User blog comment:Darthkenobi0/Ask A Geek Part 4: Return of AAG!/@comment-1367054-20100630202435

World War II was a very complicated war stemming really from the Great Depression. In essence, Hitler and the Nazis blamed minorities for the Depression in Germany, the Japanese saw an opportunity to take territory they'd been eyeing for decades under expansionist military policy, and the Allies were basically just trying to get along.

The Fascist movement was chauvinist and militaristic and thus created aggressive expansionist policies and began taking action to conquer smaller nations.

The Allies responded to said actions first by appeasement, but eventually took a defensive policy, before Churchill and Roosevelt said "enough" and took the fight to them. Pearl Harbor pissed us off and was Japan saying "Kill us our leaders are idiots!" while the regular guys were like "WTF MAN WE DONT WANT THEM KILLIN US"

Meanwhile the war, profitable as war is, took the world momentarily out of depression, the US was communized and the Soviet Union had the shit beat out of it. By 1945, the Allies had squashed the Axis and we all learned that freedom is good :)