War II did finally, however, usher in a seventy-year and counting era of European harmony that does seem to have brought an end to major wars on that continent.

Further, and more importantly, World War II is known as the Good War because the moral imperatives seemed so clear cut. Hitler was an evil, violent, racist dictator who aspired to total world domination and was not going to be stopped until he was utterly defeated. His Asian ally, Japan, was similarly ruthless, justifying atrocities as a legitimate way to subdue rival nations. It was easy for the Allies to see themselves as on the side of good in an epic struggle of good versus evil.

The Allies stood for democracy, freedom, equality, and humane values versus societies led by people who appeared little more than monsters. This might have been an oversimplified way of understanding a complicated situation, but it made fighting and winning the war seem the only possible way to safeguard the human race from a descent into barbarism. We could feel we fought the good fight for the right reasons and won: even some of the ethically murkier ground the Allies stood on could be justified as necessary given the enormity of the threat the other side posed.

When many people think of World War II, they think of it as "the good war." This is likely because it is seen as a clear-cut case of a fight against evil. The Nazis were bent on dominating Europe, just as the Japanese were committed to conquering Asia and the Pacific. The Axis Powers employed truly terrible methods to achieve their draconian goals, including genocide and other gruesome crimes against humanity. In this sense, fighting to stop them was clearly seen as the good fight.

However, your question raises the issue as to whether a war can ever truly be good. World War II resulted in what is possibly the greatest loss of life in history. Some estimates put it at eighty-five million dead. No matter the cause or motives, can such wanton destruction and killing ever be considered good?

Also, even though the Allies were fighting against the evil Axis forces, they were no saints. Remember that even the Allies did not shirk from directly attacking civilians. German and Japanese cities were indiscriminately bombed, which resulted in the deaths of countless non-combatants. Prisoners of war were tortured and executed by the Allies, and the protocols of the Geneva Convention were regularly ignored. On the US home front, about 120,000 people of Japanese heritage, many of them American citizens, were interned on the mere suspicion that they may have sympathies with the enemy. When the Soviet army took Berlin in the spring of 1945, what was perhaps the largest mass rape in history occurred. If you look further, I am sure you could find many more examples of Allied forces committing atrocities.

So the answer as to whether or not World War II was a good war is very ambiguous. The Axis Powers needed to be stopped. That was clear to most citizens of the Allied countries. (Contrast this to most of the other wars of the twentieth century, in which it was unclear to many whether or not the fight was necessary.) The methods by which the Axis Powers were defeated have been justified by many as necessary to stop them. The popular slogan "peace through victory" reflects this. However, you must ask whether or not a war can be a good war if it results in such large-scale trauma, death, and destruction—no matter the motives.

The Allied Powers that fought in World War II are often considered to be the "good" states that fought in the "Good War" due to their combined military effort against Hitler and the rise of fascism. The United States is often celebrated for its military participation in World War II and its fight against Hitler's attempt at both world domination and the total extermination of Jewish people. At a surface level, this title may appear to be an accurate description of the fight against fascism.

However, simplistic analyses tend to not mix well for accurate and critical understandings of historical events and eras. For example, while the United States did aid in stopping the Nazis, the United States also denied entrance for thousands of Jewish refugees (who were then forced to return to Europe, where many were murdered in Nazi concentration camps), forced Japanese Americans into detention camps in the western United States, dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese islands (causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and generations of suffering and birth defects), and brought Nazi scientists to the United States after the war to participate in government research and projects.

Arguably there are no "good wars." But World War II is seen in this light because of the clear menace represented by the Nazis and axis powers. Hitler was genuinely bent on world domination and the establishment of a "thousand year Reich" and his methods for doing so were inarguably diabolical. The practices of the SS and the fact of genocide and the concentration camps certainly make the Nazis appear "evil." Which suggests it was necessary and "good" to defeat them. Many, however, argue that they were defeated by their own ambition and the disastrous campaign to take Russian (Operation Barbarossa).

On the other hand, the people of Germany and the axis powers suffered immensely as a result of their leader's ambitions. One need only think of the fire-bombing of Dresden or the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to realize that there is no clear "good" in war.

TheGood War (1984) is also the title of an oral history of World War II by the populist historian Studs Terkel. The title captures the idea that many involved in the conflict on the allied side felt they were fighting for "good". But most people in war justify their actions by thinking they are on the "good" side.

WWII is called the Good War because it was a war that had the clear backing of the vast majority of the American public and because it was a war with a clear purpose that was obviously morally good.

In WWII, the US fought because we were attacked by the Japanese.  This was clearly justifiable.  We fought Germany in part because Nazism and fascism were so clearly evil.  We were firmly on the side of good.  Because of these factors, there was no real conflict over the war in the US.  Everyone supported it and it brought the country together in a common purpose.

This is very different than subsequent wars.  These wars have tended to be morally ambiguous and have lacked clear public support.  For these reasons, WWII has come to be called "The Good War."

There are at least two reasons, other than those having to do with the economy, that WWII was "good" for the US.

First, the war made the United States the undisputed leader of the "free world."  This was, of course, partly due to economics.  But it was also due to the fact that the US was the sole remaining major power other than the Soviet Union.  Countries that feared communist aggression naturally gravitated towards the US.  This allowed the US to have firm control of the international system after WWII.

Second, the war helped to remake the society of the US.  One of the major ways in which it did this was through the GI Bill.  The GI Bill helped create a much more middle-class America with a high quality of life.  Again, this was partly economic.  But it was also due to the fact that the GI Bill helped many people go to college who otherwise would not have.  It helped people buy their own homes, creating our modern, more suburban America.  It helped move most Americans away from having to do hard physical labor to earn a living.

In these ways, WWII was "good" (never forgetting the terrible toll in human life) for the US both in foreign relations and domestically.