Mainstream historian Jim Holland and Libertarian Institute editor Keith Knight clashed over one of history’s most sacred narratives — the justification for America’s entry into World War II. Moderated by Mario Nawfal, the discussion cut through decades of conventional wisdom to ask uncomfortable questions like whether Roosevelt’s administration provoked Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor or whether Winston Churchill ought to be lionized as a great hero.

Did the war, which killed over 70 million people, actually preserve “the west” and could the death have been avoided by diplomatic means? Take a look at the highlights below, but we encourage listening to the full debate so you can decide whether the “good war” was truly good.

“Provoked Into War”: Knight’s Case Against The Pearl Harbor Narrative

“The attack on Hawaii… was intentionally provoked,” argued Knight, “so Roosevelt could engage in diversionary foreign policy after his New Deal led to the double-dip recession of 1937.”

He cited Navy Captain Arthur McCollum’s October 7, 1940 memo outlining “eight ways the United States can provoke Japan,” ending with the line: “If by this means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better.”

“Roosevelt supported the policy of provoking the Axis powers,” Knight continued, pointing to a New York Times article from January 2, 1972, “War Entry Plans Laid to Roosevelt,” describing Roosevelt and Churchill’s 1941 meeting. Churchill admitted Roosevelt “would wage war, but not declare it… everything was to be done to force an incident.”

Knight added: “On November 25, 1941, Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote in his diary, ‘The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.’”

“War with Japan was not inevitable,” he said, “but an intentional policy pursued by the Roosevelt administration.”

Citing Robert McNamara’s The Fog of War, Knight quoted: “Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional.” McNamara recalled, “In that single night, we burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo.”

Knight concluded, “The unconditional surrender of Japan destroyed America’s bulwark against Mao’s China and opened power vacuums in Korea and Vietnam—leading to millions of deaths and communist victories in both.”

Pearl Harbor, he said, “was not the price of peace—it was the product of provocation.”

Conscription: Is It Moral?

To the Libertarian Knight, compulsory military service is outright immoral. “Conscription is an indicator that the people you’re claiming to represent don’t actually think something is worth fighting for.”

Holland pushed back, arguing that, during WWII, while popular opposition to war was strong, “there is a balance to strike.” “If you give too much fuel to this bully [Hitler], he’s only going to get stronger,” he said. “There’s a point where the political metric is that you’ve got to come and stand up to this.”

“Conscription comes in for the first time ever in peacetime in March 1939. Chamberlain, who is the prime minister—not Churchill—is really nervous about suggesting conscription, and there is not a public outcry at all.” Instead, Holland said, “There is an acceptance amongst the British public that this is something that needs to happen.”

“The United States goes from very, very strongly isolationist to more and more in favor of massive rearming in the summer of 1940,” Holland noted. “When conscription comes in… there’s barely a flutter of eyelids.”

While acknowledging Knight’s moral ideal, Holland insisted that liberty itself was on the line. “The whole point about the Second World War,” he said, “is that democratic nations are standing up against authoritarianism and the taking away of personal freedoms. That’s the whole point of Nazism… the state runs everything… personal freedoms are taken away.”

Check out the full debate below: