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Comment by lostlogin | Hacker News Reader

> It was clear who was right and who was wrong

I think depended on which side you were on, as it wasn’t always simple. I’m sure many of those on the wrong side didn’t see it how you do.

Follow Russia’s course through the war, or France (keeping in mind that the Vichy existed). There were factions all over the place and simplifying it down to right/wrong is too simplistic.

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Thinking of every side as equivalent is to overly simplify history. Many older Germans were scared as fuck by the fascist’s brutal tactics taking over the country. Secret police rounding people up who spoke out meant people would simply disappear and you wouldn’t know if they would come back.

That’s not that one side was some paragon of virtue and the other pure evil. Stalin wasn’t a nice fella just because he was fighting Nazi. However, there was significant differences between American interment camps and their German or Japanese equivalents etc.

Perhaps one could say, "It was clear who was right and who was wrong--whichever side you were on, that side was right and the other side was wrong" whichever struggle is being considered. Whichever faction you identified with was right, just like now.

Even just looking at the Cold War period, this still doesn’t quite cover the complexities. There was an entire anti-war movement full of folks who thought the US should pull out of Vietnam without necessarily supporting the other side of that conflict/war.

> simplifying [World War 2] down to right/wrong is too simplistic.

That is some truly incredible mental gymnastics.

It doesn't take mental gymnastics to understand nuance and complexity

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