Whenever America First is discussed liberals will always bring up World War 2 as an argument against it. According to them if we applied America First principles in World War 2 we would not have helped the Allies and Germany would have won. Remember that in the Alt:Right view I mentioned that war can be in the national interest and should be waged if it is so. Nationalism is not synonymous with isolationism. I will show here that World War 2 was a perfect exercise in America First.

Timing

The United States entered World War 2 in December 1941. The hostilities of World War 2 started in 1939. If we were pursuing a strategy that put the interests of other countries first we would have entered the war at that point but we waited till 1941 till the Pearl Harbor attack and may have waited even longer if that did not happen.

What happened in between 1939 and the end of 1941 when the US entered? Japan had already conquered a lot of the colonies of the European powers in Asia. It had already invaded China though was of course predictably stalled. France had already fallen and Britain itself was thoroughly bombed in the Battle of Britain. Germany already made headway into Russia. Stalingrad did not happen till early in 1942 but anyone could have predicted that the advance would stall given the Russian winter and Russian defense in depth combat doctrines. The US did of course send some material aid which kept the stalemate going when the allies would have collapsed.

In simpler terms. The US waited till all sides had beaten itself silly before it entered the war. This kept US casualties down as we missed the worst of the pitched battles. In D-day for instance the allies suffered around 50000 dead and that was its worst battle of the war. In Stalingrad the soviets found 250000 German corpses and the Soviets found 40000 civilian corpses in Stalingrad alone. During the war industries and ports from all the major countries were hit repeatedly while US ports in Virginia and California were safe and US factories in Ohio and Michigan were operating at peak capacity. In effect at the end of the war the US was the only country left who had the untouched industries and an effective monopoly on post war goods.

If the US committed much earlier then it would have been involved in more brutal battles and the European industries would have come thru better and if it committed much later, then the fight may have reached US soil with all the damage that brings.

Concessions

The US has always had a major problem when competing with Europe. The European countries through centuries of dominance was able to extract much wealth from its colonies around the world and consolidate it in Europe which meant that the European countries had a significant advantage when competing with America.

If the US put the interests of the world ahead of its own interest in World War 2 it would have given all the materials the allies needed to fight World War 2 for free. Instead we put America First. Initially we had cash and carry to extract the wealth they had accumulated and then when they could no longer afford to pay for the goods we did lend-lease to extract future compromises. At the end of the war the European countries had lost all of their advantages against the US.

World War 2 is only one instance where a nation benefits when pursuing its own interests first. By putting American interests ahead of all others we were able to use World War 2 as a springboard to become a superpower from the great power we were before.