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This article is condensed from its original version which appeared in the April 9, 1982, issue of Christianity Today.

The United States, so we learned in grade school, was a good nation that fought only just wars. In the colonial period we struggled to free ourselves from the tyrannical British government. In the Mexican War we fought to redress just grievances against our Southern neighbor. The Civil War freed the slaves and preserved the Union. Later we freed the Carribean Islands and the Philippines from the atrocities and oppression of their Spanish overlords. In 1917 and 18 we fought a war to end all wars by destroying the one great militaristic power of that day.

Then, in the upper grades—and especially in high school—we began to learn of the Krupp and the Vickers munitions firms and of their international schemes to exploit nations by pushing them into military build-ups and even into war in order to fatten their own pocketbooks. Some of us can remember our sense of disillusionment and cynicism when we learned the truth about Edith Cavell, and about other atrocities. Allied governments first spread these stories to whip up our moral indignation against the enemy. Not until years after the war did we discover that they were largely or wholly unsupported by the facts.

In those years, between the two great wars, thousands of students participated in the Prince of Peace contests, and hundreds of thousands more, perhaps millions, became convinced pacifists. We were angry that our own government had lied to us and could not be trusted. Conscienceless international businesses pressured governments to protect their profits with no regard for the welfare of other nations or just diplomacy for their own. War was not the last recourse of a nation seeking justice, but the tool of greedy profiteers.

Then in the middle thirties a new mood arose. Adolf Hitler entered the scene and brought a new dimension into the picture. The story of Mein Kampf transformed the Western vision of reality. Nazi suppression of liberty, persecution of the church, its scapegoating of Jews, its mind control of its citizens, and its goal to conquer all of Europe created a dreadful specter.

Depending on what church you attended, first Stalin, then Hitler, then Mussolini (with the pope as the false prophet of Revelation) was the Antichrist, who embodied in himself demonic evil that would all but destroy justice and righteousness on the earth (and from which a faithful church would be delivered only by the Rapture and the Second Coming). The lightning invasion of France and imminent conquest of Britain frightened us and forced us to rethink our Christian duty.

The sneak bombing of Pearl Harbor destroyed the last vestiges of our pacifism. Those who heard it will never forget President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's speech as we huddled around the radio on that "Day of Infamy." Christians perceived a clear duty to join the battle for the preservation of human dignity, for the survival of justice among the nations, and for freedom of conscience. Pacifism largely disappeared, and we stood united in the conviction that this, at least, was a just war.

Liberals and conservatives, radical humanists and fundamentalists, and people from all shades in-between joined the cause. Even most of the traditional "peace" churches were unable to resist the tide. It was probably the last time that America was fully united as a nation on a war issue. Many still reckon that World War II was a colossal tragedy of unbelievable proportions—but right. Hitler had to be stopped. Even the terrifying finale at Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not reverse that conviction. Though many lament the decision to drop atomic bombs, they agree that America and the West were justified in battling against Hitler and his Axis powers. Revelation of Jewish massacres and the near genocide of the Jewish people in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany confirmed for us the fact that we did right.

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March (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47