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The USSR did not start WW2.
That might have been the case in the US. The UK did not want the war at all.
That depends how you look at it. Technically the UK and France started it, as they issued the first declaration of war. However, Germany and the USSR signed a treaty that allowed them to divide up Poland, which really triggered the war. To me this is the biggest point of hypocrisy from the allies. They declared war on Germany, but basically turned a blind eye to aggression by the USSR. To me there was no lesser evil. Both of the were the epitome of evil.
In any event, the geopolitics of Asia and the western Pacific rim had as much to to with our entry into the war as anything else. There was a long effort to suppress Japan by preventing it from having access to resources such as oil and steel.
Who was producing steel in Asia other than the Japanese?!?
It is true that Japan lacked many natural resources but Europe and the U.S. gave Japan a free hand in Korea and China in fact Britain saw Japan as a counter balance to Russian expansion. One has to remember that Japan's imperial ambitions in the 19th century not suddenly in the 1930's.
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In some regards there is a parallel between Japan's situation in the 1930's and that of Iran today.
There are absolutely no parallel's, Japan enjoy favorable trade relations with both the U.S. and Europe. In point of fact because of the trade relations between the U.S. and Japan, the annexation of Manchuria was not only overlooked but fully accepted. It was the brutal and inhuman invasion of China, the threat posed by Japan to French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies that resulted in the U.S. imposing an embargo on Imperial Japan.
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As in any war, atrocities were committed. But it was a war that was inevitable, driven by events that spiraled out of control
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Again, I strenuously disagree, this wasn't WWI where things did indeed spiral out of control, WWII was the result of the willful acts of aggression committed by Japan and Nazi Germany for no reason other than naked nationalistic ambition.
Well there is always a grain even in the biggest fiction and WW2 was a big enough story to have quite a few grains, no matter how ultimately inconsequential that those grains might be.
In Europe, the seeds of WWII were sown in the Treaty of Versailles. They were watered with the tears of the German people who suffered terribly under those harsh terms. These seeds germinated, then bloomed into people like Adolf Hitler and his cronies. They were allowed to grow unchecked by the lassitude and complacency of their neighbors.
I am not necessarily sure that this is the case. Frankly, one could claim that without the Great Depression, Hitler and the Nazis would have never come to power and that thus World War II might not have occurred at all. If so, then the Great Depression would appear to have been more of a cause for WWII than the Treaty of Versailles was.
Also, it is worth noting that some/many Germans would have probably been dissatisfied with any peace terms which would not have allowed Germany to retain the gains which it acquired in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
"America certainly deserves credit for its important contribution to the hard-fought victory that was ultimately achieved by the Allies. But the role of corporate America in the war is hardly synthesized by President Roosevelt's claim that the US was the "arsenal of democracy." When Americans landed in Normandy in June 1944 and captured their first German trucks, they discovered that these vehicles were powered by engines produced by American firms such as Ford and General Motors. "
It was a wonderful war indeed, and the longer it lasted, the better — from a corporate point of view. Corporate America neither wanted Hitler to lose this war nor to win it; instead they wanted this war to go on as long as possible"
Yes, it appears to be known that some U.S. companies and/or corporations conducted business with the Nazis in order to make more money for themselves.
The books Nazi Nexus and IBM and the Holocaust, both by Edwin Black, appear to have some/a lot of good and useful research and information on this topic.
That depends how you look at it. Technically the UK and France started it, as they issued the first declaration of war. However, Germany and the USSR signed a treaty that allowed them to divide up Poland, which really triggered the war. To me this is the biggest point of hypocrisy from the allies. They declared war on Germany, but basically turned a blind eye to aggression by the USSR. To me there was no lesser evil. Both of the were the epitome of evil.
Well, to be fair, I don't think that Britain and France would have been able to defeat both Nazi Germany and the U.S.S.R.
Weren't Japan's imperial ambitions (much) more limited before the 1930s, though?
It takes a while for imperial ambitions to reach their zenith and Japan's imperial ambitions had just begun in the latter half of the 19th century with the Meiji restoration which long to become an equal to the European powers in Asia. For most of the pre-war period Japan's belligerence was directed first at Korea and then to China and Russia. By the 1930's Japan had consumed all of Korea, most of Manchuria and a good chuck of China.
That depends how you look at it. Technically the UK and France started it, as they issued the first declaration of war. However, Germany and the USSR signed a treaty that allowed them to divide up Poland, which really triggered the war. To me this is the biggest point of hypocrisy from the allies. They declared war on Germany, but basically turned a blind eye to aggression by the USSR. To me there was no lesser evil. Both of the were the epitome of evil.
Actually it was the Germans who started WW2, by invading Poland in 1939. The British and the French made a defensive guarantee to Poland in hopes this would deter Hitler. Unfortunately Hitler was not a reasonable man but the Allies did deter Mussolini for a time, at least until France was on the ropes in 1940.
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