I was largely influenced by arguments that nothing good could come of war—and I knew that WWII had a pretty good outcome, so that argument that nothing good could happen was obviously unsound.
By what metric can it be said that WWII had a “good outcome”?!
By what metric can it be said that WWII had a “good outcome”?!
The destruction of two oppressive empires which were engaging in largescale genocide would be the most obvious success criterion. A more cynical point is that for the US at least it really did help the economy. Before the US entered the war we were still in the Great Depression. Things were picking up but not by that much. Also, a major result of the war was funding which went into research that lead to a lot of useful new technologies like radar.
The destruction of two oppressive empires which were engaging in largescale genocide would be the most obvious success criterion.
Yeah, but were these oppressive empires really engaging in largescale genocide before WWII or was it (partially) caused by WWII? If the latter, then that isn’t a point in its favor. If I remember correctly, before WWII the “final solution” was supposed to be the Madagascar Plan, not The Holocaust. The only oppressive empire I can think of that was engaging in largescale genocide pre-WWII survived the war (and even expanded its power as a result of it).
A more cynical point is that for the US at least it really did help the economy.
This is definitely not a consensus amongst economists. For instance:
It is commonly argued that World War II provided the stimulus that brought the American economy out of the Great Depression. The number of unemployed workers declined by 7,050,000 between 1940 and 1943, but the number in military service rose by 8,590,000. The reduction in unemployment can be explained by the draft, not by the economic recovery. The rise in real GNP presents similar problems. Most estimates show declines in real consumption spending, which means that consumers were worse off during the war. Business investment fell during the war. Government spending on the war effort exceeded the expansion in real GNP. These figures are suspect, however, because we know that government estimates of the value of munitions spending, to name one major area, were increasingly exaggerated as the war progressed. In fact, the extensive price controls, rationing, and government control of production render data on GNP, consumption, investment, and the price level less meaningful. How can we establish a consistent price index when government mandates eliminated the production of most consumer durable goods? What does the price of, say, gasoline mean when it is arbitrarily held at a low level and gasoline purchases are rationed to address the shortage created by the price controls? What does the price of new tires mean when no new tires are produced for consumers? For consumers, the recovery came with the war’s end, when they could again buy products that were unavailable during the war and unaffordable during the 1930s.
And as for this:
Also, a major result of the war was funding which went into research that lead to a lot of useful new technologies like radar.
The technologies that were developed for the war are indeed impressive, but what of the technologies that would have been developed had WWII not occurred? How would we know if the seen outweigh the unseen in this case? The previous question is not merely rhetorical.
Yeah, but were these oppressive empires really engaging in largescale genocide before WWII or was it (partially) caused by WWII? If I remember correctly, before WWII the “final solution” was supposed to be the Madagascar Plan, not The Holocaust.
The Madagascar Plan was never seriously considered, and when it was considered the war had already started (they were discussing it in 1940). People were already being placed in concentration camps in 1939. Moreover, the Madagascar Plan was a plan specifically for dealing with the Jews. The gays, Roma and other groups were not covered under that. Whether the Holocaust of the Jews was what the Nazi high command intended from the beginning is a matter of some debate. But given their general attitude even if Britain had quickly fallen, I have trouble believing that the Nazis would have stopped with putting all the European Jews on Madagascar, aside from the terrible loss of life that would have occurred in forcively adding millions of people to an environment with minimal infrastructure to support them.
Your point about the Soviet Union seems to be a valid one.
There is a more general problem here: There are some occasions where defensive wars need to be fought simply because if one doesn’t then the enemy will wind up at your doorstep. World War 2 seems to have been such a war for much of Europe. That’s less so for the US. But the overall point that having the war was better than the alternatives seems clear.
I’m sure you know this, but “WWII” is not a verb. The United States did not decide “to WWII” instead of “not WWIIing”.
Japan aggressively invaded neighboring countries for resources and engaged in ethnic cleansing. The United States imposed a gradually more strict embargo of military and dual-use materials, including eventually oil. This precipitated the Japanese invasion of the oil rich Dutch East Indies and the attack on Pearl Harbor to cover for it.
If the question is “What should Japan have done?” the answer is “Not try to conquer Asia and not attack Pearl Harbor.” If the question is “What should the United States have done?” the answer is not “Not try to conquer Asia and not attack Pearl Harbor.” The answer might be “Disband the Pacific Fleet,” or “Pay Japan not to invade its neighbors,” or “Ally with Japan against Britain,” or “Preemptively invade Japan,” etc., but if you’re trying to direct Japanese fleet movements or German concentration camp policy or the like, you’re not engaged in an exercise showing the United States should have done anything differently.
The technologies that were developed for the war are indeed impressive, but what of the technologies that would have been developed had WWII not occurred? How would we know if the seen outweigh the unseen in this case?
It’s impossible to prove that WWII did not prevent the development of arbitrarily wonderful technology.
It is also impossible to prove that the Great Depression would have ended in the absence of an economic event like WWII.
We’re talking about what might have happened if WWII didn’t get fought. No reasonable person would demand mathematical precision under those circumstances, and you’re assuming I’ve done just that.
This kind of pedantry makes it feel like work to talk to you any further.
Not just that the two oppressive and expanding empires were destroyed, but the conquered countries came out in pretty good shape but not in a position to seek empire again any time soon. In what sense is this not a good outcome?
“Don’t invade Poland,” was not a coherent American strategy for ensuring a peaceful Europe. It was only such for Germany. Likewise “Don’t fly hijacked planes into buildings,” isn’t a policy that the United States needs to implement.
American strategy informs American actions and can only indirectly influence non-American actions.
The Axis was defeated, and the reconstruction brought Europe to the West of the Iron Curtain back to a high standard of living in a relatively short period of time, without the lingering hostilities and hardship which led to a second world war so shortly after the first one.
Since we’re talking about America’s choice here, the plausible outcomes of the Lindbergh America-First strategy (rather than starting to help the Allies even before Pearl Harbor) look like a Nazi-dominated Europe, possibly including Britain, and a Japanese-ruled China. Germany-USSR was a wild card in any case, but you have to acknowledge the possibility of atrocities on even a wider scale than we saw.
Of course, World War II was almost certainly worse for the world than what would have happened if the Nazis had never tried to conquer Europe. But the choice of whether to fight seems to have been made correctly on the part of the US and UK.
I would go further than that. As I recall, in Mein Kampf, Hitler laid out the expectation that the next stage of the Third Reich, to be carried out by his successor after Europe was pacified, was to make war on the United States to establish global domination. Given that Hitler more or less actually did the stuff he wrote that he was going to until he was stopped, it seems reasonable to conclude that the alternative to US/Allies v. Germany in Europe was US v. Germany/puppets in North America a decade or two later.
The US froze German and Japanese assets a few months before the bombings in Pearl Harbor—even this was just one in a long-series of actions that declared the US as an Allied power before Congress allowed it to be involved in the shooting war.
It seems to me like that fits into my narrative, as elsewhere on the page I said:
The United States imposed a gradually more strict embargo of military and dual-use materials, including eventually oil. This precipitated the Japanese invasion of the oil rich Dutch East Indies and the attack on Pearl Harbor to cover for it.
Thank you for adding that fact, as I didn’t know it, but if you mean to disagree you’ll have to elaborate.
I would argue that the US, Germany and Japan were on a path to war without more choice for any one of the parties. Both sides were making overt hostile actions, which provoked escalating responses. I think freezing a country’s assets is as blatant an act of aggression as interdicting shipments of material aid to Britain. I don’t know if we disagree, but I disagree with your wording. I’d say the US, Germany and Japan all chose to fight.
I’m not suspending judgement. My judgement is that leadership in the US, Japan and Germany all intended to be at war with each other for a long time before they made it come about.
leadership in the US, Japan and Germany all intended to be at war with each other
You should unpack this. Surely it was always conditional. Had all nations disbanded their armies and surrendered to Germany, you think they would have declared war on the United States, their tributary?
Once we’ve established that each was willing to go to war contingent on the actions of other nations—exactly like every nation I can think of in the history of humanity—we can compare the conditions each had. I agree that categorizing those three nations together is connotatively wrong because all nations belong in the group you describe, membership in it signifies nothing. This is the fallacy of gray.
It is not clear to me that the US would have intervened had Japan attacked the Dutch East Indies or even Australia. If this is true and Japan had thought it likely that the US would not intervene, I think US paticipation could have been avoided.
I’d say the US, Germany and Japan all chose to fight.
All chose to fight contingent on certain actions of others, but the same is true of Ghandi “I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence,” and basically every other entity. Each just had different conditions of others before it came to that action from them.
For Germany, if adjacent countries had certain territory and did not surrender it, they would invade. For Japan, they would rather not invade the Allies in the East, but would if the US cut off oil. For the US, if Japan waged sufficient amounts of aggressive war, military supplies would be cut off. If more aggressive war was waged, even oil would not be traded.
I’d say “the US, Germany and Japan all chose to fight,” and this bare fact is of basically no importance. “Both sides were making overt hostile actions,” is a type of thing that is true whether one country decides to only import product X when its manufacture complies with sufficient environmental and labor protections or one country demands the cession of most of another’s territory on threat of invasion, whether a country wages restricted war by blowing up imports to a country but nothing in the country doing the exporting, or it freezes certain foreign assets suspected of facilitating money laundering.
By what metric can it be said that WWII had a “good outcome”?!
The destruction of two oppressive empires which were engaging in largescale genocide would be the most obvious success criterion. A more cynical point is that for the US at least it really did help the economy. Before the US entered the war we were still in the Great Depression. Things were picking up but not by that much. Also, a major result of the war was funding which went into research that lead to a lot of useful new technologies like radar.
Yeah, but were these oppressive empires really engaging in largescale genocide before WWII or was it (partially) caused by WWII? If the latter, then that isn’t a point in its favor. If I remember correctly, before WWII the “final solution” was supposed to be the Madagascar Plan, not The Holocaust. The only oppressive empire I can think of that was engaging in largescale genocide pre-WWII survived the war (and even expanded its power as a result of it).
This is definitely not a consensus amongst economists. For instance:
And as for this:
The technologies that were developed for the war are indeed impressive, but what of the technologies that would have been developed had WWII not occurred? How would we know if the seen outweigh the unseen in this case? The previous question is not merely rhetorical.
The Madagascar Plan was never seriously considered, and when it was considered the war had already started (they were discussing it in 1940). People were already being placed in concentration camps in 1939. Moreover, the Madagascar Plan was a plan specifically for dealing with the Jews. The gays, Roma and other groups were not covered under that. Whether the Holocaust of the Jews was what the Nazi high command intended from the beginning is a matter of some debate. But given their general attitude even if Britain had quickly fallen, I have trouble believing that the Nazis would have stopped with putting all the European Jews on Madagascar, aside from the terrible loss of life that would have occurred in forcively adding millions of people to an environment with minimal infrastructure to support them.
Your point about the Soviet Union seems to be a valid one.
There is a more general problem here: There are some occasions where defensive wars need to be fought simply because if one doesn’t then the enemy will wind up at your doorstep. World War 2 seems to have been such a war for much of Europe. That’s less so for the US. But the overall point that having the war was better than the alternatives seems clear.
I’m sure you know this, but “WWII” is not a verb. The United States did not decide “to WWII” instead of “not WWIIing”.
Japan aggressively invaded neighboring countries for resources and engaged in ethnic cleansing. The United States imposed a gradually more strict embargo of military and dual-use materials, including eventually oil. This precipitated the Japanese invasion of the oil rich Dutch East Indies and the attack on Pearl Harbor to cover for it.
If the question is “What should Japan have done?” the answer is “Not try to conquer Asia and not attack Pearl Harbor.” If the question is “What should the United States have done?” the answer is not “Not try to conquer Asia and not attack Pearl Harbor.” The answer might be “Disband the Pacific Fleet,” or “Pay Japan not to invade its neighbors,” or “Ally with Japan against Britain,” or “Preemptively invade Japan,” etc., but if you’re trying to direct Japanese fleet movements or German concentration camp policy or the like, you’re not engaged in an exercise showing the United States should have done anything differently.
It’s impossible to prove that WWII did not prevent the development of arbitrarily wonderful technology.
It is also impossible to prove that the Great Depression would have ended in the absence of an economic event like WWII.
I’m not asking for proof; I’m asking for evidence. Proof is way too high a standard for almost anything outside of logic or mathematics.
We’re talking about what might have happened if WWII didn’t get fought. No reasonable person would demand mathematical precision under those circumstances, and you’re assuming I’ve done just that.
This kind of pedantry makes it feel like work to talk to you any further.
Not just that the two oppressive and expanding empires were destroyed, but the conquered countries came out in pretty good shape but not in a position to seek empire again any time soon. In what sense is this not a good outcome?
Lots of people died.
The best policy has some bad repercussions.
The worst policy has some good consequences.
“Don’t invade Poland,” was not a coherent American strategy for ensuring a peaceful Europe. It was only such for Germany. Likewise “Don’t fly hijacked planes into buildings,” isn’t a policy that the United States needs to implement.
American strategy informs American actions and can only indirectly influence non-American actions.
The Axis was defeated, and the reconstruction brought Europe to the West of the Iron Curtain back to a high standard of living in a relatively short period of time, without the lingering hostilities and hardship which led to a second world war so shortly after the first one.
Comparison to other plausible outcomes.
Such as...?
Since we’re talking about America’s choice here, the plausible outcomes of the Lindbergh America-First strategy (rather than starting to help the Allies even before Pearl Harbor) look like a Nazi-dominated Europe, possibly including Britain, and a Japanese-ruled China. Germany-USSR was a wild card in any case, but you have to acknowledge the possibility of atrocities on even a wider scale than we saw.
Of course, World War II was almost certainly worse for the world than what would have happened if the Nazis had never tried to conquer Europe. But the choice of whether to fight seems to have been made correctly on the part of the US and UK.
I would go further than that. As I recall, in Mein Kampf, Hitler laid out the expectation that the next stage of the Third Reich, to be carried out by his successor after Europe was pacified, was to make war on the United States to establish global domination. Given that Hitler more or less actually did the stuff he wrote that he was going to until he was stopped, it seems reasonable to conclude that the alternative to US/Allies v. Germany in Europe was US v. Germany/puppets in North America a decade or two later.
Not necessarily so.
In all cases, Germany and Japan chose to fight.
The US froze German and Japanese assets a few months before the bombings in Pearl Harbor—even this was just one in a long-series of actions that declared the US as an Allied power before Congress allowed it to be involved in the shooting war.
It seems to me like that fits into my narrative, as elsewhere on the page I said:
Thank you for adding that fact, as I didn’t know it, but if you mean to disagree you’ll have to elaborate.
I would argue that the US, Germany and Japan were on a path to war without more choice for any one of the parties. Both sides were making overt hostile actions, which provoked escalating responses. I think freezing a country’s assets is as blatant an act of aggression as interdicting shipments of material aid to Britain. I don’t know if we disagree, but I disagree with your wording. I’d say the US, Germany and Japan all chose to fight.
This strikes me as an example of the fallacy of gray together with a slice of pretending to be wise by suspending judgement.
I’m not suspending judgement. My judgement is that leadership in the US, Japan and Germany all intended to be at war with each other for a long time before they made it come about.
You should unpack this. Surely it was always conditional. Had all nations disbanded their armies and surrendered to Germany, you think they would have declared war on the United States, their tributary?
Once we’ve established that each was willing to go to war contingent on the actions of other nations—exactly like every nation I can think of in the history of humanity—we can compare the conditions each had. I agree that categorizing those three nations together is connotatively wrong because all nations belong in the group you describe, membership in it signifies nothing. This is the fallacy of gray.
It is not clear to me that the US would have intervened had Japan attacked the Dutch East Indies or even Australia. If this is true and Japan had thought it likely that the US would not intervene, I think US paticipation could have been avoided.
All chose to fight contingent on certain actions of others, but the same is true of Ghandi “I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence,” and basically every other entity. Each just had different conditions of others before it came to that action from them.
For Germany, if adjacent countries had certain territory and did not surrender it, they would invade. For Japan, they would rather not invade the Allies in the East, but would if the US cut off oil. For the US, if Japan waged sufficient amounts of aggressive war, military supplies would be cut off. If more aggressive war was waged, even oil would not be traded.
I’d say “the US, Germany and Japan all chose to fight,” and this bare fact is of basically no importance. “Both sides were making overt hostile actions,” is a type of thing that is true whether one country decides to only import product X when its manufacture complies with sufficient environmental and labor protections or one country demands the cession of most of another’s territory on threat of invasion, whether a country wages restricted war by blowing up imports to a country but nothing in the country doing the exporting, or it freezes certain foreign assets suspected of facilitating money laundering.
At least WW2 ended.
In 1989 for Poland.
Yikes. But then the two Koreas are technically still at war IIRC.