Fuchsrohre

Had a discussion the other night in the pub about war in general, and someone came out with the sweeping statement that if you removed religion, you removed most of the world's wars.

I thought it was an interesting statement, and can see how it applies or at least interfered with the likes of Palestine, Iraq, etc...

Not knowing much about WW2, I was wondering if anyone could enlighten me as to what role religion played in the reasons for the war ?

eg. if you removed the religious / jewish aspect, would the war have still started ?

Pardon my ignorance on the matter. I'm young enough for it not to have effected my life and didn't study it at any level of education.

OllyK

Removal of religion, and the reduction of skin colour and languages to a single one would no doubt have quite a harmonising impact on the world. However, wars are more often than not about territory and the resources they have than anything else. The Jewish part of WWII was that, part - there were plenty of other things going on.

IIRC - WW1 was due to the Assassination of the Arch Duke Ferdinand
WW2 was due to Germany invading eastern block countries such as Chech and Poland.

Have a rummaeg with google for more details

Brendan Hughes

WW2 was as a result of WW1 frankly - the Versailles treaty crippled Germany and pissed them right off.

I think it's fair to say that religion was nothing to do with it. The Jews were just a convenient hate figure.

Fuchsrohre

Thanks Olly

"WW2 was due to Germany invading eastern block countries such as Chech and Poland."

So is it fair to say, it would have happened regardless of the jewish people ? So it wasn't religiously motivated, rather terratorial ?

I do indeed intend to study the subject in more depth. Was just wanting a brief summary from the scooby-cognetti

Fuchsrohre

Thanks Brendan.

OllyK

I think it is fair to say religion was not the primary motivating factor in either War. Indeed exclusing the Holy Wars (which again were about territory as well), I'm struggling to think of any purely religious wars. It has certainly added to tension and disagreement about who should control certain "holy" lands, but I don't think there has been any war where people from religion A have started a war with people from religion B purely to try and erradicate a religion.

Leslie

I am pretty certain that Hitler had an abiding hatred of Jewry because of his perceived experiences during his upbringing in Austria.

As Brendan and OllyK said, WW2 was started due to Hitler's and his associates' ambitions for control of Europe and eventually World domination.

The Holocaust stemmed from Hitler's ambition to ethnically cleanse the world of Jews but did not have a part in the start of the war.

Although religion is often quoted as the major cause of wars, practically speaking wars are started by political leaders in the main who often use young religious people to further their own selfish causes by preying on their beliefs. This gives the erroneous impression that religion is the basic cause of the conflict.

Les

MrDBM

yes the Treaty of Versailles did have a huge impact on post war Germany, so much so that it was a major contributor to the second world war.

However, Hitler (and many others) believed that there was an invisible Jewish thread running through all of the upper echelons of world society, and that there was a global conspirancy of control of their part.

Germany blamed Europe and it's Jewish population for pretty much everything, including it's defeat (which they did NOT believe was true) in WW1.

So it was largely a racial start to war, as opposed to religion in it's usual sense.

In our (UK) sense, the second World War started when Germany invaded Poland, which was a instigated by a staged (by Germans) attack on a German radio outpost.

brickboy

Had WW1 not happened, Hitler would probably still have been a destitute painter in Vienna ... his anti-semitism started when he was down & out in Austria pre WW1 but he only got political ambition after being invalided out of the German army.

WW1 was basically the last trump of European colonial ambitions, it would be a VERY left-field theory which tried to link religious motivation to the "Balkan powder-keg" and the web of European ambitions to grab its resources.

Anyway, see this item from The Onion, September 2001, in which God makes it clear that he doesn't want people to fight

http://www.mikesfreegifs.com/main4/God.htm

Fuchsrohre

MrDBM:
"However, Hitler (and many others) believed that there was an invisible Jewish thread running through all of the upper echelons of world society, and that there was a global conspirancy of control of their part.

Germany blamed Europe and it's Jewish population for pretty much everything, including it's defeat (which they did NOT believe was true) in WW1."

...care to elaborate a little ?

Holy Ghost

i'm with brendan, leslie & ollyK on this.

just my two pence worth. WW2 was an ideological war driven by the failed last colonial hurrah of kaiser wilhelm (the schlieffen invasion plan of 1914 was originally completed in 1905).

going back into the late 19th century, the germans believed themselves due the same imperial spoils accrued by us and to a (much) lesser extent, the french - prompted by their own growing economic might and a very definite cultural confidence that soon became dour arrogance. what they were too late in the queue for, they decided to take off their competitors by extreme force.

WW1 failed to bring home the bacon, leaving many germans feeling a profound sense that that they'd been robbed of their destiny and their armed services sold down the river in a politically-driven armistice. the over-zealously vengeful versailles treaty imposed by the allies aggravated this feeling (not least in causing economic meltdown) and it was this that hitler effortlessly tapped into through the late 1920s, using the jews as populist whipping boys.

hitler's lebensraum policy was simply a steroidal version of an old german policy: an attempted second bite at the cherry of imperialism to secure a destiny believed owed - but with a dark side order of deliberate genocide and racial purity.

so, religion a factor in the war? not a bit. not even race. even if hitler had chosen not to go to war - or even chose to stop at calais in june 1940 and successfully sued for peace - he'd have slaughtered the jews regardless.

you can put it firmly at the volatile combination of german ambition unfulfilled and our own mistakes at versailles.

(it's not often that politicians learn from history but just compare the treaty of versailles to the post-WW2 marshall plan: a policy of resusitation not revenge that has been the keystone to peace between the great european powers ever since).

FASTER MIKE!!

no ones mentioned hyperinflation in germany in the 1930s that also contributed to the start of ww2

Holy Ghost

check my post above - economic meltdown. in the 20s!

corradoboy

"I heard it was 'cos a bloke called Archie Duke got hungry so he shot an Ostrich"

dij

LMAO.....WTF is that sposed to mean..lol

BlackadderII

Corradoboy

You thought the Renaissance was just something that happened to "other" people didn't you.

dij

I thought it was a hotel????

FASTER MIKE!!

sorry mate never read it lol

bzz

It is interesting that both World Wars, the bloodiest, most violent wars in man's history, broke out in "Christian" countries.... Christianity is supposed to be about love of God and love of neighbour, peace, etc. and yet you had Christian clergy on BOTH sides preaching their young men into the battle lines, all in the name of religion!! The clergy could have lessened the effect or maybe even stopped these wars if they had tried (back then, people listened to them), yet they chose to support wars where you had Catholics killing Catholics and Protestants killing Protestants, which surely violates everything about Christianity (same as Northern Ireland incidentally!!). Maybe religion wasn't the direct cause of these wars, but they certainly had a large part in them!!

NotoriousREV

Don't forget that Hitler got into power effectively through a back door. The Germans, as mentioned above, were unsettled, unhappy and totally disenfranchised by the existing incumbent political parties. Hitler had taken over the Socialist party and slowly moulded it to his ideals (that's right, we think of Hitler as right-wing yet he started out as a leftie).

By picking up on the public need for someone to blame for all of Germany's problems and providing the whipping boy (the Jews) he gained enough support to be voted in.

OllyK

Actually Christianity is rather more about salvation than love thy neighbour. Have a read and apart from "love thy neighbour" and "turn the other cheek" there isn't too much love and forgiveness.

Leslie

Left wingers are just extreme right wingers in disguise!

Like now.

Les

AsifScoob

Agree in large part to the informative posts above.

When I was in school, we were taught that the British followed the concept of a 'Just War', in deciding to go to war over Poland.

This notion of a 'Just War' is a Christian one, apparently.

Without this notion, would the UK have entered WWII?

Asif

Holy Ghost

interesting point but the notion of the 'just war' is more to do with human morality than religion: if you asked an athiest or agnostic what behavioural/social morals he deemed worthwhile, they'd be pretty similar to those given by any moderate christian, moderate jew or moderate muslim i'd say.

we had a political - not religious - treaty of alliance with poland that we honoured. very few people - churchill was one of them - could see what was coming and that hitler had to be stopped at all costs. but we still stuck to our obligation - i believe the answer's "yes."

CrisPDuk

Anyone whose ever heard the Right Reverend Ian Paisley speak, knows that influential factions within all branches of the Christian faith, think that Christianity is about division and subjugation more than it's about either salvation or loving thy neighbour

Holy Ghost

paisley's not representative - he's a hardline fundamentalist, not a mass-appeal moderate like rowan williams or the late basil hume. he can survive and thrive in the goldfish bowl of northern ireland and stark northern irish social division - but would become an instant irrelevance on the mainland.

Brendan Hughes

What do you mean, "would become"? He has been for years.

Holy Ghost

pedant. you know what i mean.

InvisibleMan

LOL