Pacifists Caused World WWII
Leftists, pacifists, and anti-war demonstrators think they are doing the world good by keeping their country from engaging in war. In actual fact, American pacifists in the 1930s made possible the appeasement of Hitler which led to World War II. Let me explain.
After World War I, many Americans came to view our intervention in that war and the subsequent peace settlements as a tragic mistake. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on the other hand, had read Mein Kampf and realized that Hitler was a madman and was a threat not only to Europe but to America as well (1). Unfortunately, because of the neutrality acts Roosevelt was prevented from directly helping any country fight against Hitler.
Worse, when Roosevelt tried to persuade Britain to take a strong stand against Hitler, they were persuaded to do otherwise because they realized that because of the pacifists no help would come from America: From the book No More Killing Fields by David A. Hamburg:
[Chamberlain:]... the Americans were not a useful counterweight to Germany: "It is always best and safest to count on nothing from the Americans but words.. (2)..
Fearing Britain would have to face Germany without America, Chamberlain took the path of appeasement, which only encouraged Hitler to go further.
Because of their fear of war, because of their cowardice, American pacifists encouraged war where a more aggressive stance might have stopped Hitler altogether. Tens of millions dead; this is what pacifism wrought.
This article available in Danish here.
ENDNOTES
(1):
SageHistory, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Quarantine the Aggressors
By October, 1937, President Roosevelt understood that the world was in danger, but he found himself facing a dilemma: On the one hand, German and Italian aggression were threatening world peace, and it was no longer a question of which side the United States might eventually support. President Woodrow Wilson had faced that issue when World War I broke out in 1914; the German practice of unrestricted submarine warfare had decided the issue for Wilson as to which side the United States would support. But Hitler's belligerence, his rejection of the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles, his rearming of Germany, and his militant rhetoric, along with the participation of Italy and Germany and the Spanish civil war and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, made it clear that if there was to be an enemy, it would be a fascist states of Germany and Italy.
On the other hand, the spirit of isolationism was strong in the United States. The United States military establishment was pitifully small, and the neutrality acts which Congress had recently passed limited America's ability to support nations with whom President Roosevelt was sympathetic. He wanted to assist nations that were victims of aggression, but he also needed to keep the neutralist, antiwar contingent at arm's length. This quarantine speech was a step in the direction of taking a position that made it clear on which side the United States stood but at the same time was not warlike enough to arouse Roosevelt's political opponents.
(2):
No more killing fields: preventing deadly conflict By David A. Hamburg, Page 37
