history

Learning Objectives

Recall key events, figures, and ideas of WWII and the post-war period in the United States. 

Contextualize, criticize, defend, and debate significant ideas found in historical primary sources of WWII and post-war period in the United States.

Discussion Prompt

Although historians still debate whether America should have entered WWI, there is a consensus that WWII was a defensive war and therefore the “right war to fight.”  Indeed, Americans who fought against international fascism and defended democratic liberalism during WWII have been heralded as the “Greatest Generation.” 

 

For some historians, it is absolutely clear that the U.S. was on the “right side of history” during WWII.  In other words, there are clear distinctions between good and evil during WWII, and the U.S. and its allies were fighting for the betterment of humanity.  Nazi terror across Europe, and the atrocities committed by the Japanese in Asia brought an unprecedented level of human suffering.  The U.S. liberated France, freed Holocaust prisoners, and forced the Japanese from China.  The Americans, in short, were “the good guys.”  For other historians, the differences between good and evil during WWII are not absolute.  The U.S., we are reminded, was allies with the Stalinist regime.  This alliance helped legitimize Stalin’s policies before and after the war, which historians estimate led the deliberate killing of some 10 million Soviets.  And the U.S. was responsible for target-bombing civilian centers, most notably the firebombing of Japan at the end of WWII, which killed an estimated 1 million Japanese civilians, rendered millions homeless, and destroyed practically every major Japanese city.

 

For this discussion address the following question: To what extent is WWII morally ambiguous for the U.S.?   

Put differently, are the moral distinctions between the Allied and Axis powers absolutely clear?  Are you absolutely certain that the Americans were the “good guys” during WWII?

 

Make sure your discussion takes a clear position—make an argument.  Your argument is the answer to the question: is American participation in WWII morally ambiguous?  Then spend the rest of the response proving your answer to the question.