75 Years ago...WWII Ended

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Well, give or take some hours and the International Date Line. But the Japanese surrender did occur on the 15th of August for most of the combatants (the surrender documentation was signed on 2 September in Tokyo Bay).

And it has been 75 years since the last Great Power War. 75 years.

Think about that for a minute. Throughout history, kings and khans and emperors and pharaohs conducted warfare pretty much at the drop of a hat (any hat). The only comparable length of time in European history is from 1815-1870, and you had the Crimean War (involving Britain, France and Russia, albeit on a limited scale) during that time. But read history, and war has been fairly common on the European continent.

I mention Europe because I define “Great Power War” as the ability to fight a war on more than one front and in large tracts of area. And until recently, with Japan in WWII and China today, Europe was where most of the "Great Powers’ resided (I place Ottoman Turkey and Russia in Europe, which seem fair given their history).

It hasn’t been peaceful, those 75 years. Korea, Vietnam, Congo, Falklands, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iran-Iraq…and many others. But the real killing power resides in the Great Powers (more now than ever) and they have not engaged each other since the Japanese surrender. Not that they are peaceniks, mind you…but with the advent of Atomic weapons, they have all learned that “the only winning move is not to play”.

So yeah, politics is a cesspool and racial and economic divisions here and elsewhere can cause issues, but when you reflect that WWII killed nearly a million people A MONTH for it’s last several years, maybe a world without Great Powers at war is not totally a bad thing…because I am of the inalterable belief that if Nuclear weapons had never been invented, WWIII (and probably IV) would have already occured on our timeline, to what disastrous ends one can imagine for themselves.

So…75 years without a major war. Shall we try for 100?

2

And nine months later I was born - valiantly leading the boomers into the future.

3

Unfortunately, 71 years seems to be the length of time necessary to forget about the dangers of fascism.

4

Maybe some people are forgetting about the dangers of fascism, but I am afraid the real danger are those who actively support it, because they think they are not on the receiving end and that those who are deserve it because they are truly inferior. They truly like and enjoy it because it hurts the right people. And they are either becoming more numerous or more vocal or both.
But yes, OP, let’s go for 100! I’m with you on that one!

5

So the vast majority of WW II vets are thus well over 90. That particular cadre is diminishing rapidly.

6

Those people should at least keep one of the dangers of fascism in mind: fascist countries lose wars and end up getting taken over by non-fascist countries.

7

I had a dear friend who fought in WWII. My father served in WWII as well. My mother helped the war effort at substantial personal sacrifice. I’m grateful none of them survived to see what’s become of the nation they sacrificed for. Though two of them were conservative, they wouldn’t recognize their own party and would be heartsick over the antics of the President.

I’m sorry. That isn’t what the OP is about. Yes, I’m glad we haven’t had a conflict that’s taken place over large areas of the globe. How much of that is due to fear of nuclear conflict and how much is due to advances in military technology?

8

Any conflict between nations in which someone is killed is a major war for that victim and their family.

9

I’m not sure that’s the lesson.

I’d argue it’s more like big countries win and small countries who’ve mistakenly believed they were big lose. A Fascist government is certainly one more prone to those delusions of size.

What exactly that means for the next 100 years for US vs China is problematic to say the least. There are lots of different warfare-relevant ways to define “big”, “small”, “getting bigger”, and “getting smaller”.

Not to forget Russia. Russia’s down in a conventional sense, but certainly not out in the more unconventional aspects of power projection and power politics.

10

WW II ended 27 years after WW I did. And it’s already been 12 years since thw last WWI vet died…

11

But I feel that fascist regimes, by their nature, are far more subject to delusions than other types of political regimes are. Delusions are inherent to a fascist regime. Fascist regimes are based on a foundation of myths like “Our people are inherently superior to every other people” and “Our leader is perfect and is capable of anything” and “Our superior nature will overcome any physical obstacles”. Beliefs like this are required to establish a fascist regime but they then lead that regime into situations it can’t handle, like wars with stronger powers.

12

I’ll buy that (your whole post).

But at the same time, the e.g. WWII Axis countries were conveniently located next to larger powers they could delusionally attack.

Consider if the USA had gone fascist in 1950 at the height of their power advantage over any other country. (But by no means all of them together). They might well have been unstoppable until they got bored with the game.

Consider also China 50 years from now if they have good fortune and remain nationalistic totalitarian albeit not exactly textbook “Fascist.”

IMO the USA today is at some non-trivial risk of turning into a latter day 1930s Italy; a waning power with delusions not of their former granduer, but of a former hyper-granduer that never existed. They can make life miserable for a hefty chunk of the planet until those rising Chinese put them in their place for good.

In that scenario the best long term hope for the USA is that truly Fascist regimes typically fold in 15-20 years, leaving massive physical & economic wreckage and a chastened disoriented population in their wake. If we are getting started right now it’s therefore unlikely the Chinese will get to truly world-beating stature that quickly; they’re more of a paper tiger than their GDP or their population figures would suggest. So we’ll burn ourselves out rather than be destroyed by a truly seriously superior power. Which affords a better chance to rebuild in our own image from our ashes. More West Germany after WWII than Weimar Germany after WWI.

13

I was in utero when the Japanese surrendered. Middle of the 8th month.

14

My father would have been in Manila, awaiting deployment for the invasion of the Japanese home islands. He was serving on the USS Eldorado, the command ship for the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, so he would certainly have been involved. I may owe my existence to the fact the war ended when it did.

15

I 100% agree with this. I think a lot of times, in our rush to (rightly) condemn the actions of men like Hitler and his cronies as immoral, we forget, to our detriment in the long run, to highlight how utterly stupid they were. Such people have grand ideas, but drive their countries and large swathes of surrounding territory to ruin when they are allowed to hold sway for too long unabated.

A failure to emphasize this, the utter stupidity of the fascists, has, I believe, led some to the dubious conclusion that unrestrained cruelty is a sign of intelligence and a sick sort of “courage” is all that is needed to bring about positive change (in an “I have the intelligence to see through BS social mores and customs and the fortitude to overcome them through sheer force” kind of way), and the only real failing, then, of those 20th century fascists was a failure to amass sufficient power prior to showing their hand. These are the people who are fascinated by the work of Nazi weapons designers and seem almost saddened that Hitler couldn’t just bide his time for a few more years and let his engineers whip up some of that really cool stuff they had on the drawing board.

16

These are often the people who will say the Tiger B was the best tank of the war and this proves the superiority of German military skills. But Germany built five hundred Tiger B’s during the war. The United States built fifty thousand M4 Shermans - and beat the Tigers.