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No one even slightly mainstream questions that America in WW2 was good guy.
If "WW2 revisionism" means the idea that the major combatants, Nazis and Soviet, were just about equally bad (Nazis 100% and Soviets 99,9% evil), it is not universal point of view, but, by now, common one that can be published in mainstream academic press.
The implications are now just starting to percolate into mainstream debate, and the question "Was it right choice for High Elves to join fight between Orcs and Ogres, and if so, on whose side? is now open.
"Nazis and Soviets are roughly equally bad, and the only reason why we were allied with the Soviets is that Hitler was stupid enough to declare war on both of us at the same time" isn't a particularly revisionist take - it was what Churchill thought at the time. "And if Hitler had invaded Hell, I would have made similarly favourable remarks in the House about the Devil."
The Americans didn't get a choice - Germany was already at war with the USSR when their ally attacked Pearl Harbour and they declared war on the US. The British were fully prepared to oppose both (the USSR and Nazi Germany were allies under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact at the time we declared war) but lacked the resources to do so after our French ally collapsed.
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While I would agree that the Soviets, Nazi Germany, even Imperial Japan, were bad guys, I question the goodness of the USA.
The USA was an enabler of the USSR that literally helped build it up under FDR. And an ally. How can the USA be the good guys if the Soviets are bad guys? Surely, if the Soviets are bad, then USA which has been an enablers and under FDR goverment very infested with communists had a genuine agenda of twin world hegemony for USA and USSR, certainly affects their pure good guy credentials. A good book that goes in much better detail with the receipt on these issues that I would never be able to summarize all outrageous things about how pro soviet the USA was, is going to be Stalin's war.
Not to mention, American own warcrimes which weren't negligible and even if one could argue comparatively less, that still stain the good guy picture. But some of them relate to being too complicit and supportive of Soviet ones, like returning a huge amount of people who left USSR during the war back to the USSR to be murdered.
Importantly, before ww2, the Soviet Union was much more mass murderous including towards ethnic groups than the nazis (and while the Nazis were definitely bad guys quite willing to be brutal conquerors, the fog of war propaganda still remains controversial today). In other episodes like the Spanish civil war, you had nazi germany in the side of Franco and USA sympathetic with the communist side to an extend but not intervening directly.
Doubly importantly, the idea that USA are the good guys because of WW2 has been used to justify a lot of immoral and destructive regime change and warmongering. The latest relevance is the fall of Assad regime and now the replacement of Jihadists who have started massacring minorities. While I do think things are more gray, and many millions have died in the supposed good war, where the priority of the USA was definetly not how to avoid the blodoshed (nor does it make sense to pin it mostly on the USA of course, and in fact I consider in Europe Nazi Germany and USSR to be much more blameworthy for death of millions), it is still the case that America comes off better in WW2 than Japan, Nazis, or Soviets.
But you can't forget how WW2 is milked to justify behavior where USA comes off worse and ends up leaving things worse than they started. Like in Syria. Does this affect USA's supposed good guy behavior in WW2? It should affect at least how one sees the narrative of ww2 and to justify bringing up how it has been used in this manner. Although even regarding WW2, very simplistic moral narratives don't understand how American foreign policy is made which is made by more ruthless people and of a more ruthless amoral nature and ends.
Even if one accepts possible scenarios where USA oppose regimes even more ruthless than it, that is just historical happenstance and one should not expect USA to behave as good guys in any given conflict.
Examining American foreign policy on ww2 in defiance of hagiography myths that make USA to be like a good guy in a simplistic fairy tale is a good thing, but I would object in those trying to create opposite hagiographies of say the Nazi regime. Revising the simplistic fanatical propaganda is good, but shouldn't fall to the opposite type of simplistic propaganda. This isn't to say that there isn't an issue that allows for examination to what extend aspects of Nazi Germany's behavior have been war propaganda since war propaganda is a fact of history and this war propaganda is continually promoted, but again, I think we should strive to be accurate and despite the fog of war there is still enough evidence to point Nazi Germany as nasty conquerors.
Obviously reducing the hysteria towards people who dissent from simplistic narratives, especially by people who indulge themselves in propaganda, is necessary to end up with better understanding of historical events. Which people oppose because they want to use simple narratives of the past to make opposition to their present (and more recent past) and future policy misadventures, quite controversial. But there are negative consequences today to such narratives that are used to justify disastrous for the people in the region warmongering and regime change.
I think this is about right. In most things, the option taken by the USA and NATO have been the ones good for themselves. Amazing that China can build concentration camps in their country and depopulate large swathes of Muslim majority and we can’t seem to muster the energy for a strongly worded statement. Of course, they do most of our manufacturing, so economic sanctions are bad for business.
I think the honest truth about war politics like all other political issues is that it’s Machiavellian — the point is to empower yourself and your allies , while perhaps weakening your enemies. The rest, as far as im concerned is propaganda for the democratic masses so they keep voting for the wars you want to fight. Being the good guys helps you to get the masses to support military adventures abroad. Especially when you’re telling them, again, that the regime needing change is doing the bad guy things.
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I agree with the premise about "just about equally bad" but I think it's quite a stretch to draw this conclusion. Communist Russia, even if equally ontologically evil, was a total mess in 1939 & 1941 and simply incapable of effecting as much evil as the equally ontologically-evil Germans. An evil country more or less minding their own evil business is quite a different thing to an evil country successfully marching on the entire civilized world. They don't have commensurable evil effect, regardless of ontology.
If you want to describe Anglo involvement in continental European then "joining the fight between Orcs and Ogres on the side of whoever is losing to prevent the entire thing from being sewn up by any one evil force" is about as good a one line summary of 500 years.
It is completely wrong that the USSR was a benign evil. Actually absence the German army, the Soviets who had already invaded and captured various countries, would end their mobilization and end up conquering Europe. On paper the USSR was actually stronger than Germans when Germany invaded. They were just in the middle of mobilization and not ready yet and the Germans had some advantages in term of military effectiveness which weren't necessarily something that could be quantified by everyone before the war. In terms of hardware and personnel, the USSR had the advantage.
Note, that doesn't mean that USSR was going to imminently attack, it might have taken a few years.
The fact that both the nazi and soviet regime were motivated in part by rational fear of each other which effected their foreign policy agenda, doesn't of course change the fact that both had an imperialist agenda and were quite willing to be brutal conquerors.
Too much credit and sympathy is given to the Soviet Union as an entity, (I will contrast this to sympathy towards civilians targeted by Nazi Germany who do deserve sympathy, but then even German civilians deserve some sympathy for their targeting, and almost everyone forgets that there were also massacres of Germans by the USSR before ww2 started), because it was invaded by Nazi Germany first before they got to invade them after German vs western power war would have weakened both Germany and countries like France. Also, the USSR was conducting massacres of civilians before the nazis started, before the nazi regime existed and after the nazis fell, including targeting various ethnic groups. They even tried to pin the Katyn massacre to the nazis which it self increases the fog of war effect, considering their participation in the post ww2 making of historical narrative about what happened, and it isn't as if the USSR are only regime willing to promote war propaganda.
The way FDR adminstration and media reacted to the coverup of Katyn massacre is especially notable. Such sympathies colored not only the propaganda of the time but understanding that endured today.
https://newcriterion.com/article/katyn-the-long-cover-up/
But like I said we still have enough evidence to make a negative judgement of the Nazi regime that condemns its behavior, even though there are actually room for examination of such narratives and whether aspects have been exaggerated. I still think that it is a given that the position and treatment of various non German ethnic groups would be bad in a nazi Germany victory, and the question being how bad.
The massacres of the USSR matter including of ethnic groups, even though it hasn't been focused by those who popularize history after ww2, because of course they have their agenda of which group suffering to focus upon and elevate.
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The USSR invaded or otherwise annexed through underhanded means Finland, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and parts of Romania (hint, this is part of why Moldova is its own country) at around the exact same time that Germany was conquering Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc.
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My experience has been that normie conservatives basically all hold that Hitler and Stalin were equally or near-equally bad, and that fascism and communism are equally bad.
On the left people will absolutely argue that communism is good, and occasionally you get someone who will argue that Stalin, while very bad, wasn't as bad as Hitler, but that's as far as it seems to go to me. "Who was worse, Hitler or Stalin?" is a question random people debate in bars. The idea that they're both equally bad is so common that it's a Mitchell and Webb sketch.
While I would say that both Stalin and Hitler were very bad, Stalin was less bad. However, he was baddier in a different aspect. Communism as an ideology while trying to safeguard the equality (theoretically), destroys people's aspirations. In long term, it is very bad for people and also bad for progress of humanity.
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Yes, normie cons always held this view, and now normie libs hold it too (even more so due to current events in Eastern Europe).
"left" as online people with hammer and sickle (and often rainbow, trans and Palestine flags), not as anyone remotely close to respectability.
Yes, this is the other mainstream respectable academic view. The 50's are over, you will not any more find Stalin's admirers in the academia and respectable professions(excepting Grover Furr)
Including professed Marxists like Zizek, here is his take on difference between Stalinism and Nazism
(most people would see killer who forces you to bow before him and lick his boots before he kills you as not lesser evil than ordinary killer who just does the deed withou any ceremony, but YMMV)
I think that a lot of young people today are very sympathetic to communist ideas especially in Latin America. I don't understand why, probably due to lack of growth, high unemployment, especially among young people.
For me it is unimaginable because I grew up in the USSR and we all hated it. Yet, a lot of old people are nostalgic towards the Soviet times. They had hard time to adapt to competitive system. I can understand that. Transition had to be done in more thoughtful manner. In Russia it is probably even worse due to widespread corruption and inequality.
We had to study communist ideology, read Marx and other works already at the primary school. It was very boring. I don't understand how people can find them inspiring at all. At the same time other teachers let us know, in short passages, what was wrong about the Soviet system. Biology teacher told about Lysenkoism, others mentioned deportations and so on. I think that we all grew up more like Kolgomorovs, knowing well what to say to authorities to survive, while retaining a different perspective in private. When Gorbachev started his glastnost (openness), the gates opened and the Soviet system could not survive.
I don't believe that this is a case with all communistic countries today. Maybe Cuba is similar but in North Korea people are probably too brainwashed and not sufficiently educated to be willing to reject communism.
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Yeah, that’s the thing I keep seeing, and frankly I agree with, especially since it’s been the dominant moral theme of a replacement for Christian morality. The thing is that for a long time, Hitler was Satan of a new religion in some sense with things like fascism, religious zealotry by Christians (Islam gets a pass here), bigotry, and prudishness as major sins.
And this version of the story has been used countless times to justify our own wars of aggression, or intervention in purely domestic affairs or civil wars. It’s been the cause to force globalization, migration, DEI, LGBTQ, and other social and economic realignments on people. And it’s been used to keep countries in line. For 75 years, if your country was accused of being fascist in some way, at the least you’d be cut off from trade, and at worst bombs would be+heading your way.
Your chance of being bombed was much greater if your country was communist. The US got along much better with the fascists.
Calm down, he was saying people get accused of fascism erroneously, not that fascists are persecuted.
Well, no, he said that mere accusations of fascism would get a country "at least" get cut off from trade and possibly bombed. It's a pretty outlandish statement and @upsidedownmotter's objection is warranted.
Though I think @MaiqTheTrue's overall point is valid and important.
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