I remember seeing somebody on Twitter about 5 years ago unironically post a website link to the “True” history of World War 2, which was written from a Communist perspective. It was hosted on a Communist/Socialist website and was written very longform which made it seem like it was being taken directly out of a book.
The book was fairly standard when it comes to a Communist/Far-Left perspective of World War 2. Nazi Germany was true evil but the Capitalist West was almost as bad only fighting to save capital/their colonial holdings. Soviet Union was completely innocent and the West purposefully did as little to help them in their great struggle etc. The weirdest part I read however was their interpretation of the Pacific War between China and the US vs Imperial Japan. According to this book, the Nationalist Chinese were actually the bad guys in all of this, purposely baiting the Japanese because they wanted an excuse to retake Korea. All Japanese atrocities were exaggerations to get United States sympathy and for them to enter the war on Nationalist China behalf. Then when the United States deliberately “forced” Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor they used excessive force against the Japanese. The Japanese are painted as victims of circumstance fighting a defensive war at every step of the way. The only good guys wound up being the Soviet Union, who if it wasn’t for their invasion of Manchuria in 1945 would have lead to all of East Asia (including Korea and Vietnam) being Nationalist Chinese and crushing the Communist Chinese as well.
Does anyone know what book this is from, and how mainstream this idea is? It was such a cognitive dissonance to paint the Japanese as the victims and Nationalist China as the aggressors and I was surprised to see a Communist website host that junk.
There’s a tiny kernel of truth in that Japan was under some pressure, due to embargoes, to strike at Pearl Harbor (although it was still a totally harebrained idea to bomb Pearl; nothing good could have happened.) But this book you’re describing is stretching an inch a mile.
And more than a tiny kernal of truth that the Nationalists or KMT were trying to get the US to enter the war on the Nationalist behalf and kick some Japanese butt, including booting japan out of Manchuria and Taiwan.
I remember reading, several decades ago, an English translation of some history text books about WWII used by Soviet schools. I don’t remember the specifics but one thing I noted was the virtual absence of any western leaders. I think Churchill was mentioned once and Roosevelt’s name never appeared at all.
Painting the Nationalists as evil makes sense from a Communist standpoint, but I’m struggling to understand why they’d see Japan, itself a quasi-feudal capitalist theocracy at the time, as an innocent victim. Was there some left-wing faction within the Imperial government that I’m not aware of?
The very pro-Soviet and Japanese tone the history was written and very anti-Chinese made it seem like it may have been written by a left-wing person in Japan?
Very bizarre for a communist history and I can’t see it being remotely ‘mainstream’ even in those circles. The capitalist West and the Chinese Nationalists being portrayed as villains scarcely better than the Nazis makes perfect sense for a communist history, but portraying the Empire of Japan as misunderstood victims of circumstances makes no sense at all. The Imperial Japanese government was virulently anti-communist; they signed the anti-comintern pact, were horrifically brutal in suppressing Chinese communist guerillas (the Three Alls Policy - kill all, burn all, loot all), and the communist party had been outlawed in Japan since 1925 with the Tokkō/Thought Police assigned to rooting it out and destroying it.
Simple: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The Nationalists were the no. 1 enemy, which means that their enemy - Japan - couldn’t have been all that bad.
It’d be instructive to see what the book said about the lightning pivot on June 22, 1941, when good Communists went from condemning Allied opposition to the Nazis as being due to base capitalist motives, to full-throated urging of Allied support for the Soviet Union to repel German invaders.
Once when I saw “The Bridge on the river Kwai” in the University Film Society, they had made photocopies of an analysis of the movie. I read it waiting for the movie to start.
It was very critical of how the movie depictied of the war in SE Asia, and tried some historical revisionism itself. The existence of Boses volunteer army of Indian war prisoners, fighting not very effectively for the Japanese, meant there couldn’t have been Malaysians fighting with the allies against the Japanese, is the most absurd point I remember.
Note that this was in the late 80ies, and the analysis was from a book published, at least that was my impression, in the 70ies. There was a reference about “westerners obsessed with killing yellow people”, so there seemed to be anger about the Vietnam War seeping over. I wonder whether the writers deliberately ignored that just in China Japan directly or indirectly killed probably 10 million “yellow people” and drove close to 100 million to refuge in other parts of the country, or they were just plain ignorant about WW2.
Except the Nationalists weren’t their #1 enemy - Japan was. The Chinese Civil War between the Nationalists and the Communists was put on hold from 1937-45 to deal with the much more pressing threat from the Japanese invasion of China. More importantly, Japan was that bad. Japan’s reaction to the Communist Chinese 100 Regiments Offensive was to murder upwards of 3 million Chinese civilians in an attempt to uproot communist control of the countryside in Northern China.
Exactly. And how on earth a Chinese source could sweep under the carpet the massive Japanese atrocities just beats me. I assume it is a Chinese source, notwithstanding, but historical revisionism for ideological reasons can make for some very convoluted logic.
My thought too - whatever the communist-Nationalist civil war, the most brutal fighting was what the Japanese did to the Chinese (either faction). They killed hundreds of thousands in a particularly sadistic and brutal way. For the simple crime of possibly helping the Doolittle air crews escape, the Japanese killed hundreds of Chinese villagers. The “Rape of Nanjing” killed probably 200,000 to 300,000 people in six weeks.
As I understand, this results in an animosity that is still there today. The Chinese may accept some trade with Japan, but the public generally prefers to avoid it when they can.
I think previous posters may have hit the nail on the head - that this was a revisionist version written by apologist leftists during the Vietnam War to prove colonialist white capitalists and their lackeys bad, non-whites were misunderstood good guys. (Or at least OK) Also, written by someone with more fanatical fervor than grasp of history or regional issues.
My understanding is the party line goes like this:
The various capitalist powers in the west - Germany, Britain, France, Italy, and the United States - were all trying to seek advantage over each other because capitalists lack the transnational solidarity that communists have. Part of their plotting was to try to start a war between opposing capitalist nations and the peace loving Soviet Union. Britain and France wanted the Soviet Union to fight Germany and Italy and Germany and Italy wanted the Soviet Union to fight Britain and France. And the United States wanted all the European powers to fight each other. Their plan was for their enemy to be weakened by fighting the Soviet Union so they could attack.
But the wise leadership of the Soviet Union saw through their capitalist lies. They refused to join in this war between capitalist countries. Instead they outmaneuvered all the capitalist powers and got them to fight each other while the Soviet Union not only protected its own peace but also was able to protect the people of Eastern Europe from capitalist aggression by placing them under the protection of the Red Army.
Casualties caused by an outsider will always command much more mental weight than casualties caused by oneself.
At risk of bringing in a race-related topic, it’s akin to how if a white man kills a black man, it gets far more attention from the black community than if a black man kills a black man. A death is a death but the source makes a big mental difference.