We don’t know how long Japan would have been able to hold all that territory. I also wonder how much technological superiority helped them. My impulse is to say you’re wrong to credit brutality for everything.
Oh far from crediting fully the brutality, but I would guess that it had quite a bit too do with it. You take all men able to fight and enslave them in harsh conditions, not much of a force to mount a resistance with is left.
You rape and humiliate the women, you kill anyone not worthy of slave work and you can accomplish quite a bit using one armed soldier per 20 malnurished, beaten, enslaved people who when they drop dead have no consequence to the occupying power.
Technology I am sure played a huge part in first taking the land from organized resistance but the brutal tactics they employed to keep the population in check worked rather well from all indications.
Now how long can that be sustained, I don’t know, the USSR kept her properties pretty well in check for quite a few decades using brutal suppresive tactics against independence.
You need to do some more reading on Japan’s experience in WW2. Although there were some extremely brutal aspects to Japan’s war, there were also more benign experiences, too. In Indonesia, for example, a significant amount of power was shared with Indonesians, which had been forbidden under Dutch colonial rule. In fact, the first leader of decolonized Indonesia, Sukarno, got his first experience in government by working for the Japanese.
Keep in mind, also, that the disgustingly brutal war in China as executed by Japan was a long, tragic failure.
Yes and in Indonesia thousands disappeared during there forced labor (romusha) the revolts in Aceh put down quite brutally, by the Japanese overlords who gave nothing but paper mache power to the Indonesians.
And yes Sukarno was trained quite properly by the Japanese as witnessed in his putting down of rebellions and widespread human rights abuses, not as bad as Suharto but still brutal. Ahhh fighting for independence always brutal though eh.
The Nanking Massacre was a tragic failure? Capturing the capital city with over one million inhabitants and killing over 300K people too me would be a failure of humanity but Japan did conquer her.
Japan had control of everything she wanted of China’s the prosperous parts.
And to end this, I am not a fan of brutality. I despise the actual thought of beheadings, rapes, killing for fun. I don’t think America would ever accept her soldiers doing that in a war (With the exception possibly of a defensive war on our lands) It just amazes me that people do not think Japans brutality aided in there conquests, the USSR’s brutality aided in the ability to annex neighboring countries and keep them. That America’s brutality aided in the taking of Native lands, brutality works.
Its not pretty its actually quite gruesome but it works for conquering nations.
I suppose you could say that the US dropping atomic bombs on two Japanese cities made World War 11 shorter.
But the US bombed North Vietnam heavily (and used defoliants etc) and still lost.
The result of the war depends on many factors - such as whether you wish to occupy the land, what neighbouring nations are prepared to do, whether international opinion matters to you and how good your technology is.
If you just want to commit genocide, no doubt brutality is the most ‘efficient’ way of doing so.
Certainly the conflict in Chechnya is not over, despite the Russians using disgraceful methods.
Your right, thats all that needed to be said. Brutality is the most efficient method of conquering. But to get to the meat of this fine meal.
In todays media friendly society, if all wars went back to brutal, unregulated, no laws. Would wars be shorter because no one wants to see this on there TV, without a doubt the Gulf War was ended early in part because of the waning interest in the USA after seeing the so-called “highway of death” over and over again on the news. The Americans didn’t want to see this total annilihation of a people.
If Russia’s war in Chechnya would be televised wouldn’t the Russian people then demand either a truce or withdrawl?
In Vietnam it was the images of death, the images of civilian death, the images of a brutal war that turned some of the population against the war.
So if we resorted back to brutal wars, I believe wars would be shorter, and in a few decades almost non-existent among technological powers.
Are you changing your point to simply say that the Japanese were, on the whole, extremely brutal? Then you’ll get no argument from me. But what you HAD been arguing was that the Japanese conquered only through brutality resulting in short, decisive conquests, which is not true. The Japanese conquered by force, and the level of brutality differed in different places. But on to the more important historical point:
Fine, BUT IT WAS NOT A SHORT WAR. Japan took all of the key Chinese cities in 1937, and spent eight more years at war with the Nationalist and Communist forces. How can you call that a short war?
The Japanese army suffered significant losses in China. If you are trying to make the point that Japanese brutality in Nanking and Shanghai caused the Chinese people to capitulate, you are 100 percent wrong, because the Chinese people continued to resist the occupation. The Japanese efforts to create a friendly puppet government in China (exclusing Manchuguo) were a failure. Yes, the Japanese won many battles, but their declaration of victory in China in 1938 (IIRC) was a flat-out lie. The Japanese held many cities, but they never won the war. The Japanese experience in China is a very strong argument against your thesis, not in favor of it.
I don’t think you got my point.
Dropping lots of nuclear weapons is the ‘most efficient method of conquering’. It depends if you want to do anything with the land afterwards. Or if genocide / civilian casualties bother you.
Some of us are disgusted by such violence.
The ‘war’ might be shorter. The resistance would be fiercer. The dehumanisation would be worse.
Perhaps you should read ‘1984’.
No, the Japanese conquest of China was not short, it was not decisive, it was not efficient, and it did not provide vast amounts of material for other fronts in the war. In fact, the war in China was a disaster, because the bulk of Japan’s army was tied down in “conquered” China and was not able to face the real threat, the US.
And WWII illustrates why brutal tactics make the war longer, not shorter. German units surrendered to US and British troops. But they didn’t bother trying to surrender to Russian troops, because to be captured by the Russians was usually a fate worse than death, literally.
Which brings us back to the point of the Geneva conventions. People sometimes say that we should treat prisoners humanely so that if our soldiers are taken prisoner they will be treated humanely. But that’s really a side issue. We don’t expect to have many of our soldiers captured, and we can be pretty sure that they won’t be treated humanely by the jihadis regardless of how we treat jihadi prisoners. No, the real reason to treat prisoners humanely is to allow enemy soldiers to surrender to us without fear. If they surrender they can expect warm food, shelter, safety, and an end to the war. If they keep fighting they can expect hunger, cold, fear, and death. A surrendered enemy is just as valuable as a dead enemy.
As has been pointed out to you repeatedly, war is a means, not an end. The end is to get the enemy to do what you want. If we want a pro-western Iraq that continues to sell oil on the world market and doesn’t allow terrorists to operate inside its borders, how will more brutality help us accomplish that? Our goal is to somehow convince most Iraqis that they should want the same thing we want. Slaughtering people at random seems unlikely to accomplish the goal of a stable pro-western society.