[pdonis]

> one side intends to conquer a continent or the world, invades without provocation, and won't stop until brought to submission through extreme force? The Allies did not initiate war and did not want war.

"The Allies" included the Soviet Union, which did initiate war--against Finland, against Poland, against Japan (this in the 1930s, before historians say WW II started)--and wanted even more war, hoping that all of the capitalist countries would destroy each other and leave the USSR to take over. And as others have pointed out, the USSR ended up in control of Eastern Europe, which was supposed to be liberated from tyranny--that was the original reason for Britain and France declaring war on Germany when Poland was invaded--so WW II actually failed at its primary objective. Even if you make the argument that Allied firebombing raids were a justified war measure, that argument only works if the war succeeds at its objective. If it fails, that argument falls to the ground.

[lupusreal]

Is that meant to be an oblique reference to the meme that America "initiated war" with Japan by choosing not to literally fuel Japans imperial ambitions? This reddit take is the most moronic of them all (and if this is what you're talking about, you got the decade wrong.) Japan was not entitled to foreign oil, nor the foreign land they intended to take by force using that oil, and America choosing not to give it to them was not a declaration of war. The war between Japan and half the world was started by Japan's own ambition.

If you wanted to make the case that America started it you would have to go back to the 1850s when America rudely introduced them to modern gunboat diplomacy. But for that argument you would need to read a damn book instead of parroting any fool opinion you learned on Reddit.

[pdonis]

> Is that meant to be an oblique reference

No. I meant exactly what I said. I didn't say anything about Japan except that the USSR attacked them--more precisely, they attacked the Japanese troops in Manchuria. Not just in 1945--in the late 1930s.

[lupusreal]

Okay, so the Soviets attacked the Japanese after the Japanese started their invasion of China, and that is meant to somehow reflect poorly on America? Get a fucking grip, stop huffing weeb fumes.

[adrian_b]

Well said.

It is indeed very weird to claim that UK and France have won in WWII, when they had initially declared war in order to fulfil they alliance obligations toward Poland and Czechoslovakia, but the result of WWII was that both Poland and Czechoslovakia have lost large parts of their territories (like also others of the former allies of UK and France that happened to be neighbors of the Soviet Union).

UK did not won anything in WWII. They have just preserved their integrity like someone whose home was under attack by a gang of robbers and murderers, but they got rid of the attackers by paying another gang of robbers and murderers to do most of the work, and the payment was done not with their own money, but with money stolen from other assault victims (i.e. by giving to Stalin the Eastern Europe, which was not the property of Churchill, for him to have any right to give).

Poland was much luckier than all the other neighbors of the Soviet Union, because much of its territorial loss has been compensated with territories taken from Germany. Therefore, when one compares pre-WWII with post-WWII Europe maps, at the first glance Poland does not seem to have changed much in size. However, after a more thorough look, it becomes obvious that Poland has moved on the map from east to west.