Who won WWII?

[uberfoop]

But that's Germany, not the 'righteous' America.

Let me see if I can follow your argument from start to finish:

Premise A: America has historically claimed to hold to a solid moral code.
Premise B: During WWII, America jailed a large portion of its population due to unreasonable racial suspicions.
Conclusion 1: America "completely tipped" its morals and "changed itself forever" during WWII.

Premise C: Germany murdered millions of civilians in WWII.
Premise D: Germany is not morally "righteous"
Conclusion 2: Therefore, Germany did not tip their own morals by murdering millions of civilians in WWII.



Both of these arguments seem flawed.

In the case of the first one, it assumes that America has ever historically had a reasonable moral righteousness stance. The only thing that perhaps made the Japanese internment a greater violation of our moral values than earlier US offenses against people was that the people being subjugated were our own citizens. There had been earlier atrocious acts on the part of our country which Americans with open eyes had been able to identify as totally morally messed up despite the stupid justifications we gave (ie White Man's Burden), such as the backstabbing of the First Phillipine Republic.


As for the second argument, for it to be taken seriously, you must believe that traditional German morality says that slaughtering millions of civilians for the purpose of benefiting a specific racial group is completely acceptable. If you do NOT believe the above, then it must be admitted that the Germans DID completely tip their morals during WWII.
...Which it seems Germans tend agree with.

 

[tooltiperror]

You may be onto something.

But, maybe not.

Maybe we can't decide what morals Germany had before.

 

[Samael88]

Maybe we can't decide what morals Germany had before.

That is actually pretty easy, they had zero to none morale after the first world war due to their economic system collapse^^ That was one of the main reasons why they went to war a second time you know.
Germany was basically a country with nothing to lose and if I use uberfoop's theory and add that factor then Germany won WW2 at least in the morale factor

 

[HeX.16]

War does not determine who is the winner, only with is left.

 

[Bloodcount]

Everyone who was lucky enough not to live during it is a winner. We should be glad we didn't experience any of the pain and horror it caused millions of people.

 

[punwisp]

Russia, because hitler was stupid enough to cost him the war by betraying them, causing them to go into russia and end up dying, and losing the war not too long after.

So russia, for provoking hitler's stupidity

 

[Vellu]

A historical bump.
I think Finland kind of won. It defended against the Red Army and kept its independence while many other countries didn't.

 

[Jedimindtrixxx]

A historical bump.
I think Finland kind of won. It defended against the Red Army and kept its independence while many other countries didn't.

a bit biased, no?

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i think when people refer to winning a war they refer to if they achieved their objective or not. example vietnam war america tried to stop the north from expanding communism, and the north vietnam objective was to spread down south. the north vietnamese objective was fulfilled while the american objective was not making north vietnam win. what ur saying is like saying north korea won the vietnam war because communism was pushed down south in vietnam by the nva.

im pretty sure when we are talking about who won world war 2 we are refering to who was the biggest factor in making the allies achieve their goal of stopping the axis from achieving theirs. which this in itself is very hard, because there were several parts to WW2. if we look at the germany part than it is probably agreed that the soviets had the largest impact on that part of ww2 but if you look at the japanese part of ww2 then its easy to say that america had the biggest impact with hiroshima and nagasaki.
IMO it would not have been a win without every helping, so i say it wasnt one country who won but rather it was the allied forces who won and the axis who lost.

still though its hard to come to a consensus when everyone is trying to make up their own definition for 'victory'

 

[Slapshot136]

So russia, for provoking hitler's stupidity

sorry to bring this back again, but what exactly did russia do that provoked hitler?

 

[SerraAvenger]

Italy. And also Germany.


EDIT: If you want one on the allies side, then it was obviously Russia - two words: pawn sacrifice.

 

[Jedimindtrixxx]

Italy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ortona

 

[SerraAvenger]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ortona

This just supports my point. German troops bound at Italian territory, without Italy partaking in the battle. Despite of the efforts of Wehrmacht (which in this situation seem formidable), the lack of Italian support creates another key hole in the defense system, which allows for shorter supply routes and a quicker advance.

The role of Germany in their loss would rather be
a) decimating their own troop strength, also killing highly skilled people
b) failing at Fall Blau and starting a winter offensive without proper equipment
c) starting the offensive against Russia far to early
d) starting the war far to early (before finishing preparations) in the fear of loosing their head position in technology and having to replace all their machinery
e) underestimating the US

Italy, on the other hand, lost many troops in short sighted and ill-planned assaults, hence giving it a key role in delaying Wehrmacht advance, allowing them to fail at Fall Blau in the first place; Further binding German troops that could've been used elsewhere and also posing a hole in the defensive system.

Russia sacrificed population and soldiers. If Russia would've been kept out of the war for so long, I could no longer state the outcome. Perhaps we would have one US, one Germany, and one statist Russia+China as global players right now. But gladly that wasn't possible due to Hitlers beliefs. If he hadn't been a Nazi, he might have won WW II.

The problem though is that Hitler abused many attributes that I deem highly positive, which got those attributes a fairly negative connotation (at least here in Germany). Plus he killed (or forced the flight of) many of our key Scientists, Philosophers, Authors, Artists, .... The reason why Germany "sucks" nowadays is not, as many Neo-Nazis claim, that we kinda have open borders, rather than Third Reich policies and WW II, as well as how Germany was treated after WW II by Russia (for ~30 yrs) and France (for ~5 yrs).

Just my 2$.

 

[South-Titan]

Who truly won? He who was not a belligerent. Switzerland. Minimal casualties.

 

[Sevion]

Well, first off we have to know who did made up the Axis power:

Germany, Italy, and Japan. Those were the three main Axis powers.

Next, we need to which constituted the Axis army as a whole the most.

Since we can see from enouwee's first post that, of the Axis powers, Germany suffered the greatest losses. Based on this, we assume* that Germany had the most power in the Axis army. This assumption is supported by the fact that Germany was the unofficial leader of the Axis powers. However, Germany was more of a leader in the western Axis than in the eastern Axis. But that doesn't matter.

Next, we have to decide who killed the most of Germany's men.

Now, don't quote me on this, but I think that Germany lost the most men in their campaign against the Russians. And I think this assumption is supported by a post here that the Russians made up 80% of all of the German kills.

I know this is all based on assumptions, but what more is History but assumption and twisted truth?

Anyhow, I believe Russia did the "most" in terms of kills.

Who came out on top though? America.

 

[Oninuva]

Well, first off we have to know who did made up the Axis power:

Germany, Italy, and Japan. Those were the three main Axis powers.

Next, we need to which constituted the Axis army as a whole the most.

Since we can see from enouwee's first post that, of the Axis powers, Germany suffered the greatest losses. Based on this, we assume* that Germany had the most power in the Axis army. This assumption is supported by the fact that Germany was the unofficial leader of the Axis powers. However, Germany was more of a leader in the western Axis than in the eastern Axis. But that doesn't matter.

Next, we have to decide who killed the most of Germany's men.

Now, don't quote me on this, but I think that Germany lost the most men in their campaign against the Russians. And I think this assumption is supported by a post here that the Russians made up 80% of all of the German kills.

I know this is all based on assumptions, but what more is History but assumption and twisted truth?

Anyhow, I believe Russia did the "most" in terms of kills.

Who came out on top though? America.

Russia suffered a lot more losses than Germany..

 

[Sevion]

And Russia wasn't a part of the Axis powers.

We're looking at who had the largest army in the Axis powers and who caused the most losses.

We all know Russia mainly fought Germany, right?

 

[Accname]

i think germany was the greatest winner indeed.

Before the second world war there was alot of shady things going on in germany, alot of confusion, alot of hatred and trouble.

after the world war the country was purged from alot of its former mistakes and able to start again, it was marked, yes, but it got a second chance.
If you look at germany now it is doing very well, in fact maybe even better then france and britain. (but that is subject to another debate)

I see alot of "there are no winners in a war" statements in this thread and i have to disagree. without conflic there is only little room for developlement. The whole world is build around the idea of decay, old things have to go, be destroyed, and make way for the future. think about it, whenever the "good guys" won a war the situation got slightly better. If you look at the situation at a certain, twisted angle there is no loss at all on the world. people die, but the human race will stay. new people with new ideas will come when the old people and old ideas die out. every destroyed house makes room for a new one. every old sword can become a plough share. the matter around us and within will always stay the same, but the ideas will evolve into something new and possibly better.