Two of the clearest demonstrations of biblical war strategy in modern history were carried out by men who probably never saw a page of Talmud.

President Harry Truman and Admiral Chester Nimitz were not rabbis. They were practical Americans leading a nation through World War II.

Yet their decisions clearly illustrated two ancient lessons embedded in Jewish law.

They are not fashionable lessons. But they have real life applications.

And they help explain how wars actually end.

Lesson One: When the Threat Is Clear, Strike First

The Torah offers a blunt rule of survival: If someone comes to kill you, rise to kill them first. (Sanhedrin: 72a)

It is not a doctrine of aggression. It is a doctrine of self-defense.

Consider the Battle of Midway.

Six months after the Attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan was preparing another decisive strike meant to finish the American fleet in the Pacific.

But American intelligence broke the Japanese codes and learned of the plan. 

So Admiral Nimitz had a choice. Wait for the Japanese fleet to attack, or intercept them first.

American carrier planes caught the Japanese fleet exposed and in a matter of hours, four Japanese aircraft carriers were destroyed. The balance of power in the Pacific flipped so much that historians call Midway the turning point of the war.

The principle behind it was far older than the U.S. Navy: When an enemy’s intentions are clear, waiting will be fatal. So you are obligated to attack them first.

Just imagine how different history would have been if they would have been able to preemptively attack before the assault on Pearl Harbor? How many people in the US and Japan would have been saved?!

Lesson Two: Wars End When Someone Surrenders

The second lesson is even less comfortable but even more important. 

Modern sensibilities prefer the idea that wars end through negotiation or mutual exhaustion. Sometimes they do. But in most of those situations, if the guy on the mat has any strength left, he will resume the fight the moment he catches his breath. 

When do they really end? When is there real peace? When one side realizes it cannot continue.

As the Torah commands: And you shall besiege the city that makes war with you, until its submission. (Deuteronomy 20:20)

By the summer of 1945, Japan still refused to surrender despite devastating losses. American planners estimated that invading Japan would cost hundreds of thousands of American lives and millions of Japanese lives.

President Truman made the most controversial decision of the war: he authorized the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Within days, Japan surrendered. Completely. Unconditionally!

Fast forward to today and Japan, once America’s most dangerous enemy, is among its closest allies.

It is a stable democracy and a partner in maintaining global stability.

That transformation did not come from endless stalemate. It came after a humiliating defeat and surrender.

The Torah is not naïve about war. It does not celebrate it. But it understands something many modern societies struggle to accept.

Peace is not maintained by talking away aggression. It is brought by action based on moral clarity.

One of the challenges in having conversations about war is that politics and personalities (and our X algorithm) color our perspectives. So in today’s context, how can we know if a war is the right thing or not?

We look to the Torah, the Guidebook of Life.

When a regime has killed over a thousand Americans, chants “Death to America” as a matter of policy, and openly celebrates its march toward nuclear weapons, the moral thing is to attack first.

The next step in the moral framework is equally as important. Once the war starts, you don’t end until complete surrender. Half measures leave the cancer in place. Just ask the opinion of the 30,000+ Iranians that were massacred in January. 

Some will call this bravado and others will say it’s war mongering. 

But in truth, it comes from the calm conviction that when the dust settles and the talking heads are finished commenting, this is the tried and true path to a lasting peace. 

Two Americans in the 1940s implemented what the Torah articulated millennia earlier.

These are not pleasant lessons.

But history keeps proving them to us anyway.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)