So, in WW2, the vast vast vast majority of the fight against “evil” was done by the USSR, because the Third Reich had, as one of its pillars, the destruction of the workers’ movement and the enslavement of the Slavs. The USSR lost far more than any other party to the war because the Third Reich made the war of choice, dehumanized the Slavs, and engaged in genocidal mass murder as a choice. The USSR defeated 80% of the Third Reich’s forces.
Ignores the fact Stalin sided with Hitler and invaded Poland. The Allies also had a substantial supply train back and forth between the UK and Russia to help fight the Germany army there.
On the flip side, the American and British government and business communities were pro-fascist. They funded the rise of the Third Reich, they funded domestic and international eugenics programs, they were deeply invested in apartheid states and women’s oppression. (By way of contrast, the Brits and Americans used women as prostitutes to support the war effort while the USSR had women all over their military as snipers, tank operators, pilots, machine gunners, etc.)
Governments were shits back then across the world. As for the Eugenics, that was how the world worked. You are using the current standards to demonise the past. We know the past was broken, that is why we have change. Eugenics is still a thing today. There will always be those who think they are better than everyone else. As for using women for prostitutes, just read on how the Russians treated the German women. Or more so what is happening in Ukraine right now.
Countries have been funding partisan groups and wars for time immemorial. The enemy of your enemy is my enemy etc. The west is funding Ukraine right now. Ukraine is funding partisan groups in Russia. Russia in turn has mercenaries from all over the world. The Wagner group is active in many areas.
But then what of Japan. Before the USA nuked Japan, the USA and Japan were negotiating terms of surrender.
No they were not. The emperor of Japan refused to surrender, the Allied forces did not see the need to offer good terms. There is a famous scene in the movie Oppenheimer, where Roosevelt gets the news of the successful test of the nuclear bomb at the Potsdam summit. Good terms are at the behest of the position you are in. Japan was not in a good place.
The USA made an active deliberate choice to nuke civilians unnecessarily.
Damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. The counter argument is that it has prevented the use of Nukes since then. Or rather anyone who commits to using one know exactly what they are doing. What is a certainty is that fewer died as a result of the bomb. Not the most palatable end justifies the means, I agree.
Why? Because communism was their real enemy. It was the reason they got involved in the war, it was the driving force behind their strategic decisions. They got involved against communism, they went to Germany against communism, they partitioned Germany against communism. And they nuked Japan as a show of force, or to demonstrate how bat shit they were, to create conditions of fear and restraint.
Japan was nuked in the fight against communism>? Stalin was making imperial demands. The land grab by the Russians was the beginnings of soured relations. Remember Russia was directly responsible for the UK and France entering the war when it invaded Poland.
As for the rest, no one could argue that governments have only just moved away from being shits. It is a recent thing, and not all governments are complying with the change in attitude. Judging the actions of the past by the standards of today is just a “better than thou ism”. It is easy to be pompous and pious in the current environment. Not so much when the whole world is working to different values. I am 100% certain that they will be shits again should the need arise. Looking in the direction of Israel on that one.
We need the whole world to agree to not invade each other. We do not need to justify the actions of today by the misdemeanours of those in the past.