[bluejekyll]

Reading Howard Zinn made me question for the first time how moral we (the allies) were during that war: https://www.howardzinn.org/a-veteran-against-war/

I still believe it was worth fighting, but I agree that we shouldn’t delude ourselves into believing that we didn’t have other motivations.

[andrewla]

Yes -- the framing of WWII as a war of "good against evil" and "fascism must be fought at all costs" is entirely retrospective. Roosevelt and Wilkie were stepping over each other trying to argue who was the most anti-interventionist.

It was only the bombing of Pearl Harbor that gave Roosevelt the political power to openly support intervention in the European theater, which before he could only passively push for. If he had announced his intention to get boots on the ground before the 1940 election, we would have had a different president in 1941.