I am torn between two philosophies.
With my human logic, I instinctively agree with
@The Revolting Man. When faced with danger, the obvious and logical thing to do is to prepare to defend yourself and your household. You FEEL more in control, more assured, when you have a weapon and the skills to use it. And we've seen in the past year in Texas how armed people can stop a mass shooter in a church. This is the natural and logical approach.
And there is that one verse about buying a sword.
But there are so many other verses about peace and turning the other cheek, that the one verse about swords seems to be the exception that proves the rule. And the early church were pacifists. In many cases they would not even allow a soldier to join the church. The ancient Christian interpretation of Jesus' teaching was so radical it seems insane to us - but that doesn't mean we should disregard it. On the contrary, it's so challenging to our thinking that it's probably worth pondering extremely carefully, to determine whether our first reaction might just be wrong.
That is completely incorrect. I agree with Mojo - many have argued America should not have joined in WW2.
Think about how that would have gone for a moment. After Dunkirk, Germany occupied northern France largely to defend Germany against Britain - the armistice agreement itself specifies that this occupation would be greatly reduced the moment war with Britain ceased. It is widely understood that Hitler offered Britain favourable terms of peace during and after the battle of Dunkirk in 1940, but these were rejected. After all, Germany never wanted to fight Britain, it was Britain who declared war on Germany. Britain was able to reject this offer of peace and keep fighting
because they could rely on material support from the USA - and later received military support also. If the USA had refused to support Britain in their war with Germany, Britain would have been forced to accept peace, and the war on the Western front would have ended in 1940.
If the USA had also refused to offer material support to the Soviet Union, and a weaker Soviet Union now had to face the full force of a Germany fighting only on one front, the Eastern front war may have ended much sooner one way or another (ie less death), and large chunks of Eastern Europe would have never ended up under communism (whether they'd have been better off under Naziism is of course debatable).
If Germany was at peace with the West, even if they had wished to persecute the Jews, the worst excesses would have been unable to be hidden from the public and media under the "fog of war", and the Jews would have more easily escaped through peaceful borders in the West.
If the British Commonwealth was not distracted in Europe (because Britain had been forced to accept peace with Germany), there would have been no vacuum of power in the Pacific for Japan to try and exploit, and the war in the Pacific may never have even begun.
Lots of what-ifs there, but to put it simply -
if fewer people fight, fewer people die. Choosing not to fight = peace.
However, it's hard to see it from that angle, because we have been all taught to see WW2 as a just war, where the West was truly on the side of good against pure evil. That is because, by the end of the war, so many people had died that it was simply unthinkable to come to any other conclusion. Millions of children without fathers could be told "Daddy was a hero fighting for good", or "Daddy died because the government conscripted him to a pointless war". The second is simply not an option, either emotionally for individuals, or practically for governments who don't want to be overthrown by a revolt. So in the West we have been raised to see WW2 as the just war, and in the USSR they were raised to see it as the Great Patriotic War, with our own side being purely good and the opponent as pure evil (the actions of each selectively reported to strengthen that narrative). It's so deeply ingrained in our entire worldview that we just can't see it any other way without enormous and conscious effort.
Just like monogamy...
