Editing Pacifism (section)

====World War II====
[[File:Berkeley, California. University of California Student Peace Strike - NARA - 532103 (cropped).tif|thumb|A peace strike rally at [[University of California, Berkeley]], April 1940]]

With the start of [[World War II]], pacifist and antiwar sentiment declined in nations affected by the war. Even the communist-controlled [[American Peace Mobilization]] reversed its antiwar activism once Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. After the [[Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor]], the [[Non-interventionism|non-interventionist]] [[America First Committee]] dropped its opposition to American involvement in the war and disbanded,<ref>{{Cite news |date=12 December 1941 |title=America First Acts to End Organization |page=22 |work=The New York Times}}</ref> but many smaller religious and socialist groups continued their opposition to war.

=====Great Britain=====
[[Bertrand Russell]] argued that the necessity of defeating [[Adolf Hitler]] and the [[Nazis]] was a unique circumstance in which war was not the worst of the possible evils; he called his position ''relative pacifism''. Shortly before the outbreak of war, British writers such as [[E. M. Forster]], [[Leonard Woolf]], [[David Garnett]] and [[Storm Jameson]] all rejected their earlier pacifism and endorsed military action against Nazism.<ref>Ian Patterson, "Pacifists and Conscientious Objectors", in Adam Piette and Mark Rawlinson, ''The Edinburgh Companion to Twentieth-Century British and American War Literature'', Edinburgh University Press, 2012. {{ISBN|0748638741}}  (p. 311).</ref> Similarly, [[Albert Einstein]] wrote: "I loathe all armies and any kind of violence; yet I'm firmly convinced that at present these hateful weapons offer the only effective protection."<ref>Quoted on [http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/infodocs/people/pp-einstein2.html Albert Einstein] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071009142749/http://www.ppu.org.uk//learn/infodocs/people/pp-einstein2.html |date=9 October 2007 }} at Peace Pledge Union, and but also discussed in detail in articles in Einstein, Albert (1954), ''Ideas and Opinions'', New York: Random House, {{ISBN|0517003937}}</ref> The British pacifists [[Reginald Sorensen, Baron Sorensen|Reginald Sorensen]] and [[Cecil John Cadoux|C. J. Cadoux]], while bitterly disappointed by the outbreak of war, nevertheless urged their fellow pacifists "not to obstruct the war effort."<ref>Martin Ceadel, ''Pacifism in Britain, 1914–1945 : The Defining of a Faith''. Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1980. {{ISBN|0198218826}} (pp.&nbsp;298–299).</ref>

Pacifists across Great Britain further struggled to uphold their anti-military values during the [[The Blitz|Blitz]], a coordinated, long-term attack by the ''[[Luftwaffe]]'' on Great Britain. As the country was ravaged nightly by German bombing raids, pacifists had to seriously weigh the importance of their political and moral values against the desire to protect their nation.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Overy |first=R. |date=1 May 2013 |title=Pacifism and the Blitz, 1940–1941 |journal=Past & Present |issue=219 |pages=201–236 |doi=10.1093/pastj/gtt005}}</ref>

=====France=====
Some scholars theorize that pacifism was the cause of France's rapid fall to the Germans after it was [[Invasion of France (Nazi Germany)|invaded]] by the Nazis in June 1940, resulting in a takeover of the government by the German military. Whether or not pacifism weakened French defenses against the Germans, there was no hope of sustaining a real pacifist movement after Paris fell. Just as peaceful Germans succumbed to violent nationalism, the pacifist French were muzzled by the totality of German control over nearly all of France.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Hucker |first=D. |date=15 November 2007 |title=French public attitudes towards the prospect of war in 1938 1939: 'pacifism' or 'war anxiety'? |url=https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/preview/1017511/French%20Public%20Attitudes%20towards%20the%20Prospect%20of%20War%20in%201938-39.pdf |journal=French History |volume=21 |issue=4 |pages=431–449 |doi=10.1093/fh/crm060}}</ref>

The French pacifists [[André and Magda Trocmé]] helped conceal hundreds of Jews fleeing the Nazis in the village of [[Le Chambon-sur-Lignon]].<ref name="pph">''Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There'' Philip P. Hallie, (1979)  New York: Harper & Row, {{ISBN|006011701X}}</ref><ref>Brock and Young, p. 220.</ref> After the war, the Trocmés were declared [[Righteous Among the Nations]].<ref name="pph" />

=====Germany=====
Pacifists in [[Nazi Germany]] were dealt with harshly, reducing the movement into almost nonexistence; those who continued to advocate for the end of the war and violence were often sent to labor camps; German pacifist [[Carl von Ossietzky]]<ref>Brock and Young, p. 99.</ref> and [[Olaf Kullmann]], a Norwegian pacifist active during the Nazi occupation,<ref>Brock and Socknat, pp.&nbsp;402–403.</ref> were both imprisoned in concentration camps and died as a result of their mistreatment there. Austrian farmer [[Franz Jägerstätter]] was executed in 1943 for refusing to serve in the [[Wehrmacht]].<ref>''[[In Solitary Witness: The Life and Death of Franz Jägerstätter]]'' by [[Gordon Zahn]].Springfield, Illinois: Templegate Publishers. {{ISBN|087243141X}}.</ref>

German nationalism consumed even the most peaceful of Christians, who may have believed that Hitler was acting in the good faith of Germany or who may have been so suppressed by the Nazi regime that they were content to act as bystanders to the violence occurring around them. [[Dietrich Bonhoeffer]], an anti-Nazi German pastor who later died in 1945 in the [[Flossenbürg concentration camp]], once wrote in a letter to his grandmother: "The issue really is: Germanism or Christianity."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Lovin |first=Robin W. |date=July 1997 |title=Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works Volume 2: Act and Being: Transcendental Philosophy and Ontology in Systematic Theology; Minneapolis, Fortress, 1996. 237 pp. $30.00: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works Volume 5: Life Together; Prayerbook of the Bible; Minneapolis, Fortress, 1996. 218 pp. $30.00 |journal=Theology Today |volume=54 |issue=2 |pages=266–268 |doi=10.1177/004057369705400223 |s2cid=170907892}}</ref>

After the end of the war, it was discovered that "[[The Black Book (list)|The Black Book]]" or ''Sonderfahndungsliste G.B.'', a list of Britons to be arrested in the event of a [[Operation Sealion|successful German invasion of Britain]], included three active pacifists: [[Vera Brittain]], [[Sybil Thorndike]] and [[Aldous Huxley]] (who had left the country).<ref>Reinhard R. Doerries, ''Hitler's Intelligence Chief: Walter Schellenberg'', New York. Enigma Books, 2013 {{ISBN|1936274132}} (p. 33)</ref><ref>William Hetherington, ''Swimming Against the Tide:The Peace Pledge Union Story, 1934–2009''. London; The Peace Pledge Union, {{ISBN|978-0902680517}} (p. 14)</ref>

=====Conscientious objectors=====
There were [[conscientious objectors]] and war [[tax resisters]] in both [[World War I]] and [[World War II]]. The United States government allowed sincere objectors to serve in noncombatant military roles. However, those [[draft dodgers|draft resisters]] who refused any cooperation with the war effort often spent much of the wars in federal prisons. During World War II, pacifist leaders such as [[Dorothy Day]] and [[Ammon Hennacy]] of the [[Catholic Worker Movement]] urged young Americans not to enlist in military service.

During the two world wars, young men conscripted into the military, but who refused to take up arms, were called conscientious objectors. Though these men had to either answer their conscription or face prison time, their status as conscientious objectors permitted them to refuse to take part in battle using weapons, and the military was forced to find a different use for them. Often, these men were assigned various tasks close to battle such as medical duties, though some were assigned various civilian jobs including farming, forestry, hospital work and mining.<ref name="Kramer, Ann 2013">Kramer, Ann. Conscientious Objectors of the Second World War : Refusing to Fight. Pen and Sword, 2013.</ref> Conscientious objectors were often viewed by soldiers as cowards and liars, and they were sometimes accused of shirking military duty out of fear rather than as the result of conscience. In Great Britain during World War II, the majority of the public did not approve of moral objection by soldiers but supported their right to abstain from direct combat. On the more extreme sides of public opinion were those who fully supported the objectors and those who believed they should be executed as traitors.<ref name="Kramer, Ann 2013" /> The World War II objectors were often scorned as fascist sympathizers and traitors, though many of them cited the influence of World War I and their [[shell shock]]ed fathers as major reasons for refusing to participate.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kramer |first=Ann |title=Conscientious Objectors of the Second World War: Refusing to Fight |year=2013 |publisher=Barnsley: Pen and Sword |isbn=978-1844681181}}</ref>