Questioning a moral myth

In this blog post I want to argue for an unpopular view. It is that the Second World War was morally wrong. More precisely, it was morally wrong for Britain, the U.S. and others to wage war against Germany and Japan in 1939-1945. My justification for this is, in brief, that it predictably had terrible consequences and that there is nothing that can plausibly be put in the balance to outweigh these consequences and thus support a different judgement.

As this conclusion runs so contrary to what most ‘decent people’ believe, I feel that before entering into the detailed argument for it, I ought to say something to prevent people jumping to certain conclusions. First of all, in case anybody suspects otherwise, I wholeheartedly accept that the regimes being opposed by the Allies in the Second World War were evil. If I had been alive and living in Germany at the time, I would have hated Hitler and been baffled by the level of adulation he received. (Whether I would have had the courage to oppose him is another matter.) Secondly (and relatedly), once it was clear that it was going to be fought anyway, I would have wanted the Allies to win it and would have done whatever my courage and principles allowed me to do in order to increase the chances of an allied victory. Thirdly, I am just as susceptible to the heroism (one might almost say 'romance') associated with the war as anyone. (I like stories and films about Colditz and the Battle of Britain, for example.) Nevertheless I am pretty confident in my conclusion that the war was not a just one. Here is why.

I claim that it was wrong on the part of the Allies to wage this war, because they had good reason to think that the war would risk encouraging the development of weapons threatening the total destruction of humanity and there was no overriding reason to take that risk. This is what I will now try to show.

Let us note first that the war did, as a matter of fact, lead to the development of weapons threatening the total destruction of humanity - these weapons were the successors to the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the war itself. The threat has been with us, with varying degrees of intensity, ever since. It might be objected that the Allies could not have known, when they first declared war, that they or anyone else would end up developing and using nuclear weapons. That is strictly true. But my claim was that they did have good reason to think that there was a risk of this happening. As early as August 1939, long before America entered the war, Albert Einstein signed a letter to President Roosevelt warning him that the Germans might be developing nuclear weapons and Roosevelt took the threat seriously enough to set up the Advisory Committee on Uranium, which started to coordinate research needed for the development of such weapons by the U.S. (See https://www.governmentattic.org/5docs/TheNewWorld1939-1946.pdf , pp. 16-19).

Before proceeding further, I need to clarify the question. I am in effect asking here whether, given my values (which, I presume, are not too different from yours), and given the knowledge available at the time and the situation then prevailing, I would have advised President Roosevelt to proceed with war against Germany and Japan. Note that to justify a negative answer to this question it is not necessary to suppose that Roosevelt had a full understanding of the likely consequences of a nuclear war. (It is not even necessary to suppose that Einstein did.) What matters was whether there was information available at the time, from Einstein or from any other nuclear scientists, from which it could reasonably be inferred that waging a war against the Axis powers would encourage the development of weapons threatening the total destruction of humanity. I believe that this is indeed the case. Einstein did in fact know how powerful these weapons would be. It could reasonably be inferred that they might eventually be manufactured in large numbers, enough to destroy humanity entirely.

Some, while conceding that the war did encourage the development of weapons threatening humanity, might object that this does not mean that it was unjust, for there are other moral factors to consider. In particular, it might be urged, the war provided help to Jews and other victims of the Nazis by effecting the latter's military defeat, ensuring their overthrow within Germany as well as their defeat in the many countries Germany had occupied. Many lives were thereby saved, and much suffering prevented.

However, the argument is not convincing, for two reasons. The first is that since the destruction of humanity would be such a terrible event, perhaps the worst that could be imagined, any significant risk of its happening as a result of taking some measure trumps virtually any reason which might be put forward in favour of the measure. I concede, however, that this argument has an uncomfortable feel to it in the present case. It seems to be saying in effect that it would have been right to let the victims of the Nazis suffer and die for the sake of humanity as a whole. The idea of 'sacrificing' people to the Nazis may seem beyond the pale. It would therefore be good to have another argument to bring to bear here and fortunately there is one. For there was another way in which the victims of Nazism could have been helped, a much better way than fighting an incredibly destructive war. They (or large numbers of them at least) could have been allowed to settle in Britain, America, or other countries where they would for the most part have found themselves accepted. This would have been a much better way, as it would have spared the death and suffering caused by the war (including the death and suffering of some of the Nazis’ victims themselves), not to mention the fact that there was no guarantee that the war would be won by the Allies and if it had not been, Hitler's genocidal treatment of these groups would presumably have continued. Yet in point of fact, relatively few Jewish refugees were allowed to settle in the allied countries. (One particularly callous example of refusal is described here.) It might be objected that the task of absorbing large numbers of refugees is a difficult one. But such difficulties pale into insignificance compared with the horrors of a world war between nations determined to win at almost any cost.

No doubt readers will be able to think of many objections to my view. However, I will stop for now and if you want to express these objections, please do so in the comments!