Saved the World - How Christianity Led The Allies to Victory in World War II

Jeremy Tan

doi:10.67690/t398bn17

Saved the World - How Christianity Led The Allies to Victory in World War II

Authors

J. Tan

CGC Ministry Manila and Thermomix PH

Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.67690/t398bn17

Abstract

World War II, known not just for the greatest physical destruction of men, material, and nature, but also recognized as the most evil of evils. Also told as the greatest sin of mankind by General Douglas MacArthur. To overcome evil of such magnitude, it was overcome by the great goodness of the heart with even greater magnitude than evil. Although the overwhelming men and material or military force of the Allies were also keys to victory, I explore the Christian and Biblically inspired factors which contributed to those men and material power. More than that, it was the inner drive of the Allies which led to Victory. I also explore that inner drive, driven by Christianity. I also write this to honor and respect the memories of all those who served and lost their lives during the war, whether civilian or military, I salute them. I owe my freedom to them.

Author Biography

J. Tan, CGC Ministry Manila and Thermomix PH

Jeremy Tan studied Astronomy, Geology, Genetics and World War II history as an independent researcher for decades. He went to the Mater Carmeli School for ALS and Philippine Cultural College during his school days. He took computer science courses during the 2000s. Jeremy believes the Bible and is a Christian. He also specialized in creation science research. He has a massive toy collection ranging from action figures to historical and classic war planes, ships and tanks mainly from World War II. He also has star wars and star trek collectable items. He also likes the Terminator. Jeremy is also involved in several government organizations and religious charities. He goes to CGC Manila and is a part of the Thermomix PH family.

References

Ambrose, S. E. (1994). D-Day, June 6, 1944: The climactic battle of World War II. Simon & Schuster.

Anderson, J. (2009). Christianity and democratisation: From pious subjects to critical participants. Manchester University Press. doi:10.7228/manchester/9780719077388.001.0001.

Bailyn, B. (1967). The ideological origins of the American Revolution. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Barnett, V. (1992). For the soul of the people: Protestant protest against Hitler. Oxford University Press.

Bellah, R. N. (1967). Civil religion in America. Daedalus, 96(1), 1–21.

Bergen, D. L. (2023). Between God and Hitler: Military chaplains in Nazi Germany. Cambridge University Press.

Bix, H. P. (2000). Hirohito and the making of modern Japan. HarperCollins.

Brown, C. L. (2006). Moral capital: Foundations of British abolitionism. Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture & University of North Carolina Press.

Bungay, S. (2000). The most dangerous enemy: A history of the Battle of Britain. Aurum Press.

Butow, R. J. C. (1954). Japan’s decision to surrender. Stanford University Press.

Churchill, W. S. (1940, June 18). Their finest hour [Speech]. House of Commons. International Churchill Society.

Churchill, W. S. (1949). The Second World War: Vol. 2. Their finest hour. Houghton Mifflin.

Clodfelter, M. (2017). Warfare and armed conflicts: A statistical encyclopedia of casualty and other figures, 1492–2015 (4th ed.). McFarland.

Conway, J. S. (1968). The Nazi persecution of the churches, 1933–1945. Basic Books.

Craven, W. F., & Cate, J. L. (Eds.). (1955). The Army Air Forces in World War II: Vol. 6. Men and planes. University of Chicago Press.

Deane, J. R. (1947). The strange alliance: The story of our efforts at wartime cooperation with Russia. Viking Press.

Dear, I. C. B., & Foot, M. R. D. (Eds.). (2001). The Oxford companion to World War II. Oxford University Press.

Dower, J. W. (1986). War without mercy: Race and power in the Pacific War. Pantheon Books.

Dreisbach, D. L. (2017). Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199987931.001.0001.

Eisenhower, D. D. (1944, June 6). Order of the day to soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force [Military order]. National Archives and Records Administration.

Evans, R. J. (2005). The Third Reich in power, 1933–1939. Penguin Press.

Evans, R. J. (2008). The Third Reich at war, 1939–1945. Penguin Press.

Fairchild, B., & Grossman, J. (1959). The Army and industrial manpower. Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army.

Feis, H. (1950). The road to Pearl Harbor: The coming of the war between the United States and Japan. Princeton University Press.

Frank, R. B. (1999). Downfall: The end of the Imperial Japanese Empire. Random House.

Froese, P. (2008). The plot to kill God: Findings from the Soviet experiment in secularization. University of California Press.

Gallicchio, M. (2020). Unconditional: The Japanese surrender in World War II. Oxford University Press.

Glantz, D. M., & House, J. M. (2015). When titans clashed: How the Red Army stopped Hitler (Rev. and expanded ed.). University Press of Kansas.

Gordon, A. (2014). A modern history of Japan: From Tokugawa times to the present (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.

Green, S. K. (2015). Inventing a Christian America: The myth of the religious founding. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190230975.001.0001.

Grossmann, A. (1995). A question of silence: The rape of German women by occupation soldiers. October, 72, 43–63. doi:10.2307/778926.

Hardacre, H. (2017). Shinto: A history. Oxford University Press.

Harrison, M. (1996). Accounting for war: Soviet production, employment, and the defence burden, 1940–1945. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511523625.

Harrison, M. (Ed.). (1998). The economics of World War II: Six great powers in international comparison. Cambridge University Press.

Hasegawa, T. (2005). Racing the enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the surrender of Japan. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Hastings, M. (1984). Overlord: D-Day and the battle for Normandy. Simon & Schuster.

Hastings, M. (2011). Inferno: The world at war, 1939–1945. Alfred A. Knopf.

Holland, J. (2010). The Battle of Britain: Five months that changed history, May–October 1940. Bantam Press.

Holmes, D. L. (2006). The faiths of the Founding Fathers. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780195300925.001.0001.

Johnson, J. T. (1981). Just war tradition and the restraint of war: A moral and historical inquiry. Princeton University Press.

Jones, R. H. (1969). The roads to Russia: United States Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union. University of Oklahoma Press.

Kawamura, N. (2007). Emperor Hirohito and Japan’s decision to go to war with the United States: Reexamined. Diplomatic History, 31(1), 51–79. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7709.2007.00591.x.

Kennedy, P. (2013). Engineers of victory: The problem solvers who turned the tide in the Second World War. Random House.

Kurlander, E. (2019). Nazism and religion. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.680.

Lilly, J. R. (2007). Taken by force: Rape and American GIs in Europe during World War II. Palgrave Macmillan.

MacArthur, D. (1945, September 2). General MacArthur’s speech at the surrender of Japan [Speech]. Naval History and Heritage Command.

Marty, M. E. (1970). Righteous empire: The Protestant experience in America. Dial Press.

Miner, S. M. (2003). Stalin’s holy war: Religion, nationalism, and alliance politics, 1941–1945. University of North Carolina Press.

Mitter, R. (2013). Forgotten ally: China’s World War II, 1937–1945. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Moskoff, W. (1990). The bread of affliction: The food supply in the USSR during World War II. Cambridge University Press.

Motter, T. H. V. (1952). The Persian Corridor and aid to Russia. Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army.

Munting, R. (1984). Lend-Lease and the Soviet war effort. Journal of Contemporary History, 19(3), 495–510. doi:10.1177/002200948401900305.

Naimark, N. M. (1995). The Russians in Germany: A history of the Soviet Zone of occupation, 1945–1949. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Noll, M. A. (2002). America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0195151119.001.0001.

Noll, M. A. (2006). The Civil War as a theological crisis. University of North Carolina Press.

Orbach, D. (2017). Curse on this country: The rebellious army of Imperial Japan. Cornell University Press.

Overy, R. (1995). Why the Allies won. W. W. Norton.

Overy, R. (2013). The bombing war: Europe, 1939–1945. Allen Lane.

Paine, S. C. M. (2012). The wars for Asia, 1911–1949. Cambridge University Press.

Pape, R. A. (1993). Why Japan surrendered. International Security, 18(2), 154–201.

Peris, D. (1998). Storming the heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless. Cornell University Press.

Peris, D. (2000). “God is now on our side”: The religious revival on unoccupied Soviet territory during World War II. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 1(1), 97–118.

Piehler, G. K. (2021). A religious history of the American GI in World War II. University of Nebraska Press.

Polk, A. R. (2021). Faith in freedom: Propaganda, presidential politics, and the making of an American religion. Cornell University Press.

Pospielovsky, D. V. (1991). Church and state in Soviet Russia: Russian Orthodoxy from World War II to the Khrushchev years. M. E. Sharpe.

Reese, R. R. (2011). Why Stalin’s soldiers fought: The Red Army’s military effectiveness in World War II. University Press of Kansas.

Reese, R. R. (2014). The Russian Orthodox Church and “patriotic” support for the Stalinist regime during the Great Patriotic War. War & Society, 33(2), 131–153. doi:10.1179/0729247314Z.00000000035.

Roosevelt, F. D. (1941, December 8). Joint address to Congress leading to a declaration of war against Japan [Speech]. National Archives and Records Administration.

Roosevelt, F. D. (1944, June 6). Prayer on D-Day [Radio address]. The American Presidency Project.

Skya, W. A. (2009). Japan’s holy war: The ideology of radical Shinto ultranationalism. Duke University Press.

Smith, R. E. (1959). The Army and economic mobilization. Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army.

Snape, M. (2015). God and Uncle Sam: Religion and America’s armed forces in World War II. Boydell Press. doi:10.1017/9781782044857.

Snape, M., & Bell, S. (Eds.). (2023). British Christianity and the Second World War. Boydell & Brewer. doi:10.1515/9781800108783.

Spicer, K. P. (2008). Hitler’s priests: Catholic clergy and National Socialism. Northern Illinois University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Stettinius, E. R., Jr. (1944). Lend-Lease: Weapon for victory. Macmillan.

Suprun, M. (2023). Lend-Lease food aid to Russia/USSR during the Second World War. The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 36(1), 96–108. doi:10.1080/13518046.2023.2207051.

Tooze, A. (2006). The wages of destruction: The making and breaking of the Nazi economy. Allen Lane.

United States Army Air Forces, Office of Statistical Control. (1945). Army Air Forces statistical digest: World War II. U.S. Government Printing Office.

United States Bureau of the Budget. (1946). The United States at war: Development and administration of the war program by the federal government. U.S. Government Printing Office.

United States Department of State. (1941). Foreign relations of the United States, diplomatic papers, 1941, the Far East, Volume IV. U.S. Government Printing Office.

United States Department of State. (1941, July 25). Press release issued at Poughkeepsie, New York, by the White House on July 25, 1941. In Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, Japan, 1931–1941, Volume II. U.S. Government Printing Office.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (n.d.). The German churches and the Nazi state. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

United States Strategic Bombing Survey. (1945). Summary report (European War). U.S. Government Printing Office.

United States Strategic Bombing Survey. (1946). Japan’s struggle to end the war. U.S. Government Printing Office.

United States Strategic Bombing Survey. (1946). Summary report (Pacific War). U.S. Government Printing Office.

United States War Production Board. (1945). Wartime production achievements and the reconversion outlook: Report of the chairman, War Production Board, October 1945. U.S. Government Printing Office.

van de Ven, H. (2017). China at war: Triumph and tragedy in the emergence of the new China, 1937–1952. Harvard University Press.

Vatter, H. G. (1985). The U.S. economy in World War II. Columbia University Press.

Weeks, A. L. (2004). Russia’s life-saver: Lend-Lease aid to the U.S.S.R. in World War II. Lexington Books.

Weinberg, G. L. (2005). A world at arms: A global history of World War II (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511818639.

Wilson, M. R. (2016). Destructive creation: American business and the winning of World War II. University of Pennsylvania Press.

Wohlstetter, R. (1962). Pearl Harbor: Warning and decision. Stanford University Press.

Wood, G. S. (1969). The creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787. University of North Carolina Press.

Yang, D. (2020). Nanjing Massacre. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.147.

Young, L. (1998). Japan’s total empire: Manchuria and the culture of wartime imperialism. University of California Press.

Cover Image