Bottomline is that every view of any historical event is always one viewpoint or another. The idea of an “objective view” of history is appealing, but I don’t think it’s possible.
As one example, when Europeans pushed west in North America and removed Indians, were we bringing civilization to a savage stone age people? Or were we stealing land from people who have lived here for centuries? Or were we behaving like every nation ever has and taking what we could manage to get away with? I see all of that boiling down to three separate viewpoints: 1) Indians were primitives and no one cares about them 2) White people are brutal colonizers who steal things 3) People always do bad things to other people.
Back to WWII — Hitler was bad, Stalin was bad, the Versailles Treaty was bad, a lot of stuff went wrong for a lot of people.
I believe that another point overlooked or not considered at all is that early Americans were often more European. English, German, French, Spanish…..both politically and culturally. A true American culture was still evolving.
“Back to WWII — Hitler was bad, Stalin was bad, the Versailles Treaty was bad, a lot of stuff went wrong for a lot of people.”
As were the WESTERN Industrialists who propped up Hitler to fight the Communist Soviets, as they didn’t want to get their hands dirty having to do the actual fighting. Not much different than today’s Neocons with their Proxy Wars.
One thing though...often these type of ‘cute schemes’ don’t go exactly as desired, as WW2 showed, and more recent wars are showing.
I’m British, should I still be pissed at the Normans, the Danes and the Romans?