Were the Allies the lesser of 2 evils in the 2 World Wars...?

Question

I know about the horrible things that the Japanese and Germans did...
In fact, my country was once occupied by the Japan.

Still, as I began learning more about how the wars went,
I began to wonder about how the Allies fought them.

Japanese-Americans being put into concentration camps..
the nuking of 2 Japanese cities that killed millions..
bombing of German cities....
just to name a few of the things they did.

Maybe it is easy for me to question them NOW.
But I wasn't around back then, and I would have spoken up against these acts.

Innocents must never be targeted, and that is what they did.

If they hadn't done all those things,
there would have been more Allied casualties...
the wars would have gone on much longer...
but then, isn't that the risk that those who fight on the side of good
have to take?

Nobody who kills millions of innocent people
can claim the moral high ground.

Don't take me wrong, though. I AM grateful for what they
did for us...

Your thoughts?

sorry. I mean, my country was once occupied by Japan.

typo.

There is no right or wrong answer here,
just opinions, but please, refrain from using
terms such as 'Japs'.

It's considered racist.

I refer to the answer given by "Johnny Canuck".

Good point. The ones who feed the army and
provide them with weapons are the civilian workers.

However, I disagree that they are legitimate
targets because of it.

Going by your argument,
that would make the targeting of civilians
by terrorists legitimate.

Something to think about

p.s. terrorism is never legitimate

Answer 1

From an historical point of view where hardly any of us now living on the planet actively took part in WW II, yes the allied forces were the lesser of two evils; which however does not justify their atrocities like Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and their passive conduct to the ongoing holocaust (they knew about it since 1942 yet did nothing to prevent it).

PS: not Jewish, just an ongoing non-biased historian

Answer 2

My response to this line of thinking is to say it goes to show that you are used to a world where war means a large industrial power is "correcting" some dinky little third world state. In these circumstances "civilians" are mostly non-participants. Now in the case of World War Two where you had two first world industrial powers going at it, the whole dynamic changes. These wars are fought by professional and equiped armies. They need industrial production to keep them going. So who is it that builds those tanks and fighter planes. Who is that farms and produces the food those armies eat? Who makes the uniforms? In what is called a "total" war such as occurred for all the Axis and Allies, EVERYONE is a participant and therefore a LEGITIMATE target. The intent was not to kill civilians, but at the same time how much concern do you need to have for their lives. They make things to kill you. It's nasty business, but there was very little choice.

Beyond that, you brought up some examples of what can be considered war attrocities by the Allies. I want to question the ones you specificly mentioned in the hope you might develop a greater appeciation of the events.

Dresden: Because of how far east it was, Dresden had become the Nazis' industrial hub toward the end of the war. Although it was not "unreachable" by the long arm of strategic bomber command out of England, it was an extremely difficult target. That meant it had been largely left alone. In the meantime other western cities took the brunt of the bombardment. As the war drew to a close however, the ease in which strategic bombers could go farther into Germany meant more an effort had to be made.What was of greater concern however was the Red Army. They were fast approaching Dresden and with good reason military thinkers began to envision the Nazis crippling the Soviets such as the Soviets had done to the Nazis in the similiar industrial hub of Stalingrad. Obviously this was not going to be acceptable and the decision was made to level the city. That said, there are those that would suggest the bombing was an act of hatred and revenge. I would find that pretty damn hard to believe if you were a tired Soviet infantryman facing the prospect of urban industrial warfare.

The Atomic Bombs: It is estimated "Little Boy" killed 40,000 people in Hiroshima and that "Fat Man" killed 32,000 in Nagasaki. Over the course of the first week of August 1945 however, a much greater effort had been made against Tokyo and the surrounding areas in the hopes it would bring the Japanese people to their knees. Because factories were hard to destroy, a concious decision was made to aim for the wooden houses of the workers. Using the other "innovative" weapon of napalm based incinderary bombs, the USAF burned Tokyo to the ground killing upwards of 150,000 people. Now I don't know about you, but if I had a choice between dying from an atom bomb or a napalm one, I'd take being vapourized by an atom bomb any day of the week and twice on Sunday. (Dying from the fallout however, that's a different matter) The real question though is why do you never hear about Tokyo in modern "pop" history? I'd suggest it really has nothing to do with WWII but much more to do with our modern world where the nuclear deterent was everything.

Anyway, I figure that's lots to think about....

Answer 3

Interesting question. Evil is a generalisation for MADNESS which is prevelant in all war.

I believe Germany and Japan and on the Axis side to be guilty of evil for massacring millions of innocent Jews and thousands of Asians.

The Soviets on the Allied side were also guilty of killing their own gypies, jews and thousands of Germans civilians. Its madness but one in every seven Soveit soldier had already lost a family member by 1945.

The war was started by the Axis and the Allied response was tactical and military. Fire for fire, the dropping of the atomic bombs saved miliions, not only for Allied troops but after the Battle of Okinawa, they know that the Japanese civilians were fatalistic and suicidal any land invasion. It was inevitable, a few hundred thousand lives to save millions more.

Dresden, Hamburg was part of strategic bombing to cripple the German war production giving the Allied the material atvantage on the frontline.

Measuring the Allied 'atrocities', the Axis got more than 6 million Jews and gypsies exterminated, the Japs got countless millions of Chinese killed in China and Asia.

Comparing two scenarios, when the Japanese were advancing towards Manila in 1941, MacArthur vacated to the Bataan Peninsula and declared Manila an open city to spare the civilian population. When the Americans retook Manila in 1945, the Japanese marines summarily executed more than 130k filipinos and destroyed most of the city in the fighting making Manila the most destroyed city in WW2.

Still on the Philippines, when more than 15000 US troops surrendered on Corregidor Island in 1941, of more than 5000 Japanese troops, only 23 were captured aloive when US troops recaptured the island at the ending of the war.

The fight such extreme mentaility, it is one evil to rid another.

I would not rate the Allied for being evil (Soviets excluded and hence you have the Cold War after) but shudder to think of today if the Axis had won the war. No more Jews, no Muslims, one superior Aryan race dominating the West and most of Asia being depleted and plundered. The darkest age of history.

Answer 4

With the exception of Russia, definitely the lesser evil. The atomic bombs killed less people (even if you count subsequent deaths from radiation poisoning) than those by the Germans & Japan. The German "final solution" itself has killed at least 6 million Jews. The rape of Nanking saw close to half a million Chinese massacred & the total number killed by the Japs in China is never known, though it would very likely in terms of millions.

Answer 5

The tragedy of war is that there is no moral high ground; people are forced to make choices which they themselves find repugnant in the interest of bringing the fighting to an end.

There is no question that putting the Japanese Americans in concentration camps was wrong. I have read quite a bit about WWII, and the fact is that there were quite a few people in positions of power who also thought it was wrong. The problem was, as they saw it, a matter of national security. They did what they thought best at the time. Hindsight is 20/20, so we can see now just how wrong they were, but they couldn't see that far ahead back then.

The bombing of German cities was a direct response to the German bombing of England. All of the major cities in England were the target of indiscriminate bombing raids by the Germans, and the Allied bombs were an effort to say very clearly to Hitler, "diplomacy has failed; you bomb us, and we will, in turn, bomb you." One of the things you learn when you read about WWII is that Hitler had a very low opinion of the leaders in other countries in Europe. He strongly believed that everyone else was too weak and too civilized to fight on his terms, and that his bombing raids would not be answered with force. He was, if you will remember, able to annex Austria with no fight, invade Poland with very little resistance, and France with only moderate resistance. He knew that he had to completely occupy England for his master plan to work out. He started by bombing manufacturing centers, and was surprised when the English did not cave in. He progressed to bombing civilian centers in an effort to frighten them into giving in to him. He was quite angry and surprised to find them responding with equal force.

As for the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as you read more in depth, you find that that was a very hard decision for American leaders to make. They had planned the assault on mainland Japan. The estimates for casualties was what caused them to really consider the atomic bombs. The estimates were 500,000 to 1,000,000 Allied casualties, and that's just the men in uniform. American leaders were prepared to pay that price. However, they were very aware that an invasion would mean millions of Japanese civilian casualties on top of the uniformed casualties, and that most, if not all of Japan's medium and large cities would be completely destroyed in the bargain. I have read repeatedly that the Japanese casualties were seriously considered alongside the American casualties. The way they saw it was that they could destroy two cities, and maybe stop the war, or destroy an entire country, and most of its citizens, and end the war that way. They chose to drop the atomic bombs to show Japan just how serious they were about ending the Japanese threat. Luckily, Japan sat up and payed attention.

The sad thing, of course, is that Japan would have surrendered sooner or later anyway. There was division in her leadership, with the diplomats arguing for surrender, and the military leaders arguing for total war down to the last Japanese citizen. Unfortunately, due to their form of government, they had to reach a unanimous agreement, and they were deadlocked. Diplomats had been putting out signs and testing the waters with an eye to surrender since at least the beginning of 1945, but the military men in the cabinet were holding them back. If anything, the bombs broke that deadlock.

I know I sound like an apologist for my government and the decisions that were made during WWII. That is not really the case. I hate that the US had to resort to dropping the atomic bombs to end the war. In all honesty, I would prefer that they had done the land invasion, even if that meant that Japan was reduced to one wooden shack with a white flag above it. But it wasn't my war, and it was not my decision. I am just like everyone else who was not alive then, a Monday morning quarterback, sitting in a cozy chair with a book in one hand, a drink in the other, and a lot of opinions that cannot ever change the facts.

Answer 6

The winners get to write the history books. We did lose the moral high ground considering the firebombing of Dresden, Tokyo and other cities, besides the nuclear detonations,. Once a war is declared, there's no way to humanize or civilize the reasons for war. Warfare is inherently inhumane. Civilians are killed, the Geneva Conventions were violated, etc. \

From my viewpoint, those that try to humanize war will be defeated, that to me is the lesson of Dresden, Nagasaki and Hiroshima....

Answer 7

The allies were not to blame for World War Two. The person who gets the ball rolling can ultimately be blamed. For example, in Canada law states that if a robber attempts to rob a store, and a police officer ACCIDENTALLY shoots the clerk, its the robbers fault. If he hadn't robbed, no one would have been shot.

The atomic bombs were dropped on those two cities because we wanted the war to end. There was no choice. To say we were the lesser of two evils is a trivial statement because had we not bombed them, they would have bombed us.

Would you call David from "David and Goliath" evil? He fought against an evil force and had to kill someone to do it.

If its between someone who is sitting next to me, and someone in Japan who started a war with us, i say, bomb it all.

Its a sad statement about human history that its kill or be killed bu that's they way it has always been and always will be. I'm sure someone out there on the Allied side was devious, and some from the axis were nice, but its kill or be killed.

I don't see us as evil because we survived.

Answer 8

The prison camps for Japanese Americans was wrong.

The bombing of German cities was a direct response to the bombing of English cities. The Germans did it first and the allies responded.

The atomic bombs save millions of lives. A land invasion of Japan would have probably destroyed every large city in Japan. Also this would have prolonged the war. Remember Japan had the fight to the last man mentality. The Atomic bombs changed their minds.

Sure some bad things happened, but that is what happens during wars. The alternative was to allow the Nazi's and Japanese Imperialist to run amok.

Answer 9

A major difference between the Allies (which I'm defining as US and UK--Stalinist Russia was in the same boat as the Axis powers for this purpose) and the Axis is that Germany and Japan were committing atrocities before WWII began, whereas the Allies' atrocities were reactions to attacks and overzealous war-fever.

Answer 10

Yes