It’s futility to argue, of course, but I think the assertion that, while evil, the Nazis were no more evil than anyone else – amounts to exactly just such a denial. Not gonna say more, except that I dispute my remarks were in any way off topic.
Did any of the Allies cut their POWs open and stuff them full of bubonic plague like Christmas turkeys? Freeze their appendages off, Sub Zero style? How about using them for kitana pracitce, Daniel-san, complete with leaderboards in their local rag?
This should be relevant to anyone commenting here for reasons other than posting statistics - Nanjing
Plenty more at source. I repeat, trying to paint the Japanese as uniquely cruel within the context of all out war is historical revisionism. Of course, humans have learned from history and are now much more civil:
The Atrocities Committed Against Women and Girls in the Congo Defy Imagination
Obviously, that’s a “lot better” since it was your side doing it.
I think it’s actually pretty safe to call “mutilating dead bodies, which was officially condemned” a lot better than “torturing and murdering civilians (among others), in accordance with orders.”
Look, the last thing I am is an apologist for war crimes – no matter who commits them. But again, the tone of this whole thread attempting to single out the Japanese as the “cruelest of the cruel” is historically unfounded at best, xenophobic at worst.
Fact is there is no such thing as “the worst of all” when it comes to war. The whole history of humanity is written in mostly innocent blood spilled in the name of any number of “causes.”
Timeline of genocides and alleged genocides
Read on. Plenty of cruelty to go around.
ETA: would you consider these folks* to be better off than the ones murdered w/sanction of the Japanese government?
*warning, graphic picture of burnt corpses.
Eh, have you noticed how Red has mashed up “people during WW II had very negative views of the Japanese” with “people in this thread believe that they’re subhuman” with “Nasty things happen during war, so live vivisection as official policy is the same thing as doing stuff to dead bodies.”
Jake, China Town, yadda yadda.
Not really a valid comparison. Your own cite notes that these numbers were added up from many trials in many places, including China, the Philippines, etc. The trial of the top leadership, mentioned elsewhere on the same page, notes that in the “international tribunal” trying the top leadership, there were charges brought against 28 individuals.
Of course there were many other Nazis tried and convicted as well, in the countries where they had committed their crimes. And also many more in Germany later, under the German justice system.
The OP is about the Japanese during WWII. It is not, I think, inappropriate for us to focus on the Japanese during WWII.
Jesus, did you guys actually read about Unit 731? How can you possibly make an equivalency between the US and the Japanese treatment of prisoners after reading that? That shit is scarier than the scariest horror movie.
Didn’t the Japanese Army hand out meth like candy to it’s soldiers? I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of these atrocities were meth-fueld manic episodes.
“The Japanese army used methamphetamine during World War II to prevent sleepiness and was also provided it to their pilots during Kamakazi operations.”
How this influenced their actions, I cannot say.
Some reasonable arguments have been discarded in favor of a “Grrr, America!!!” argument.
My favorite bit is how one historian’s argument that American hatred for Japan in the 1940’s meant that they were seen as “subhuman”… in the 1940’s and that somehow shows that people in this thread are saying that Japanese conduct during the war means that they were “subhuman” or are “subhuman”. Or something. It’s equal parts “Grrr, America!!!” nonsense coupled with some “If you disagree with me, then you view people as less than human!” nonsense.
It’s chock full of nonsense.
As is the quoted post. For no one is arguing in favor of moral equivalency but rather the amorality of war on all sides of any given confrontation.
Just about anyone’s moral identity can be, and is, eroded into taking sides in a conflict – Emerson’s “peace through understanding” notwithstanding.
You should probably have words with whoever got a hold of your password and did all that posting in favor of bullshit equivalency. Quite an improper thing for them to do, distorting your rational and non-absurd argument like that.
As far as I can tell, no one was arguing against the amorality of war, so I’m confused.
You seem to be trying to have it both ways by denying that you’re arguing for moral equivilancy on the one hand, and accusing others of xenophobia if they argue for a moral unequivilancy on the other, so I’m confused.
Red also seems to have confused “amorality” with “immorality”; while war is inherently amoral in many respects, certain modes of conduct are immoral, such as medical experimentation upon prisoners or wanton destruction, and so on. His argument is the worst sort of pretzeling, and amidst his utterly unconvincing denial that he was engaging in fallacious moral equivalency, he tried to draw a moral equivalency between horrific medical experimentation that was used to murder living human beings, and doing disrespectful things to corpses.
Well, it’s pretty clear what’s going on when his argument actually degrades to the point where it becomes “damage to corpses” = “live vivisection without anesthesia, and freezing people’s limbs and then letting them thaw and observing the process of rot, and so on”
And the fact that his absurd argument is explicitly being used to claim that the people who disagree with him about his bullshit moral equivalency are racists (or just “xenophobic” people who view the Japanese as “subhuman” :rolleyes:)… well, that’s just icing on the cake. All of that of course being bound up in the delightfully shitty “Grrrr, America!” nonsense whereby if Americans realize that the conduct of the Japanese army during WWII was not fungible with other nations’ modes of war, then they’re ignorant and/or racist.
the answer may lie here http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=59&catid=2 scroll down where it says “why were the Japanese so brutal in Nanking” I think it may be the 4th reason listed.
I wouldn’t read too much into that, everyone used bennies to prevent sleepiness. “Memorandum on the Use of Benzedrine and Methedrine in War”, “Stimulants for Members of the German Luftwaffe” both intelligence reports on German military use of stimulants in WWII originally published in Tactical and Technical Trends. Use of Contents of First-Aid Kits & Packets of the US Army,
I seem to recall Cornelius Ryan mentioning in A Bridge Too Far that amphetamines used during the siege of Arnhem caused more problems than they were worth once soldiers came down from them. The USAF still uses go pills of dextroamphetamine for very long flights. It’s quite a distance from things like these to full blown meth-addicted violent behavior.