Were the biggest wars in the 20th century religious wars?

Question

Was World War I religious and what about World War II?

The Korean War and Vietnam?

The First Gulf War?

When the US nuked Japan was it for the cause of religion?

Answer 1

You should also ask this question in the History category. I'm sure they would love to talk about numerous events leading up to these 20th century wars.

Answer 2

No, they had nothing to do with religion. NO wars ever had its basis in religion. Even the crusades were about land. Leaders just use religion to rally their causes. If religion never existed every single war would have still existed they just would have used a different cause to rally the troops.

Korean and Vietnam war was about containing communism.
World Wars were land grabs in Europe and Japanese imperialism in WW2. They were about power and land.
First Gulf War was a lot about oil and stopping Hussein who was trying to take over a soveireign nation to take their oil and money.


Religions dont start wars. Politicians do for a variety of reasons. The biggest murderous gvt of all time was communists, which rejected religion and tried to stamp it out.

Answer 3

Nope. Misguided political ideology, imposed nationalism and a failed ally system influenced both of these conflicts.

Just goes to show that if you get a large population to believe in any ideology on the basis of fear and nationalism, you can pretty much convince millions of people to kill themselves in armed conflict.

Much of war is about obtaining control over resources and other people.

Religion used to perform the same functions in war and society (Read Queen Elizabeth's speech about the defeat of the Spanish armada), before people were granted more freedom to believe what they wanted and it became harder to rally a society around this one area.

I'm not denying the underlying causes of modern war, but most wars were influenced by ancient religions prior to the 20th century. Some conflicts today (see Middle East) are still rooted in ancient beliefs.

Answer 4

Why are you asking really obvious questions like this.

For carnage, try the US Civil War too. Throw in the French Revolution and the US Revolutionary War. Nobody is making a claim that modern wars are mostly based in religion. Although there are many conflicts based in religion, the primary "religious wars" were fought prior to the Industrial Revolution. Nobody disputes this.

Answer 5

I think it was a mix of things.
In the Catholic world, whenever the Blessed Virgin appeared, she usually was followed by a horrible upheaval

Rwanda 1981-89, Kibeho. Civil war breaks out 1990

There were 4 apparitions before the outbreak of WWI
(all in France) Rue du Bac, La Sallette, Lourdes and Pontmain

in 1937, in Poland to a nun, St Faustina.

Medjugore, (former Yugoslavia)

All wars claim political strife.

Answer 6

I do not believe that they were religious wars. Hitler was against Jews, but could we fault that on religion, or just a major nut job?

Korea, as far as I know, was about land, Vietnam too.

The Gulf War was about land and oil, but it would be stupid to say that when we wouldn't even be over there in the first place if one of our friends: Kuwait, and another who might have a devil: Saudi Arabia, needed us to keep Saddam out of those places.

So there is only religion involved when "Islam" got many idiots involved. Kinda like how it's going now. Islam is full of idiots. I hope the smart one's get out of it!

Answer 7

Winston Churchill---"War is simply theft on a grand scale."

it is often useful for power-hungry people to justify and dignify their territorial and material ambitions by appealing to people's beliefs, but war is domination and theft, often justified by, but not based in, true religious convictions. It doesn't hurt to throw in racial and ethnic bigotry---it is quite fashionable nowadays for non-believers to blame all of the problems of history on religion, but this is really more of a matter of the tail wagging the dog.

Neither WW1 nor WW2 was primarily religion-based. Nor was Korea, Vietnam. The present war on terror is more difficult to pin down, and it is certainly true that history will look back on these present days differently than we look upon them now, but there are religious themes here that are kind of new, and as much as I am NOT a Bush fan, I have great sympathy for the fact that he is sailing in uncharted waters.

Are you back in school, Adie?

edit---The first war to liberate Kuwait is very complicated. I'd be interested to hear yer Dad's take on it---here's mine...

S Hussain did not like the idea that the Kuwait folk were drilling diagonally into their oil fields. S.H. saw himself as a modern-day Nebuchadnezzar, the USA sent mixed signals to SH and it was on. Kuwait, (sp?) had been a reliable USA ally for many years, and housed many sensitive listening posts. And the Saudis, well, we need the hell out of them, and they were not happy with the situation.

Bush Sr.'s decision to stop short of Baghdad and end the operation "Desert Storm" was wise. there are three things you can do---kill him, let him be, or castrate him. Bush Sr did the third thing, and 2/3 of Iraq was a no-fly zone when Bush Jr invaded.

To Bush Jr's credit, SH was trying to play fiddle-*** games with weapons inspectors to make us think that he had weapons of mass destruction. This did not, ultimately, work out well for him. Or us.

must go to work

Answer 8

Virtually none of the wars in the 20th century are religious.

Answer 9

This is better posted in the history area, but many political conflicts integrated/leveraged religion in little-known ways. The Catholic Church, for example, struck a deal with Nazi Germany to maintain moral control in that country (and German soldiers had statements that God was on their side engraved in their belt buckles). Mussolini came to a similar agreement with the Vatican. It may not have been religion that launched conflicts, but they were shrewdly political in negotiations with very unsavory leaders in order to retain power...apparently, that was their highest goal.

EDIT: Japan got nuked in retaliation for Pearl Harbor. Self-defense is rarely justified by religion, rather...it's justified by the fact that it's self-defense.

Answer 10

US plays the leading role in all the Wars and without USA
there is no war. WAR = USA. They are the first to poke their noses in other peoples' affairs. They love to fight Terrorists and love to play the war games.