that is reality.

but that part about the IJA science division's atrocities is interesting, i never knew that, i'm gonna look into that.

 

[Choppaduel]

They were battles between the extremely evil and the very evil.

 

[Mxrz]

Yes. WW2 was. The allies were as close to "good" as possible in any realistic large-scale war. But the term itself has been whitewashed in modern times to be a lot more pleasant (and trivial) than it actually was. So much so, that now even the Allies look bad under this modern reinterpretation. Some people these days will claim that neither side was 'good' in the hopes of appearing enlightened, but their reasoning just highlights this unrealistic perception of war.

The Cold War was two sides fighting for the ideology they believed in. The horrors of WW2 left both sides seeing the other as the 'new evil' and resulted in some extreme behavior.

 

[zumbledum]

the thing about WW2 is there has been 50 + years of mis information bigging up and glorification going on. now i dont want to downplay anything horrible that happened wont even risk nameing some for fear of missing others. but if you boil it down to brass tack numbers , ww2 was stalin vs hitler. evil vs evil in most peoples view.

A fairly uncomfortable truth lies there, if Stalin had been a good guy if Russia had been a democracy Germany would of won. no civilised or senseible leader would of allowed the losses and death it was only Stalin's Inhuman disregard for human life that allowed Russia to brake the push and turn the tide, and if you google ww2 timeline Russia and germany are going at it for 5 years and germany has done nothing but retreat for a year before the allies finnaly land to join in the big land grab.

Cold war... a war based in nothing but fear and mistrust, the west demonised the east, the red peril we were gripped by the sheer terror of Communism spreading. Having lived through the 80's remembering threads and when the wind blows, the hilarious duck and cover! and just looking at the absurd lengths America went to fight to spread Democracy and deny communism you have to come away with the conclusion the Evils won that one. controversial i know but if you look at the work of teh CIA , IMF WB , the sheer destruction that free trade inflicted on the world a super charged unsustainable capitalist takeover. we today are still seeing the waves in the pool , the state of the economy is down to the anti red nixon era.

 

[magter3001]

Both were wars of Hypocrisy. America tried to save it's image when they killed off all the Native Americans and save e Jews while the Cold War was just a big propaganda crap that had both nations hate each other for no reason at all.

 

[Lord_Ascendant]

Because there is no such thing as clear-cut good and evil in the real world. It is a trite literary devise to separate the hero from the villain. Actions taken can be *perceived* as evil because we are looking at it from the outside. No matter what you say, to the villain they are always in the right. A villain who acknowledges their evil is usually a terrible villain because why should they keep trying? Do cause more destruction? Eventually they'll run out of stuff to blow up and then all the fun is gone. It's like you have a pie. It's a tasty pie, too. You can have a slice now and some more later...or eat it all up now and be left wanting more. It takes a certain kind of character to make a "villain-that-is-awake-of-their-evil" work as a driving force because honestly "just because" is a bad motivation for...well...anything.

Both wars were fought for specific reasons. World War Two was to stop Fascism & the Martial State from expanding over the known world. See, Germany was only able to become so corrupt was because of the World War before that had so totally screwed them. 10,000 angry Germans turned around and showed the world that they couldn't put them in a corner. They just accepted the leadership of a complete nutjob and paid for it with being booted back to Berlin.

The Cold War was an economic war between Russia and the USA. Communism vs Capitalism, both of us hated the others guts but neither wanted to just duke it out because of consequences for others. We pushed each other now and then and we went to extraordinary lengths to curb check each other but in the end we called each others bluffs and nothing came of it. Eventually, Russia and communism didn't stay married and their divorce broke up their empire and they said "we're sorry".

No one was evil in any of these, and no one was good. There we just people. Shades of grey.

 

[plugav]

No, they weren't wars between good and evil.

The Cold War is obvious - two superpowers trying to dominate global politics is hardly a conflict between good and evil, even if the Western bloc was more civil towards its own (white) citizens (and no-one else).

What about World War II?
Well, first of all the Nazis weren't just some satanic death cult. Their rule was a consequence of social tensions caused by the Treaty of Versailles. And let's not forget Italy and Japan were on the "evil" side too, for their own reasons.
Second, the "good guys" may have not immediately known about the ethnic cleansings, but they didn't move a finger when the Reich took over Czechoslovakia in 1938 and invaded Poland in 1939 either.
Third, the power that helped defeat the Axis was the USSR - the Nazis' former allies and a right bunch of bastards on their own (what with the Gulag and everything).
And the final blow - the US nuked Japan (which still suffers because of it). And not even to win the war, either, but mainly to show off their new weapon to Stalin.

 

[Romidude]

In my opinion, no one in history has even been evil. No one has ever just dressed up as Skeletor and gone "MWAHAHA, I SHALL DESTROY THE EARTH BECAUSE FUCK YOU". People do what they do because they think what they were doing was the right thing to do. Everyone from the Nazis to the Taliban have thought that they were fighting the good fight, and to some people, it was the good fight.

 

[Obrien Xp]

You can never say anything is between good and evil as that concept is in and of itself based on your interpretation and nobody has the right interpretation.

However, with that aside:
WWII: Militarily: The Germans killed prisoners, the Russians killed prisoners. The Germans bombed cities, the Allies bombed cities. The Japanese slaughtered Nanjing, the US nuked Japan twice. The Axis had concentration camps, the Allies had concentration camps. The Nazis had death and work camps, the Russians had work camps. The Axis made up stuff for propaganda, the Allies made up stuff for propaganda. The point is, everyone killed and everyone is to blame in one way or another for just about everything. I don't support the Nazis, Imperialists, Fascists, or Communists. I am happy with most of the results of who won the war. I do not think anyone can claim to have anywhere close to a clean record. Sure the Allies weren't as bad as the Axis in most cases but, to say they were the good guys is far from the truth. If it weren't for the whole extermination of minority groups there would have been little negative stigma towards Nazi Germany. If Germany didn't move on Poland then it is likely that Stalin would continue his aggressions and the Allies and Axis would all make their move on the USSR.

The very idea that the Cold War was between good and evil just sickens me, I won't even comment on that.

 

[Griffolion]

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I agree with you and consider such things to be evil.

My original statement was to merely highlight the concept that "Good" and "Evil" may be relative terms between each individuals mind.

GAAAH. i'm glad to hear you say that, but i'm growing impatient waiting for someone to argue the point that both sides of the war did bad things;

axis
-holocaust
-inhumane experimentation
-gestapo and SS
-instigate war
-japanese treatment of chinese + korean cities
-sneak attack on pearl harbor
-japanese use of biological/chemical weapons and ignoring rules of geneva convention


allies
-japanese internment camps
-atomic bombings on hiroshima and nagasaki
-soviet treatment of prisoners
-soviet treatment of troops

as you can see, one side's clearly more eviler, but one could argue that the allies weren't exactly the messaih either.

Please don't take this as me side stepping what you're saying, because it's really valid. But i think the actual concept of "war" is inherently evil. And thus can bring out evil in all men in myriad capacities and manifestations. This does appear to be supported by your post of both sides doing evil things. No one side in a war is utterly perfect/justified/right.

 

[mega48man]

josef mengele wasn't the only scientist, he was just the most notorious scientist at Auchswitz...Auschwitz being the key word...it's like everyone keeps forgetting that hitler gave the o.k. for the SS to systematically torture and kill millions of people. what the hell do they teach you brits in school across the pond?

So, you're back to appealing to emotion, and to assuming things about other people that you know nothing about. Hint: not a Brit here.

I think we're done talking.

things that i know nothing about?

here's a list of my sources asshole

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation
http://history1900s.about.com/od/auschwitz/a/mengeletwins.htm
http://www.auschwitz.dk/mengele.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owwL0Fynqak

i'm not appealing to emotion, i'm stating facts. these things actually happened. i'd get 0% on my essay if started making things up or bantered for too long about a deep emotional connection to the topic which is unrelated to the argument.

if i were someone who knew nothing of the topic, i would of said something like "yeah, hitler killed the jews, that was wrong!" or better yet i'd quote Bluto from animal house "did we give up when the germans bombed pearl harbor? HELL NO!" but no. i referenced a person who not many people today are even aware of, so what does that suggest about my WW2 related knowledge?

 

[kidwithxboxlive]

This is a very gray area..... The cause you fight for, will be portrayed a good against evil. Like with Iraq and Afghanistan. The Taliban think they are the good guys in all this and have been persuaded this, where as the British and Americans believe they are the good guys. No matter what happens, the 2 sides will both think they are the good people in all of this, whereas we think the WW2 situation, the Nazis were the baddies, Hitler persuaded the Germans were fighting a good cause, but im repeating what im saying but in different contexts, but yeah, i know what im on about

 

[Inglorious891]

Since the major Axis powers of WWII did some pretty nasty stuff and only tried to achieve their goals though conquest and submission, I'd say that WWII was very black and white.

The Cold War, on the other hand, was definetly not so clear cut. Both the US and USSR did some shady things in an effort to stop the spread of eachother's ideals, and since both spent the whole of the time in that whole arms race ordeal, I'd say that the Cold War was definetly a fight between two shades of gray.

 

[Darren716]

the nazis weren't evil.they banned smoking and gave animals rights. they also invented the jet engine. the russians and americans were more evil than the nazis

Oh no trying to create a master race and killing 12 million inocent people isn't evil in the slightest.

 

[Skillswords]

well the reason WW2 even started was due mainly from the harsh treaty of Versailles crippling Germany and leaving it in a state of desperation, so its debateabul if WW2 was a moral conflict EXCEPT Hitlers genocide is still evil, and his abuse of his own people for power was evil. So i'm going to say yes to WW2.

The Cold war i'm going to say no, it's really a battle of different ideology's. both sides were being dicks to a very equal degree (America planting nukes in turkey and meddling in foreign affairs, Soviet union trying to push their way of life onto others)

 

[mega48man]

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i stopped reading at " it wasn't genocide per se, they just had all their food resources taken from them"

seriously? that's got to be one of the most retarded things i've ever heard.

this is what i imagine you look like

they had all their food resources taken away from them? you're absolutely correct, that did happen, [HEADING=2]WHICH IS WHY 10,000,000 PEOPLE DIED OF STARVATION[/HEADING]
[HEADING=1]DER DA DURRRRR[/HEADING]

[HEADING=3]Not a genocide? let's see what you think after watching this documentary[/HEADING]

i don't want another message from you in my inbox until you've read everything i've said. you completely missed the point of my original argument which was to support the claims of both sides of my original questions "were WW2 and the cold war clear cut battles between good and evil".