I need you history buffs to help me out on something.
People keep using America’s involvement in WWII as a good example of doing something that was obviously good that the general public didn’t support. We needed a leader to make it all happen, they say. Therefore, leadership is good.
First, I don’t know that it’s true that a majority of the (informed) American public was against entering WWII. But let’s say it is true because I don’t feel like researching it. It sounds true enough.
The result of America entering the war was certainly good, if you compare it to Hitler conquering the planet and using Americans to make fertilizer. But is that the right comparison?
Suppose America had done nothing but sit back and watched? Oh, and one other thing: continued building atomic bombs. Then, when we had a handful of A-bombs, suppose we just gave them to our allies and pointed them toward Berlin and Tokyo. The war still ends and 500,000 American soldiers don’t need to die.
Non-Americans wouldn’t have fared so well. Presumably many more of them would have died if America sat it out until the final play. And there is the little issue of rebuilding Japan and Germany into democracies; that might have turned out different.
It seems to me that one possible outcome of the U.S. not entering WWII is that Germany and Japan never become economic super powers, and so American dominates the world economy even more than it already does.
I’d have to say that America entering WWII when it did was probably good for the world. But was it good for America, from a purely selfish perspective?
That’s not a rhetorical question posing as an opinion. I just don’t think the answer is obvious either way.