World War II only war that even modern leftists/Anarchists/Pacifists/Draft Dodgers willing to fight

It's quite easy to say you'd support WWII with hindsight, with full knowledge of how terrible the Nazis and Japanese were. How many people opposed to war actually joined the army in the moment?
 

Griffith

Banned
I'm going to go with a strong "no" on this one. You've asked why a specific group of left-leaning groups and others on the American spectrum who fit into that kind of coalition or have what's considered American leftist foreign policy. I've posited my position, and I think there's a decent chance that's the case. We're talking about left wing bogeymen; racism, militarism, imperialism, etc, etc. As I said, it's a total layup.

Libertarians and anarchists aren't left leaning (especially in American standards). Hell libertarians consider themselves out of line and way above it (literally they are when you check their position on the graph). Nor does being a member of a religious pacifist group such as Quaker and Jehovah makes you leftist, in fact most religious pacifist tend to be right leaning overall (its only on military issues and self defense in which they have leftist views).
 
Prior to the US entry in to WWII the "left" was more "pro-war" than the right. To be honest neither the left nor the right cared much about the atrocities Japan was doing in China, the Holocaust had not yet begun and at the most the majority of Americans would "tut-tut" the Nazi actions against the Jews and others but antisemitism social and institutional was widespread in America, and the racial social Darwinism the Nazis preached was pretty common in the USA although not as extreme in most cases.

As far as religious pacifists go, those that are sincere in their belief won't support any war. In this they are apolitical.

In the USA, like elsewhere, you see support for war/military intervention based upon whose ox is being gored. Intervention with military force for a cause you see as good (whether political or humanitarian) is lobbied for, if its not a cause you back then military intervention is wrong. Nothing left/right or particularly American about that. FWIW my personal beef if with those who beat the drum to send in the Marines for a cause, yet are not going to the recruiting station to join up - they see the intervention as important, but are unwilling to put their own ass on the line. This applies to folks on the left and the right equally.
 
This is a big thing I notice thats unique about World War II. Its that its the one war that people are universally willing to support even if they personally oppose the war or are members of a faction that is traditionally anti-military and cynical of the state.

I'm not sure if it's the only one. The Spanish Civil War also became a de facto call to arms for former pacifists, idealists, etc. I've heard of British left-wing radicals who considered joining the army in the Falklands War, as the enemy was a military junta who brutally crushed down the left-wing opposition. And right now, virtually everyone on the left is in favour of fighting ISIS, while some also openly call for a military support for the Kurdish forces.
 
As far as I know it's a big example of a just war that's well worth fighting and rightly so, but however given the scale of the conflict and how it was built up prior to the outbreak of war, there were plenty of shades of grey on part of the Allies, especially considering the European empires and how the USA treated the Japanese-Americans as well as the firebombings and the atomic bombings and dealings with the undemocratic USSR and Nationalist China. None of them can be excused for what the Axis done, but those grey things make me think WWII as more of a Grey vs. Black conflict, even if the Allied greyness greatly stands out from the mostly blackness of the Axis.
 
It's quite easy to say you'd support WWII with hindsight, with full knowledge of how terrible the Nazis and Japanese were. How many people opposed to war actually joined the army in the moment?

I think this is a key point. Through much of the war, it would be easy to describe WW2 as a rerun of WW1. A bunch of imperialists and authoritarians engaged in pointless fighting. Who would make the same decision to fight without accurate knowledge of the Holocaust? Even beyond that, who would make the same decision to fight without knowledge of the tremendous success in rehabilitating the devestated war zone in Europe?
 
Well, this thread remembers me to these words by an spanish anarchist who, as many other spanish leftists, fought in the Spanish Civil War and later in the forces of the Free France:


"How many lands have my feet trod and my eyes seen! What terrible scenes of desolation of death I witnessed in those years of continual war. Adverse circumstances had made us, anti-militarists, the most battle hardened soldiers of the Allied armies"


I think this is a key point. Through much of the war, it would be easy to describe WW2 as a rerun of WW1. A bunch of imperialists and authoritarians engaged in pointless fighting. Who would make the same decision to fight without accurate knowledge of the Holocaust? Even beyond that, who would make the same decision to fight without knowledge of the tremendous success in rehabilitating the devestated war zone in Europe?

There was not knowledge about the Holocaust, but the evils of Fascism were known, and, amongst others, the international left was well aware of them and activelly opossing fascism as soon as fascism became a relevant political force. Ask to Mateotti. And the most pacifist person would be wary about people who thinks things like "war is the world's only hygiene".
 
there were a sizeable number of Americans (just looking at the US in this case) who had views that prevented them from agreeing to military service in World War 2

links worth looking at

http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe40s/life_05.html

a somewhat broader view

http://www.nationalpeacemuseum.org/history.html

of course in places like the Soviet Union, Germany and Japan that kind of conviction got you sent to a camp to be worked to death or simply got you executed

Myself I respect their belief, but I think that war, unlike most others, was pretty clearly a fight against evil in possibly the most naked form we have seen since the Middle Ages and in this case I think they were wrong, although not the ones willing to still do national service of some kind.

Modern (our decade) people with this kind of belief are deserving of respect in my opinion.
 

Griffith

Banned
I think this is a key point. Through much of the war, it would be easy to describe WW2 as a rerun of WW1. A bunch of imperialists and authoritarians engaged in pointless fighting. Who would make the same decision to fight without accurate knowledge of the Holocaust? Even beyond that, who would make the same decision to fight without knowledge of the tremendous success in rehabilitating the devestated war zone in Europe?

How did WWII get such a reputation as a noble war that even anarcho-Capitalists, libertarians, Jehovah's Witnesses, and even Muslim fundamentalists all state they would have volunteered to fight against Hitler? I mean thats the general consensus today.
 

Japhy

Banned
How did WWII get such a reputation as a noble war that even anarcho-Capitalists, libertarians, Jehovah's Witnesses, and even Muslim fundamentalists all state they would have volunteered to fight against Hitler? I mean thats the general consensus today.
Gas chambers pretty much.
 
How did WWII get such a reputation as a noble war that even anarcho-Capitalists, libertarians, Jehovah's Witnesses, and even Muslim fundamentalists all state they would have volunteered to fight against Hitler? I mean thats the general consensus today.

Hindsight is 20/20
 
It would be interesting to know how the left and Hollywood would regard WW3 today if it started in say late 1952 over Stalin pushing hard again on Berlin combined with the Korean War going even hotter and Stalin throwing a dozen divisions into the mix.

I think it would depend on how the war ended up going. If the West turned the USSR and China into atomic wasteland with a bunch of H-bombs, I bet there'd be a lot of guilt. If we won but then "lost the peace" and were soon facing resurgent Eurasian powers in a new Cold War, there would probably be a sense of futility. If the Soviet Bloc won dominance in Eurasia, the US might still be a hyper-50s garrison state with Hollywood on full propaganda blast. If the US won and became the global hegemon by force of arms, there would probably be a triumphalist mood with some isolationist criticism that we had become just another empire.
 

aleasp

Banned
WWII was a situation that has not been duplicated in modern times. By the time of Pearl Harbor, it was very clear who the bad guys were and why we were fighting. The stakes were perceived as being so high that we were willing to form an alliance with the Soviet Union to fight a common enemy, even though it was questionable whether Stalin was any better than Hitler, and despite the fact that they sometimes did not behave very much like allies. We had a clear objective, and when that objective was achieved, the war ended. A decision to stay in Europe and fight the Russians would have met with opposition, regardless of its merits. If a Japanese surrender had not been honored by the garrisons on numerous Pacific islands, who had been cut off and presented little threat, a bloody campaign to eradicate every straggler would have taken years and would likely have received diminished public support.
 
Have Japan do a surprise attack on America attacked and have Hitler declare war on us.1930s politics were further to the left than most people realize today's left would be considered moderates in the 1930s.
As for pacifists,many were willing to fight they knew what Japan did in Nanking and many could see the Nazis were evil, if more evidence was acquired and publicized showing what the Germans were doing to " undesirables" more pacifists would be willing to fight.
 
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