While many of these points are true, I disagree with the premise that the US wasn't the decisive factor in WW II (that their history books think they are), nor that they should bear guilt. In a broad sense:
1) Even during the time when the US was indecisive re: the war (early 1941), FDR intitiated lend/lease, which greatly helped Britain and Russia (they would've been f**ked without it, which Stalin privately admitted).
2) Though Russia was paying a heavier price on the Eastern European front, you seem to forget that the US was also fighting in the Pacific Theater, almost singlehandedly (as the British largely failed). As such, they gained command of the seas, which put them in a great place to enforce peace, even today.
3) At the end of the war, people forget that Russia tried to grab Japan at the last second. Though horrific, I more or less agree that the atom bombs prevented an invasion that may have cost millions more lives, and kept Russia from occupying more Japanese territory (as it was, they grabbed N. Korea). People also forget how vicious the Japanese were, and that 60% of our POWs died in their hands. My father’s cousin (who flew over 40 missions) died in one of their camps.
4) I agree with the responder that the US was at its best AFTER the war, when it rebuilt Japan and Germany, partially as hedges against an evil Stalin. Many knew during the war that Stalin was sinister, and the Cold War was very much a continuation of our WW II efforts. If not for us, it would've been a very different (and less democratic) world. Many allied Vets and Baltic State people (along w my pilot father) have told me of the “good” Germans (Luftwaffe, Rommel & others, smarter & who knew around ’43 they were going to lose, Hitler a madman etc) and the “bad” Germans (Hitler & friends, SS, Gestapo…the nuts). The “good” Germans were wanting us to help depose Hitler then finish off the Russians, who they felt were the real enemy (this is basically how the Cold War played out).
5) We didn't stop the Holocaust? What the hell, you really got me on this one...though we did refuse some Jewish refugees in the late 30s (see "Ship of Fools"), my father was actually a copilot POW freed by the same 14th armored division that freed Dachau. He and others witnessed the before/after. If you could ask him, he'd say "we sure as hell did stop the Holocaust, though we were tragically late. Though some of those camps were freed by the Russians, just ask the captives who they'd rather be freed by". He said that German families hired freed Western POWs to protect them against the Russians, who went on a horrific raping/pillaging spree.
6) My late father in law was a Filipino plantation worker born on Maui in 1934. When he took us on a tour of his high school many years ago, he told us there may not have been Japanese Nisei/Sansei spies on the Mainland, but there were plenty in the islands (as you’d guess) and they ratted them out. It turned out German Americans were much more likely to be mainland spies, but in the confusion of Pearl Harbor, you can understand the tragic internments a bit in the context of the times, and reparations were eventually paid.
Please tell me that this isn't along the lines of the guilt-laden far-left and far-right US bashing that today even blames the US/NATO for the Ukrainian War (thanks Chomsky, Tucker Carlson & others). For the record, I'm a Moderate that has read and travelled extensively, discussed with many foreigners and might know a bit about the subject. Did we make mistakes? Sure, but in the larger scheme, we made strides in integrating our forces, put women to work in factories, brought together allies, developed state-of-the-art technologies (and if we hadn't the World would surely have been in a much worse place). Later wars like Vietnam and Iraq might be a better place to question America, WW II was probably our finest moment, something of which we should all be proud.
