[Livia]

Originally Posted by Oliver_W

Without WWII and adjacent events, the modern world in which we live wouldn't exist.

(For better or worse!)

Everything moves on rapidly in a time of war, weapons, medicine... it's been like that since we've been having wars. Every time we go to war we're a little bit more efficient at killing each other and then repairing the wounded. My gripe is that the USA organised their involvement in WW2 like a business venture. I get tired of saying, we only paid back our WW2 debt to the USA in 2006, while the Americans were instrumental in insisting Germany was rebuilt and re-industrialised. The UK took decades to repair the damage of WW2 both to infrastructure and to the population. So when they say, yeah, we came and saved you all in WW2. No, we hired you and you took three years to get here. The USA sent us 50 moth-balled WW1 battleships most of which still hadn't worked at the end of the war and in return we gave them land rights to places then still under the empire. The USA won't do anything for nothing. British, Indian, Australian, Kiwi, Canadian, South African and Caribbean soldiers fought the Japanese in the Pacific, the war could not have been won without those countries, but you'd think the USA did it all alone. So them stealing away Nazis in the night for their own ends is really just par for the course.

I say this while not wishing to take away the bravery of the individual American soldier.