How did religion help end ww2 and prevent atrocities which would have occurred otherwise?

The Catholic Church during the war did more than any organization to evacuate Jews. Now, let me delve in deep into this question because you're gonna have someone who say the "Pope was allies with Hitler" and post selective out of context pictures and quotes to prove their point.

Pope Pius XI in 1933 signed a concordat with the Nazis when they came to power. That was done not because he allied himself with Hitler, but because he was following the general policy of appeasement Europe had to Hitler. Even Jewish organizations tried to appease Hitler through the Havara Agreement they signed in 1932. Once that policy failed, the Papacy changed policy and in 1937 Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical called Mit Brenneder Sorge which condemned Nazism and racism.

Now back to the general question, the Catholic Church did more than any organization to evacuate Jews. During Kristallnact it is estimated that as many as 200,000 Jews were evacuated by the Papacy. During the war according to the writings of both Pinchas Lapide and Rabbi David Davin as many as 800,000 Jews were evacuated. Tally that up and that amounts to 1.1 million.

More to the point Pius XII was deeply involved in the War in other ways. He played an enormous role in warning through back channels of Hitler's impending invasion of Belgium the Netherlands and he played a role in at least 3 assassination plots. Moreover the Catholic Church in Germany was instrumental in mobilizing the population to oppose Hitler's Euthanasia Program. If you don't believe a word that I have said, just check out all the links I am posting.

Link:

https://cruxnow.com/interviews/2016/06/17/pius-xii...

https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/1.5145416

https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/vi...

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/what-the-b...

it didnt.

Hope.

Miracles. The president was concerned about the fog when they planned the invasion of Normandy. He asked God about it, who answered that the fog was for the Allied troops protection.

I have never once heard that religion caused WWII. The only cause for WWII was German Nazism and Japanese Imperialism.

The same one that started it

They didn’t.

If they were following the Bible... they should have killed every German male, and every German female who wasn’t a virgin, thrown every German baby out of high windows, and taken the German female virgins home to rape.

Usually the end to a war is because of empathy and morality—not anything religious. You can’t start a war with empathy and morality... but you sure can do it with religious ideology.

Two millenia of Christian hatred for the Jews laid the ground work for the Holocaust. I recommend the book Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History by James Carroll.* While there are inspiring stories of great heroism shown by Christians to rescue Jews and others, neither Christianity nor any other religion effected the end of WW2. Nor is there any evidence that religion has lessened persecution and slaughter in the post-war years. Anti-Semitism is on the rise again in Europe and the election of Trump to the presidency has emboldened outward expressions of anti-Semistim, anti-Muslim, racism, homophobia, and anti-immigrant hatred in the United States, much of it in the name of religion.

Religion did not help. The German Army belt buckles said "God is with us" and God did not help Germany to win. Japan had a living God as an emperor and it did not help. The Soviets were Atheists and they won the war.

We often hear about how religion helped cause ww2

- It didn't cause WWII, it just made parts of it a nightmare.

but what about the positive side of faith?

- No one has found that yet.

Surely just as many Christians, Jews and people of other faiths fought against fascism and communism.

PEOPLE did, religion had nothing to do with it.

How did their faith help them in these dark times?

- Ask them.

I don't know

Religion actually had very little to do with WW2 other than the fact that it is always there wherever there are large groups of people.