• 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.

    • @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.

    • 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.

    • @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.

    • 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.