From a Marxist perspective, UK, USA, France etc had the same class interests as Nazi Germany. They were also uncomfortably okay with the Nazis Pre-war. I know this is a big topic (and I’m sure some marxist books have been written on it) but briefly why did the Allies fight against Nazi Germany from a dialectical pov.
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I am way less knowledgeable about the Japanese/Pacific theater so I won’t comment…
Pacific theater was purely classic imperialist war for redividing the colonial spoils - on both sides - Japan i don’t think i have to comment because it’s obvious. Then enters US which for decades had imperialist ambitions about east Asia which we can easily see since they already had many island colonies, not to mention brutal subjugation and genocide in Philippines. So, in 1941 Japan was already streched thin by their (purely imperialist) war in China. Most importantly, their strategic resources were on the very shaky ground - they basically were importing them from the competing imperial powers. USA started embargo on Japan, supported by the european colonialist powers and Japan was standing before a hard choice: either immediate retreat from China and most likely losing their entire colonial empire (with obvious perspective of being colonized immediately by the US), or go va banque and take what they need by war. So the war was not really this stupid as bourgeoisie historians always say, it was rational but desperate, since the alternative was basically complete surrender and colonization - which they were trying to actively avoid for a century and which did happened after their lost as we all know.
Overall, while not justifying Japan and especially all its atrocities, Pacific War was caused by the US as the inter-imperialist war.
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They liked when Hitler talked about killing the Soviets, but they hated the idea of Germany returning to the great powers race. WW2 was an extension of the inter imperial conflicts in WW1. The allies stepped up the war and invaded France when it looked like the Soviets were going to occupy all of Germany.
There was a struggle to contain Germany, hence the pacts between the French, Brits, and Poles. They also wanted Germany and the USSR to partake in mutual destruction, WW1 again, but just in the east.
The obvious answer is that Hitler was colonizing other Europeans instead of colonizing non-Europeans which means that the other European empires will expose and condemn any war crimes under Hitler’s regime even as they attempted to hide the fact that the Holocaust was inspired by the fake residential schools that enslave all Native American children in America and Canada or the fact that Nazi Germany commited less war crimes as other European empires. When the British and French learned that they can no longer please Hitler, they decided to free ride in Stalin and make the Soviet Union do all the work despite the greater need for post-war recovery from the Russian civil war that is more destructive than WW1 and the relative underdevelopment compared to Western European empires. Stalin failed to persuade the British and French in a diplomatic meeting, but Stalin eventually force the Western European empires to end their free riding over Soviet Union with a temporary non-aggression treaty with Hitler so the Western European empires will not blandly praise Hitler for genociding Communists and stealing support from working class.
the basic answer is because Germany declared war on them.
Germany invaded France. Before Germany invaded, France and England signed a defensive pact and England got pulled into the war.
The US wasn’t going to get involved in Europe, they weren’t going to get into the war at all until Japan attacked. But Hitler declared war on the United States.
Had Hitler not declared war on France or the US, war in western Europe likely wouldn’t have happened. England was big on the whole “peace in our time” thing and likely would have stuck to it through the Nazi era, and the US still had an isolationist doctrine in regard to wars in Europe.
As well, England and France were only at war with Italy, because Italy threatened their African colonies. If they hadn’t, Fascist Italy would’ve survived like Francoist Spain did.
I’ve wondered though, why did Japan attack the US to begin with? Seemed pretty random and definitely didn’t go well for them.
Because the US was strangling them with an oil and trade embargo. It was either go to war and try to prevail against the US in the pacific with a quick decisive victory, or slowly have their empire fall apart. It was an inter-imperialist conflict over who gets to colonize the pacific. The US won and took many of Japan’s former island colonies as their military bases with which they have since been trying to surround and contain China.
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That and I would also add in about the Philippines issue. The USA controlled the Philippines and not conquering it along with the rest of southeast Asia (which they invaded mostly for resources) would leave Japan’s shipping routes and Indo-Pacific colonies extremely vulnerable to a future attack by the USA, so they opted to strike first.
Hawaii was one of the islands Japan claimed during their imperial expansion, and they were too headstrong to believe the US could defend itself against their encroachment.
United Kingdom: Considered itself as the sole nation to have the divine right to divide and conquer and any nation on the planet and declares otherwise is UK’s enemy. A united Europe would makes the UK look like Japan to China.
France: It’s biggest friend during World War I was the Russian Empire, but since Russian revolution killing the royal family and replacing the Empire with the Soviet Union, France lost it’s biggest friend.
So then they then looked at an aggressive Poland who took use of the Russian civil war and invaded large parts Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine and decided they wanted to Poland to be their new best friend and signed military alliance treaty.
Around 15 years later Poland got invaded by Germany.United States: Did not join World War 2, but got attacked by Japan.
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