Could atheist westerners, please explain?

[Ivan Denisovich]

Respectfully, Atlas, I think you're confusing the terms "imperialist Capitalism" with "secularism".

As you and others have pointed out, religious motivations only matter to the cannon fodder, ever since the Crusades (and the Muslim versions of same, as they conquered Turkey and Spain, etc.), and even an Introduction to World History course will teach that every supposed "religious" war can be traced to economics. We see the use of nationalism and religion both as ways the wealthy elites can manipulate their people into seeing people who have things we want as "The Other", "The Enemy", "barbaric animals", etc.

I would say that religious or ideological motivation isn't something that matters only to cannon fodder, in my opinion it provide framework for entire conflict. When you fight with infidels peace isn't something that comes to mind as easily as when you fight with the enemy, when you're in a war against subhumans no mean is to horrible to use.

War between III Reich and USSR can't exactly be called religious (though calling nazism cult heavily borrowing from religious language wouldn't be out of place I would say; marxism-leninism on the other hand was religion [Rafał Imos, Faith of the Soviet Man. The Soviet's Institutionalized Myth, Raymond Aron The Opium of the Intellectuals], though Aron saw it as political religion, or poor man substitute) but it is ideology which lead to cruelties committed on Eastern Front. To be fair there was other reasons but one could look to Western Front and compare things. If not for belief of Russians racial inferiority and Jewishness of it's system I wager war would look different.

You could also look on deeds of Stalin regime where military language in used in context of economy was far from uncommon - from what I read older works ascribe more importance to ideology/state religion, same with books written by those who suffered during years of dictator rule. Good examples could be Escape from Russian Chains by Ivan Solonievich, or Martin Malia The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991 in which ideology/state religion play a great role, constantly being shown as more important than economy. There is also other view - Stalin and Europe: Imitation and Domination, 1928-1953 redacted by Timothy Snyder sees ideology/state religion only as justification and deeds of regime which appeared irrational to victims were supposed to be rational in larger sense of country well-being. I must say I don't agree with Snyder view - you could say that forced relocation to inhospitable regions of country was good for said country, but you would be hard pressed to claim rationality in such endeavors when you consider in what circumstances it took place. Same is with Great Terror - in book redacted by Snyder it is shown as ultimate anty spy action and considered more or less good for regime. But again where is rationality in forcing your own secret police to see plots where there are none and murdering innocent citizens? It's only framework of ideology/state religion that could make it appear rational - when survival of Homeland of Revolution is at stake individual rights and lives doesn't matter; if being closer to socialism mean intensifying of class struggle (Stalin own invention) then you can argue that regime will be opposed when there is no real enemies left, or no hope for prevailing. It's this invention that allowed Stalin to claim that peasants during Great Hunger were fighting against the state by starving.

Another showing of ideology mattering would be Shoah - killing Jews when there was real enemy to be killed could only be called rational when they're greater enemy standing behind everything, or to put it bluntly only if framework for judging rationality was nazi ideology. Raul Hilberg in his The Destruction of the European Jews shown that while arization was short term gain for III Reich it was long term loss. If I remember right same was with the killing - rational thing to do would be using Jewish labourers (I don't say leaving Jews alone cause, well Nazis were Nazis). Apart from being morally reprehensible killing Jews was irrational - it show that ideology matters not only to foot soldiers.