Pat Buchanan wrote a really stupid column here. The Nazis would have conquered Poland and Eastern Europe and so forth whether Britain declared war on them or not.
The book "Blood and Soil" tells about Nazi plans for the inferior peoples like the Slavs.

How was it good?
1. It was relatively good in that we won and didn't tie or lose.
2. It was good that we did not fire the first shot (although FDR did all he could to provoke the Japanese-cutting off scrap iron and getting the Dutch to cut oil from Indonesia). The Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor.
3. It was good that we did not first declare war-Hitler declared war on us. I tnink FDR wanted us to get into the European war more than into the Asian one.
4. Most citizens were for the war after Pearl Harblor.
5. Most young men were willing to serve and did serve.
6. The media people were not anti-war or anti-U.S or anti-FDR.
7. We wound up as one of two super-powers and the USSR finally collapsed.
8. I don't think the people writing about WWII being a good war meant that they were in favor of war, but that it was a justifiable and defensive war and got rid of two dangerous and aggessive regimes.
9. Did it solve all the problems? No. Granted the peace was poorly managed at Yalta, but in his defense, FDR was a sick man and many did not understand just how malignant Stalin was.
(I never admired FDR all that much and I never bought into the "Uncle Joe" idea. Stalin was known to be thug then and showed it even more after 1945. And the facts came out about his actions before the war.
So, Pat, you didn't find an acorn this time.
Donald W. Bales

I'm not sure what a "good war" would have been. War is by definition an ugly, terrible thing. People die, sometimes by the millions. Property is destroyed, resources are used that might have been put to more productive purposes. The bad guys sometimes win, and even when they don't, it doesn't always mean the best possible outcome even for all stakeholders. Unfortunately, not fighting this war was simply not an option for the Allies. It was either "Go to war and get the Axis stopped" or "do nothing, then wait for them to finish off the civilized world and then come for America." The Allies chose to sacrifice millions of their men and defeat the enemy, and the world is better off for their having made that sacrifice. I am suddenly reminded of John Stuart Mill's famous quote, "War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless mad and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." Finally, remember that Buchanan is something of an isolationist and believes that combat (except strictly in self-defense) is bad - he hates pre-emptive strikes of any kind - so take what he says with a very large grain of salt.