Eugene,
Churchill was a good guy??? So far as which one to live under, Churchill imposed wartime socialism and fascism on Britain, thus making it easy for the subsequent Labour regime to institutionalize socialism in Britain. Also, Churchill’s bellicosity repeatedly prevented the peace agreement between Germany and Britain that Hitler desperately wanted. Yes, Hitler was a monster, but no, he did not want to rule all of Europe. He repeatedly stated that he wanted to live in peace with Great Britain and invaded Russia to demoralize Britain into agreeing to peace.
Also, you are ignoring that in order to defeat your invincible comic-book super villain Hitler, the Allies allied with a much worse monster, Joseph Stalin, who, at the outset of WW II, had murdered millions, whereas Hitler had murdered hundreds.
Furthermore, your good guy, Churchill, wanted to impose the Communist-inspired Morganthau Plan on Germany, which would have reduced Germany to an agricultural society. Its implementation would have enslaved Germany and caused millions to starve.
In addition, your hero was the first to purposefully murder civilians during the war. He bombed German cities to demoralize the enemy, but as is always the case, these bombings merely hardened German civilians against Britain and probably prevented an earlier peace because Germans wanted to fight to the death to avenge the bombings. The same happens in the Middle East today.
Moreover, the bombings of cities actually wasted valuable British resources, thereby hurting the British war effort.
So what happened because of your hero’s stubborn refusal to come to a peace agreement and his efforts to get FDR to join the war? When the U.S. joined the war, the Nazis, dejected because they knew they had no chance to win, felt they had nothing to lose and imposed the final solution, which didn’t begin until 1942, thus killing at least 6 million people. Before the war, Hitler oppressed and deported Jews, but there was no mass slaughter until he became desperate. Therefore, without Britain’s entry into the war, Hitler probably wouldn’t have invaded France, Norway, Poland, etc., and therefore wouldn’t have had as many Jews to kill.
In addition, your hero’s intervention allowed two much worse tyrants than Hitler to rise to power. Stalin took over much of Hitler’s short-lived empire and certainly imposed infinitely more oppressive regimes on the countries in that empire than Hitler, and Stalin probably killed more Jews than even Hitler. Also, as a result of Stalin’s rise, U.S. support for Chinese Communists, and the unconditional surrender of Japan, Mao rose to power in China and murdered the most people in history.
Additionally, the great Churchill, as previously stated, imposed war socialism on Britain, handing over to the socialists who defeated him after the war the apparatus for a permanent socialist economy that ruined Britain for decades to come.
Let’s not forget that Churchill sent back to Stalin thousands of Russian refugees that he knew would be enslaved and murdered.
What would have happened if Britain didn’t enter the war? Most likely, no Holocaust, no invasion of France, no invasion of Britain, an eventual war with Russia that probably would have ended in a stalemate and weakened both dictators instead of empowering one at the expense of another.
We can’t say for sure what would have happened without British intervention, but we do know what happened as a result – Tens of millions dead, and hundreds of millions handed over to two tyrants much worse than the one defeated.
You fall into the fallacy of Hitler as Darth Vader and the Allies as Luke Skywalker. Though obviously a monstrous oppressor and killer, Hitler was not invincible and was most likely incapable of enslaving Europe, and indeed, before Britain began constantly meddling in Hitler’s affairs, Hitler had no intention of conquering all of Europe anyway! The reality of WW II is much more complex than your simplistic school textbook version of events. The war, like most wars, had no good guys. All governments in this war were bad guys, and just because one might have been worse than another does not justify rooting for one over the other.
As for the euphemism for murder known as “collateral damage,” it is wrong no matter what the circumstances. If you knew a murderer was hiding in building containing 30 innocent people and you bombed the building, you would be guilty of murder nonetheless. Whether this or that government would have won a war without collateral damage (and there’s strong evidence that collateral damage is unnecessary in war and in fact hurts the effort of the government that engages in it) is immaterial. What’s important is that murder is murder.
It is absurd to justify collateral damage by arguing that it’s acceptable because the people in that country hate you. How do you know all of them hate you? Also, since when is hatred a justification for murder? Do you hate all Muslims? Is it acceptable for terrorists to want to kill you if you hate all Middle Eastern people? Do all Jews hate Palestinians? Do all Palestinians hate all Jews? Is it good to encourage this hatred by using it to rationalize murder?
Educate thyself!