I read a recent Cracked article on WWII and I wanted to see how accurate it was, this being the best place. Is the author correct in their 5 "facts"? How historically contested are these facts?

by [deleted]

The article in question can be found here.

http://www.cracked.com/article_21091_5-bullshit-facts-everyone-believes-about-wwii.html/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fanpage&utm_campaign=new+article&wa_ibsrc=fanpage

I think the first point is wrong in that it limits technology to only transport, disregarding radar and weapons technology. What other errors or refutable statements do you see?

eidetic
the_dog1

The last point seems like it was made to be basically "look how edgy I am." Does that mean the actual points of discussion are inaccurate? Not necessarily. The Stalin regime did indeed kill a whole bunch of people. And World War Two certainly ended with that regime in charge of a lot of Eastern Europe. That doesn't mean though that their conclusion is right.

One of the main arguments is because Stalin killed a whole lot of people, and he won, this makes removing hitler and friends not good. This is starting to run into "genocidal Olympics" territory. Which is, because this person killed more people than that person. The second person isn't to bad. Or the second person is better than the first because they killed less. You see this a lot in comparing dictators and atrocities. An example is, 9/11 only killed 3,000 people so it's not as bad as say, the nuking of Hiroshima. Which from a historical perspective isn't really correct. Where both these atrocities bad? Certainly. But to the same people in the same time period? No. Americans who have loss family members in 9/11 probably view it as the worst of the two events. A Japanese person in the late 1940s who had their family killed by the bomb would certainly see that as the worst event. This same problem the author falls victim too. How can you tell holocaust survivors World War Two wasn't a good war because some Eastern European ended up in a soviet prison because of it? You really can't. The two people lived in different places and probably different times. The holocaust survivor probably views World War Two as good.

The author also pointed out that opinion polls showed some Americans wanted to commit genocide against the Japanese, so the war couldn't be good because of that. This is wrong because it works on the idea of basically hypothetical events. This war can't be good because IF these people had got their way THEN this COULD have happened. Did the US nuke Japan into the Stone Age? No. Was genocide committed against the Japanese? No. So how can you judge something historically on events that never happened? You can't say something was bad because of what might have happened anymore than you can say something was good because of what might have happened.

It comes down to assigning moral labels such as good or bad is an individual choice that we all must make on our own. History can provide us with the facts of the events, but interpretations can't be done without bias. To me World War Two was a good war. No matter how many Americans answered a poll on the streets saying they wanted to wipe out Japan. But I can probably never convince a neo-nazi that the outcome of World War Two was good.

TL;DR: author was wrong to say World War Two wasn't a good war. Because to a lot of people it was. Even if to others it wasn't.