That’s the goal of a political purge, so yeah, they succeed all the time. Any justification as being for the betterment of society is often openly and publicly predicated as keeping those in power as the ends, and those purged wanting to take them out of power as the threat.
Are you joking? The Nuremburg and Tokyo trials were for major war criminals. There were no pardons, at best shady deals not to prosecute in exchange for information on biological warfare.
More than 5,700 lower-ranking personnel were charged with conventional war crimes in separate trials convened by Australia, China, France, the Netherlands Indies, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The charges covered a wide range of crimes including prisoner abuse, rape, sexual slavery, torture, ill-treatment of laborers, execution without trial, and inhumane medical experiments. The trials took place in around fifty locations in Asia and the Pacific. Most trials were completed by 1949, but Australia held some trials in 1951.[25]China held 13 tribunals, resulting in 504 convictions and 149 executions. Of the 5,700 Japanese individuals indicted for Class B war crimes, 984 were sentenced to death; 475 received life sentences; 2,944 were given more limited prison terms; 1,018 were acquitted; and 279 were never brought to trial or not sentenced.[26]
The Soviet Union and Chinese Communist forces also held trials of Japanese war criminals. The Khabarovsk War Crime Trials held by the Soviets tried and found guilty some members of Japan’s bacteriological and chemical warfare unit, also known as Unit 731. However, those who surrendered to the Americans were never brought to trial. As Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, MacArthur gave immunity to Shiro Ishii and all members of the bacteriological research units in exchange for germ warfare data based on human experimentation. On May 6, 1947, he wrote to Washington that “additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii probably can be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as ‘War Crimes’ evidence.”[27] The deal was concluded in 1948.[28][29]
Did it? Did the people who carried out the Terror / purge get the government they wanted? Is France today what Robespierre was aiming for?
Most of the Jacobin leaders died in the counter-purge of the Thermidorian Reaction, which instituted a more conservative government, which then fell to the Empire.
The “Thermidorian Reaction” was named after the month in which the coup took place and was the latter part of the National Convention’s rule of France. It was marked by the end of the Reign of Terror, decentralization of executive powers from the Committee of Public Safety and a turn from the radical Jacobin policies of the Montagnard Convention to more moderate positions. Economic and general populism, dechristianization, and harsh wartime measures were largely abandoned, as the members of the convention, disillusioned and frightened of the centralized government of the Terror, preferred a more stable political order that would have the approval of the plurality. The Reaction saw the Left suppressed by brutal force, including massacres, as well as the disbanding of the Jacobin Club, the dispersal of the sans-culottes, and the renunciation of the Montagnard ideology.
The Jacobins =/= French society as a whole. France today is not a near-absolute monarchy nor does the Church own a tenth of it. That’s because of the Revolution. The Empires were a blip in that path.
How many died under the Republics? Under the pre-Revolution monarchy?
What does Robespierre have to do with the Empire? He was years dead by then.
I’d argue the Revolution was the most consequential part of that timeframe.
Did Napoleon I have an impact in his 10-year part of it? Sure. Hard to argue that he didn’t.
Was it nevertheless a blip in the progress from the absolute monarchy of the ancien régime to the modern democracy the French enjoy? Yes, it was.
I’m not arguing that the First French Empire wasn’t of historical significance. I’m saying in the particular realm of the free society the French enjoy today, it was a mere brief detour back to autocracy. A very brief flirtation. The Second Empire may have lasted a bit longer, but had even less impact.
Let me rephrase then, did you not understand what you read? There is no hand-waving going on. Unit 731 escaping war crimes prosecution in exchange for data on biological warfare is explicitly addressed 1) by the very sentence of mine you quote and 2) in the second paragraph of the quoted wiki article.
Going back to your original statement, in what way do said shady deals for biowarfare data constitute
You said, “Are you joking” about allies pardoning people and THEN give a pass to Unit 731 by merely noting it existed.
No, I am not joking and you can’t just give a pass to something like what the US did with Unit 731 and suggest the US was diligent in prosecuting war criminals. You are breezing over a big part there.
The US prosecuted what…5,600 Japanese for war crimes? Out of how many? Was the US really diligent about that?
You’d be as hard-pressed as Giles Corey to find a good-faith purge; since, like Corey’s accusers, somebody was seeking to gain.
Joe McCarthy was fed names by J. Edgar Hoover and from other Washington insiders who’d had enough of these New Deal leftists and wanted things to go back to when the Federal government was a club of southern Democrats and northern Republicans agreeing on keeping Blacks and Labor in their place
Fifty years later, New Gingrich purged the government of “wasteful bureaucracy” dedicated to evaluating and regulating commerce. They’ve been replaced with corporate think-tanks and lobbyists. The average American doesn’t pay their salaries directly anymore, but boy, you better believe they do.
(ETA: the only “good” political purge I can think of was the 1947 abolition of the Japanese aristocracy besides the immediate imperial family. Some of them had been opposed to the militarists, but even more were part of it. So good riddance).
If I try to make something and fail several times, but finally hire a contractor who builds it right, does that mean I didn’t fail in the past as my project now works?