Just like the fog of night for murderers , the fog of war is a wonderful time for bureaucrats and politicians to do all the bad things they lacked the courage to attempt in peacetime.
WWII can be seen as a continuation of a mid-Victorian battle.
On one side, evangelical Christians promoting social medicine and caring for all creatures and
believing this world is 'not my home' but a hostile place that one can only survive by helping each other.
On the other side, the post-Darwin 'God is Dead' utilitarians who judged all other beings on their (diminished) usefulness to their social superiors in light of human Science's newly proven ability to potentially totally understand and totally control Nature.
Utilitarians has long wanted to judge and reject all life forms 'unworthy of life' but feared to do so in peacetime.
But now the ethos of 'we must win the war, even at the cost of losing our souls' allowed them to roll back recent advances in social medicine in the guise of aiding the war effort.
The war aims of the Allies and the Axis won't inspire anyone of a caring sensibility , which is why most such individuals did their duty with a grim rather than a heartfelt determination.
Mostly it was a war over colonial markets between a number of huge empires : three nations , the German, Russian and Chinese, has traditionally been a contiguous, land-based empire.
America, Japan and the empires of the Atlantic coast of western Europe had been based on overseas colonies. Italy fell somewhere in between.
No empire went to help China when the Japanese empire mistreated the Chinese even worse than all the other nation-empires had.
But the nation-empires resented the loss of potential markets and natural resources and they did think that Japan's abuse of the Chinese could prove counter-productive to all empires in the long run.
But the social values of the elites of all these empire-nations was not that far apart : they were mostly in the utilitarian camp.
As a result, almost no nation went to war against Germany, Italy or Japan's already demonstrated sheer evilness, unless they themselves were directly attacked by them.
The British and French were the sole exceptions but even there it was a near run thing and their initial war efforts were lukewarm and 'phoney' until they were themselves directly attacked.
Given the pox on all Allied ,Neutral and Axis houses, how could a caring person respond to WWII ?
We know how one such caring person, Dr Martin Henry Dawson, did respond : with his campaign of "selfless penicillin for all, particularly in wartime" ...
WWII can be seen as a continuation of a mid-Victorian battle.
On one side, evangelical Christians promoting social medicine and caring for all creatures and
believing this world is 'not my home' but a hostile place that one can only survive by helping each other.
On the other side, the post-Darwin 'God is Dead' utilitarians who judged all other beings on their (diminished) usefulness to their social superiors in light of human Science's newly proven ability to potentially totally understand and totally control Nature.
Utilitarians has long wanted to judge and reject all life forms 'unworthy of life' but feared to do so in peacetime.
But now the ethos of 'we must win the war, even at the cost of losing our souls' allowed them to roll back recent advances in social medicine in the guise of aiding the war effort.
The war aims of the Allies and the Axis won't inspire anyone of a caring sensibility , which is why most such individuals did their duty with a grim rather than a heartfelt determination.
Mostly it was a war over colonial markets between a number of huge empires : three nations , the German, Russian and Chinese, has traditionally been a contiguous, land-based empire.
America, Japan and the empires of the Atlantic coast of western Europe had been based on overseas colonies. Italy fell somewhere in between.
No empire went to help China when the Japanese empire mistreated the Chinese even worse than all the other nation-empires had.
But the nation-empires resented the loss of potential markets and natural resources and they did think that Japan's abuse of the Chinese could prove counter-productive to all empires in the long run.
But the social values of the elites of all these empire-nations was not that far apart : they were mostly in the utilitarian camp.
As a result, almost no nation went to war against Germany, Italy or Japan's already demonstrated sheer evilness, unless they themselves were directly attacked by them.
The British and French were the sole exceptions but even there it was a near run thing and their initial war efforts were lukewarm and 'phoney' until they were themselves directly attacked.
Given the pox on all Allied ,Neutral and Axis houses, how could a caring person respond to WWII ?
We know how one such caring person, Dr Martin Henry Dawson, did respond : with his campaign of "selfless penicillin for all, particularly in wartime" ...
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