I am by no means a history buff, I am however intrigued by the American Civil War, WWI and WWII. By talking about these conflicts with friends much more knowledgeable than myself, I have noticed that there is a theme of cheering for the losers or armies widely viewed as "the bad guys"(The Confederacy, The Axis). At the very least, people interested in military history have a predilection for "What If" senarios.
While I understand how much these conflicts have effected the world today:
A:) Are losers in conflicts generally classified as villainous?
B:) Is there an implicit racism in suggesting that "The Nazis could have won if..." or "Longstreet's defensive style could have won if..."?

A;) Yes because the victors write the history books

B:) No

A)yes
B)don't get the second one but because of what they did are morally wrong now they are viewed as villains

I'd like to hear from someone in a country which was on the losing side of WWI. I don't think either side was especially noble in that war. Do they consider their countries to be the villains in that war?

I also think there's something a little villainous in staying neutral during WWII, even though the full extent of what the nazis were doing wasn't known.

How is there possibly racism, implied or otherwise, in going through a hypothetical situation in such a manner?

|> A:) Are losers in conflicts generally classified as villainous?

Generally, yes (for the reason Tacticus gives), but not always. Think about the conflict between the European settlers (or invaders, depending on your point of view) and the American Indians (in Northern America) and the Mayas and Incas in Middle and Southern America.

|> B:) Is there an implicit racism in suggesting that "The Nazis could have won if..." or "Longstreet's defensive style could have won if..."?

Why would there be? Is there implicit racism in noting the Nazis *did* win just about every battle in the first year of the war?
I think you're mixing up a few things:

- There's a rather huge difference between "they could have won" and "I wanted them to win"...
- Discussing the battlefield has little to no relation with discussing Nazi politics (for instance, discussing how they might have repelled D-Day in no way, shape or form means you're advocating concentration camps).
- There's a well-known logic error where people consider something bad, *solely because* the Nazis did something the same way. For instance, in an economic crisis it can be a good idea for the government to invest in major infrastructural works. It is utter bullshit to object to that simply because Hitler did it (to clarify: he built a massive network of highways (Autobahn)), after all, the USA did the same thing at approximately the same time (Hoover Dam for instance).

@X any war fought on foreign soil is inherently not "noble". Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's necessarily the wrong thing to do, but there's nothing "noble" about attacking someone in their homeland. "honor" would be a totally different question however, as sometimes attacking hostile people's in their own land is the honorable or "right" thing to do, even though it almost always leads to civilian casualties, if it's under the guise of saving many more people (ether their lives or from oppression).

Blast... so it's not noble to defend another nation against in invading country? Interesting... I guess WWII was an ignoble cause.

WWII? Noble? I don't think so. Was the cause honorable? Yeah, in my opinion it was.

Noble (the way I see it) is based on morals and fairness. Is it noble to kill non-militant, non-violent citizens of any country, especially of another while in their own country? No, I don't believe so. Stepping in to help a nation defend itself is both noble and honorable. Continuing to attack the aggressor after you've beaten them out of that country, is not noble, and only on rare occasions is it honorable. Again, that doesn't make it wrong entirely.

So in your specific example of WWII, stepping in to help earlier would have been much more Noble and Honorable of America. The American government was asked multiple times to step in and do the right thing by defending peaceful nations, but didn't because of fear of repercussions and too much faith in other countries' military strength. Stepping in to defend and take back countries that had been taken over or attacked by the Axis was indeed a noble cause. Continuing to attack Germany in it's home-land was not noble, although it was honorable, because it had to be done, or they would have rebuilt and continued to commit atrocities. Sometimes we have to do things that aren't noble, moral, or honorable in order to stop wrongs from happening in the future.

@Eagle:
I think Richard was responding to this part:
|> any war fought on foreign soil is inherently not "noble"

An overwhelming majority of the soldiers liberating Europe were fighting on (to them) foreign soil: American, Canadian and English troops everywhere, the few Dutch troops who fled to England and afterwards took part in the liberation where mostly fighting on foreign soil (France, Belgium) and for instance the Polish troops who fought on the Western front were on foreign territory as well.

|> Continuing to attack Germany in it's home-land was not noble

Not all Germans supported the Nazis; if it's okay to liberate France, Belgium and the Netherlands from Third Reich occupation, why then is it not okay to free Germany from Third Reich occupation? Don't forget that many European countries had political parties with Nazi or Nazi-like ideas, Germany was only different in that there the Nazis took full control of the entire country.

Uh to whoever said we it wasnt right about attacknig the axis, thats a lie, they all deserved to die, russiawas simply getting payback for what the germans had done to them, I mean if someone came to america , killed our jews for no reason , raped our citizens and burned our cities so that their people could inhaibt there,m Id imagine if we beat them out, wed want to do the same or close to them. Russians had the same thought.
Two yeah we can call some generations not evil like the germans pre WW1 to the germans during WW2, but lets not excuse the whole generation for that
Finally, this post is going down the same lane my post did, to an off topic discussion about how the germans were wrong.

all the south wanted was to protect its way of life and that is why they seceded. they wanted to protect their rights to own slaves and states rights. They felt very threatened and were willing to fight for what they believed in.

@Mr. Anderson The flaw to the south was slavery, it was the biggest flaw in their cause

Just war theory.

Eagle, I am confused. Are you saying it is inherently wrong to attack civillian centers during war? Unfortunately, there really hasn't been a war in recorded history when population centers weren't attacked in some way. The goal is usually (but not always) to attack military targets such as weapons factories, which are unfortunately generally in cities. The problem, of course, is that collateral damage is unavoidable, even in this age of "smart" bombs and GPS-guided cruise missles. To completely ignore these perfectly valid military targets would just cause many combatants to hide amongst civilians. This is one of the tough things about the current US wars, particularly Iraq. The Iraqi insurgents know the US (the civilians back home, at least) are quite squeamish about hurting civilians, so they blend in as much as possible.

War is not noble, war is not honorable. In my opinion, what is necessary in a war is to hit hard and quick, and bring your own boys home as soon as possible.

Texas... never mind the fact that such military installations (factories etc) are often intentionally locating in non-militant areas as a means of protection. Forces your opponent to fight a PR campaign in order to destroy it.

Add in the fact that those very same valid military targets have innocent civilian employees and there is no way to possibly avoid such collateral damage.

First off I want to say that I'm not trying to be inflammatory or anything, just voicing my opinion on war in general. Second, I'll respond as much as possible in order :P

@RvW - yeah "any war fought on foreign soil is inherently not 'noble'" what I meant was that any war fought on a soil where you are not welcome. 2- I know that many Germans didn't support the government, but all fantasies aside, the majority of them did. This means that in my opinion any war fought against the Nazi's on their own soil is immoral and therefor not noble. The difference with countries such as France is that the majority of the citizens were against their Nazi oppressors and therefore wanted to be liberated.

@M1919 - sry, but I don't agree with you at all. Most of the Nazis were not bad people, and the Axis consisted of multiple other countries. I am an American, and I will tell you straight up that our history books are pure BS. Many of the Axis governments did great things inside their countries, and the thought of anyone wishing another group of people dead because of supporting a government that had in many ways revolutionized their country is abominable. (Spain would be the best example here, although Italy, Japan, and Germany fit somewhat as well (if you discount the Holocaust)).

@Anderson - The south wanted to succeed, they had no right to do so, many of their citizens did not want to until propaganda was flung against the government, and it was handled like what it was; A rebellion that needed to be squashed.

@Richard - that's where you get to the grey area between Civilian, Government Worker, and Militant. There's never a fine line there, and those are some of the cases where it's sometimes inherently necessary to kill civilians in order to stop the production of war-supplies that could then be used to kill other people. "Kill one, Save a thousand" is the general point of such strikes, but often it's in vain.

@M1919...agian - Not entirely true. Regardless of what (especially low level) history books in America will tell you, Slavery wasn't the biggest point of the war, nor even one of the top 3. The biggest issue in question was States rights, followed by taxation.

@Texas - no, I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong. It is however, not noble. I'm trying to distinguish that there is a difference there. Noble is what you would want to do in the best case scenario, but often we have to do things that we don't want, which on this scale often means human casualties, including civilian ones. There's nothing Noble or Honorable about killing innocents, but on occasion it has to be done.

At the risk of this turning into a debate about the causes of the Civil War:

ACTUALLY, the economic factors WERE the cause of the war. The key economic factor being slavery. States rights? The right of the states to keep slaves. In any case, the South was wrong on most fronts (you do not have the right to own another human being, no matter what fancy words you dress it up as.) The only one thing they got right was. . . the right of the States to leave the Union. They had every right to secede, regardless of whether or not they did it to keep free labor, um, "free".

I disagree, I've taken advanced American history classes and studied the matter thoroughly. Go back and look at the records. The first time Slavery was officially noticed as a part of the was at Gettysburg, which was in a side-speech towards the end of the war. I've also read every official letter of succession form each state, and not one of them mentioned slavery.

And why would they mention slavery? Almost every major power by that time had peacefully abandoned the practice. The United States is one of only a few (three I believe) countries to have actually fought a war over it. The South realized that their only hope would be to be recognized as an independent nation by a European power, and then receive political and/or military aid from them.

I too have heavily researched American history (admittedly in order to exonerate Benedict Arnold, but that is another matter), however that is the same as saying "I went to public school." At the core of the matter was in fact the issue of slavery. The matter, I believe, is was slavery DIRECTLY the root of the war? I do not believe so. But the main political differences between the north and the south were those having to deal with Slavery. (Evidenced by the fact that states that had less need for slaves, or parts of states were there were not a large concentration of slave owners sided with the Union. This is not the only example, but it is the most glaring.)

So while the South may not have seceded BECAUSE they wanted to own slaves, they seceded because they owned them and their economy was based heavily on their use. Economic factors such as having a primarily agrarian economy like the South did lend themselves to the idea that those who wished for the secession (Wealthy landowning slave-holders, that is to say) that there was a fear that Abraham Lincoln would take away their right to own human property, which, in their minds, would have devastated their economy and put them in a position of weakness when compared to the lower class. The main distinguishing factor in the south between being respected and being a commoner was the ownership of slaves, because they were a sign of wealth and helped to propagate that wealth.

I am not disagreeing with you that slavery was NOT the cause of the war, but one of several. However, to say that Slavery was not a very important cause for the South is ludicrous, and to deny that slavery motivated much of the early successions by the southern states that were not motivated by what was seen as Union aggression at Fort Sumter.

But we could argue all day about it. That's why history is so fascinating!