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CMV: It's possible that radical absolute pacifism would have lead to a preferable outcome to World War 2.

I've been pondering the pros and cons of pacifism for some time now, and one uncomfortable position that I hold is that it is possible that radical, absolute pacifism on the part of the Allies would have lead to a better outcome from the World War 2 conflict. Some ideas to consider...

**1. The war itself was a particularly bad outcome.**

With so many millions dead, both civilian and military, it would take an enormously negative outcome to compare with the cost of war. Yes, under evil Axis rule, France would have been utterly subjected, but would the Nazis have really killed 500,000 civilians during occupation? 

**2. The Holocaust - Arguably a result of the war?**

From what I've read, there is a decent (and terrifying) argument that it was World War 2 itself that caused the Holocaust, that it was under the guise of militarization and the threat of war that the Nazi party justified their genocidal actions. With the Holocaust being so horrifyingly widespread during the war itself, it's difficult to imagine that it would have been even worse without the war. 

**3. The Axis Powers marking the end of an era.**

A common fear to the idea of the Axis powers winning the war is that we would all now be Nazis if that were the case. But subsequent history seems to suggest that the idea of an ongoing Nazi occupation of all mainland Europe was always infeasible. The world had been (and still is) undergoing a massive liberalization and democratization, and even those fascist and totalitarian parties that survived the war were 'doomed' to modernize. Even if we assumed that the Nazis would openly ignore their claims of "only fighting for self-preservation", and would try to hold an empire over other western states (like England and France), it simply wouldn't be worth their effort to maintain all these territories. Just as all the Allied empires dissolved, in many cases to peaceful resistance, so would the Axis empires. 


It's not a pleasant idea, and not even backed by particularly strong evidence. I'm just looking for evidence to the contrary. Change my view!

EDIT: Grammar and formatting.
gpt
>would the Nazis have really killed 500,000 civilians during occupation? 

Yes, and then some. This was the *Lebensraum* policy. In the east, clear out the Slavs and take their land for German families.

>there is a decent (and terrifying) argument that it was World War 2 itself that caused the Holocaust,

It's a spurious one. The momentum toward genocide was well underway as NAZI ideology coalesced in the 1930s, and Hitler committed to The Final Solution as early as 1941. Nothing in history is inevitable, but in this case genocide was as close to inevitable as it got. Of course the war created internal pressures, but the groubdwork for atrocity had been lain.

>The Axis Powers marking the end of an era.

The idea was that it was the *beginning* of a new era. In many ways, it was. Imagining that these Powers would have collapsed under their own weight ignores the forces that assembled them to begin with, and it would have been a very dangerous and brutal waiting game to see when/if it would happen.

Radical pacifism would have resulted not only in mass casualties, but widespread extermination of populations as the Axis powers dominated the world. It would have been a Holocaust lasting generations rather than just years.