WW2 Preservation of "the old boy's club"?

Having just finished reading Robert Asprey's War In The Shadows, it would appear that WW2 was not fought to protect the world from tyranny but to maintain the status quo of the European colonial system.

How dare the Japanese attempt to create an Asia for Asians, with the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere", when the Europeans got there first and were already stealing the natural resources of their colonies.

Why do they not teach in history lessons that, after the war and the defeat of Japan, the Dutch, the English, and the French returned to their former colonies and had to reclaim them by force of arms because the people of those colonies now knew that the former masters could be beaten and they wanted to be free and independent countries without the yoke of colonialism.

The funny thing is that, in attempting to preserve their status as colonial empires, they lost everything anyway.

 

Well now! I would be the first to agree that little in the world is simple and straight forward but are you suggesting that unchecked conquest, expansion and genocide by Germany and Japan would have been a good thing?

 

Not at all, it's just a matter of the pot calling the kettle black. "British East India", "French Indo-China", "Dutch East Indies"...already conquered by the European nations whose empires were thereby expanded.

Genocide? Upon their return to Indonesia, the Dutch had to undertake a "pacification program" to reclaim their colony from the rightful citizens of the islands. By late 1946(this would be AFTER the evil Japanese were beaten)in areas where Indonesian resistance was most stubborn(read that free people wanted to maintain their freedom) authority was given to Captain "Turk" Westerling to do what was needed to break said resistance. His most effective method was to have his troops round up village populations in the areas of principal resistance and arbitrarily pull men out of the crowd and shoot them, continuing until he was satisfied that the villagers had given sufficient info concerning which members had been active in the resistance movement...that is, those free Indonesians who resisted the Dutch in their attempt to reclaim their colony.

Doesn't much matter if it was a Dutch Captain from the free world or a Japanese Captain from the Rising Sun...people who wanted to maintain their freedom were needlessly killed. Dead is dead!

The same story is told regarding the other democracy loving countries that were our allies in WW2. "That colony was ours and we want it back, regardless of what the people who live there want".

 

As I alluded, little in this world is simple and straight forward. Do not equate death with genocide, they really are quite different entitities. I'm sure many if not most examples are inexcusable, but don't be swayed from the truth by the magnitude of one over the other.

Old world colonialism has some responsiblity for most of the armed conflict the world has seen in the last century+, IMHO. However, to denigrate what WWII was about to the preservation of some sort of "old boy's club" is disingenuous at best and revsionist history at its worst. YMMV

 

To pretend that WW2 was about the preservation of freedom, in light of what is now known, is to keep one's head in the sand.

Giving away half of Europe to the Soviets and the post WW2 conflicts brought about by European countries trying to regain their past glory seems like a funny way to preserve freedom

Alas, History is written by the winners and we would not want to upset that apple-cart.

 

Totally different discussion, but if you want to post that on the appropriate forum, I'm sure it is worthy of discussion. Is is said that politics creates strange bedfellows and I maintain that war creates downright scary ones. What the Allies should have done after the war is indeed an entirely different matter.

Tiresome and untrue aphorism, especially in this day and age of instant information.

 

This is a superficial and inaccurate assessment of the historical record.

Claiming that WW II was solely to benefit the European colonial powers is ignorant and ignores several salient facts. Colonialism in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific was already seriously being challenged by indigent nationalistic movements, notably in the larger countries such as India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Indochina.

The United States had already, in 1935, granted the Philippines autonomous status and was helping the the PI Commonwealth prepare for full independence scheduled for 1946. Such a development could only have hastened the independence of countries like India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Indochina. In fact the US was pressuring Britain and other colonial powers to follow it's lead in Asia and the Pacific.

Casting Japan and it's Greater East Asian Co-Propserity Sphere in the role of liberators ignores the basic fact that Japan was attempting to expand it's empire into a developing power vacume Asia and the Pacific. The GEACPS was nothing but a sham to disguise Japan's neo-colonial scheme to control all of Asia for it's own benefit. To their credit, most Asian nationalists soon saw through this thinly veiled hoax, and either opposed it it, or attempted to use it to their own ends. Had the Japanese prevailed and been able to establish the GEACPS, it most certainly would have ended any hopes of freedom and independence for the majority of the peoples in Asia and the Pacific because the Japanaese would not have hesitated to use the most brutal and viloen methods to physically suppress any independence movements.

In that sense, therfore, the Pacific War at least, was about the preservation of hope for freedom and self-determination.

As for Europe being "given" to the Soviets, that's a common mispeception; noone gave the Soviets anything, they took whatever territory they acquired by brute military force and there was precious little anyone could do about it unless they were willing to plunge Europe into another bloody and very possibly disastrous war.

That old saw about "history being written by the winners" is just a cop-out for when you don't like the facts, or they don't fit the theory you would like to advance. So save it for someone who hasn't bother to study the pertinent period.