• chaogomu
      link
      fedilink
      42 years ago

      WW2, we only joined because Japan attacked. Otherwise, there were elements of the US population that were cheering for Hitler.

      • @TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id
        link
        fedilink
        English
        22 years ago

        Well that and the fact that there was a huge Irish-American population that was hostile towards the UK in ways that I think a lot of younger people and non-historians have really lost sight of because it’s not really a thing anymore. The idea of taking sides with the British Empire was a very tough pill for a lot of Irish-Americans, most of whom, unlike today, still had direct connections to Ireland. The famine was no longer really in living memory, but the children of the famine survivors were definitely still alive and influential and they absolutely despised the British for understandable reasons.

        History is always way more complex and nuanced than some half-baked one-liner trope on social media.

      • davel [he/him]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        22 years ago

        We also nuked two cities, for reasons much less honorable or necessary than the one we are told.

          • davel [he/him]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            12 years ago

            Two reasons, I think:

            • So Japan would unconditionally surrender to the US instead of (conditionally or unconditionally) surrendering to the USSR.
            • As a warning to the USSR to not spread communism further. The Cold War started even before WWII ended.
            • @TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id
              link
              fedilink
              English
              12 years ago

              Close. What they were worried about was a hot war with the Soviets. There was also a great deal of uncertainty about Japanese willingness to continue to fight. It’s simply not the case that they had clear unambiguous intelligence on Japanese leadership’s intentions, which makes sense since there were several schools of thought among the Japanese.

        • Nacktmull
          link
          fedilink
          0
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          Don´t tell that to the average US American though, they really hate hearing this truth.

          • @TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id
            link
            fedilink
            English
            -12 years ago

            Any respected historian on the subject will tell you that it’s way more complicated and nuanced than your average social media user is aware of. If, like Truman, you honestly believed that using atomic bombs on Japan would ultimately result in less loss of life, on a purely mathematical basis it was the only moral decision.

            • Nacktmull
              link
              fedilink
              1
              edit-2
              2 years ago

              The idea of using the most powerful weapon in existence, a weapon with destructive powers never seen before, that of all weapons can kill the most people in one hit - 140.000 people in Hiroshima alone - to “reduce loss of life” and then telling yourself that it was the moral thing to do, must require some serious mental gymnastics, lmao.

      • @Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        2
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        People don’t realize that the US used to see fascism as a sort of white utopia. It was really popular up until WW2 when they hard turned on it. Kind of like what happened with communism, actually. It was seen as a revolutionary form of democracy up until the cold war, now people only know it for all the propaganda that came out of the era. (most of which was flat out lies made up on the spot by actual nazis)

        It’s a lot of the reason why the modern day liberal is so staunchly both-sides when it comes to anything geopolitics.

      • possibly a cat
        link
        fedilink
        -1
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        The US blockaded embargoed Japan’s oil - arguably already an act of war - with the intention of getting pulled into the war. Although I suppose one might argue it was planned, in part, to undercut the rise of domestic Nazis.

    • uralsolo [he/him]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      32 years ago

      That was mostly by accident. IMO America’s actions in and around WW2 are better understood as the result of two expanding empires bumping into one another (America and Japan)

    • Nacktmull
      link
      fedilink
      3
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      In ww2 the Russians did most of he dirty work anyway. When the USA joined the war it was already clear the axis had lost.

      • cooljacob204
        link
        fedilink
        02 years ago

        Lol no it wasn’t clear. And you’re forgetting about the entire Pacific.

        Russians trying to rewrite history, forgetting who supplied half their army while also joining a war against their enemy on another front (at great cost to western lives), overall saving lives as the Germans had to divert resources and ending the war in Europe sooner.

        • davel [he/him]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          02 years ago

          Neither of you are wrong, but Americans should understand that the USSR suffered over twenty million deaths vs ~117,000 Americans on the Western Front. They had their own western cities & infrastructure invaded/destroyed. The undertaking & sacrifices are hard to compare.

          Russians trying to rewrite history

          Okay my bad: you actually are wrong.

          • cooljacob204
            link
            fedilink
            12 years ago

            It’s been a very common thing recently with Russian to claim the West basically did nothing in WW2.

            They are quite literally rewriting history in their classrooms.

            Now I won’t deny they took the brunt of the force and paid an absolutely huge price in lives.

            But op is trying to use WW2 as a way to say the US is bad. That we did nothing and only joined when it was basically over. It’s a super common Russian nationalist talking point right now.

        • @zerfuffle@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          -12 years ago

          Operation Barbarossa had stalled by the time the US entered the war. German logistics were overextended, they were out of oil, and they were against a larger, rapidly industrializing power defending their homeland.

          By the time D-Day rolled around, Army Group North and Army Group South were taking loss after loss and the USSR had reclaimed a significant chunk of the land lost during Barbarossa. The Germans were in collapse. Roosevelt had promised a second front in 1942 but couldn’t deliver until 1944 (when it was clear that the Soviets had a clear shot at Berlin and had the momentum to keep going).

          The Dnieper-Carpathian Offensive put Army Group Center in an increasingly precarious position even as Russia continually gained ground in Byelorussia.

      • @TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id
        link
        fedilink
        English
        02 years ago

        Typical oversimplified tripe. Soviet bodies played a huge role, but US and British mechanized force projection, naval power and industrial capacity were at least as important.

        It’s also just bullshit that the Axis had already lost. That’s the worst kind of historical revisionism. It might be obvious to us looking back, but it wasn’t even remotely obvious to anyone alive then.