Literally not one country initiated combat against Nazi Germany before being attacked itself.
Churchill stands virtually alone as one with moral clarity on the Nazis.
USSR allied with them. France was fine seeing everyone else get rolled. Poland signed a nonaggression pact. The British parliament were generally happy to let Hitler have his way.
How about instead, you tell me who you think went out of their way to combat Nazism?
> Literally not one country initiated combat against Nazi Germany before being attacked itself.
The UK and France both declared war at the same time after Germany invaded Poland.
I think the UK fired the first bullets -- or rather depth charges, on Sep 3rd. That resulted in damage and no deaths. A few hours later Germany attacked a UK passenger liner and killed over 100 civilians - not just Brits but also Canadians and Americans.
The day later the RAF bombed a German naval port, causing little damage, but again attacks.
France had the Saar offensive within days, so France fired the first shots between France and Germany. Nazi invasion of the Benelux and France was inevitable, but technically France attacked Germany before Germany attacked France.
> The British parliament were generally happy to let Hitler have his way.
Britain was mobilising throughout the late 30s. Declaring war at Munich could well have resulted in a British loss - the RAF wasn't really capable of running the Battle of Britain, it barely survived even with the extra year of preparation. On the other hand Nazis were less prepared too. Who knows what that would have done - perhaps a coup against Hitler would have succeeded. On the other hand perhaps there would have been no support for war - leading to a resignation of Chamberlain, Halifax becoming PM who was even more stronger into appeasement, and a swift truce hammered out, with no the UK abandoning Poland.
Churchill was of course more wary of Hitler, but Chamberlain is the one who declared war.
This is pretty much a complete and comprehensive description of what's now called the Phoney War for being pretty much nonexistent beyond the bare minimum required to "check the box" for England and France's "defense" of Poland (which, to be clear, waiting for your ally to be directly attacked == not doing anything until you are attacked)
Not that I think any of this is indefensible, to be clear, but it is obvious in the moral clarity of today that offensive action against Nazi Germany would have been justified. The reason no one engaged in it was because it wasn't morally clear at the time.
I don't understand when you consider the first attack by Germany on the UK? The invasion of Poland?
Even if you ignore early engagements in September 1939, from April the UK was involved in fighting in Norway - losing over 4000 troops in the process.
The war wasn't waged particularly well by France or the UK in 39/40, being too late to be involved in Finland and failing to successfully defend Norway, but it was certainly waged in Norway. The failures led to the fall of both Daladier and Chamberlain, but thousands of British troops had been killed before Churchill became Prime Minister.
Yes I would say "waiting until I'm legally obligated to act, and even then doing such a minuscule job of it that it's called 'The Phoney War'" are clear evidence of a lack of moral clarity.
It seems like you believe I'm arguing that no military action was underway prior to Churchill. I'm not. I'm arguing that (effectively) no one had "moral clarity" about the Third Reich other than Churchill.
I don't think it has anything to do with moral clarity. The western allies didn't hesitate to attack because they weren't sure whether Hitler was such a bad guy after all. They feared another repetition of wwi and worse, because the increased effectiveness of aerial bombing would bring the horrors of the trenches to the home front. This fear drove all of the capitulations to Hitler by France and the UK in the 1930s, and continued as late as 1944, when much of the British leadership still feared to land armies in the killing fields of northwest Europe.
If you believe that today WW2 was "morally clear," what you are saying is that it was clearly worth overcoming all of those risks and that fear (understandable as it is).
They did not do that and instead were spurred into action only when they themselves were attacked, ergo obviously it was not morally clear at the time.
Okay, well I disagree with your dimensional analysis. To me moral clarity is being confident about who is in the right and who is in the wrong. Taking action to do something about it is another matter. To me it's morally clear that Ukraine is in the right in the current war, but I have taken no personal risks to put my life on the line for that belief.
Churchill stands virtually alone as one with moral clarity on the Nazis.
USSR allied with them. France was fine seeing everyone else get rolled. Poland signed a nonaggression pact. The British parliament were generally happy to let Hitler have his way.
How about instead, you tell me who you think went out of their way to combat Nazism?