You know, the more I study World War 2 the more I question whether or not the Ailles were just the Axis with a "Good Guy" label slapped on them. What do you think? Should we really consider the Allies good guys? Or were they nothing more than the opposition to the Axis?
Hi there! That’s a really interesting question, one I’ve given some thought to myself while maintaining this blog and reading up on the war. There’s definitely some truth to that old adage: history is written by the victors, and if there’s anything the current political climate around the world has taught us, facts are relative. Additionally, as I’ve tried to share via this blog, the Allies were flawed states themselves, and as time has worn on more and more attention has been given, rightfully, to the oftentimes unjust societies and governments of the Allied nations.
Take the United States, for instance – the U.S. was still a segregated nation at the time, to the point of maintaining segregated units in the Army (like, for instance, the 92nd Infantry Division, of which 2 soldiers were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in 1997, when it was determined that they had previously been denied the award due to their race, and the celebrated Tuskegee Airmen). The racism and ongoing imperialism of the U.S., particularly the ongoing American presence in the Philippines (officially a protectorate of the U.S. at the outbreak of WWII) was often skewered by the Nazis in propaganda and leaflets.
(Of course, there is a certain amount of irony here, as the Germans were equally happy to internally celebrate the resources provided by their own colonies in Africa.)
The internment of Japanese-Americans, too, has long been recognized as a shameful and clearly racist and discriminatory act by the U.S., to the point of reparations paid and Pres. Reagan apologizing on the behalf of the nation through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.
Other Allies had their own issues as well; Great Britain was still a major colonizer at the time of the war, with the racism that inevitably comes with that, and heavily relied on the material wealth of those colonies (particularly India, a fact Japan attempted to exploit through political leaflets) to fund their war effort; the USSR, under the rule of Josef Stalin, imprisoned, exiled, and executed millions of so-called “enemies of the working class,” political enemies of the government, during the Great Purge of the 1930s.
And these are just a few examples (went more into detail with the U.S., since, as an American, it’s what I’m most familiar with). I could wax ad infinitum about the sins of these nations. So there are really no black-and-white answers. And yet…
The fact remains that it was the definitive actions of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler that triggered the war. The invasion of Poland, the annexation of the Sudetenland, these were actions taken directly by the Third Reich, and sparked the war. (The failure of British appeasement notwithstanding.) And it is my view that the horrific actions of Nazi Germany, chiefly the Holocaust, cause it to cede any moral high ground. Any actor that partakes in literal genocide gives up any claim to the title of “the good guy.” Any state that directly causes the horrific death of approx. 11 million innocent civilians, 1.5 million of those children, on the basis of religion, race, sexual orientation, and political belief – and all to serve as a scapegoat so that the nation does not have to confront its actual problems – is morally bankrupt.
The sins of the Allies should be recognized, taught, and discussed, in an objective and critical manner. This is how we learn from our history and progress as a society. But we should be very careful of, in that process, inadvertently engaging in apologetics for the Axis powers, by reducing the Allies to just their “opposition.” By and large, the assorted nations of the Axis engaged in numerous atrocities, through policy and through military action, and are justly condemned by history. The Allies, in fighting the Axis (and thus these atrocities), then, have as much claim to that label of “Good Guy” – inasmuch as any complex state can be called “good.”
There is so much to learn from World War II: chiefly, in my view, what a nation can do when headed by a fascist propelled to power by demagoguery and populism, and the time to learn from it has never been more important than it is now.
