I don’t disagree with what you have said (for obvious reasons), but out of curiosity - why did USA fight other fascists in that case? Imperial Japan was likely due to wanting control of Pacific region. What about the Nazis?
I’d imagine this kind of questions arise sooner or later in discussion with USians in regards to their country’s behaviour and state
European fascism was directed at Europeans in the process of attempting to enslave the Slavs. It’s ultimate goal was to destroy the USSR because the ideology that led to the world’s first workers’ state was a threat to the entirety of the European project. Everyone in Western Europe and America was onboard for this.
The first problem came when the Third Reich showed it would apply it’s brutality to white people. This had never been done before and it was a major moral affront to the West. The second problem was when it became evident that, in order to win, the Third Reich would need to consolidate much of the European economies under its control. The US needed that economy in order to sell its goods.
The final problem, however, was that the Third Reich was losing to the USSR. Had the US not intervened when it did, the USSR would have marched all the way across Europe instead of stopping at Berlin. The USA had to intervene to stop the entire continent from becoming part of the workers’ state movement.
Why did it intervene in Japan? Mostly because it gave the US access to the Pacific border of the USSR. Japan occupied Korea at the time, so defeating Japan gave the US legal and physical capability to occupy Korea in their wake, which they needed to do since the USSR had a long history with Korea and indeed arrived to secure it as a socialist society.
There’s also the issue of China. China was beyond valuable to the Western Europeans. So much of White action in the Pacific is related to dominance over China for profit. Japan was fighting in China and the Chinese communists were fighting alongside the Chinese nationalists in a temporary alliance. The West wanted the nationalists to win the civil war in order to secure their dominance over the region. Pushing Japan into a full submissive surrender created room for the West to operate in the region, taking on roles and relationships and positions that used to be in the Japanese sphere of influence.
Just because two people are fascist doesn’t mean they share goals. It just means they share ideologies. Fascists have no ideological framework for cooperating with other fascists. There may be some benefit to that cooperation. But that benefit cannot outweigh the problem of one fascist power eating another power’s lunch.
Japan attacked the US first, and they did that because Japan wanted an empire and the US empire was taking up a bunch of the space in the pacific already
I mean, it’s relevant to why the USA was on the correct side of the conflict - because they were forced to be by Japan who wanted their pacific territories. It was Japan and Germany that declared war on the USA, not the other way around. The USA was on the “good side” by pure happenstance and conflicting imperialist interests, they would have preferred to sit back and be isolationist while the Nazis and the Commies killed each other.
Nah, I don’t think that’s accurate at all. FDR’s entire strategy was to save capitalism. That was also the Nazi’s goals. The problem was that the Soviets were winning, and that for Nazi Germany to win they would take over the European economy and America would have to take junior partner status. If Nazi Germany both didn’t need all of Europe and also could actually beat the Soviets, the US wouldn’t have been involved at all.
Japan had no capability to invade the USA and could not extend its empire to the USA. It attacked Pearl Harbor to get the USA out of the Pacific so it could have China, Korea, SE Asia all to itself. America could have responded to that without doing anything with Korea and without intervening in the Chinese civil war. Instead the US nuked Japan to demonstrate to the Soviets that they would destroy them if they tried to take the rest of Europe, then took Korea over from Japan to stop the Soviets from spreading into the peninsula, and then intervened in the Chinese civil war to protect the nationalist KMT and create the Taiwan situation.
The idea that the US had no horse in the race is contradicted directly by all the available evidence.
Anti-communism was already a major component of what the US and Western Europe were doing before WW2. To ignore it and attempt to artificially divide motivations between WW2 motivations and cold war motivations is to be idealistically ahistorical
the problem is not ignoring anti-communist motivations from 1917, it’s you not understanding that those interests got contradicted and disrupted by ww2.
the US arming, assisting, and requesting the Soviet entry against Japan makes no sense when you’re trying to analyze this through the lense of future Korean war. why the fuck would they do that? why did the US give the Soviets any resources at any point if the goal of them fighting the nazis was entirely because they were losing to the Soviets? if these stated motivations exist, why would these events have taken place?
Because the US was not willing to lose hegemony over Europe nor was it ready to declare its in-theater ally as its enemy. The US would have been pushed out of Europe if they had. They needed to manage the end of the conflict in a way that resulted in containment of the USSR which is exactly what they did and what the result of their actions were.
I don’t disagree with what you have said (for obvious reasons), but out of curiosity - why did USA fight other fascists in that case? Imperial Japan was likely due to wanting control of Pacific region. What about the Nazis?
I’d imagine this kind of questions arise sooner or later in discussion with USians in regards to their country’s behaviour and state
European fascism was directed at Europeans in the process of attempting to enslave the Slavs. It’s ultimate goal was to destroy the USSR because the ideology that led to the world’s first workers’ state was a threat to the entirety of the European project. Everyone in Western Europe and America was onboard for this.
The first problem came when the Third Reich showed it would apply it’s brutality to white people. This had never been done before and it was a major moral affront to the West. The second problem was when it became evident that, in order to win, the Third Reich would need to consolidate much of the European economies under its control. The US needed that economy in order to sell its goods.
The final problem, however, was that the Third Reich was losing to the USSR. Had the US not intervened when it did, the USSR would have marched all the way across Europe instead of stopping at Berlin. The USA had to intervene to stop the entire continent from becoming part of the workers’ state movement.
Why did it intervene in Japan? Mostly because it gave the US access to the Pacific border of the USSR. Japan occupied Korea at the time, so defeating Japan gave the US legal and physical capability to occupy Korea in their wake, which they needed to do since the USSR had a long history with Korea and indeed arrived to secure it as a socialist society.
There’s also the issue of China. China was beyond valuable to the Western Europeans. So much of White action in the Pacific is related to dominance over China for profit. Japan was fighting in China and the Chinese communists were fighting alongside the Chinese nationalists in a temporary alliance. The West wanted the nationalists to win the civil war in order to secure their dominance over the region. Pushing Japan into a full submissive surrender created room for the West to operate in the region, taking on roles and relationships and positions that used to be in the Japanese sphere of influence.
Just because two people are fascist doesn’t mean they share goals. It just means they share ideologies. Fascists have no ideological framework for cooperating with other fascists. There may be some benefit to that cooperation. But that benefit cannot outweigh the problem of one fascist power eating another power’s lunch.
Basically in short: The nazi’s were “too much” for capitalists and actually posed a threat to their capital.
Also, to add American Eugenics and Jim Crow laws heavily influenced their regime. So yeah.
Japan attacked the US first, and they did that because Japan wanted an empire and the US empire was taking up a bunch of the space in the pacific already
Who attacked first is irrelevant.
I mean, it’s relevant to why the USA was on the correct side of the conflict - because they were forced to be by Japan who wanted their pacific territories. It was Japan and Germany that declared war on the USA, not the other way around. The USA was on the “good side” by pure happenstance and conflicting imperialist interests, they would have preferred to sit back and be isolationist while the Nazis and the Commies killed each other.
Nah, I don’t think that’s accurate at all. FDR’s entire strategy was to save capitalism. That was also the Nazi’s goals. The problem was that the Soviets were winning, and that for Nazi Germany to win they would take over the European economy and America would have to take junior partner status. If Nazi Germany both didn’t need all of Europe and also could actually beat the Soviets, the US wouldn’t have been involved at all.
Japan had no capability to invade the USA and could not extend its empire to the USA. It attacked Pearl Harbor to get the USA out of the Pacific so it could have China, Korea, SE Asia all to itself. America could have responded to that without doing anything with Korea and without intervening in the Chinese civil war. Instead the US nuked Japan to demonstrate to the Soviets that they would destroy them if they tried to take the rest of Europe, then took Korea over from Japan to stop the Soviets from spreading into the peninsula, and then intervened in the Chinese civil war to protect the nationalist KMT and create the Taiwan situation.
The idea that the US had no horse in the race is contradicted directly by all the available evidence.
this is the kind of analysis you get when you start from a cold war perspective and work backwards to explain ww2.
Anti-communism was already a major component of what the US and Western Europe were doing before WW2. To ignore it and attempt to artificially divide motivations between WW2 motivations and cold war motivations is to be idealistically ahistorical
the problem is not ignoring anti-communist motivations from 1917, it’s you not understanding that those interests got contradicted and disrupted by ww2.
the US arming, assisting, and requesting the Soviet entry against Japan makes no sense when you’re trying to analyze this through the lense of future Korean war. why the fuck would they do that? why did the US give the Soviets any resources at any point if the goal of them fighting the nazis was entirely because they were losing to the Soviets? if these stated motivations exist, why would these events have taken place?
Because the US was not willing to lose hegemony over Europe nor was it ready to declare its in-theater ally as its enemy. The US would have been pushed out of Europe if they had. They needed to manage the end of the conflict in a way that resulted in containment of the USSR which is exactly what they did and what the result of their actions were.