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Comment by philwelch | Hacker News Reader

> There were always political or economic agendas hidden under any wars

Which is why the US was reluctant to get involved in the World Wars. You can't have it both ways.

Interestingly, there have been multiple speculations on US's involvement in WW2:

One is the good democratic fight versus the bad facists. US were hampered by the isolationist views held by quite a number of senators at the time, hence there was no direct involvement until after Pearl Harbour attack, which resulted in an almost uniform senatorial agreement on declaration of war.

Another is that US could have kept maintaining the profit stream from arms-dealing to both sides (Germany still imported American arms prior to 1941 or so, if I'm not mistaken) but got unwillingly dragged into the war.

Yet another more cynical view is that after the huge Axis loss at USSR, US just saw the opportunity to join in and mope up what's left of the Axis since winners get to dictate the terms. The Pearl Harbour event was a surprising but timely excuse.

> Yet another more cynical view is that after the huge Axis loss at USSR

"huge Axis losses" in the USSR didn't start happening until 1943 though. Even the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad wasn't until the end of 1942.

So that view is not merely cynical, it's also simply inaccurate.

I beg to differ. Operation Barbarossa was the one turning point of the USSR invasion. Stalingrad was merely the consequence IMO as Barbarossa had led to German army being both weakened and stretched too far out. They simply could not compare to the Soviet war machine's recover-ability and production.

Of course Pearl Harbour was what got the US directly involved and nuking Japan out in the end, but I hold the speculation that without Pearl Harbour, US would still declare war to either Germany or Japan anyway because of several reasons below: 1) US businesses were being harmed by the Axis, i.e. Germans attacking cargo ships meant to supply arms to Britain. Sooner or later the piled up losses would justify the entry in front of Congress.

2) The Japanese was expanding fast in Asia and they would not stop just short of US territorial waters, plus the imposed embargo had been pissing the Japanese off anyway. A clash was inevitable.

3) Letting USSR being the major player and eventual winner meant letting communism spread throughout Europe. There had to be a sizable participation from the Capitalist group in the war and the rest of the Western bloc was too tattered to muster that up.

In 1941, it probably didn't seem obvious that Russia would prevail. The cynical, hegemonic move for capitalism certainly wouldn't have been to ally with the Soviets, but rather to let both totalitarian regimes fight each other to exhaustion and sweep up the remains of both.

Hypothetically, a win for either Axis or Eastern bloc would spell disaster for capitalism. That practically guarantee that US would join in the fray, one way or another, indirectly or directly. Pearl Harbour helped alot with the decision making, as other members pointed out in this thread and the general consensus on America's participation in WW2.

Right, I'm just saying counterfactually, if you were in charge of a global capitalist conspiracy, you'd sell weapons to both sides until Germany and Russia were both weakened and then conquer both, and then you have global capitalist hegemony.

The fact that that's not how it worked out is pretty good evidence that there wasn't a global capitalist conspiracy behind the whole thing after all.

Well, it was pretty much a big win for America after the war ended, economically with all that arms trade and diplomatically as the affirmed leader figure of Western bloc.

It's easier to say that now that the US won the Cold War as well.

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