Ayn Rand on World War II

[woschei]

Roderick T. Long writes on mises.org: "It's worth remembering that Rand herself opposed U.S. involvement in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam." I know Miss Rands stand on the war in Vietnam but is Mr. Long really right about Ayn Rands opposition to any American involvement in World War II?

[BurgessLau]

Roderick T. Long writes on mises.org: "It's worth remembering that Rand herself opposed U.S. involvement in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam."

What evidence did Mr. Long provide?

Did he explain why Ayn Rand was opposed to U. S. involvement in the war against the communists in Vietnam?

The Ayn Rand Lexicon, in the article on "War," offers three pages of excerpts from Ayn Rand's writings about her thoughts on war. All the excerpts come from Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

What other resources are available for the study of Ayn Rand's views on the particular wars of her time and on war in general?

[redfarmer]

Roderick T. Long writes on mises.org: "It's worth remembering that Rand herself opposed U.S. involvement in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam." I know Miss Rands stand on the war in Vietnam but is Mr. Long really right about Ayn Rands opposition to any American involvement in World War II?

The only war I know of that Ayn Rand directly opposed was the Vietnam War. In fact, she wrote an entire essay on it ("The Lessons of Vietnam" in The Voice of Reason). In the same essay, she hints at the fact that she may not have fully approved of World War I or the Korean War but she never outright says she disapproved of them.

I've never seen a quote that even suggested she may have disagreed with World War II. I've heard this claim made several times but have never seen a quote used to back it up. If you could provide what Mr. Long uses as evidence, I would be very interested.

[woschei]

There is no quote at all, only the sentence that I cited.

[blueskyboris]

Reasoning from Rand's basic political philosophy leads to the conclusion that she opposed WWI on the grounds it was created by right-wing collectivist ideals of patriotism and chivalry, which are clearly anti-individualist, because society expects young individuals to fight or be disgraced as cowardly and base. In short, there was no rational egoist reason for an individual to choose to go to war in WWI, as it was percipitated by collectivist ideals of sacrifice and the fact that it was a European War.

WWII, however, was a world war. The Nazis clearly threatened life in America, because new technological advances allowed for their expansion beyond Europe with ease. An American individual was faced with the prospect, while London was being bombed, of fighting the Nazis in Europe now or in New York a few years later. So bascially, rational self-interest was clearly threatened, because the Nazis were clearly tribal-nationalists out to conquer.

As with WWI, the basic premises that underlie Objectivist philsophy speak opposition to Vietnam. Vietnam's backwardness clearly did not threaten the USA, which was strike one; Vietnam was clearly not threatening America militarily, which was strike two; and forced conscription of an unwilling populace was strike three.

[Alon]

Not only were the Axis powers a threat to the U.S. but it was the Axis that declared war on America - first the bombing of Pearl Harbour and shortly afterwards Germany's declaration of war.

Unless Rand was a pure pacifist, and we know she was not, she could not have opposed a war in which America was attacked.

[The Owl]

I know Miss Rands stand on the war in Vietnam but is Mr. Long really right about Ayn Rands opposition to any American involvement in World War II?

Unless I'm missing something, Mr. Long either knows something I do not, or at least is able to parse the word "certainly" in ways with which I am unfamiliar. From the 1964 Playboy Interview:

http://ellensplace.net/ar_pboy.html

PLAYBOY: What about force in foreign policy? You have said that any free nation had the right to invade Nazi Germany during World War II . . .

RAND: Certainly.

PLAYBOY: . . . And that any free nation today has the moral right -- though not the duty -- to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba, or any other "slave pen." Correct?

RAND: Correct. A dictatorship -- a country that violates the rights of its own citizens -- is an outlaw and can claim no rights.

[blueskyboris]

Not only were the Axis powers a threat to the U.S. but it was the Axis that declared war on America - first the bombing of Pearl Harbour and shortly afterwards Germany's declaration of war.

That was the last straw politically for many individuals, yes, but the movement for war was gaining political momentum well before Pearl Harbour.

[AwakeAndFree]

Ayn Rand was not opposed to WW2, but she did oppose the cooperation with Soviet Russia against Germany. She seems to have thought that the United States should, to the degree possible, let the two thugs Hitler and Stalin fight each other.

You can find a mention of this in her HUAC testimony.

[the tortured one]

Ayn Rand was not opposed to WW2, but she did oppose the cooperation with Soviet Russia against Germany. She seems to have thought that the United States should, to the degree possible, let the two thugs Hitler and Stalin fight each other.

You can find a mention of this in her HUAC testimony.

that at a glance sounds like a solid plan, but I think Russia would have come out on top, and would have steamrollered right over Germany and into France, and would have turned the entire European continent red. When you look at the numbers that Hitler and Stalin threw at each other compared to the numbers the other allies threw at them, the difference was staggering. Hitler and Stalin literally had thrown hundreds of divisions at each other. As impressive as D-day was, Hitler thought it was a diversionary force from the real invasion.

And from there? probably another round of appealsment until Russia does something to piss even the liberals off, like invade England or something. And that fight would have been a whole hell of a lot harder for us than WWII ever would have been.

[scottkursk]

And from there? probably another round of appealsment until Russia does something to piss even the liberals off, like invade England or something. And that fight would have been a whole hell of a lot harder for us than WWII ever would have been.

I don't think that there was anything that the Soviet Union could have done to make the left in the United States angry. Considering they slaughtered or starved more of their own people than Hitler did, and they didn't even blink an eye, nothing would have angered them.

Siberia and the internment camps elicited no reaction. Their involvement in Africa did nothing. The mass murder of the people of Prague who made the unholy mistake of saying "wouldn't it be nice to vote or have a right to speak" didn't make a blip on the radar. Nor did the mass murders and rampant disregard for rights that occured in China, Cambodia, etc. When I went to college, the left complained about Aparthied but the left didn't give a flip about slavery in Sudan, oppresion in Nicaragua, or in the Soviet block.

They still don't and probably never will.

[DavidV]

Roderick T. Long writes on mises.org: "It's worth remembering that Rand herself opposed U.S. involvement in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam." I know Miss Rands stand on the war in Vietnam but is Mr. Long really right about Ayn Rands opposition to any American involvement in World War II?

I don’t remember where, but I remember reading it as well.

I think that U.S. involvement in WWII was a mistake because Soviet Russia was a bigger threat to the US than Hitler. Neither Hitler nor Japan wanted a war, but FDR made policy decisions that led to it. The best result might have been to allow China, Russia, Germany, and Japan destroy themselves and each other. It is only American support that kept the Soviet regime afloat for so long.

[Free Capitalist]

Better Soviet than Nazi.

[Tom Rexton]

I don’t remember where, but I remember reading it as well.

I think that U.S. involvement in WWII was a mistake because Soviet Russia was a bigger threat to the US than Hitler.  Neither Hitler nor Japan wanted a war, but FDR made policy decisions that led to it.  The best result might have been to allow China, Russia, Germany, and Japan destroy themselves and each other.  It is only American support that kept the Soviet regime afloat for so long.

Actually, if you read William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (particularly Chapter 25 "The Turn of the United States" pp. 871), you'll see several primary documentary evidence (taken from correspondence between Hitler and his officers) that Hitler did intend to eventually go to war with the United States--but only after all of Europe and Russia had been conquered.

[DavidV]

Better Soviet than Nazi.

If you think totalitarianism as a disease, then Nazism is the Ebola, and Communism is the black plague. Ebola is more deadly, but it is also too deadly, and thus rapidly exhausts itself. Communism, like the black plague, takes longer to burn and thus causes more damage in the long run. Historically, the Nazi ideology required it to take self-destructive military movies, (invade Russia) and even sacrifice military objectives (redirect military trains to kill more Jews). The Communist ideology on the other hand, takes a longer term determinist perspective, and is thus able to survive longer before it exhausts itself.

Edited February 7, 2005 by GreedyCapitalist

[AwakeAndFree]

If you think totalitarianism as a disease, then Nazism is the Ebola, and Communism is the black plague.  Ebola is more deadly, but it is also too deadly, and thus rapidly exhausts itself.  Communism, like the black plague, takes longer to burn and thus causes more damage in the long run.

David, this is a beautifully made argument. I agree with it 100%.

[scottkursk]

I don’t remember where, but I remember reading it as well.

I think that U.S. involvement in WWII was a mistake because Soviet Russia was a bigger threat to the US than Hitler.  Neither Hitler nor Japan wanted a war, but FDR made policy decisions that led to it.  The best result might have been to allow China, Russia, Germany, and Japan destroy themselves and each other.  It is only American support that kept the Soviet regime afloat for so long.

Obviously, the Japanese deserved what they got. They did attack us and therefore quite reasonably deserved to be nuked out of existance. The NDSAP run Germans however did kill less people than the Soviets did. The gulags ran more people through them than the killing farms the NDSAP did. Eventually, when you add in the dead from Cambodia, Nicaragua, Granada, Rhodesia, etc, the Soviets were vastly more evil than the NDSAP.

I'm not defending the support of the Nazi regime. Quite the contrary. The point is that Nazi's and Communists are two sides of the same coin. It was just that the Soviets killed much much more people that the Nazt's did. I'd have to say they were far more a greater evil.

[tommyedison]

And from there? probably another round of appealsment until Russia does something to piss even the liberals off, like invade England or something. And that fight would have been a whole hell of a lot harder for us than WWII ever would have been.

Two words: Atom Bomb

before '49 atleast.

Anyway, none of this would have been necessary if Patton had been allowed to have his way. He would have finished the Soviets then and there.

[Montesquieu]

that at a glance sounds like a solid  plan, but I think Russia would have come out on top, and would have steamrollered right over Germany and into France, and would have turned the entire European continent red. When you look at the numbers that Hitler and Stalin threw at each other compared to the numbers the other allies threw at them, the difference was staggering.  Hitler and Stalin literally had thrown hundreds of divisions at each other. As impressive as D-day was, Hitler thought it was a diversionary force from the real invasion.

And from there? probably another round of appealsment until Russia does something to piss even the liberals off, like invade England or something. And that fight would have been a whole hell of a lot harder for us than WWII ever would have been.

You forget that any advantages or abilities the Soviets had were derived entirely from U.S. support, from food and raw materials to their tank designs, etc. Without this great infusion of industrial capital, food, technology, military equipment, engineers, advisors, etc. the Soviet Union would have crumbled under the Nazi onslaught which, in turn would have been so overextended as to be untenable. The only reason Russians fought were, 1) the Nazis were brutally ruthless when they "liberated" Soviet territory, 2) they had guns to their backs from the Soviet regime, 3) the propaganda message shifted from save communism to save Russia. It wasn't just the fact that the liberals in the US were appeasing the Soviets, they, in utter supremacy in the government, were actively aiding them with the immense resources at the governments disposal.

To the other suggestion that we somehow provoked the Japanese, this is a gross misunderstanding. The Roosevelt administration only pursued actions against the Japanese, like the oil embargo, after the Japanese invaded Indochina, or committed other atrocities in China, notably their entirely malicious invasion of Manchuria and subsequent takeover of the Chinese coastal plane (the rape of Nanking occured during this phase). China had been an ally of ours since the Republic of Sun Yatsen. I find the assertion that we somehow did anything to justify the Japanese attack, made by anyone on this forum, or by Dr. Peikoff in his West Point appearance, to be misinformed in the extreme. The Japanese had, since their push for modernization under Meiji and subsequently, borrowed heavily from German forms and imported a great number of German advisors from the government of Chancellor Bismarck. The Japanese had already built up a decade long track record of aggression and brutality before they attacked Pearl Harbor, and they did so solely because they thought they were entitled to natural resources because they had enough force to aggressively steal them from their neighbors as opposed to freely trading for them.

WW1, our involvement in it anyway, was driven entirely by a selfless call to arms to secure "democracy" in the world and help other countries express their "self-determination" which sounds amazingly familiar these days. The one legitimate reason for us to get involved, the German foreign minister, Zimmerman, attempting to get the Mexican government to attack the United States, was thrown in the war message of Wilson as an afterthought.

The only reason I can think of for WW2 being a mistake is that it made the Soviet Union more powerful than it ever could have been without our immense disbursements of essentially free (to them) supplies and industrial capital. Had we fought the war either on our own, or with just Britain, we could have easily defeated Germany, Italy, the USSR, and Japan, because we could have used all that material for ourselves and Britain as opposed to throwing it away on the Russians and imposing idiotic restrictions on people at home.

[the tortured one]

right on the mark, Montesquieu. I am aware of the fact that the Soviet union, and even England to an extent, were held afloat by the awesome power of the united states. But given Nazi aggression and the leftist's love for all things communism, I do not think that the United States would have withdrawn support of the soviets, even if our intention was to let the two beasts tear each other apart. There were too many leftists in America.

as for WWI, the U.S's role in the allied victory was undeniable. France was being held afloat by England, who by the time the U.S got involved, had two weeks worth of credit left. I think if we had not gotten involved, a stalemate would have ensured, and a treaty which would have been more amicable towards both sides would have occured, which would have prevented Hitler's rise to power. The reason for his meteoric rise to power was due, in large part, to the terribly shoddy post-war dealings with Germany which left them crippled and in want of a strong leader.

Edited February 7, 2005 by the tortured one

[Sparrow]

A common argument in favor of US involvement in WWII is the liberation of the Nazi Death Camps. If the Nazi regime was left alone to exhaust itself (as pointed above) it means that all those targeted for extermination by the Nazis would have been exterminated, leaving the Nazis with the need to produce new "enemies of the Reich" or "enemies of the Arian Race" since a dictatorship cannot function without such enemies.

Granted that saving the victims of a dictatorship is not a valid argument for going to war because their extermination does not pose a threat, there is a different angle to this issue: Suppose that private American citizens had rational selfish interests to prevent the extermination of inmates who were relatives or admired scholars and artists. (The Jewish population of Europe included a large amount of renowned achievers whose extermination was a loss to the West.) These private American citizens could argue that they had the right to buy several bombers, hire trained pilots, and fly to Europe to bomb the Death Camps. This is actually a Libertarian argument, and the argument against them would be that the government has a monopoly on the use of force. As long as the US had not entered the war, the only venue open for those private citizens would be to join the European anti-Nazi underground.

Still, I would like to quote Rand in "The Roots of War" to show her position about the victims of the Holocaust (as well as the Soviet Gulags).

"If a man is led to a Nazi Gas chamber, or a Soviet firing squad, with no voices raised to defend him, would he feel any love or concern for the survival of mankind? Or would he be more justified in feeling that a cannibalistic mankind, which tolerates dictatorships, does not deserve to survive?" (Capitalism: The Unkonwn Ideal, 42-43)

Rand does not specify how voices raised to defend these victims could have saved them, but she does say that there is a moral obligation to prevent their extermination, and that these victims had a right to expect some action in their defense.

-- Michelle Fram Cohen

[Free Capitalist]

I don't know what proof any of you guys have that Nazis would "exhaust themselves" into extinction, if they only were left to their own devices. Native Nazi industry alone was strong to invade Europe, but not strong enough for a World War; I just saw on History Channel recently how many, if not most, of their tanks were manufactured by the Czchecs (sp?).

Yes the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in a preemptive strike, but Moscow was not their ultimate goal; a separate and equally strong strike force was sent South, to conquer Ukraine. And what's in Ukraine? Enormous oil resources. If we let Hitler do his own thing, we would have a Nazi Eurasia, with all of its resources, against all of North America, with all of its resources - which is like comparing David and Goliath; we wouldn't have a chance. If not for American intervention, Britain would fall, and so would the Soviet Union, and after consolidating the foothold on Eurasia, America itself would be invaded before 1945, and thus it'd be doubtful if we would ever finish the atomic bomb in time for it to matter. Nazi V2 rockets would fly across the Atlantic and strike any place in the US at will, including the atomic research laboratories, Washington, you name it; of course, since we had no intercontinental ballistic missiles to match those, we'd be just sitting here sucking our thumbs while pounded by them. The German jet fighters would blow our propeller-powered "dustcroppers" out of the sky, since we had no jet technology of our own. And let's not even talk about how many King Tiger tanks the Germans would churn out with an adequate industry, and what mincemeat these would make of our fragile Shermans.

Soviets, by comparison, had a small industry (at least until Americans got involved), and they sorely lacked the brainpower and audacious initiative in their generals and unit commanders. Hitler, for all his faults, was a brilliant leader and one of the trademark aspects of the German war machine was that all commanders acted independently, individually, with broadly and vaguely defined goals, and were expected to think, adapt, innovate, on the spot. Again from the History Channel, during the Battle of France, one of the German Panzer divisions was known as the "Stealth division", because no one knew where it was or where it would turn up next, including the Nazi High Command.

This was a close war. We barely made it, even with the Nazis fighting on all fronts. I think we should appreciate that we pulled through.

Edited February 7, 2005 by Free Capitalist

[Sparrow]

"I just saw on History Channel recently how many, if not most, of their tanks were manufactured by the Czchecs (sp?)."

The correct spelling is Czechs. And thank you for your post. I agree that a dictatorship can never exhaust itself as long as there are productive individuals whom it can coerce to produce.

[JMeganSnow]

For some excellent fiction about some of the lesser-known aspects of The War I highly recommend Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon and the movie Enemy at the Gates.

I think I agree with Free Capitalist here: by the time the U.S. got involved Britain was losing in a BIG way, the U.S.S.R. was also losing, and the U.S. continued to assist in this massive losing for a couple of years.

A minor side effect of the war was to establish, not a particular people, but an entire IDEOLOGY (Nazism) as an enemy, an enemy that must be fought to the death for no compromise is possible.

I think the U.S. was absolutely correct when she took up the sword in WWII.

[Charles]

As to the question of Nazi Germany's 'inevitable exhaustion' - let us not forget that in Soviet Russia the landowners and businessmen were openly denounced from the beginning of the Bolshevik revolution. Hitler, however, had not only entered government democratically, but had done so with the support of most of Germany's greatest industrial magnates. This is the wonder of the Nazi propaganda machine that managed to harness the opportunism of the right and the class struggle of the left under one nationalistic tyranny. Always be skeptical of flags!

Not to mention the evidence that if it hadn't been for D-Day the Nazi's own A-bomb project may have come to fruition, its first target known to have been New York.

Edited February 7, 2005 by Charles