Lest We Forget: August 6 and 9 1945: Part III
At the beginning of 1940, Roosevelt wanted the U.S.A. to enter the war:
For the Atlantic/European Theater, the U.S.A. went from a "Cash and Carry" policy for foodstuffs, raw matierials and war materiel with Britain. Whatever Britain wanted or needed, they had to pay for it up front and transport it back in their own ships by themselves. This pleased the American industrialists/capitalists as they wanted to make money from anyone who was willing to pay the most, whether that be Britain or Germany or whomever.
Later in 1940, this changed to "Lend Lease." The U.S.A. would lend whatever Britain needed at the time and Britain would pay for the use - "lease" of the goods and materials later.
Later, U.S. destroyers would escort British convoys up to the limit of the 200 nautical miles of U.S. coastal waters.
This was later extended to Greenland.
This was shortly extended to Iceland. U.S. military forces fought/bluffed German forces on Iceland to surrender. Iceland, formerly a 'protectorate' of Britain, then a naval post for the Kriegsmarine was now a 'protectorate' of the U.S.A. Again, this angered the American industrialists/capitalists (Alcoa/Alcan) because they had a brisk little trade with Germany for Iceland's aluminum bauxite among other strategic resources.
Finally, by the end of 1940, British convoys had U.S. merchant ships carrying American goods to Britain with U.S. destroyers accompanying the convoys all the way to Britain.
Roosevelt's orders to his Navy commanders was not to initiate a battle with the Kriegsmarine but to fire in self defense if fired upon first.
As you can see, Roosevelt was intentionally sending U.S. Navy seamen in harm's way, just daring the Germans to 'pick 'em off'. Incidents did take place where U.S. Navy seamen were injured and killed and where they fired upon the Kriegsmarine in an undeclared war that lasted for a year prior to when the U.S.A. officially entered the war.
The hope was that innocent 'neutral' U.S. Navy seamen being killed by the Kriegsmarine would turn American public opinion in favor of war with Germany.
For the Pacific Theater, the 1940 Embargo Act against Japan of strategic resources like oil, coal, iron ore, steel, aluminum, rubber, etc., was meant to force Japan's hand: Just like the current U.S. embargoes against North Korea and Iran.
Roosevelt would also send U.S. warships in small numbers or single destroyers, cruisers or battle cruisers to waters where Imperial Japanese Navy vessels were or where the Imperial Japanese Army was: like Shanghai, Hong Kong, Canton, Macao, the Yangtze, Yellow and Peal Rivers - that's what the Panay Incident was all about. Other places were the coastal waters of the Japanese home islands, where they would conduct 'war manoeuvers' (sound familiar: i.e., South Korea 2010?). In this case, the U.S. ships came from the Philippines. U.S. navy vessels would also sail in the waters off Formosa (Taiwan) and sail to Singapore when Japanese ships were also located there.
With the 1940 U.S. Embargo against Japan, Japan either would have to militarily disengage and politically and financially divest from China or find secure sources of strategic materials to continue its war in China.
There was a struggle of control and influence over the Japanese civilian government between the Army and Navy. The war in China was the Army's 'project'. The Army would not disengage from China and demanded that the government secure the resources required to continue the war. The Navy saw the invasions of Formosa, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, Singapore, French Indo-China, Burma and Thailand, etc., as both a means of securing the strategic resources required and as a way to gain prestige for the Navy and greater control and influence over the government in relation to the Army. These attacks and invasions were the Navy's 'projects'.
War with the U.S.A. was desirable because the threat posed by the U.S. Pacific Fleet needed to be neutralized, just like the threats the British Royal Navy, the Australia and New Zealand Royal Navies and the French Navy and Dutch Navy posed in the Pacific.
War with the U.S.A. was inevitable after the invasion of the Philippines.
Yamamoto had lived and studied at an American university for a number of years. Unlike many of his Japanese colleagues, he understood the psychology of the Americans. He knew the size of the country, the size of its population, its wealth of natural resources and its industrial capacity. Most of the other Imperial Japanese Navy commanders thought the superiority of their training, military prowess and the size, distances and impregnability of their island fortresses in the Pacific that they had built up for 20 years, would be enough to defeat the U.S.A. In this light, I think Yamamoto's "Sleeping Dragon" analogy can be taken at face value.
As to the actual attack on Pearl Harbor itself, it was meticulously and near flawlessly planned and executed, showing that Japan could carry out such a technically advanced and modern military attack along with the best of them. The Imperial Japanese Navy and Air Force attacked only military targets. Any American and Hawaiian civilian injuries or deaths were accidental. Civilians were not intentionally targetted in this operation.
Pearl Harbor was an inside job. Roosevelt had hoped for it or something like it by provoking Japan for nealy two years (i.e., since early 1940.)
It was no accident the U.S.A.'s aircraft carriers were out to sea when the attack occurred. U.S. "Purple" and "Ultra" had cracked the Japanese Naval code. Roosevelt, select members of his administration and the highest ranking officers of his military Chiefs of Staff had 'connected the dots' and figured it out.
Since the start of 1940, Roosevelt wanted the U.S.A. to go to war. The Roosevelt administration had been taking actions in both the Atlantic and Pacific that were hoped to provoke either Germany or Japan into war with the U.S.A.
As it turned out, Japan took the bait and attacked the U.S.A. at Pearl. Germany later declared war against the U.S.A. in support of its Axis partner Japan. That was all that was needed to get the U.S. into the European Theater of war. Roosevelt declared war against Germany, Italy and the European Axis powers (without actually being attacked by them) and sent troops to Britain and North Africa. And the rest they say, "Is history."
At the beginning of 1940, As it turned out, Japan took the bait and attacked the U.S.A. at Pearl. Germany later declared war against the U.S.A. in support of its Axis partner Japan. That was all that was needed to get the U.S. into the European Theater of war. Roosevelt declared war against Germany, Italy and the European Axis powers (without actually being attacked by them) and sent troops to Britain and North Africa. And the rest they say, "Is history."
Hmm no. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S., the U.S. did not declare war on them.
To be absolutely technically precise, Frmrsldr is correct in saying the Germany declared war on the USA, and then the USA declared war on Germany by passing the "War Bill" in Congress, giving the executive powers for using federal funds to prosecute the war.
Hmm no. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S., the U.S. did not declare war on them.
Sure he did. Once they declared war on the U.S.A., he did them the honor of returning the 'favor'. It's proper diplomatic form. Even the Japanese government attempted to declare war on the U.S.A. before the Pearl Harbor attack. The declaration was delayed by Japanese Embassy staff in Washington D.C. trying to decode their orders from Tokyo.
Only nazi Germany (and possibly fascist Italy) was the "baddie" in this regard, invading other countries without a formal declaration of war.
It was not diplomatic protocol. Roosevelt needed money from Congress to fight the war.
Yamamoto had lived and studied at an American university for a number of years. Unlike many of his Japanese colleagues, he understood the psychology of the Americans. He knew the size of the country, the size of its population, its wealth of natural resources and its industrial capacity. Most of the other Imperial Japanese Navy commanders thought the superiority of their training, military prowess and the size, distances and impregnability of their island fortresses in the Pacific that they had built up for 20 years, would be enough to defeat the U.S.A. In this light, I think Yamamoto's "Sleeping Dragon" analogy can be taken at face value.
The idea that Yamamoto stood alone among the Japanese general staff in having a gloomy assessment of war with the USA. Indeed, the entire premise of Japanese war planners was that any protracted war with the USA was a lost cause -- therefore they all favoured a short war. Once, the decision to go to war was made, it was Yamamoto who enthusiastically advised a direct strike against the USA at Pearl Harbour in order to knock out the Pacific Fleet, and this was actually a late addition to the overall war plan, and one that Yamamoto insisted on, on threat of his own resignation, precisely because of his high estimation of the latent power of the USA. It was the army that opposed war against the USA, prefering to let the USA take the plunge.
Army and Navy planners agreed that the first plan was too risky for it would leave Japanese forces exposed to attack from the Philippines and Malaya. The Navy preferred the second plan; it was safe, provided for a step-by-step advance, and created no serious problems. The Army objected to it, however, on the ground that by the time the main objectives in the Netherlands Indies and Malaya were reached the Allies would have had time to strengthen their defenses. The third plan, with its early seizure of Malaya and bypassing of the Philippines, appealed greatly to the Army planners who hoped in this way to gain southeast Asia and delay American entry into the war. But this course, as the Navy pointed out, also placed American naval and air forces in the Philippines in a strategic position athwart Japan's line of communication and constituted a risk of the utmost magnitude. The fourth course, simultaneous attacks and advance along two axes, created serious problems of co-ordination and timing and a dangerous dispersion of forces. But because it was the only course which compromised the views of both groups, it was finally adopted.
Japan's Decision for War
Politically, Japanese war planners thought would be difficult for Roosevelt to justify making all out war with Japan, "on behalf of others", such as the colonial possessions of the Dutch in Indonesia, and the British in Singapore, it was Yamamoto's impetuous intervention that gave the Roosevelt just the card he needed to commit to total war in Asia.
It was not diplomatic protocol. Roosevelt needed money from Congress to fight the war.
Of course financial matters (funding the war and getting the economy on a war footing) and fine legal ease points of politics and government had to be taken into consideration. After all, the U.S.A. was a "democracy" with a Constitution.
ETA:
Germany did not attack the U.S.A., Roosevelt did not have to declare war on Germany but could have ignored Hitler's declaration of war against the U.S.A.
Japan's Decision for War
Politically, Japanese war planners thought would be difficult for Roosevelt to justify making all out war with Japan, "on behalf of others", such as the colonial possessions of the Dutch in Indonesia, and the British in Singapore, it was Yamamoto's impetuous intervention that gave the Roosevelt just the card he needed to commit to total war in Asia.
As soon as the Philippines were attacked, the U.S.A. would enter the war. The Japanese leadership knew that (including Yamamoto.) A strike first at the Philippines would warn the U.S. government and the fleet at Pearl. Hence the attack first at Pearl.
The army plan was to avoid attacking the Phillipines, as I pointed out before. The plan as enviasaged by the political war planners was to avoid war with the USA for as long as possible, and force the USA into making the decision. The concept was that war for the sake of other imperial powers (Britian and the Netherlands) would be harder to justify domestically than an direct attack on the USA, and since the attack was intended primarily as a kind of high stakes negotiating strategy where the ultimate end was a negotiated settlement with the USA, the strike on Pearl Harbor defeated the political intentions of the Japanese war plan:
An introduction to the causes of war: patterns of interstate conflict
Y'know, I've talked to Canadian infantrymen, tankers, sailors and bomber crews who fought in WWII, civilians who lived in occupied Europe (and the Canadian home front, of course), as well as Germans who were pressed into the Hitler Youth, then given Schmeissers and pointed in the direction of the US Army.
They all said the war was a waste.
Really? Because all the ones Ive talked to said war is a waste but this one had to be done
Well except the nazi ones, they just said the war was a waste with the occasional sprinkling of 'gee too bad we lost"
My wife asked my friend who was in Vietnam if he had any stories and all he said was that he can't remember any of it when he is awake.
I have an uncle who was the pilot of one of those patrol boats in the river (ala apocolypse now) and many a time he came back the only one alive. He doesnt talk about it at all.
Got me. They all said war is a waste. The Canadians said WWII was horrible, but they'd have done it again since it had to be done.
Then there was my grandpa, who was a zombie and not ashamed to admit it. He didn't see the war as part of his world, he just wanted to take care of his family. He always talked about how stupid the army was (he was a highly-skilled aircraft welder before the war, then was drafted and drove truck in the army, even though he was asked to be a sniper because he was such a good shot) and how it messed up his life.
The army plan was to avoid attacking the Phillipines, as I pointed out before. The plan as enviasaged by the political war planners was to avoid war with the USA for as long as possible, and force the USA into making the decision. The concept was that war for the sake of other imperial powers (Britian and the Netherlands) would be harder to justify domestically than an direct attack on the USA, and since the attack was intended primarily as a kind of high stakes negotiating strategy where the ultimate end was a negotiated settlement with the USA, the strike on Pearl Harbor defeated the political intentions of the Japanese war plan:
An introduction to the causes of war: patterns of interstate conflict
That's quite a wager with no guarantee that the U.S.A. would not enter the war. Even if Japan had attacked all the other European colonial possessions and not the Philippines, here's how Roosevelt could (and probably would) have played it:
1. Japan's decade old war in China. It was the U.S.A. that came up with the idea of "open cities" in China, where foreign powers essentially 'owned' Chinese cities where their capital exploited China - cities were foreign owned 'free trade zones'. For the past 50 years or so, there were American missionaries and their families in China. There were also U.S. Navy, Army and Marine personnel and their families in China - remember the Panay? They were writing to family back in the U.S. describing the war in China and the terrible things the Japanese were doing there.
2. With the Japanese capturing the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, French Indo-China, Burma and Thailand and with the fortified Pacific island bases Japan held for the past 20 years, Roosevelt could warn the American public that there also were U.S. Army, Marine, Navy and Air Force personnel and their families as well as American missionaries and their families in the Philippines (just like in China) and that an invasion of the Philippines was imminent and that their lives, well being and security were at stake.
This might just have been sufficient to convince most Americans to go to war against Japan.
lest we forget..
WWI and WWII were started because of the break down in world capitalism. Meaning that it had to be restructured.
German capitalism was rising while British and French was in decline.
American Capitalism was rising as well.
Germany knowing full well that they would be competing against America, tried to control Europe and important trade routes under the rule of German capitalism.
Strategicly the American bourgeoise stayed out of the war untill they felt they could win it. Their idea won, beeting out Germany.
American Capitalism winning was the only real outcome anyways. They had advanced management techniques and developed the assembly line. Resulting in the ever increasing productivity and extracting large surplus value, that needed to, and was used to, reform European capitalism. Bringing world capitalism into a long period of stability.
That stability ended by the 1960s and new forms of capitalist accumulation was needed. The Chinese, eastern Europe and other third world working class was brought on board to increase the extraction of surplus value.
At the same time American capitalims was taken over by financial vultures that preyed upon everything that the American industrialist of the early 1900's developed. Also they turned American capitalism into financial market speculation.
Since all market financial speculation is directly related to the surplus value extracted from the working class, the financial speculation of the capitalist vultures exceded all realistic equvilence between financial markets and supr plus value accumilated. Casing a major world capitalist melt down.
The only thing left is for the realignment of world capitalism through new wars and massive human slaughter.
The army plan was to avoid attacking the Phillipines, as I pointed out before. The plan as enviasaged by the political war planners was to avoid war with the USA for as long as possible, and force the USA into making the decision. The concept was that war for the sake of other imperial powers (Britian and the Netherlands) would be harder to justify domestically than an direct attack on the USA, and since the attack was intended primarily as a kind of high stakes negotiating strategy where the ultimate end was a negotiated settlement with the USA, the strike on Pearl Harbor defeated the political intentions of the Japanese war plan:
An introduction to the causes of war: patterns of interstate conflict
That's quite a wager with no guarantee that the U.S.A. would not enter the war. Even if Japan had attacked all the other European colonial possessions and not the Philippines, here's how Roosevelt could (and probably would) have played it:
1. Japan's decade old war in China. It was the U.S.A. that came up with the idea of "open cities" in China, where foreign powers essentially 'owned' Chinese cities where their capital exploited China - cities were foreign owned 'free trade zones'. For the past 50 years or so, there were American missionaries and their families in China. There were also U.S. Navy, Army and Marine personnel and their families in China - remember the Panay? They were writing to family back in the U.S. describing the war in China and the terrible things the Japanese were doing there.
2. With the Japanese capturing the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, French Indo-China, Burma and Thailand and with the fortified Pacific island bases Japan held for the past 20 years, Roosevelt could warn the American public that there also were U.S. Army, Marine, Navy and Air Force personnel and their families as well as American missionaries and their families in the Philippines (just like in China) and that an invasion of the Philippines was imminent and that their lives, well being and security were at stake.
This might just have been sufficient to convince most Americans to go to war against Japan.
I am just trying to point out the rationale for war, and the plan as far as the political leadership was concerned. What is interesting about it this to me is that the "political" object (negotiated settlement in a limited war) was undermined by Yamamoto's mini/max analysis of the "best chance" scenario based in purely military factors.
1) Objectively, Yamamoto is right in strictly operational terms, attacking the fleet at Pearl Harbour is safer because it delays US operational ability in the immediate frame.
2) Those operational imparatives end up contradicting the political object, because they hand Roosevelt his best case domestic political context for prosecuting all out war against Japan: An "unprovoked surprise attack against the US".
The plan takes shape first with a view towards a limited war, a kind of game of chicken in the Pacific, based in a specific political view, but "mission creep" takes over.
welcome to the new world order.....
lest we forget..
The only thing left is for the realignment of world capitalism through new wars and massive human slaughter.
You said it!
History is repeating itself.
This time, instead of the German, Italian and Japanese Empires, perhaps it will be the American Empire that is destroyed.
The plan takes shape first with a view towards a limited war, a kind of game of chicken in the Pacific, based in a specific political view, but "mission creep" takes over.
War is like that, it has a way of getting out of hand. Hitler, Mussolini, Yamamoto and other Japanese military and political leaders found that out to their chagrin after about mid 1942.
Bush and Obama have found that out for Iraq after 2004 and Afghanistan after 2003.
And it's the millions of schmucks like the families of the Frmrlsldrs, trippies, Qa'bongs and cueballs who get butchered in the process.
Yes, and the so-called democratic western countries at the time were still supporting the fascist kuomintang in China. Their friendly dictator Franco was in firm control of Spain after overthrowing democracy in that country with help from Hitler, Mussolini, Ford, GM, Studebaker, and other western world fascists. And workers of the world were in awe of the Russian people and Red Army as they stood alone against Nazi Germany for over two years when Hitler poured two-thirds of the corporate-sponsored military machine into the heart of Russia and Ukraine.
Once it was clear that Germany was being defeated, however, and Soviet troops were actually on German soil, then the Allied imperialists launched the D-Day invasion and moved as quickly as possible in what seemed to be an effort more to confront the Soviet army than to defeat the Nazi war machine.
Hi, Fidel. Re your post #20, on the Americans' "slow boat" to the second front:
I'm not by any means well-read on WWII, but picked up 2 volumes of Lord Alanbrooke's war diaries from a charity book-sale and recently began reading them. (Alanbrooke became Chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1941.) Here's the editor, Arthur Bryant: "On April 1st, 1942, the American Secretary for War, Henry Stimson, and the Chief of Army Staff, General George Marshall, presented President Roosevelt with a plan for an early Anglo-American invasion of northern France. It had been drafted by...Major-General Dwight Eisenhower....its objects were to keep Russia in the War by drawing German ground and air forces from the eastern to a western front, and to provide a theatre where American forces could be employed at once to destroy the Axis in Europe before turning against the Japanese aggressor in the Pacific." (Emphasis mine) It was thought that if Russia started to wobble (remember, their pact with the Nazis was only a few months dead at the time), Operation Sledgehammer would have to be launched, a landing in France in summer 1942. "It was recognized that this would have to be carried out mainly by British troops and that its cost would probably be sacrificial."
Alanbrooke found the early invasion plans hair-raising, though they reflected the Americans' desire to hit back at someone after Pearl Harbour. Meeting Marshall for the first time "was an eye-opener...he had not studied any of the strategic implications of a cross-Channel landing....We should be operating with forces intially weaker than the enemy and, in addition, his rate of reinforcement would be at least twice as fast as ours....His formations were fully trained and inured to war whilst ours were raw and inexperienced. I asked him to imagine that his landing had been safely carried out, and asked him what his plans would then be...I found that he had not begun to consider any form of plan of action or to visualize the problems that would face the army after landing." There was also the problem that U-boats were roaming the North Atlantic at will in that period, making resupply chancy.
Roosevelt, Marshall and Eisenhower were all keen to invade northern France in 1942 if that meant keeping Russia onside. Alanbrooke, who had served at Dunkirk, wisely dissuaded them. It's hard not to think the result would have been a Dieppe writ large.
Good God, am I turning into one of those History Channel people, obsessing about whose tanks had the bigger guns? Back to Victorian novels for me.
In relation to the main topic of this thread it is perhaps more relevant to mention that the anglosphere Allies (US, UK, etc) made a very large effort long before August 1945 to draw the Soviets into the war in the Pacific. The Soviets had, in fact, a treaty with the Japanese (not unlike the non-aggression treaty with the Nazis between late August 1939 - June 1941 that was much better known) for the purpose of NOT getting sucked into fighting on 2 fronts. When it did come, Operation August Storm was a critical plank in the Allied success against Japan and in getting a speedy surrender.
Yes, all good points, F-P. I've read different points of view on the American, British and Canadian government strategies then. I think the Americans and British(and western industrialists and financial elite driving government interests then) were somewhat pre-occupied with the Pacific theater and in hacking off pieces of China for themselves in the 1930s and 40s. But as far as re-supplying by sea was concerned, US industrialists were doing a job on maritime workers wanting better pay and working conditions. Many US and Canadian seafarers saw frontline action in the Atlantic where regular naval forces just never saw up front and close. The seafarers wanting recognition were labelled communists and even spat upon by regular enlisted men in pubs and diners back home in North America. I think the re-supply had isssues with German U-boats for sure, but maritime workers were also under attack on a political front at home as well.
And then there is the issue of Stalin's pact with Nazi Germany. There has been in-depth discussion of that issue by various historians and essayists. I think pacts of one sort or another were not so uncommon then with the Munich agreement in 1938 an example. Like European leaders claimed at the time, agreements with Germany bore advantages and disadvantages for each country involved. While the Russians sent raw materials and energy to Germany, the Germans returned the favour with sending various goods to Russia that aided both the civilian and military economies. The main aim of any national leader, remember, is to avoid war and conflict, which is what Molotov-Ribbentrop II was mostly about according to the Russians themselves.
Yes, and the so-called democratic western countries at the time were still supporting the fascist kuomintang in China. Their friendly dictator Franco was in firm control of Spain after overthrowing democracy in that country with help from Hitler, Mussolini, Ford, GM, Studebaker, and other western world fascists. And workers of the world were in awe of the Russian people and Red Army as they stood alone against Nazi Germany for over two years when Hitler poured two-thirds of the corporate-sponsored military machine into the heart of Russia and Ukraine.
Of course Fidel, the smart play was to turn on Chiang and give China to Japan, or better, force Chiang into the fascist camp, but this would never happen because Soviet aid (Operation Zet) to Chiang dwarfed anything sent by the Americans until the end of the war. But don't let that stop you from re-writing history so that it fits in with your preconcieved notions of good guys and bad guys.
In relation to the main topic of this thread it is perhaps more relevant to mention that the anglosphere Allies (US, UK, etc) made a very large effort long before August 1945 to draw the Soviets into the war in the Pacific. The Soviets had, in fact, a treaty with the Japanese (not unlike the non-aggression treaty with the Nazis between late August 1939 - June 1941 that was much better known) for the purpose of NOT getting sucked into fighting on 2 fronts. When it did come, Operation August Storm was a critical plank in the Allied success against Japan and in getting a speedy surrender.
And the Russians realized the advantages for not fighting on two fronts since Lenin's pact with the Germans. Stalin would later discount the notion that Hitler might chance fighting on two fronts, which is what lost WW I for Germany. Stalin guessed wrong. Hitler had designs on Russia all along. Stalin would later refer to Dieppe and Italian fronts as "the sideshow in the Mediterranean."
That is incoherent and a total non-sequitur, Fidel. Didn't your English teacher teach you to put one subject in each paragraph that you write?
Anyway, carry on.
During the Cassablanca Conference, Prime Minister Winston Churchill raised the issue with Roosevelt of landing British and American forces in Yugoslavia after they had swept the Wermacht out of North Africa. The objective was to keep the Red Army within Russia and out of any other countries.
What came out of this were not landings in Yugoslavia but the Sicily and Anzio etc., landings in Italy. The closest the Western Allies came to landings in Yugoslavia was "The Man Who Never Was". An intelligence ruse hoped to draw Wermacht troops from the West, the Eastern Front and from Italy.
Churchill later made his reasoning behind this public in his post war "Iron Curtain" speech.
Your super-secret information source makes no mention of the Soviets supplying Chiang Kai-shek. After 1945, the Sovs helped Maoists give Chiang and KMT the heave-ho from China, as in mainland China and not Formosa and later "Taiwan."
That is incoherent and a total non-sequitur, Fidel. Didn't your English teacher teach you to put one subject in each paragraph that you write?
Anyway, carry on.
Same to you.
Your super-secret information source makes no mention of the Soviets supplying Chiang Kai-shek. After 1945, the Sovs helped Maoists give Chiang and KMT the heave-ho from China, as in mainland China and not Formosa and later "Taiwan."
You were talking about the period 1942. While you are all about distorting history, why not also distort the meaning of your posts in this thread? In for a penny, in for a pound... eh?
What is your point? What is it that you think your source reveals to us? Air America and CIA worked with Chiang's gangsters after 1945 to export opium over the Himalayas and westward in aiding the finance of Chiang's anti-Maoists and WACL wackos, anti-communist Tibetan theocratic feudalists and so on. I don't see where youre going with that link at all.
That the truth is that Stalin and Mao didn't get along. The Soviet Union had a long standing relationship with Chiang Kai Shek, and that support for the Communist insurgents was tepid at best. After the war they had no confidence in the Chinese CP and continued with the policy of backing a government of national unity between the KMT and the CPC, and it was only after this effort failed, and the US bought Chiang's alliegience that they supported the Maoist forces unconditionally.
The Soviet Union did not care who it had influence with in China, as long as they had influence.
Reds under their beds even then.
I'm looking for where I said something to the contrary and can't find it, mr scarecrow. But carry on anyway as you're on a roll at this point.
Russia supplied Chiang's China with combat aircraft from 1937 to 1941. Russian ground and air forces even directly clashed with Japanese ground and air forces in Mongolia in the Second Nomonhan Incident in 1939 (the First Nomonhan Incident was in 1936.)
During 1939-40, Russia was introducing new combat aircraft into the Red Air Force. When the nazis invaded in June 1941, Russia stopped exporting combat aircraft and began rationalizing their fighter and bomber fleets, phazing out old models and stepping up production of new ones. Communist Russia needed all the combat planes it could manufacture in its life or death struggle against nazi Germany. During the 1941-45 War, Chiang's China was left with ageing obsolescent Russian aircraft.
Since 1937, the AVG (American Volunteer Group, these were regular U.S. Air Force airmen, but Roosevelt wanted to create the fiction that they were 'volunteers' or mercenaries who were not connected to either the U.S. government or U.S. Air Force. Remember, Roosevelt wanted American public opinion to turn in favor of war, without being seen as having a hand in this 'turning' of opinion), was operating three squadrons in China. By the start of 1942, they had been formally 'amalgamated back' into the U.S. Air Force.
From 1941-45, the Chiang government did get a lot of money from the U.S. government and Chiang's army got a lot of ammunition and small arms from the U.S. By the last year of war, Nationalist China got some interceptor/ground attack aircraft like late model Spitfires from Britain and some Mustangs from the U.S.A.
During 1942-45, the U.S. Air Force clandestinely operated a secret airbase out of China, where B-17, B-24 and later, B-29 missions were flown against Japan.
Those were the contributions of the U.S.S.R. and U.S.A. to Nationalist China during 1941-45. From 1945-49, the U.S.A. financed and armed Chiang's forces, while the U.S.S.R. financed and armed Mao's forces.
I should have posted these sites much earlier, but I have to work around time constraints. I think these will be useful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_in_the_East
The Chinese were not worthy of the land according to the dominant ideology, called bugs, below-human. Yoshio Tsuchiya, (Japanese Secret Military Police): "The Chinese were inferior - didn't belong to the human race. That was the way we looked at it." In December 1937 the Japanese Army reached the then capital of China, Nanking... Men were set on fire, women beaten, bayoneted, raped. After Nanking atrocities followed in the Chinese countryside - the Chinese used for bayonet practice. Yoshio Tsuchiya (imprisoned 1950-56 for war crimes): "The first time you still have a conscience and feel bad, but if you are honoured and given merit and praised, that will be the driving power for the second time - after the second time I didn't feel anything." A soldier is asked why he felt no guilt or shame raping and killing women. He replies: "Because I was fighting for the emperor. He was a god; in the name of the emperor we could do whatever we wanted against the Chinese."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_and_Japan
Mass killings
Looting
Human experimentation and biological warfare
Use of chemical weapons
Preventable famine
Torture of prisoners of war
Forced labor
Comfort women
Cannibalism
The Empire also violated international agreements signed by Japan, including provisions of the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907) such as a ban on the use of chemical weapons and protections for prisoners of war. The Japanese government also signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1929), thereby rendering its actions in 1937-45 liable to charges of crimes against peace,...
The historian Chalmers Johnson has written that:
"It may be pointless to try to establish which World War Two Axis aggressor, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples it victimised. The Germans killed six million Jews and 20 million Russians [i.e. Soviet citizens]; the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese. Both nations looted the countries they conquered on a monumental scale, though Japan plundered more, over a longer period, than the Nazis. Both conquerors enslaved millions and exploited them as forced labourers - and, in the case of the Japanese, as [forced] prostitutes for front-line troops. If you were a Nazi prisoner of war from Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand or Canada (but not Russia) you faced a 4% chance of not surviving the war; [by comparison] the death rate for Allied POWs held by the Japanese was nearly 30%"
According to the findings of the Tokyo Tribunal, the death rate among POWs from Asian countries, held by Japan was 27.1%. The death rate of Chinese POWs was much higher because - under a directive ratified on August 5, 1937 by Emperor Hirohito - the constraints of international law on treatment of those prisoners was removed. Only 56 Chinese POWs were released after the surrender of Japan. After March 20, 1943, the Japanese Navy was under orders to execute all prisoners taken at sea...
... R.J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, states that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military murdered from nearly 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most likely 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. "This democide was due to a morally bankrupt political and military strategy, military expediency and custom, and national culture..."
Historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta reports that a "Three Alls Policy" (Sanko Sakusen) was implemented in China from 1942 to 1945 and was in itself responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians. This scorched earth strategy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself,...
Deaths caused by the diversion of resources to the Japanese military in occupied countries are also regarded as war crimes by many people. Millions of civilians in Southeast Asia - especially Vietnam and the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia), both of which were major rice-growing countries - died during a preventable famine in 1944-45...
An estimated 2 million Vietnamese, or 10% of the population then, died during the famine of 1944-45. A later UN report stated that 4 million people died in Indonesdia as a result of famine and forced labour during the Japanese occupation.
http://www.rapeofnanking.info/JapaneseAtrocities.html
Bataan Death March
Borneo Death Marches
Slave Labour Camps
Death Railway (Thai-Burma Railway, "Bridge on the River Kwai")
"Hell Ships"
Unit 731
I was well aware of all that before we started this conversation. I had hoped evidencing my familiarity with the subject by laying out and referencing in detail the historical record would disabuse you of the notion that I haven't studied this issue in depth. The fact is that I have.
I have never once said the Japanese did not commit atrocity, as you seem to be saying. Nor have I denied that the firebombing of Dresden was a war crime. I just reject the idea that all imperial policy is the same, just by benefit of the fact that it is imperial.
Nothing you have said has changed my view. My discussion of the actual Japanese war aims is intended to show that their aims as discussed in the highest levels of the Japanese cabinet were entirely different than those held at the highest levels of the German war leadership.
When I took Diplomatic History way back in the dark ages we had to read Richard Storry's (sp) A Short History of Japan. Is there a more recent work you might reccomend Cueball that covers Japanese diplomatic history in the first half of the twentieth century?
I don't know about a comprehensive book on that subject specifically. Most of what I know about Asian politics of the period is put together from several sources, everything from "The Morning Deluge" by Han Su Yin, to Angus Smedley's "The Great Road: The Life and Times of Chu Teh", to "Ho Chi Minh: A polictical biography". I have of course read "Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbour", which I regard to definitevly show that the US intended without a doubt start a war with Japan, even if I am no 100% convinced that Peal Harbour was total set up. As for the actual decision making process of the war itself, "An introduction to the causes of war: patterns of interstate conflict from WW2 to Iraq", which I referenced above was a real eye-opener for me. As well, I found "Japanese Destroyer Captain" by Tameichi Hara to be a fascinating book that really humanized the Japanese side of the conflict in way it had not been done for me before -- Hara was the commander of the squadron that ran over PT-109, and in the destroyer right behind the one that almost killed John F. Kennedy.
There are others, such as Hiroshima by John Hersey but those are some notable ones.
But I would say the single most important book I have read about the Pacific War, though it is more sociological than historical or political was "War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War" which is perhaps more pertinent to this thread.
Thanks for the recommendations, Cueball. I may see if I can scare up a copy of the last.
ETA: Campus library has a copy. Will check it out this morning.
I just reject the idea that all imperial policy is the same, just by benefit of the fact that it is imperial.
Where have I said that all colonial/imperial policy is the same? What fascist Italy did in Tripolitania (Libya), Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and Italian occupied Yugoslavia from 1920 - 1945, what nazi Germany did in regards to the war on the Eastern Front and the Holocaust and what fascist Japan did in Asia and the Pacific Theater, if it is to be considered colonial/imperial policy, pales what the European and American colonialists/imperialists did from the late 19th Century to the end of World War II, even when compared to the worst case scenarios of the Indian Wars in the U.S.A. in the late 19th Century and the cultural genocide of the reservation and residential school system in the U.S.A. and Canada and the treatment of Africans by Belgians in the Congo from 1875 - 1915.
The only thing nazi Germany did that was worse than fascist Japan was the Holocaust and, as I said before, that was a difference in degree, not in kind. When it comes to atrocities, everything else fascist Japan did, equaled or was worse than what nazi Germany did. The 1937 Rape of Nanking, although of shorter duration than the nazi policy in the East from 1939 to 1942 of marching or driving in trucks to isolated fields, having people dig their own mass graves and then gunning those people down with pistols, rifles and machine-guns then burying them, was roughly equivalent, but with one significant difference: the nazis overwhelmingly targeted Jewish people. The Japanese fascists indiscriminately raped and murdered any Chinese person who had the misfortune of being unable to escape from the Japanese soldiers.
Those the nazis did not gas and incinerate, they worked to death - so the death camps were also 'labor' camps. Just like the nazis sending people by the thousands on trains from the occupied countries and territories (both West and East) to work as forced labor in Germany (i.e., non Jews working in war factories, etc.), the Japanese fascists sent on boats to Japan or Thailand or marched from one part of an occupied country to another. Only these ocean voyages and marches weren't as pleasant as the German train rides. See the Bataan Death March, the Sandakan Death Marches and the "Hell Ships", ships where prisoners were overcrowded, starved and dehydrated and were not marked with Red Cross flags so Alled warships sank them as merchant ships. Both the nazis and fascist Japan ran labor camps where people by the hundreds of thousands to millions died.
The nazis conducted unethical scientific experiments on live subjects. So did fascist Japan with Unit 731 and its subunits. The Japanese used biological and chemical warfare against both Chinese soldiers and unsuspecting Chinese civilians - something the nazis did not do.
Vietnam and Indonesia were major rice growing countries. Fascist Japan caused "preventable" famines in these countries in 1944-45 (sorry, I got the date wrong earlier.)
The nazis looted and burned Russia for all they could. But they were only there for about three years. The Japanese fascists looted and burned China for all they could. They were there (especially in the Northeast) for up to fifteen years.
The Japanese fascists forced app. 200,000 Asian and Pacific and even some European women to be military "comfort women" - i.e., forced them to be sex slaves for the fascist Imperial Japanese Army - again, something the nazis did not do (or, at least nowhere near that scale.)
Nothing you have said has changed my view.
Forget about what I have said.
It may be pointless to try to establish which World War Two Axis aggressor, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples it victimised. The Germans killed six million Jews and 20 million Russians [i.e. Soviet citizens]; the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese. Both nations looted the countries they conquered on a monumental scale, though Japan plundered more, over a longer period, than the Nazis. Both conquerors enslaved millions and exploited them as forced labourers - and, in the case of the Japanese, as [forced] prostitutes for front-line troops.
My discussion of the actual Japanese war aims is intended to show that their aims as discussed in the highest levels of the Japanese cabinet were entirely different than those held at the highest levels of the German war leadership.
Did you read the quotes and go to the sites I provided links for and do research to acquire more detailed information on specific subjects you might find interesting under the topic of Japanese war crimes, I provided in post #35?
If you did, then how can you possibly say that?
According to the findings of the Tokyo Tribunal, the death rate among POWs from Asian countries, held by Japan was 27.1%. The death rate of Chinese POWs was much higher because - under a directive ratified on August 5, 1937 by Emperor Hirohito - the constraints of international law on treatment of those prisoners was removed. Only 56 Chinese POWs were released after the surrender of Japan. After March 20, 1943, the Japanese Navy was under orders to execute all prisoners taken at sea.
My discussion of the actual Japanese war aims is intended to show that their aims as discussed in the highest levels of the Japanese cabinet were entirely different than those held at the highest levels of the German war leadership.
In light of the facts I have provided, this claim fails categorically.
The more of the stomach turning details I read about the way the fascist government and Imperial Japanese Army and Navy prosecuted the war, the more it looks to me like the Japanese fascists were the nazis of the Asia-Pacific War.
What do you think, that the war aims of fascist Japan were solely to get their hands on oil and rubber and other strategic resources from China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaya, Indochina, Burma and Thailand, etc?
Just as Hitler and the nazis intended to make Russia (not Germany) the heart of the Third Reich, the Japanese fascists, realized that Japan could not meet the nutritional, resources and financial needs of its people and intended to make China the "new Japan" - i.e., the heart of the Japanese Empire.
Just as the nazis realized that physical and population size would make it a Herculean task to conquer Russia, so too the Japanese fascists and military realized that physical and population size would make it a Herculean task to conquer China. That is why Adolf Hitler made the oath sworn by the Reich's armed forces a personal oath of loyalty sworn to him by name, that is why the nazis referred to Slavs as subhuman (untermenschen) and adopted a scorched earth policy in the East and did it in the name of Der Fuerer and the glory of the fatherland, in order to have any hope of conquering Russia. That is why the Japanese fascists made the Emperor a god, Imperial Japanese Army soldiers referred to Chinese as subhuman ("bugs") and adopted a scorched earth policy in the East (China) and did it in the name of the the Emperor and the glory of the Empire, in order to have any hope of conquering China.
If in the history books about fascist Japan's prosecution of the war, war aims and atrocities, there is a dearth of letters, orders, communiques, telegrams, correspondence, communications, etc. from the government to the highest Imperial Japanese Army and Navy commanders in the field and out on the high seas, then compare the Nuremberg trials with the Tokyo trials:
Notice how far more German nazis were executed and received harsher sentences than their fascist Japanese counterparts?
The reason for this is American rewriting of history by suppressing such fascist Japan documents. When Harry Truman became President, he realized that there were two Superpowers: the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. The U.S.S.R. was the evil communist empire that in the next World War (if it came to that) the U.S.A. would end up fighting against. That is why the use of the two atomic bombs; so the War in the Pacific would be wrapped up as quickly as possible to prevent the U.S.S.R. and allow the U.S.A. to be the sole occupying power in Japan.
Truman was already viewing the world through the lens of the Cold War. The reason why so many Japanese war criminals received reduced sentences and got off so lightly, and the reason why documents that show Emperor Hirohito's and fascist Japan government's culpability for war crimes committed in the prosecution of the war, was due to the fact that the de facto governor of Japan, General Douglas MacArthur and the Truman administration saw Japan as a valuable bulwark against the spread of communism in Asia.
Documents and communications that establish fascist Japan's culpability concerning development and use of biological and chemical agents in World War II were also suppressed because the U.S. military viewed such information as useful and beneficial in a future war against communist U.S.S.R.
In contrast, the U.S.A. had to share occupation of Germany with (most importantly) the U.S.S.R., the U.K. and France. The other countries, especially the U.S.S.R., would not allow the U.S.A. to "pull the sort of stunt" it did in Japan. Hence that is why far more documents of communications between the nazi government and "the highest levels of German war leadership" were "allowed" to surface than in the case of Japan.
The atrocities the fascist Japanese government and Imperial armed forces committed in World War II was shameful and inexcusable. The covering up of these atrocities and the widespread protection of Japanese war criminals by the highest levels of the U.S. government and military afterward was also shameful and inexcusable.
Just like many Jews, and the state of Israel, successive Chinese governments and many Chinese survivors of fascist Japan's war atrocities have neither forgotten nor forgiven.
Dude, there is no difference.
This is just polemic. There isn't anything in it that directly deals directly with the evidence I presented.
There isn't anything in it that directly deals directly with the evidence I presented.
The problem is, your evidence is only the tip of the iceberg.
Look into the Tokyo Tribunals, follow the links provided by the wiki sites, get a hold of the books and reference material in the footnotes sections of the wiki sites, check out books and documentary DVDs that interview Japanese soldiers who witnessed and were involved in the crimes and the survivors who were their victims.
Learning new things is not something to be afraid of.
The problem is that other peoples posts are really only device for you to make your polemic. You have repeatedly assumed I have been saying things that I have not said, over and over again, launch into your tirade and consitently misread whatever is being said, only so you can launch into the statement you want to make.
You have maintained over 4 threads, that I defended the bombing of Dresden. That I said the Japanese were the "good" guys, that I felt the Japanese occupation of China was justified and that I ignored US imperial interests in the prosecution of the Pacific war, and in particular its aftermath. None of which I said. In fact, I said exactly the OPPOSITE, on several occassions, even in the posts that you have quoted from me which you used to launch your ridiculous attacks.
Again, I cited specific examples of how the Japanese and German war planning differed, and you have not yet, not even ONCE confronted my points on evidence, at all ever in these threads.
Being lectured about the Rape of Nanking as if you just informed me of it in these threads is just fucking stupid, when obviously I am welll enough read on this subject. I learned about the Rape of Nanking 30 years ago, and details of it from various perspectives are in some of the books I mentioned up thread. For example the Agnes Smedley book is based on her experiences in the Chinese Communist zone during the war against Japan, and is filled with all kinds of material on the Communist insurgency and the "100 Regiments Offensive", which led to the implimentation of the "Three Alls Policy" by the Japanese.
The "Rape of Nanking", the Burma Road and the "Three Alls" is pretty much ABC's of the Japanese war in China, and not some kind of closely guarded secret kept from the public domain by the CIA, because the American's had uses for Hirohito after the war.
Indeed, my study has led me away from the conclusion you have come to, because I have actually been reading more recent material that comes directly from the source, material that has been missing for the public domain in the west since the war. You seem unaware of this material.
Indeed it doesn't seem to matter how much I reference sources at all. You simply are not listening, because all you are looking for is an opportunity to lecture.
Corporations Profit from Permanent War: Memorial Day 2010
And they continue to be sucked into and arms twisted into waging expensive taxpayer-funded wars. What a string of bad luck. What are the odds? Inconceivable!
Why We Fight
Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies
Cueball, what part of...:
The only thing nazi Germany did that was worse than fascist Japan was the Holocaust and, as I said before, that was a difference in degree, not in kind. When it comes to atrocities, everything else fascist Japan did, equaled or was worse than what nazi Germany did. The 1937 Rape of Nanking, although of shorter duration than the nazi policy in the East from 1939 to 1942 of marching or driving in trucks to isolated fields, having people dig their own mass graves and then gunning those people down with pistols, rifles and machine-guns then burying them, was roughly equivalent, but with one significant difference: the nazis overwhelmingly targeted Jewish people. The Japanese fascists indiscriminately raped and murdered any Chinese person who had the misfortune of being unable to escape from the Japanese soldiers.
Those the nazis did not gas and incinerate, they worked to death - so the death camps were also 'labor' camps. Just like the nazis sending people by the thousands on trains from the occupied countries and territories (both West and East) to work as forced labor in Germany (i.e., non Jews working in war factories, etc.), the Japanese fascists sent on boats to Japan or Thailand or marched from one part of an occupied country to another. Only these ocean voyages and marches weren't as pleasant as the German train rides. See the Bataan Death March, the Sandakan Death Marches and the "Hell Ships", ships where prisoners were overcrowded, starved and dehydrated and were not marked with Red Cross flags so Alled warships sank them as merchant ships. Both the nazis and fascist Japan ran labor camps where people by the hundreds of thousands to millions died.
The nazis conducted unethical scientific experiments on live subjects. So did fascist Japan with Unit 731 and its subunits. The Japanese used biological and chemical warfare against both Chinese soldiers and unsuspecting Chinese civilians - something the nazis did not do.
Vietnam and Indonesia were major rice growing countries. Fascist Japan caused "preventable" famines in these countries in 1944-45 (sorry, I got the date wrong earlier.)
The nazis looted and burned Russia for all they could. But they were only there for about three years. The Japanese fascists looted and burned China for all they could. They were there (especially in the Northeast) for up to fifteen years.
The Japanese fascists forced app. 200,000 Asian and Pacific and even some European women to be military "comfort women" - i.e., forced them to be sex slaves for the fascist Imperial Japanese Army - again, something the nazis did not do (or, at least nowhere near that scale.)
It may be pointless to try to establish which World War Two Axis aggressor, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples it victimised. The Germans killed six million Jews and 20 million Russians [i.e. Soviet citizens]; the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese. Both nations looted the countries they conquered on a monumental scale, though Japan plundered more, over a longer period, than the Nazis. Both conquerors enslaved millions and exploited them as forced labourers - and, in the case of the Japanese, as [forced] prostitutes for front-line troops.
Did you read the quotes and go to the sites I provided links for and do research to acquire more detailed information on specific subjects you might find interesting under the topic of Japanese war crimes, I provided in post #35?
According to the findings of the Tokyo Tribunal, the death rate among POWs from Asian countries, held by Japan was 27.1%. The death rate of Chinese POWs was much higher because - under a directive ratified on August 5, 1937 by Emperor Hirohito - the constraints of international law on treatment of those prisoners was removed. Only 56 Chinese POWs were released after the surrender of Japan. After March 20, 1943, the Japanese Navy was under orders to execute all prisoners taken at sea.
What do you think, that the war aims of fascist Japan were solely to get their hands on oil and rubber and other strategic resources from China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaya, Indochina, Burma and Thailand, etc., and to stop the French, Dutch, Australians, British and Americans from preventing this?
WRONG! By failing to mention the atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese to achieve their "Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere", you give the impression that you are either intentionally ignoring this crucial aspect of Japan at war or are downplaying/whitewashing/excusing/sugarcoating/justifying fascist Japan government's policy of a nazi Germany "Total War" or "Three Alls" type war strategy.
Just as Hitler and the nazis intended to make Russia (not Germany) the heart of the Third Reich, the Japanese fascists, realized that Japan could not meet the nutritional, resources and financial needs of its people and intended to make China the "new Japan" - i.e., the heart of the Japanese Empire.
Just as the nazis realized that physical and population size would make it a Herculean task to conquer Russia, so too the Japanese fascists and military realized that physical and population size would make it a Herculean task to conquer China. That is why Adolf Hitler made the oath sworn by the Reich's armed forces a personal oath of loyalty sworn to him by name, that is why the nazis referred to Slavs as subhuman (untermenschen) and adopted a scorched earth policy in the East and did it in the name of Der Fuerer and the glory of the fatherland, in order to have any hope of conquering Russia. That is why the Japanese fascists made the Emperor a god, Imperial Japanese Army soldiers referred to Chinese as subhuman ("bugs") and adopted a scorched earth policy in the East (China) and did it in the name of the the Emperor and the glory of the Empire, in order to have any hope of conquering China.
If in the history books about fascist Japan's prosecution of the war, war aims and atrocities, there is a dearth of letters, orders, communiques, telegrams, correspondence, communications, etc. from the government to the highest Imperial Japanese Army and Navy commanders in the field and out on the high seas, then compare the Nuremberg trials with the Tokyo trials:
Notice how far more German nazis were executed and received harsher sentences than their fascist Japanese counterparts?
The more of the stomach turning details I read about the way the fascist government and Imperial Japanese Army and Navy prosecuted the war, the more it looks to me like the Japanese fascists were the nazis of the Asia-Pacific War.
Just like many Jews, and the state of Israel, successive Chinese governments and many Chinese survivors of fascist Japan's war atrocities have neither forgotten nor forgiven.
... did you not read?
It seems all of it except the Rape of Nanking references.
There's more in there than just the Rape of Nanking. The Rape of Nanking is but a part of the overall fascist Japan government's political influence on the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy's military strategy.
There's links and references provided and comparative statistics on the numbers of people the German nazis and the Japanese fascists murdered on ethnic grounds when it came to prosecuting their wars.
Information that categorically and diametrically challenges your claim that the German nazi government politically influenced the professional Wermacht's military strategy whereas (emphasis on this comparative word) the Japanese fascist government did not politically infleunce the professional Imperial Japanese Army and Navy's military strategy.
And again, you bring up mountains of internet based "articles" such as Wikipedia to establish your case that the Japanese committed atrocities.
And again, I never said the Japanese did not commit atrocities.
You seem to think that quoting statistics (especially ones with many zeros in them), many of which were compiled at the behest of agencies whose explicit mission was to attribute essential and unparalled blame solely to the Japanese, and remove blame from other parties, such as the United States. Asserting that starvation in Asia was a deliberate policy of the Japanese government aimed at exterminating peoples with the explicit purpose of committing genocide, is a highly tendentious claim, in the face of the fact that it is quite clear that the Japanese tried to establish functional puppet governments to manage their empire, and the fact that the Japanese army itself was starving in the regions you are talking about at the time you are talking about them, directly because of the US efforts to isolate the Japanese garrisons by interdicting their supply.
No. I am not going to play the numbers game with you, that has nothing to do with what I said. Simply repeating over and over again that people died under the Japanese occupation does not establish that this was a deliberate policy of genocide. For example upon the Vietnamese people in 1944/45 as you suggest. Indeed, the Vietnamese only began to starve at the end of the war, at around the time that the empire was defunct, after three years of war, occupation and Allied blockade.
On the other hand, the very first thing that the Nazi's did in Poland, and then in Russia two years later was to begin deliberate ethnic cleansing on racial lines of Jews, Roma, and Slavs. Not only was there a government instituted program of extermination, including an entire administrative apparatus devoted to extermination for the sake of extermination, including specially trained and military units whose sole purpose was to carry out the extermination specific people. As well, the detailed journals of the leadership of OKW in Russia explicitly outlined the standing orders for destruction of Slavic society in detail, through policies intended to cause disruption and starvation such as depopulation of urban centers -- the impact of this in the Ukraine, and other areas under German occupation was immediate, when the Germans were still winning the war, and fully capable of supplying their forward areas.
This isn't about Wehrmacht not abiding by the Geneva convention in the treatment of Russian POWs, as is the case with the IJA not according those same rights to the Chinese.
Again, you have yet to show examples of an coherent and organized policy of extermination for the sake of extermination by the Japanese government and document it. All you have come up with statistics of the numbers of people who died under Japanese occupation for various reasons, reprisals, collapse of the food supply, and so on. On the other hand there is absolutely no question at all that the Nazi's planned and undertook a policy of racial extermination in the Slavic regions as soon as they were able, as the army moved forward, and this is supported not only by the forensic evidence but through the documents from the German state that link together to show that the chain of command was engaged in extermination for the sake of extermination as a matter of state policy.
Your polemic states, as follows:
However, you have not provided one shred of documentary evidence that this "scorched earth" policy was a pre-planned policy aimed at racial extermination. As I pointed out the Japanese did not institute the "Three Alls" policy in northern China until 1941, four years after the Marco Polo incident, under the order of General Okamura, in the immediate aftermath of a succesful peasant uprising led by the Communist Chinese called the "100 Regiments Offensive".
Please understand that this is not to say the the Japanese occupation was "nice" or a "good thing", just to say that the Japanese pursued their goals using a different playbook than Germany under the NSDAP. As far as I can tell your theory is just a "theory" that you pieced together based on a general reading of the basic facts, without attention to detail.
Indeed, it is entirely clear that the Japanese solution to the "Herculean" task of subjugating large number of people, was not first and foremost immediate mass extermination, but the attempt to set up local interlocutors as their puppet agents in the occupied territories. This is something that the Germans did not do in Eastern Europe. German efforts to create local puppet authorities in the east were perfunctory and symbolic at best. There is no German example of a puppet Slavic state, such as Manchoukou that fielded hundreds of thousands of men to serve the emperor. They also had a large puppet Chinese army operating under the auspices of their own "Nationalist" Chinese government.
It was only after this policy had failed to pacify northern China, and revolt broke out that the Japanese instituted the "Three Alls" policy four years after the occupation of Shanxi and Shandong began.
This is quite other than the German modus operandi in Eastern Europe, There the Germans immediatly undertook a campaign of genocide as an intrinsic part of their occupation policy, right from the start as territories came under their control, even though resistance from the occupied peoples was very slight -- this policy in the east is strikingly different even than their own "kid gloves" policies in the occupied territories of Western Europe, such as France and the Benelux countries.
71 years ago today the Germans attacked Poland, starting in motion the war that killed over 60 million human beings and which gave new meaning to words such as Nagasaki and holocaust.
Happy anniversary.
I believe that the Nazis knew well before the start of barbarossa that there would not be enough food in Russia and Ukraine to feed the German army and civilians due to disruptions in civilian economies. And it's now known that Nazi logistics was hopeless from the beginning. There was looting and pillaging of their own supply lines as to undermine the German's own civilian and military supply lines. The Germans knew it would be a war of annihilation from the very beginning.
I don't believe the final solution in Russia and Ukraine was focused on any one ethnicity - although Jews were at the top of Hitler's list of people to exterminate - the final solution in Russia and Ukraine was to murder all non-German ethnics inclusive by whatever means. The purpose of lebensraum from the beginning was to make living space for Germans and no one else. It was Hitler's Darwinian view of evolution. The strategy for achieving results favourable to Germans only was open ended one as far as Hitler was concerned.
Ignorance of the law is said to be no excuse, and it is a given law of every land that people need to eat to survive. Neither the Japanese nor Germans could claim ignorance of this basic fact common to every living thing on earth.
The Vietnamese apparently do not observe the 1945 famine on a day of remembrance. And some commentators suggest that they should. John Pilger writes that Vietnam did not really win the war with US invaders if we consider how Vietnam was laid siege to for years after 1975 by embargos and financial warfare waged against them by the US and its powerful multinational corporations. Vietnam has been forced down the road of capital and having to pledge allegiance to certain WTO obligations to export food to "the market" over and above its own needs if ever those needs should need to be addressed as so many chronically-hungry nations have had to follow the diktats of a merciless global market in food. Whether Japanese imperialists or an invisible hand market ideology causes millions to suffer agonizing deaths by starvation, the results are clearly the same. The free traders have been blackmailing whole countries into starving their own people for a long time. The justifications given for it are only sligthly different today than during WW II.
According to the findings of the Tokyo Tribunal, the death rate among POWs from Asian countries, held by Japan was 27.1%. The death rate of Chinese POWs was much higher because - under a directive ratified on August 5, 1937 by Emperoro Hirohito - the constraints of international law on treatment of those prisoners was removed. Only 56 Chinese POWs were released after the surrender of Japan. After March 20, 1943, the Japanese Navy was under orders to execute all prisoners taken at sea.
R.J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, states that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military murdered from nearly 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most likely 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. "This democide was due to a morally bankrupt political and military strategy, military expediency and custom, and national culture."
The Sook Ching massacre was a systematic extermination of perceived hostile elements among the Chinese in Singapore by the Japanese military during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore, after the British colony surrendered on 15 February 1942 during the Second World War. Sook Ching was later extended to include Chinese Malayans as well. The massacre took place from 18 February to 4 March 1942 at various places in the region.
The term Sook Ching means "a purge through cleansing" in Chinese and it was referred to as the Kakyoshukusei (or "purging of Chinese") by the Japanese. The Japanese also referred to it as the Shingaporu Daikensho, lit. "great inspection of Singapore".
It is important to note that the purge was planned before Japanese troops landed in Singapore. The military government section of the 25th Army had already drawn up a plan entitled, "Implementation Guideline for Manipulating Oversees Chinese" on or around 28 December 1941. This guideline stated that anyone who failed to obey or cooperate with the occupation authorities should be eliminated. It is clear that the headquarters of the 25th Army had decided on a harsh policy toward the Chinese population of Singapore and Malaya from the beginning of the war. According to Onishi Satoru, the Kempeitai officer in charge of the Jalan Besar screening centre, Kempeitai commander Oishi Masayuki was instructed by the chief of staff, Suzuki Sosaku, at Keluang, Johor, to prepare for a purge following the capture of Singapore. Although the exact date of this instruction is not known, the Army headquarters was stationed in Keluang from 28 January to 4 February 1942... Clearly, then, the Singapore Massacre was not the conduct of a few evil people, but was consistent with approaches honed and applied in the course of a long period of Japanese aggression against China subsequently applied to other Asian countries.
Under Lieutenant-Colonel Oishi's command were 200 regular Kempeitai officers and another 1000 auxiliaries who were mostly young and rough peasant soldiers. Singapore was divided into sectors with each sector under the control of an officer. The Japanese set up designated "screening centers" all over Singapore to gather and "screen" all Chinese males between the ages of 18 and 50. Those who were thought to be "anti-Japanese" would be eliminated. Sometimes, women and children were also sent for inspection as well.
The following passage is from an article from the National Heritage Board [of Singapore]:
The inspection methods were indiscriminate and non-standardised. Sometimes, hooded informants identified suspected anti-Japanese Chinese; other times, Japanese officers singled out "suspicious" characters at their whim and fancy. Those who survived the inspection walked with "examined" stamped on their faces, arms or clothing; others were issued a certificate. The unfortunate ones were taken to remote places like Changi and Punggol, and unceremoniously killed in batches.
... The ones who passed the "screening" would receive a piece of paper bearing the word "Examined" or have a square ink mark stamped on their arms or shirts. Those who failed would be stamped with triangular marks instead. They would be separated from the others and packed into trucks near the centers and sent to the killing sites.
The killings
There were several sites for the killings, the most notable ones being Changi Beach Park, Punggol Beach and Sentosa (or Pulau Blakang Mati). The Punggol Beach Massacre cost the lives of 300 to 400 Chinese, who were shot at Punggol Beach on 28 February 1942 by Hojo Kempei firing squad. The victims were some of the 1000 Chinese males detained by the Japanese after a door-to-door search along Upper Serangoon Road.
... a "Three Alls Policy" (Sanko Sakusen) was implemented in China from 1942 to 1945 and was in itself responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians. This scorched earth strategy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, directed Japanese forces to "Kill All, Burn All and Loot All."
..., during the Second Sino-Japanese War, gas weapons, such as tear gas, were used only sporadically in 1937 but in the spring of 1938, however the Imperial Japanese Army began full-scale use of phosgene, chlorine Lewisite and nausea gas (red), and from summer 1939, mustard gas (yellow) was used against both Kuomintang and Communists Chinese troops.
... Emperor Hirohito signed orders specifying the use of chemical weapons in China. For example, during the Battle of Wuhan from August to October 1938, the Emperor authorized the use of toxic gas on 375 separate occasions,...
The major means of getting intelligence was to extract information by interrogating prisoners. Torture was an unavoidable necessity. Murdering and burying them follows naturally. You do it so you won't be found out. I believed and acted this way because I was convinced of what I was doing. We carried out our duty as instructed by our masters. We did it for the sake of our country. From our filial obligation to our ancestors. On the battlefield, we never really considered the Chinese humans. When you're winning, the losers look really miserable. We concluded that the Yamato [i.e., Japanese] race was superior.
Many written reports and testimonies collected by the Australian War Crimes Section of the Tokyo tribunal, and investigated by prosecutor William Webb (the future Judge-in-Chief), indicate that Japanese personnel in many parts of Asia and the Pacific committed acts of cannibalism against Allied prisoners of war. In many cases this was inspired by ever-increasing Allied attacks on Japanese supply lines, and the death and illness of Japanese personnel as a result of hunger. However, according to historian Yuki Tanaka: "cannibalism was often a systematic activity conducted by whole squads and under the command of officers.
In some cases, flesh was cut from living people: [an]... Indian POW Lance Naik Hatam Ali (later a citizen of Pakistan), testified that in New Guinea:
"the Japanese started selecting prisoners and every day one prisoner was taken out and killed and eaten by the soldiers. I personally saw this happen and about 100 prisoners were eaten at this place by the Japanese. The remainder of us were taken to another spot 50 miles [80 km] away where 10 prisoners died of sickness. At this place, the Japanese again started selecting prisoners to eat. Those selected were taken to a hut where their flesh was cut from their bodies while they were alive and they were thrown into a ditch where they later died." [N.B. Frmrsldr: Such sadism suggests this was done not out of the necessity for survival but as psychological warfare by the Japanese fascists against their enemy and to instill in the Japanese soldier the mentality to resist to the end and fight by whatever means the (sometimes) depraved minds of men can devize.]
... Americans were referred to as kichiku (mongrel beast or mongrelized apes).
What is the significance of these quotes?
They establish a number of things:
1. The war crimes perpetrated by the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy, were clearly, unquestionably and categorically linked to orders and directives of the Emperor and the fascist government.
2. The Japanese fascist government and Imperial military had a systemic racist policy toward the Chinese, exactly like the German nazi government, SS, Einsatzgruppen, specially detailed police etc., had a racist policy toward the Jews.
3. The politics of the Japanese fascist government affected military policy.
The rounding up, screening, transportation and murder of Chinese in the Sook Ching (Singapore) Massacre is exactly the same as the rounding up of Jews in Poland, Holland, France, Italy, etc., transporting them elsewhere and murdering them.
Cueball makes the argument that the Rape of Nanking was the reverse of the politics influencing military strategy hypothesis - where actions by the Imperial Japanese Army influenced the policies of the fascist government, resulting in the "Three Alls Policy".
Well guess what? The German nazi government went through the same learning curve. The nazis who murdered masses of innocent unarmed civilians during 1939 to 1942, realized that rounding up masses of people, marching or trucking them to an isolated spot, then killing them with small arms was inefficient and uneconomical.
Hence the Wannsee Conference in 1942 where Himmler, Heydrich and other top nazis met with industrialists who manufactured and operated industrial ovens and crematoria. This is where the Holocaust as it is most widely understood began. The Holocaust actually wasn't running at peak efficiency until 1944, when the nazis were clearly losing the war.
Earlier, Cueball made the claim that having personnel involved in the rounding up, transporting, running of the camps, gassing and incinerating Jewish people negatively affected the course of battles and ultimately the war for the nazis.
An example of where a policy of war crimes based on systemic racism was hurting fascist Japan's war effort was the "Hell Ships". One would think that after late 1942, Japan would increasingly rely on its merchant marine importing strategic resourses and labor to run its war factories.
Not so, the overcrowding of the ships, the starving and dehydrating of the prisoners and failing to do something as simple as carrying Red Cross flags on these ships suggests the Japanese fascists would rather see the prisoners dead and the cargo at the bottom of the ocean than assist Japan's war effort.
Something also worth looking into is the Tanaka Memorial:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/01/tanaka.htm
http://www.mailstar.net/tanaka.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanaka_Memorial
And fascists tend to think alike when planning false pretexts for war. Remembering the 9/18 incident Remembering destruction of the "Liutaio bridge" in Manchuria
Why We Fight
Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies
Why We Fight is a good series.
The most appropriate for this thread are:
Prelude to War
Battle of China
War Comes to America
Some very good Hollywood films about the war made during the war are:
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
Back to Bataan
Destination Tokyo offers the movieviewer a fantastic mission. If you don't know what it is, you'll have to see the movie - I don't want to spoil the fun!
quote Hence the Wannsee Conference in 1942 where Himmler, Heydrich and other top nazis met with industrialists who manufactured and operated industrial ovens and crematoria. This is where the Holocaust as it is most widely understood began. The Holocaust actually wasn't running at peak efficiency until 1944, when the nazis were clearly losing the war. quote
Himmler wasn't at that conference. It was totally a Heydrich performance
I'll admit I haven't been following the minutiae of this thread in great detail; but let me get this straight.
The Germans and Japanese did some nasty stuff in the war, right?
quote Hence the Wannsee Conference in 1942 where Himmler, Heydrich and other top nazis met with industrialists who manufactured and operated industrial ovens and crematoria. This is where the Holocaust as it is most widely understood began. The Holocaust actually wasn't running at peak efficiency until 1944, when the nazis were clearly losing the war. quote
Himmler wasn't at that conference. It was totally a Heydrich performance
It is important that neither Hitler nor leading Nazis such as Goring, Gobbels or Himmler were present as Wannsee. The Nazis who did attend were mostly senior civil servants and brueaucrats; a few were leaders of the police or security forces.
http://www.suite101.com/content/the-wannsee-conference-1942-nazi-germany...
You're right. Thanks, Bacchus.
I knew that Hitler, Goering and Goebbels hadn't attended. I assumed that Himmler (naturally) had.
Why do you suppose that is?
Was it an 'insurance' policy? Were the top nazis thinking that should they (unthinkable, I know) lose the war, their not attending Wannsee would provide them with future 'plausible deniability'?
Do you suppose this was Heydrich's little pet project? Something he just went ahead and did on his own to suck up to his bosses in the hopes of a rapid rise up the 'corporate ladder' (i.e., nazi hierarchy)?
It's poetic justice that pig Heydrich the "Protector of Czechoslovakia" later died of injuries he received from the explosion of a bomb hurled by a Free Czech SOE agent.
I'll admit I haven't been following the minutiae of this thread in great detail; but let me get this straight.
The Germans and Japanese did some nasty stuff in the war, right?
FormerSoldier has tried, without success, to equate the deliberate and calculated genocide against Jews and Slavs by the Hitlerite regime with the terrible atrocities of the militarist regime in Japan. Cueball has, quite rightly, torn him a new one on this issue. . They are not the same.
Hmm Im guessing iot was totally Heydrichs pet project. He did his job with great Zeal and Himmler preferred to be a great 'military' leader at the time, obsessing over Waffen SS units and tactics/Strategy. He left all the SS/SD stuff to Heydrich
I'll admit I haven't been following the minutiae of this thread in great detail; but let me get this straight.
The Germans and Japanese did some nasty stuff in the war, right?
FormerSoldier has tried, without success, to equate the deliberate and calculated genocide against Jews and Slavs by the Hitlerite regime with the terrible atrocities of the militarist regime in Japan. Cueball has, quite rightly, torn him a new one on this issue. . They are not the same.
They've both made some excellent points and know the history of war really well. I tend to lean toward Former Soldier's analysis of Japanese atrocities. Apparently some of us have a difficult time understanding how it was all just a war between fascist nations for resources in Russia and China and Asia in general. The good guys didn't necessarily win the war. The good guys certainly did fight the war, but they were fascists and elites who collected the spoils and profited after all the blood, sweat and tears were spilled for them on their behalfs. We still have wars for resource grabs today. Fewer people are killed because of the technically advanced nature of modern weaponry, but the intent is still the same as it was when Eisenhower made his speech warning against MIC. And we have malnutrition and related diseases killing tens of millions of people every year just as surely as any other fascist atrocity. And there are a handful of rich and powerful nations ignoring the basic human right to food and to exist still. This is an ongoing crime against humanity as diabolical as any plan for organized murder by open warfare.
Excellent comments were made by both Cueball and FrmrSldr. I have to side with FrmSldr on this one though and not his worthy opponent in the mini debate.
You seem to think that quoting statistics (especially ones with many zeros in them), many of which were compiled at the behest of agencies whose explicit mission was to attribute essential and unparalled blame solely to the Japanese, and remove blame from other parties, such as the United States.
That is utter befuddled nonsense. The 'agencies' you are referring to are agencies that represented and the governments of China, Korea, the Philippines, Dutch East Indies/Indonesia, Malaya/Malaysia/Singapore, Indochina/Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos, Siam/Thailand, Burma, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, France(?), Britain and other countries and individuals from those and other countries, who were the victims of Japanese fascist war and human rights crimes. These governments, agencies and people had every right to attempt to bring Japanese fascist criminals to justice, just as Jewish and other people who were victimized, and the Simon Wiesenthal Foundation had/have every right to see that justice is brought to nazi war criminals.
The reason why General Douglas MacArthur and the Truman administration reduced so many executions and reduced so many prison sentences handed out at the Tokyo Tribunal to so many Japanese fascist war criminals was NOT out of any sense of guilt or to cover up war and human rights crimes committed by the U.S.A. The U.S. felt little shame and plenty of justification for Dresden, the fire bombing of Japanese cities and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As for how some American GIs treated Japanese soldiers who surrendered, were injured or the bodies of dead Japanese soldiers (in the persuit of looting) well, it was par for the course in light of the way the Japanese fascists treated Allied soldiers in the field and Allied PoWs. The same case can be made for any atrocities Russian soldiers commited upon nazi soldiers and German civilians in light of how they were treated by the nazis.
No, the reason why MacArthur and the Truman administration were so soft on the Japanese fascist government and military was due to the fact that Japan was seen as a valuable bulwark against the spread of communism in Asia at the end of the "hot" (World) War and the start of the Cold War. The U.S. military also felt that Japanese experiments with biological and chemical agents would be useful in a possible future war against communist U.S.S.R. and China. In fact, these actions by the U.S. government and military denied justice to American citizens who were victims of Unit 731 and other Units that conducted unethical scientific experiments on live human subjects, the Bataan Death March, PoWs, forced or slave laborers on the Death Railway (Thai-Burma Railway), prisoners on the "Hell Ships", etc.
Frank James, now living in Redwood City, was shipped to Shenyang (Mukden) in Manchuria as a PoW in November 1942. The Japanese medical personnel wearing masks, sprayed liquid into their faces and gave them injection, took frequent blood samples and released fleas in the warehouse where the prisoners slept.
When he returned to the United States in 1945, the U.S. Army made him sign a document swearing never to discuss his 731 experiences in the camps. For 40 years, he didn't breathe a word.
http://www.rapeofnanking.info/JapaneseAtrocities.html
At least nine out of 12 crew members survived the crash of a U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 bomber on Kyushu, on May 5, 1945. (This plane was Lt. Marvin Watkins' crew of the 29th Bomb Group of the 6th Bomb Squadron.) The bomber's commander was sent to Tokyo for interrogation, while the other survivors were taken to the anatomy department of Kyushu University, at Fukuoka, where they were subjected to vivisection or killed. On March 11, 1948, 30 people including several doctors were brought to trial by the Allied war crimes tribunal. Charges of cannibalism were dropped, but 23 people were found guilty of vivisection or wrongful removal of body parts. Five were sentenced to death, four to life imprisonment, and the rest to shorter terms. In 1950, the military governor of Japan, General Douglas MacArthur, commuted all of the death sentences and significantly reduced most of the prison terms. All of those convicted in relation to the university vivisection were free by 1958.
Asserting that starvation in Asia was a deliberate policy of the Japanese government aimed at exterminating peoples with the explicit purpose of committing genocide, is a highly tendentious claim, in the face of the fact that it is quite clear that the Japanese tried to establish functional puppet governments to manage their empire, and the fact that the Japanese army itself was starving in the regions you are talking about at the time you are talking about them, directly because of the US efforts to isolate the Japanese garrisons by interdicting their supply... Simply repeating over and over again that people died under the Japanese occupation does not establish that this was a deliberate policy of genocide. For example upon the Vietnamese people in 1944/45 as you suggest. Indeed, the Vietnamese only began to starve at the end of the war, at around the time that the empire was defunct, after three years of war, occupation and Allied blockade.
Vietnam and Indonesia were rice exporters. This was a preventable famine, meaning that there was enough rice to prevent people from starving. The fact that millions of people died of starvation was from human action. 2 million Vietnamese and 4 million Indonesians died. You're telling me there were 2 million Japanese soldiers in Vietnam and 4 million Japanese soldiers in Indonesia?
No. I am not going to play the numbers game with you, that has nothing to do with what I said.
Oh! So the lives of hundreds of thousands and millions of Jews, Roma and Slavs are 'worth' more than the lives of hundreds of thousands and millions of Chinese, Koreans, Philippinos, Indonesians, Malayans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Thai, Burmese, etc.?
DO I NEED TO SPELL IT OUT TO YOU WHAT THAT SOUNDS LIKE?
On the other hand, the very first thing that the Nazi's did in Poland, and then in Russia two years later was to begin deliberate ethnic cleansing on racial lines of Jews, Roma, and Slavs. Not only was there a government instituted program of extermination, including an entire administrative apparatus devoted to extermination for the sake of extermination, including specially trained and military units whose sole purpose was to carry out the extermination specific people. As well, the detailed journals of the leadership of OKW in Russia explicitly outlined the standing orders for destruction of Slavic society in detail, through policies intended to cause disruption and starvation such as depopulation of urban centers -- the impact of this in the Ukraine, and other areas under German occupation was immediate, when the Germans were still winning the war, and fully capable of supplying their forward areas... there is absolutely no question at all that the Nazi's planned and undertook a policy of racial extermination in the Slavic regions as soon as they were able, as the army moved forward, and this is supported not only by the forensic evidence but through the documents from the German state that link together to show that the chain of command was engaged in extermination for the sake of extermination as a matter of state policy...
Indeed, it is entirely clear that the Japanese solution to the "Herculean" task of subjugating large number of people, was not first and foremost immediate mass extermination, but the attempt to set up local interlocutors as their puppet agents in the occupied territories. This is something that the Germans did not do in Eastern Europe. German efforts to create local puppet authorities in the east were perfunctory and symbolic at best. There is no German example of a puppet Slavic state, such as Manchoukou that fielded hundreds of thousands of men to serve the emperor. They also had a large puppet Chinese army operating under the auspices of their own "Nationalist" Chinese government.
It was only after this policy had failed to pacify northern China, and revolt broke out that the Japanese instituted the "Three Alls" policy four years after the occupation of Shanxi and Shandong began.
This is quite other than the German modus operandi in Eastern Europe, There the Germans immediatly undertook a campaign of genocide as an intrinsic part of their occupation policy, right from the start as territories came under their control, even though resistance from the occupied peoples was very slight --
There's two problems with your extermination for the sake of extermination:
1. There was a purpose to the extermination. In the nazi propaganda film, "The Eternal Jew" the nazis likened Jews to rats. Rats are vermin. Vermin, in this case rats, spread disease. In the nazi mind, Jews infected, weakened and destroyed the Aryan body politic. Put another way, the purpose then of the "Jewish or Final Solution" was extermination for the health of Aryans and non-Jews. The nazis viewed Jews as a "disease", they viewed themselves as "health care professionals" and "the Final Solution", the Holocaust as the "cure". Although they viewed Slavs as inferiors, they DID NOT view them the same as Jews, and thus they, unlike the Jews, were not singled out for the "Final Solution".
2. Therefore the Holocaust and the Scorched Earth policy on the Eastern Front are categorically different. The Holocaust was not military strategy, "How could exterminating Jews because they were Jews be a military strategy that would win the/a war?", at best it only contributed, among other things, to the nazis losing the war and may have contributed to the nazis losing particular battles in the last year of war, although to empirically establish this argument in specific cases is extremely difficult.
Unlike the Holocaust, the Scorched Earth policy did not affect military strategy, it was military strategy. Those who were killed died incidentally as a result of the prosecution of this military strategy. You cannot put those who died in the Holocaust in the same category as those who died in the Scorched Earth military strategy because the two are categorically different.
As for starvation in Russia, I have read about starvation in the cities Leningrad, Sevastopol (I believe) and Stalingrad because they were under siege and it was either impossible or difficult for food and fuel to be brought to these cities. As for starvation elsewhere in Russia, you will have to show me the proof.
As for the Ukraine, many Ukrainians are blond, blue eyed and fair skinned. So much so that high ranking nazis (correct me if I'm wrong but I believe Himmler himself went to the Ukraine) featured them on propaganda posters, argued they were Aryans, praised and studied Ukrainian dress, customs, folklore, etc. Ever heard of the Waffen SS Foreign Divisions? Yes, for the Ukrainians, there was the Waffen SS Galizien Division. For the Russians, there was the Waffen SS 2nd Russische Division and the Russian Liberation Army commanded by General Andrei Vlasov. The nazis saw Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians and Ukrainians as valuable allies to fight against and (it was hoped) defeat Russia. As part of this effort, the nazis went to great lengths to remind Ukrainians that the Ukraine was independent from 1917 to 1921, just twenty years before their (nazi) 'liberation'.
Concerning the "large Chinese puppet army operating under the auspicies of their own 'Nationalist' Chinese government", I assume you mean the Chinese or Manchurian army in Manchukuo under the Japanese puppet Emperor Pu Yi? Otherwise the "Nationalist Chinese government" would be Chiang Kai Chek's Kuomintang government and armies. Did this (paper) 'army' ever engage in combat with any Nationalist or communist Chinese armies, what was the size of this Manchurian Army? Please tell. The Japanese fascists had no more intention of giving Manchukuo ("real") independence than the nazis had of giving Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Ukraine any ("real") independence.
Again, as to your claims that the nazis caused preventable starvation and genocide/Holocaust against Slavs from the start of the first shots fired in the invasions of Poland and Russia and then thereafter, please do provide forensic evidence that shows the number of people who starved, the number of people rounded up, the number of trains that transported them West, the death camps they were sent to, and the number of (NON-JEWISH) ETHNIC SLAVS who died in this manner. A pretty amazing feat for the period 1939 - (end) 1941 considering there were no (factory of) death mass gas and cremation camps prior to (the start of) 1942 Wannsee Conference.
In fact, the September 1 to 30, 1939 Battle of Poland was fought as a blitzkrieg military strategy just exactly as the Battles of Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, France, the (air war) Battle of Britain, the North African Campaign, Yugoslavia (in 1941), Greece and Crete.
Although the nazis may have begun rounding up and shooting Jews in the thousands in 1939 after the fall of Poland, they also allowed a large Jewish population to live in the Warsaw Ghetto. There were still large numbers of Jews not in death camps but living in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1944 who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising along with non-Jewish ethnic Poles. That was mighty sloppy of Uncle Henry (Himmler), the SS and the Einsatzgruppen, wasn't it?
The Scorched Earth military strategy didn't begin until Hitler personally instructed his Generals to wage a war of "give no quarter, take no prisoners" on June 22, 1941 - Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia. Even then, in terms of how Wermacht officers and men treated Russian soldiers and prisoners, it seems not all officers and men acted upon Hitler's instructions in the year 1941.
To make a statement that the nazis treated Western Europe with kid gloves, while although generally true, is an overstatement. By 1944, the nazis sometimes let the pleasant mask they were wearing slip. They were committing reprisal killings whenever a German soldier was killed by a partisan. French villages where the populations were wiped out were Ascq, Clermont-en-Argonne, Maille, Robert-Espagne, Tulle and Oradour-sur-Glane. In Oradour-sur-Glane, the nazis rounded up all the men, women and children, separated the men, put the women and children in a church, shot the men, then burned the church, wiping out the entire village. In Norway, the village Telavag was wiped out in reprisal. Also in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg the nazis had razas where they sealed off city blocks, then entered every building to round up Jews, suspected members of the resistance and to round up forced laborers to be sent to Germany and possibly as soldiers to fight on the Eastern Front.
I agree with you former soldier. The two regimes were pretty identical. The main difference being the Japanese didnt want to just exterminate people but use them up in that extermination(experiments, work to death, bayonet practice, cannablism etc)
I agree with you former soldier. The two regimes were pretty identical. The main difference being the Japanese didnt want to just exterminate people but use them up in that extermination(experiments, work to death, bayonet practice, cannablism etc)
All the fascist regimes had their genocidal, Scorched Earth, "Three Alls". For the nazis, it was the activities of the SS and Einsatzgruppen in the East during 1939 to the end of 1941. For the Japanese fascists, it was the Rape of Nanking and other similar Sinophobic (racist hatred against Chinese) atrocities and acts of genocide. For the Italian fascists, it was the murderous assault, rape, bayoneting and gunning down of hundreds of thousands of persons and the wanton burning and destruction of their property in the Italian assistance of the nazis in occupying Yugoslavia from 1941-1943.
The nazis had their equivalents to working people to death and experimenting on them:
Before they were gassed, or those who avoided being gassed, were worked to death, or nearly worked to death, in the death and concentration/labor camps. If you see photographs of death camp inmates, they are clearly emaciated.
The nazi equivalent to Unit 731 was SS Dr. Joseph Mengele who conducted unethical medical experiments on live human subjects in the Auschwitz death camp.
In fact, the only significant difference between the German nazis and the Japanese fascists was the nazi Holocaust. The only thing the Japanese had that came close to it were the "Hell Ships", where due to the lack of the simplest precautions that would have increased the chances of the "labor" (i.e., human beings) and strategic resources (including foodstuffs) making it to Japan and the overcrowding, starving, dehydrating and heat exhaustion conditions of the ships, suggested that they were intended as instruments of murder rather than war and home front supply ships for Japan and its people.
As I have said in previous posts in this and the earlier thread, in the eyes of universal morality, law and justice, this difference is only one of degree (quantitative) rather than in kind (qualitative).
An atrocity is an atrocity. Although we have been largely concentrating on the atrocities committed by the Axis powers, we must not forget that the Allies committed war time atrocities as well. That is what Hiroshima and Nagasaki were: war crimes and crimes against humanity. As they were committed by a civilian government and authority - the U.S. government and Harry Truman as President of the United States of America and the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces - I consider it to be a case of a political policy/decision that affected/influenced (a) military strategy.
For those of you interested in the human rights crime of unethical medical experiments on live human subjects in popular culture, there are the DVDs:
The Boys From Brazil A loosely based semi-fictional, semi-biographical depiction of Josef Mengele conducting his experiments in 1970s Brazil.
Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS
And, not to be outdone, there is Ilsa running a gulag in Siberia in Stalinist Russia in the early 1950s titled - Ilsa, Tigress of Siberia
For the Japanese fascists and Unit 371, there is the Men Behind the Sun series.
Warning: This stuff is not for the feint of heart.
This was shortly extended to Iceland. U.S. military forces fought/bluffed German forces on Iceland to surrender. Iceland, formerly a 'protectorate' of Britain, then a naval post for the Kriegsmarine was now a 'protectorate' of the U.S.A. Again, this angered the American industrialists/capitalists (Alcoa/Alcan) because they had a brisk little trade with Germany for Iceland's aluminum bauxite among other strategic resources.
You have an interesting take on history. Iceland was a protectorate of Denmark. Please cite your source for a German naval base in Iceland.
I agree with you former soldier. The two regimes were pretty identical. The main difference being the Japanese didnt want to just exterminate people but use them up in that extermination(experiments, work to death, bayonet practice, cannablism etc)
Then perhaps you can explain why it is that the Japanese did not institute the "three alls policy" in Shandong and the Shanxi region until 4 years after they occupied it, whereas the Nazi with the assistance of the Wehrmacht immediatly engaged in severe ethnic cleansing of the Slavic regions they occupied, immediatly upon occupation, as part of plan clearly outlined by Adolph Hitler, and backed up by the General Staff? You agree perhaps with Fmrsldr's contention that the occupation of France and the Benalux was somehow similar to the occupation of Poland and Ukraine?
That contention is of course a completely ahistorical "howler" that puts anything said by Frmrsldr completey out out of the context of anything even close to reality.
What you may not understand here, is that Frmsldr is trying to construct a specific thesis that there was not anything substantively different from German policies in Eastern Europe than the policies of any imperial power. The USA, Japan, UK and the rest. His view is that in fact there is no such thing as substantive differences in Imperial policy, based in political objectives, and ideological world view, and that they are all the same.
Of course this is absurd in the light of the fact that even in terms of the occupation policies of the Germans there were substantive differences in their occupation policy of Slavic peoples, and their occupation in the west. Indeed, Denmark even held elections in 1943 where the local NSDAP did not win.
This was shortly extended to Iceland. U.S. military forces fought/bluffed German forces on Iceland to surrender. Iceland, formerly a 'protectorate' of Britain, then a naval post for the Kriegsmarine was now a 'protectorate' of the U.S.A. Again, this angered the American industrialists/capitalists (Alcoa/Alcan) because they had a brisk little trade with Germany for Iceland's aluminum bauxite among other strategic resources.
You have an interesting take on history. Iceland was a protectorate of Denmark. Please cite your source for a German naval base in Iceland.
Actually it became a UK protectorate for a short period after the fall of Denmark, then the British handed over responsibility to the USA before the USA entered the war. And it was Britain that invaded not the USA, but this kind of hsitorical inaccuracy is par for the course in Frmsldr's revisionist history. Fact is something he routinely mangles in order to make it fit his particular ideological views.
And this is also the first time I have heard of any Kreigsmarine base in Iceland, though there was a certain amount of covert "neutral" merchant traffic supplying the German navy that went through there, before the British invaded in May 1940, as far as I remember, but no warship "base". There were no "German forces" there so to speak, there was a local government tenuously asserting that it was "neutral".
So far, the better part of Frmersldrs historical sources seem to be everything from semi-fictional stories such as Wikipedia to historically based fiction such as the "Boys from Brazil" to flash Nazi exploitation porn films made in the seventies, such as "Ilsa She Wolf of the SS".
These threads get more and more bizarre with each new revetation of Frmsldr's sources.
This was shortly extended to Iceland. U.S. military forces fought/bluffed German forces on Iceland to surrender. Iceland, formerly a 'protectorate' of Britain, then a naval post for the Kriegsmarine was now a 'protectorate' of the U.S.A. Again, this angered the American industrialists/capitalists (Alcoa/Alcan) because they had a brisk little trade with Germany for Iceland's aluminum bauxite among other strategic resources.
You have an interesting take on history. Iceland was a protectorate of Denmark. Please cite your source for a German naval base in Iceland.
Actually it became a UK protectorate for a short period after the fall of Denmark, then the British handed over responsibility to the USA before the USA entered the war. And it was Britain that invaded not the USA, but this kind of hsitorical inaccuracy is par for the course in Frmsldr's revisionist history. Fact is something he routinely mangles in order to make it fit his particular ideological views.
And this is also the first time I have heard of any Kreigsmarine base in Iceland, though there was a certain amount of covert "neutral" merchant traffic supplying the German navy that went through there, before the British invaded in May 1940, as far as I remember, but no warship "base". There were no "German forces" there so to speak, there was a local government tenuously asserting that it was "neutral".
So far, the better part of Frmersldrs historical sources seem to be everything from semi-fictional stories such as Wikipedia to historically based fiction such as the "Boys from Brazil" to flash Nazi exploitation porn films made in the seventies, such as "Ilsa She Wolf of the SS".
These threads get more and more bizarre with each new revetation of Frmsldr's sources.
What's wrong with Wikipedia?
It's an online encyclopedia where people post information. If there's anything historically wrong, you or anyone else can correct it.
As I said, anyone interested in pop culture could check out those movies. I realize they are 'hollywood' type B-grade soft porn gore exploitation flicks. I don't get my information from these movies. However, in both the Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS and the "Men Behind the Sun" movies, if one looks beyond the sexploitation, the true frightening aspect is that the experiments depicted in these movies were conducted by German nazi and Japanese fascist "doctors".
As for The Boys from Brazil, it starts from reality, then goes on with its own story: Josef Mengele did escape from Germany to Latin America. In Argentina he did practice medicine performing illegal abortions. The experiments depicted in the movie were done by Mengele in Auschwitz. The purpose was to see if non Aryans could be made to look like Aryans i.e., through changing eye color.
As for Iceland, I said Kriegsmarine post. What was there was a weather post to assist German naval and merchant vessels. O.k., so it was the British that captured the post. Sorry, bad memory on my part. Tell me, how does a mistake over a minor historical fact flaw the rest of the argument in that post. If anything, it will make people suspicious and they will check the accuracy of the rest of what I said. If that's the only factual mistake I made in that post, then that's not so bad.
Fine. You are still left trying to explain how you can charachterize the occupation of France and the Benalux as anything similar to the occupation of Poland and parts of the former Soviet Union?
As for wikipedia, yes it is often ok as a general guide, as you can see if you read its section on Iceland during WWII, which is substantially different on all major points that you raised in relationship to how it became a US protectorate.
As for wikipedia, yes it is often ok as a general guide, as you can see if you read its section on Iceland during WWII, which is substantially different on all major points that you raised in relationship to how it became a US protectorate.
Agreed. Sorry, I'm often pressed for time and have to rely on my sometimes faulty memory which sometimes causes me to get some points wrong. I appreciate it when people point out my mistakes. It helps me to learn and become a better person.
Again, please accept my apologies for my errors and thank you for helping me exchange wrong for correct information.
Fine. You are still left trying to explain how you can charachterize the occupation of France and the Benalux as anything similar to the occupation of Poland and parts of the former Soviet Union?
I can answer that question easily my friend with the following questions:
How does:
To make a statement that the nazis treated western Europe with kid gloves, while although true, is an overstatement. By 1944, the nazis sometimes let the pleasant mask they were wearing slip.
become
... the occupation of France and the Benalux as anything similar to the occupation of Poland and parts of the former Soviet Union?
?
The atrocities of the massacres of Ascq, Clermont-en-Argonne, Maille, Robert-Espagne, Tulle, Oradour-sur-Glane and Tlavag did occur, agreed, no?
The nazis did transport Jews from Western Europe to Germany where they were murdered, Anne Frank did exist, Western Europeans were transported to Germany as forced labor, the "Hunger Winter" of 1944-45 in north Holland and Amsterdam
My point is that it was racism that was behind the atrocities of the Axis (fascist) powers and they all committed terrible race based atrocities.
Fascism was one of the most vile, horrific and obscene things to be visited upon this earth, whether it was Japanese, German or Italian fascism. There was very little significant doctrinal difference among them. It was all based on the racist belief that the superior races had the right and duty to themselves to take the world's labor and resources. The inferior races had no right to resourses (including foodstuffs) or even their own labor. The inferior races were not even human beings. Thus, they had no human rights. If persons do not have human rights, then no matter how you treat them, you cannot perpetrate any wrongs or crimes against them. Finally, Jews (for the German nazis), Chinese (for the Japanese fascists) and Tripolitanians, Abyssinians and Yugoslavians (for the Italian fascists) no longer had even the right to live.
Does any of this sound familiar? How about Afghanistan, Iraq, Baghram Prison (Afghanistan), Abu Ghraib (Iraq), Battle of Fallujha (Iraq), Battle of Haditha (Iraq), Guantanamo Bay (Cuba), U.S. military commissions, torture, General Petraeus' escalating U.S./NATO/ISAF airstrikes in Afghanistan, General Rick Hillier, "The Taliban are detestable murderous scumbags", detainee transfers by Canadian soldiers to Afghan authorities where they were tortured and the Conservative government's subsequent coverup?
44,000 Canadians died in World War II.
Why?
Have we already forgotten the lessons of that war?
Don't rejoice in his defeat, you men.
For though the world stood up and stopped the bastard,
The bitch that bore him is in heat again. - Bertolt Brecht
That is why we must not forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nor must we forget or downplay any atrocities committed in the Second World War or by anyone at any time.
I am sorry. Anyone who tries to seriously compare what happened during the occupation of France to what happened in Poland and Ukraine simply does not know what they are talking about.
For example, there was no standing order that "no French cities were to be captured", and that instead Paris (for example) should be "surrounded and bombarded indescriminately until its population were made refugees" and driven out into the wilderness, as there was for all Russian cities, with particular reference to Moscow and Leningrad.
I think any country where profiteering industrialists, or in our age, Capitalists in general, have so much influence over government and the running of the country, those countries will be overrun by fascism at some point. Capitalists have propped up every mass murderer from Adolf Hilter to Chiang Kai-shek, Mussolini, Franco, Pol Pot and Fulgencio Batista to Osama bin Laden. Their common battle cry is anticommunism.
I am sorry anyone who tries to seriously compare what happened during the occupation of France to what happened in Poland and Ukraine simply does not know what they are talking about.
An atrocity is an atrocity, right?
Fascism, whether Japanese, German or Italian (or anywhere else), was vile, obscene and reprehensible. Period.
Relativistic moral discussions about which fascists were worse and where, is pointless because no valuable knowledge or moral lessons are learned from this.
There are practical and military reasons why "Scorched Earth" warfare was not unleashed upon Poland (1939) and the Western countries: The size of the countries, they are small, where would the displaced persons go? Germay either had a numerical and/or technological advantage over these countries or, at best, there was numerical and technological parity. Look at how all the Western European countries (and Poland, Yugoslavia and Greece in the East) fell in a matter of weeks. "Scorched Earth" was not needed here.
As I've said before, when it came to the invasion of Russia, the nazis faced obstacles they hadn't faced in Poland and the Western European countries. There was Russia's vast physical size, vast population size, vast resources, vast industrial output, the vast size of its military forces, the relative parity in the technology of its weapons and equipment.
In order for Germany to have any chance of defeating Russia (unlike the other countries), Russia had to be dealt a severe blow. Such a severe blow that it would be impossible for Russia to recover, ever. Russia would have to be invaded with maximum speed and maximum violence. Russia and its people needed to be smashed physically, as well as psychologically, as well as militarily, as well as industrially. Hence the "Give no quarter, take no prisoners" "Scorched Earth" military strategy. If you are going to wage such an unrestrained, morally repugnant war of "Victory or annihilation", then it makes it easier for the soldiers to murder and destroy on such a vast scale if you add racism into the mix. If people are not human beings, then they have no human rights. If they have no human rights, then you can do whatever you like to them, and you will have committed no wrong.
If you were a General planning the German invasion of Russia in early 1941, can you think of a "better" (in practical terms) way to attempt to achieve victory under such impossible circumstances? If so, how?
I am sorry. Anyone who tries to seriously compare what happened during the occupation of France to what happened in Poland and Ukraine simply does not know what they are talking about.
For example, there was no standing order that "no French cities were to be captured", and that instead Paris (for example) should be "surrounded and bombarded indescriminately until its population were made refugees" and driven out into the wilderness, as there was for all Russian cities, with particular reference to Moscow and Leningrad.
Do you know what ethical blindness is?
What you just said is a classic example of it.
Your above argument is what is called moral relativism.
In contrast, I argue from the perspective of what is called universal morality.
(Universal morality asks questions like:)
In Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad (Russia) and Amsterdam (Holland) the nazis caused preventable starvation from which masses of people died.
Does a difference in location make any difference to the moral wrongness of the atrocity committed?
Does a difference in the reason or 'politics' behind the atrocity alter the fact that it was an atrocity or somehow 'lessen' its moral wrongness/repugnance/perniciousness?
If I were an SS officer at a death camp would it make any difference whether I had starved a child or gave the child some candy before I threw the child in the chamber and turned on the gas? Would my reasons for murdering the child make any difference?
NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT!
One day in 1942, 1,000 Jewish civilians were rounded up in Kiev, Ukraine and taken by their nazi captors to an isolated area where they were massacred by small arms fire and later buried in a mass grave.
One day in 1942, 1,000 Chinese civilians were rounded up in Singapore, Malaya and taken by their Japanese fascist captors to an isolated area where they were massacred by small arms fire and later buried in a mass grave.
From the perspective of universal morality, the only things relevant in these cases are the facts that innocent civilians were murdered by a racist ideology that saw the deaths of certain ethnic groups as desirable and that these facts, standing alone, constitute an atrocity. Any other details such as location, or whether it was the result of a government policy ('politics') a priori (a plan that pre-existed the act) or a posteriori (practice or actions preceeding the devising of a plan; the plan in this case is derived from the practices or actions), are utterly irrelevant and unimportant because their exclusion do not alter the moral 'status' of the act.
Now a slight change in focus.
Many Dutch are fair skinned, blue eyed and blond. The nazis would have regarded them as Aryans. They would have regarded the rest of the "pure" Dutch as close 'cousins' to the Aryans.
Wouldn't the murder of masses of Dutch civilians through preventable starvation be a contradictory and somewhat ironic act on the part of the nazis?
How many of you sharp Babblers out there caught that?
Many Dutch are fair skinned, blue eyed and blond. The nazis would have regarded them as Aryans. They would have regarded the rest of the "pure" Dutch as close 'cousins' to the Aryans.
Wouldn't the murder of masses of Dutch civilians through preventable starvation be a contradictory and somewhat ironic act on the part of the nazis?
How many of you sharp Babblers out there caught that?
Well I consider myself tarp as a shack most times. But I think most reputable scholars tend to shy away from using the term Aryan today as it is considered another highly politicized term. The British used it apparently as excuse to conquer India. Historian David Frawley wrote about the British in India: "They could claim to be doing only what the Aryan ancestors of the Hindus had previously done millennia ago." And we know that the British were guilty of perpetrating a number of atrocities and crimes against humanity in that country.
Personally speaking, I admit to having a difficult time telling various ethnicities apart. I admit to not being sure if someone is from Japan or China or even the Philippines. I met a young women who is Filippino who I was sure looked Chinese(I grew up in Northern Ontario where everyone looked the same and yet so very different then for the most part. Hair colour differences are a dead giveaway, or so I led myself to believe). OTOH, It might take me some time discerning the country of origin of a given European person until I hear them speak their native language. German and Dutch sound similar as far as I can tell. I might not tell the difference between a Swedish person speaking and a German, or Dutch and South African. I've met people who resemble me and my features and eye colour, and they could have been born in Norway, or Finland, Czech Republic, England, Germany or even Australia. I can't tell us whites apart sometimes.
Now a slight change in focus.
Many Dutch are fair skinned, blue eyed and blond. The nazis would have regarded them as Aryans. They would have regarded the rest of the "pure" Dutch as close 'cousins' to the Aryans.
Wouldn't the murder of masses of Dutch civilians through preventable starvation be a contradictory and somewhat ironic act on the part of the nazis?
How many of you sharp Babblers out there caught that?
You mean to say that the Germans behaved differently based on their racial theories in the Benalux and in Eastern Europe? Fucking shokcing! You are a real genius. Not that I haven't been trying to point out for 4 threads now that the ideologies and political belief shaped the policies that were applied in different reagions and depended on the country applying the policy and their ideological outlook.
In short, the populations of Western Europe were acceptable as Aryan "stock" and could be incorporated into the empire, while those of Eastern Europe were sub-human targets for mass ethnic cleansing and extermination.
As well, the Wehrmacht (based in practical considerations) insisted (after watching the devestation of Poland take place before their eyes), that such wanton destruction of the population and the economy was bad for the war effort, and proposed a policy aimed at integrated the arms production abilities of the captured territories to the war effort as a whole.
Now that we have established that imperialism can take different forms, even within the same empire, perhaps we can move on to a realistic appraisal of Japanese war aims and policy, as opposed to the blanket assertion that the modus operandi of all imperial ventures are precisely the same?
Not likely, I suppose, since it is quite evident that your major ambition here is to self-righteuously prove your moral superiority by denoucing everyone else. Even the facts are expendable in the face of this object, as has been repeatedly evidenced.
As well, the Wehrmacht (based in practical considerations) insisted (after watching the devestation of Poland take place before their eyes), that such wanton destruction of the population and the economy was bad for the war effort, and proposed a policy aimed at integrated the arms production abilities of the captured territories to the war effort as a whole.
Wrong again. The annexation of Bohemia and Moravia (the Czech state) in late 1939 was to acquire the valued Skoda factories. As I said above, the Battle of Poland was a blitzkrieg battle exactly like the Battles of Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg, France, Britain, the North African Campaign, Yugoslavia (1941), Greece and Crete - there was no wanton destruction of the population and economy as a whole in these places at this time. In Poland and Yugoslavia this occurred later.
Also, as I've argued before, Russia was invaded because Hitler and the nazis coveted Russia's land, resources (including foodstuffs output and production and also oil, especially oil), labor (human resources) and industry.
A successful conquering of Russia necessitated a Scorched Earth military strategy. Anti Slavic racism was deemed the most efficient and effective way to implement Scorched Earth. This was the first time this military strategy was employed in the European Theater of World War II, NOT the initial Battle of Poland.
If you want another pointless hairsplitting debate, here's one for you:
Was the inevitable invasion of Russia the cause for the anti Slavic racism in Mein Kampf (my view) or was the anti Slavic racism in Mein Kampf the cause for the invasion of Russia (a view I reject because I maintain that Russia was invaded for its land ( i.e., lebensraum), resources and labor and for NO OTHER REASON)?
When Poland was invaded, Hitler did not want, nor did he expect, a general European war. The 1938 Munich Conference suggested to Hitler that this wouldn't happen. Thus he was surprised when France and Britain declared war on Germany over Poland. If things went entirely the way Hitler wanted in 1939, World War II would have consisted solely of the invasions of Poland and Russia as envisaged (the invasion of Russia) by Mein Kampf.
Show me that colonialism/imperialism of Western Europe and the U.S.A. prior to World War II reached the same excesses as that of Japanese, German and Italian fascism.
Again, what valuable knowledge and moral lessons do we gain over a discussion of the obvious that racism was involved in the Scorched Earth policies of the Japanese fascists in China and the Asia-Pacific, German nazis on the Eastern Front and Italian fascists in Tripolitania, Abyssinia and Yugoslavia?
ABSOLUTELY NONE, as far as I can see.
The annexation of Bohemia and Moravia happened in the spring of 1939, not "late" 1939. Your arguments from authority would be far more convincing if you were not constantly making clear factual errors in such self-assured tones.
The claim that there was no "scortched earth" policy in Poland, is another absurd falsification by you in an effort to make your rhetoric fit the case you want to make:
I mean, really, for someone who has pretensions to being a student of geo-politics and this particular war, the basic facts that the German high command ordered the immediate execution of the Polish "elite", and followed that up with mass excutions and huge campaigns of ethnic cleansing immediatly as soon as the "civilian" authorities took over, is pretty much ABC's stuff. Notably, no such campaign was conducted in the west, were local civil authority was maintained, under German rule, France for example paying a large tax for its own occupation, adminstrated by the existing French authorities.
Obviously you aren't really very much interested in the truth, but I am not going to allow your repeated falisfications of history go unchallenged.
Indeed, the depopulation of Polish-Danzigers was so severe that even the local Nazi authorities began to relent because the city was no longer able to function as a modern port. Lebensraum, as you see, began in Poland. It was just carreid out in a more forthright and organized manner in Russia, based on the Polish experience.
I have never contested that the Lebensraum program was initiated for any other purpose than to turn the Slavi regions into a giant colony. I have never made an issue of that point.
What I pointed out was that there was no Japanese Lebensraum program. The "Three Alls" policy was not instituted to depopulate northern China so that it could be populated by Japanese colonists, it was instituted as a retaliatory measure of reprisals against the restive Chinese population. Hence, it did not begin in 1938, when Japane conquered Shanxi and Shandong, it began in 1941, after the Chinese Communists organized a highly successful peasant revolt against Japanese rule.
The point was to supress resistance, not exterminate the Chinese. When they failed to find suitable puppet adminstrators to co-ordinate their imperial exploitation of the conquered territory, they applied increasingly repressive measures. As I said, a very traditional imperial view of the kind similar to any other imperial power, such as Britain, the USA, or France, in most cases.
I would like to go into a more detailed analysis of Japanese "Fascism" and what it was and was not, but such a discussion would be pointless in the face of your deliberate obfuscation and falsification of the facts.
As for a comparison between the German Lebensraum doctrine and other imperial powers, I think that Ward Churchill would argue that Hitler's idea was nothing but an imitation of the deliberate British policy of depopulation of North America for the purposes of colonization: A Little Matter of Geoncide -- Holocaust Denial in the Americas 1492 to the present.
The annexation of Bohemia and Moravia happened in the spring of 1939, not "late" 1939. Your arguments from authority would be far more convincing if you were not constantly making clear factual errors in such self-assured tones.
O.K., so I was off by a couple of months. Again, big deal, it doesn't alter my conclusion that Bohemia and Moravia were annexed for the Skoda factories and for the deposits if coal and iron ore there.
The claim that there was no "scortched earth" policy in Poland, is another absurd falsification by you in an effort to make your rhetoric fit the case you want to make:
I mean, really, for someone who has pretensions to being a student of geo-politics and this particular war, the basic facts that the German high command ordered the immediate execution of the Polish "elite", and followed that up with mass excutions and huge campaigns of ethnic cleansing immediatly as soon as the "civilian" authorities took over, is pretty much ABC's stuff.
Indeed, the depopulation of Polish-Danzigers was so severe that even the local Nazi authorities began to relent because the city was no longer able to function as a modern port. Lebensraum, as you see, began in Poland. It was just carreid out in a more forthright and organized manner in Russia, based on the Polish experience.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler incessantly talks about Russia and Russians and the unlimited arable land and space and natural resources of Russia. Hitler also obsessed about bolshevism this and communism that. Gee, I didn't know that Poland was communist from 1919-1939 or that it was so big or that it had so much land or that it had so many resources, as described in Mein Kampf.
Those orders given during September 1939 existed on paper only. Had they been carried out systematically, this would have been common knowledge by 1940 in the West. We would have heard about it from the Free Poles who fought in the Battle of France and the Battle of Britain and beyond. As you said yourself, "... mass executions and huge campaigns of ethnic cleansing [occurred] as soon as the 'civilian' authorities took over,... Indeed, the depopulation of Polish-Danzigers was so severe that even the local Nazi authorities began to relent because the city was no longer able to function as a modern port."
Same thing with the invasion of Russia. There may be all kinds of orders to commit mass murder of surrendered soldiers and innocent unarmed civilians. There is always the unavoidable problem of theory meeting reality. The soldiers, officers and officials who had the responsibility for prosecuting the war and governing the people realized that such actions were counterproductive to conquering Russia and governing the people in the occupied territories. There is also the problem of getting German soldiers, who would have been ordinary people like you and I, to murder masses of unarmed innocent people. Most German officers of the Wermacht were members of the aristocracy and considered themselves highly trained professionals. The Scorched Earth instructions they were getting from Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich and other nazis, they would have regarded as vulgar and something "a Bohemian Corporal would demand." If the orders came from Himmler or anyone not in the direct chain of command, Wermacht officers could have (and it appears they did) ignored such instructions.
When it comes to establishing mass executions and the near "elimination" of Poles and Slavs, it isn't sufficient to read book after book and page after page of orders that were given to do so. Orders alone do not cause the act to become accomplished. Orders can always be ignored. If you want to establish that Poles and Slavs were nearly eliminated, you need to provide statistics that show the numbers.
"All Poles will disappear from this world."
I still see Poles living in this world. I guess that statement was more rhetoric than anything else, huh?
What I pointed out was that there was no Japanese Lebensraum program. The "Three Alls" policy was not instituted to depopulate northern China so that it could be populated by Japanese colonists, it was instituted as a retaliatory measure of reprisals against the restive Chinese population. Hence, it did not begin in 1938, when Japane conquered Shanxi and Shandong, it began in 1941, after the Chinese Communists organized a highly successful peasant revolt against Japanese rule.
The point was to supress resistance, not exterminate the Chinese. When they failed to find suitable puppet adminstrators to co-ordinate their imperial exploitation of the conquered territory, they applied increasingly repressive measures. As I said, a very traditional imperial view of the kind similar to any other imperial power, such as Britain, the USA, or France, in most cases.
I would like to go into a more detailed analysis of Japanese "Fascism" and what it was and was not, but such a discussion would be pointless in the face of your deliberate obfuscation and falsification of the facts.
Tell me, what were the Twenty-One Demands all about?
Japan's closest ally at that time, Great Britain also expressed concern over what was perceived as Japan's overbearing, bullying approach to diplomacy, and the British Foreign Office in particular was unhappy with Japanese attempts to establish what would effectively be a Japanese protectorate over all of China.
... Japan continued to push for outright control over Shandong Province and they won European diplomatic recognition for their claim at the Treaty of Versailles...
The German nazis had Mein Kampf as a blueprint for the conquest of Russia and world domination, the Japanese fascists had the Tanaka Memorial as a blueprint for the conquest of China, the Asia-Pacific and world domination. Ever heard of it?
http://www.mailstar.net/tanaka.html
By the 1920s, the Japanese fascists realized that Japan would not be able meet its growing population in terms of land, in terms of feeding its people, in terms of supplying the national economy and industry with Japan's resources. Just as the nazis needed lebensraum - land, labor and resources from Russia, Japan needed its own "lebensraum" -land, labor and resources from China and the Asia-Pacific.
That is why, by the end of the 1920s, the fascists succeeded in making the Emperor a god. Although Hirohito was a symbolic figurehead, we must not pass this off as mere insignificance. The christian god is also a symbolic figurehead. Yet, as we know, from the earliest christian times many horrific atrocities have been justified in the name of the christian god. From this experience through the ages, we know the danger we face when religion mixes with politics. This is precisely the case in fascist Japan by the end of the 1920s.
The Chinese were not worthy of the land according to the dominant ideology, called bugs, animals, below-human. Yoshio Tsuchiya, (Japanese Secret Military Police): "The Chinese were inferior - didn't belong to the human race. That was the way we looked at it." In December 1937 the Japanese Army reached the then capital of China, Nanking... Men were set on fire, women beaten, bayoneted, raped. After Nanking atrocities followed in the Chinese countryside - the Chinese used for bayonet practice... A soldier is asked why he felt no guilt or shame raping and killing women. He replies: "Because I was fighting for the emperor. He was a god; in the name of the emperor we could do whatever we wanted against the Chinese."
What was the 1937 Rape of Nanking all about, again?
Mass killings
R. J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, states that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military murdered from nearly 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most likely 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. "This democide was due to a morally bankrupt political and military strategy, military expediency and custom, and national culture." According to Rummel, in China alone during 1937-45, approximately 3.9 million Chinese were killed, mostly civilians, as a direct result of the Japanese operations and 10.2 millions in the course of the war. The most infamous incident during this period was the Nanking Massacre of 1937-38, when, according to the findings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Japanese Army massacred as many as 300,000 civilians and prisoners of war, although the accepted figure is somewhere in the hundreds of thousands... In Southeast Asia, the Manila massacre, resulted in the deaths of 100,000 civilians in the Philippines. It is estimated that at least one out of every 20 Filipinos died at the hand of the Japanese during the occupation. In the Sook Ching massacre, between 25,000 and 50,000 ethnic Chinese in Singapore were taken to beaches and massacred. There were numerous other massacres of civilians e.g. the Kalagong massacre.
Historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta reports that a "Three Alls Policy" ... was implemented in China from 1942 to 1945 and was in itself responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians. This scorched earth strategy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, directed Japanese forces to "Kill All, Burn All, and Loot All."
Human experimentation and biological warfare
... According to GlobalSecurity.org, the experiments carried out by Unit 731 alone caused 3,000 deaths. Furthermore, according to the 2002 International Symposium on the Crimes of Bacteriological Warfare, the number of people killed by the Imperial Japanese Army germ warfare and human experiments is around 580,000. According to other sources, "tens of thousands, and perhaps as many as 400,000 Chinese died of bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax and other diseases...", resulting from the use of biological warfare.
Forced labor
The Japanese military's use of forced labor, by Asian civilians and POWs also caused many deaths. According to a joint study by historians including Zhifen Ju, Mitsuyoshi Himeta, Toru Kubo and Mark Peattie, more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilized by the Koa-in (Japanese Development Board) for forced labour. More than 100,000 civilians and POWs died in the construction of the Burma-Siam Railway.
The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java, between four and 10 million romusha (Japanese: "manual laborer"), were forced to work by the Japanese military. About 270,000 of these Javanese laborers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in South East Asia. Only 52,000 were repatriated to Java, meaning that there was a death rate of 80%.
According to historian Akira Fujiwara, Emperor Hirohito personally ratified the decision to remove the constraints of international law (Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907)) on the treatment of Chinese prisoners of war in the directive of August 5, 1937. This notification also advised staff officers to stop using the term "prisoners of war".
Sook Ching massacre
The Sook Ching massacre ... was a systematic extermination of perceived hostile elements among the Chinese in Singapore, by the Japanese military during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore, after the British colony surrendered on 15 February 1942 during the Second World War.
... The term Sook Ching means "a purge through cleansing" in Chinese and it was referred to as the Kakyo shukusei, or "purging of Chinese" by the Japanese.
Massacre Planned Before Japanese Occupation
Hayashi Hirofumi ... (professor of politics at Kanto-Gakuin University and ... Co-Director of the Center for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility) writes,
"It is important to note that the purge was planned before Japanese troops landed in Singapore. The military government section of the 25th Army had already drawn up a plan entitled, "Implementation Guideline for Manipulating Overseas Chinese" on or around 28 December 1941. This guideline stated that anyone who failed to obey or cooperate with the occupation authorities should be eliminated. It is clear that the headquarters of the 25th Army had decided on a harsh policy toward the Chinese population of Singapore and Malaya from the beginning of the war. According to Onishi Satoru, the Kempeitai officer in charge of the Jalan Desar screening centre, Kempeitai commander Oishi Masayuki was instructed by the chief of staff, Suzuki Sosaku, at Keluang, Johor, to prepare for a purge following the capture of Singapore. Although the exact date of this instruction is not known, the Army headquarters was stationed in Keluang from 28 January to 4 February 1942... Clearly, then, the Singapore Massacre was not the conduct of a few evil people, but was consistent with the approaches honed and applied in the course of a long period of Japanese aggression against China and subsequently applied to other Asian countries."
The "screening"
... According to the A Country Study: Singapore published by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress:
"All Chinese males from ages eighteen to fifty were required to report to registration camps for screening. The Japanese military or police arrested those alleged to be anti-Japanese, meaning those who were singled out by informers or who were teachers, journalists, intellectuals, or even former servants of the British. Some were imprisoned, but most were executed." [Footnote Frmrsldr: It looks a lot like the German nazi occupation of Poland described above, doesn't it?]
Looks to me that Japanese fascist colonialism and German nazi colonialism categorically do not differ in any significant way. I can see no significant difference. Can you?
Where is the deliberate obfuscation and falsification of the facts?
As for a comparison between the German Lebensraum doctrine and other imperial powers, I think that Ward Churchill would argue that Hitler's idea was nothing but an imitation of the deliberate British policy of depopulation of North America for the purposes of colonization: A Little Matter of Geoncide -- Holocaust Denial in the Americas 1492 to the present.
Was European and American colonialism like Japanese fascist colonialism or German nazi colonialism? Oh, it was like German nazi colonialism. But wait a minute, you just said:
When they [Japanese fascists] failed to find suitable puppet administrators to co-ordinate their imperial exploitation of the conquered territory, they applied increasingly repressive measures. As I said, a very traditional imperial view of the kind similar to any other imperial power such as Britain, the USA, or France, in most cases.
So Japanese fascist colonialism was like European and American colonialism. German nazi colonialism was like American and European colonialism.
So Japanese fascist colonialism was like German nazi colonialism. Isn't that what I have been arguing the whole time?
You're so caught up in your mixed metaphores, you're confusing yourself.
From 1603 to the present, when has an American colonial (later U.S.) government ever had a formal policy where its stated goal was to "Make all American Indians disappear from this world"?
The reason for moving the American Indian west across the Mississippi in the early 1830s, Reservations and Residential schools by the federal government was to try to give them land that would not be taken from them by the whites and to protect and ensure the survival of the American Indian (in the case of the Residential School policy.)
In contrast, the intent of the German nazi 'colonial' policy in Poland and Russia was never to help and protect the Poles and Slavs, but clearly to harm them.
You can't compare American continental colonialism with Europen 19th Century colonialism. European 19th Century colonialism was characterized by capitalist exploitation. In order to make capital, capitalist exploiters need a supply of labor. It would be against their self-interest to liquidate their (in this case, native) laborers. Tell me, what ever became of those European "lebensraumer" farmers of Africa and Asia?
The annexation of Bohemia and Moravia happened in the spring of 1939, not "late" 1939. Your arguments from authority would be far more convincing if you were not constantly making clear factual errors in such self-assured tones.
O.K., so I was off by a couple of months. Again, big deal, it doesn't alter my conclusion that Bohemia and Moravia were annexed for the Skoda factories and for the deposits if coal and iron ore there.
The claim that there was no "scortched earth" policy in Poland, is another absurd falsification by you in an effort to make your rhetoric fit the case you want to make:
I mean, really, for someone who has pretensions to being a student of geo-politics and this particular war, the basic facts that the German high command ordered the immediate execution of the Polish "elite", and followed that up with mass excutions and huge campaigns of ethnic cleansing immediatly as soon as the "civilian" authorities took over, is pretty much ABC's stuff.
Indeed, the depopulation of Polish-Danzigers was so severe that even the local Nazi authorities began to relent because the city was no longer able to function as a modern port. Lebensraum, as you see, began in Poland. It was just carreid out in a more forthright and organized manner in Russia, based on the Polish experience.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler incessantly talks about Russia and Russians and the unlimited arable land and space and natural resources of Russia. Hitler also obsessed about bolshevism this and communism that. Gee, I didn't know that Poland was communist from 1919-1939 or that it was so big or that it had so much land or that it had so many resources, as described in Mein Kampf.
Those orders given during September 1939 existed on paper only. Had they been carried out systematically, this would have been common knowledge by 1940 in the West. We would have heard about it from the Free Poles who fought in the Battle of France and the Battle of Britain and beyond. As you said yourself, "... mass executions and huge campaigns of ethnic cleansing [occurred] as soon as the 'civilian' authorities took over,... Indeed, the depopulation of Polish-Danzigers was so severe that even the local Nazi authorities began to relent because the city was no longer able to function as a modern port."
Same thing with the invasion of Russia. There may be all kinds of orders to commit mass murder of surrendered soldiers and innocent unarmed civilians. There is always the unavoidable problem of theory meeting reality. The soldiers, officers and officials who had the responsibility for prosecuting the war and governing the people realized that such actions were counterproductive to conquering Russia and governing the people in the occupied territories. There is also the problem of getting German soldiers, who would have been ordinary people like you and I, to murder masses of unarmed innocent people. Most German officers of the Wermacht were members of the aristocracy and considered themselves highly trained professionals. The Scorched Earth instructions they were getting from Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich and other nazis, they would have regarded as vulgar and something "a Bohemian Corporal would demand." If the orders came from Himmler or anyone not in the direct chain of command, Wermacht officers could have (and it appears they did) ignored such instructions.
When it comes to establishing mass executions and the near "elimination" of Poles and Slavs, it isn't sufficient to read book after book and page after page of orders that were given to do so. Orders alone do not cause the act to become accomplished. Orders can always be ignored. If you want to establish that Poles and Slavs were nearly eliminated, you need to provide statistics that show the numbers.
"All Poles will disappear from this world."
I still see Poles living in this world. I guess that statement was more rhetoric than anything else, huh?
Is that really the best you can do? Seriously. What is most annoying about you is your continued fudgification of the facts for the purposes of allowing yourself to post page after page of half-baked theories justifying your previous bullshit.
What if I were to day: "I still see Jews living in this world. I guess the 'final solution' was more rhetoric than anything else, huh?"
By the way Poles are "Slavs", so there is no need to use phrases such as "Poles and Slavs" when you are making shit up.
Same thing with the invasion of Russia. There may be all kinds of orders to commit mass murder of surrendered soldiers and innocent unarmed civilians. There is always the unavoidable problem of theory meeting reality. The soldiers, officers and officials who had the responsibility for prosecuting the war and governing the people realized that such actions were counterproductive to conquering Russia and governing the people in the occupied territories. There is also the problem of getting German soldiers, who would have been ordinary people like you and I, to murder masses of unarmed innocent people. Most German officers of the Wermacht were members of the aristocracy and considered themselves highly trained professionals. The Scorched Earth instructions they were getting from Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich and other nazis, they would have regarded as vulgar and something "a Bohemian Corporal would demand." If the orders came from Himmler or anyone not in the direct chain of command, Wermacht officers could have (and it appears they did) ignored such instructions.
This particular piece of bullshit needs special attention.
What is being said here is that the a few thousand members of the Einstatsgruppen singlehandedly managed all the civilian massacres in Russia. Utter bullshit. In fact the Wehrmacht were an essential element in the whole process because they handled all of the logistics, including a great share of the management of prisoner facilities. This despite your pop-sociology lecture about the German "officer" elite, which is also complete bollocks, because indeed many German officers openly approved of and expressed extremely racist views -- who precisely do you think guarded the trains? Who precisely guarded the open air barbed wire enclosures where Russian POW's were kept during the battle of Stalingrad, so they could freeze to death in the Russian winter? This is not to say that "some" Wehrmacht officers and enlisted men did not ignore or otherwise thwart injunctions from the Einsatzgruppen and the SS, but in fact this was the exception, not the rule.
Indeed, I am reminded of one particular incident where a group of captured Russian children, who had been seperated from their parents who had been executed, were being held in a barn by a Wehrmacht detachement, and the officer in charge initially refused an order to burn the barn, but relented under pressure from an SS officer, and eventually had the shrieking and crying toddlers burned alive because, he reasoned, "if his men didn't do it, then the SS would find someone else to do the job, and prolonging the suffering would not be humanitarian."
Now if you would kindly fuck off with your fake history lectures. The lengths you will go to make up theories and fudge facts based on your vague recollection of History Channel "pop" history TV specials in order to try and make the case that there was nothing particularly special about one of the most catastrophic cases of ethnic cleansing in recent history is truly disgusting.
The repetition of the "honourable Wehrmacht professional officer" trope (a common theme among Holocaust deniers) is really the icing on the cake of what has been a truly heroic example of the total intellectual dishonesty that you have exhibited in these threads.
Wilhelm Keitel OKW
Apparently they preferred that the upper elite creme de la creme of military officers be chosen from the land owning class of Germans. It was kind of like the way our stoogeaucrats in Canada pick red chamberlings for the senate in Ottawa. Have to have an upper crust edge, good in-breeding and all that.
Is that really the best you can do? Seriously. What is most annoying about you is your continued fudgification of the facts for the purposes of allowing yourself to post page after page of half-baked theories justifying your previous bullshit.
"I still see Jews living in this world. I guess the 'final solution' was more rhetoric than anything else, huh?"
By the way Poles are "Slavs", so there is no need to use phrases such as "Poles and Slavs" when you are making shit up.
Yeah, I know Poles are Slavs. So are Czechs and Jugoslavians. What's your point?
In Mein Kampf, Hitler obsesses about Russia, the vast size of Russia, the vast arable land of Russia, the vast strategic resources of Russia. He also obsesses about bolshevism/communinsm. When you combine that with his obsession about Slavs, what he is talking about is Russia, not Poland. One can only include Poland in this if one argues that Hitler saw Poland as an appendage of Russia, which is possible, although I don't think Hitler ever clearly articulated this in Mein Kampf.
If we are to include Poland as an "appendage" of Russia, then logically, we have to include the other Slavic countries as well. This poses a problem with Jugoslavia. While it may work for Czechoslovakia, Hitler would never have invaded Jugoslavia if he didn't come to Mussolini's aid in his misadventure in Greece and if shortly before nazi Germany's ally Jugoslavia hadn't had a coup that instituted a pro communist Russia government.
I wouldn't become too enamored with your theory that the nazis were all that kind to the Western Europeans. Ultimately, the nazis hated anyone who was not like them and did not unquestioningly subscribe to their ideology. The slightest resistance would be met with reprisals, hardship and death.
When we think of Nazi killing, genocide immediately comes to mind, particularly that of "6,000,000 Jews." But they also murdered for reasons other than race or religion. For one, the Nazis slew those who opposed or hindered them, whether actually or potentially. This was why Hitler assassinated hundreds of top Nazi SA's (Sturmabteilung) in June and July 1934, who under Ernst Rohm were becoming a strong competitor to the SS (Schutzstaffel); or executed perhaps 5,000 Germans after the 1944 plot on his life and attempted coup d'etat. Indeed, it is why critics, pacifists, conscientious objectors, campus rebels, dissidents, and others throughout the twelve-year history of the regime in Germany, were executed, disappeared, or slowly died in concentration camps. The Nazis thus killed some 288,000 Germans, not counting Jews, homosexuals, and those forcibly "euthanized." If these are included, then the Nazis murdered at least 498,000 Germans, probably 762,000... this was one out of every hundred Germans.
If one includes the 5,200,000 German civilian and military war-dead, the average German's likelihood of dying from the regime was slightly better than one out of eleven -- extremely low odds for a life.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NAZIS.CHAP1.HTM
The historical stuff is pretty much common knowledge. The statistics are interesting and are probably not widely known.
I have to be frugal with my time. Like my money, I don't have a lot of spare change time. I spent a little extra time and did some research on the shall I say, nazi "administrative" aspects of the Battle of Poland. Initially, I just went by common descriptions of what occurred during this period in time. I have discovered that you are right and I was wrong.
On this point I concede victory to you, sir!
I'm sorry though, but I am still a bit in a quandary over whether you consider Japanese fascist colonialism the same as German nazi colonialism or European and American colonialism, or whether they were all the same?
What are your definitions of colonialism and imperialism?
Imperialism, does not in and of itself require "colonialism". That is why we have two words. One, "colonialism", the other "imperialism". These are not the same thing. All colonial pojects are by definition imperial, but not all imperial projects are colonial. Colonialism is imperialism that requires population displacement in order to allow for the colonial project. Imperialism can simply be the imposition of power over another people, without necessitating the displacement of population.
For example. US war in Vietnam: Not colonialism. No attempt to emigrate an American population to Vietnam. Japanese conquest of Korea; Imperial, for the most part as opposed to colonial, since the object was to incorporate the Koreans as Japanese subjects of the empire. This is not to say that no Japanese moved to Korea as part of the imperial project, but the main thrust of the issue was subjugation and exploitation, not population transfer. British empire in North America: Colonialism, since its primary purpose was population transfer.
Population transfer usually requires, and in fact to my knowledge has always included ethnic cleansing.
Now if you would kindly fuck off with your fake history lectures. The lengths you will go to make up theories and fudge facts based on your vague recollection of History Channel "pop" history TV specials in order to try and make the case that there was nothing particularly special about one of the most catastrophic cases of ethnic cleansing in recent history is truly disgusting.
The repetition of the "honourable Wehrmacht professional officer" trope (a common theme among Holocaust deniers) is really the icing on the cake of what has been a truly heroic example of the total intellectual dishonesty that you have exhibited in these threads.
If you want to find out who did and didn't and who were suspected of Holocaust and democide war/human rights crimes, then look at who's names are on the list of the Nuremberg Tribunals and who were/are wanted by the Simon Wiesenthal Foundation.
You blow a gasket when you percieve me downplaying, excusing or denying the involvement of some Wermacht officers from participation in the Holocaust and democide?
What about yourself? After I have saturated you with genocide, democide war and human rights crimes that were systemically perpetrated by the Japanese fascist government and Army officers and soldiers, your response was that "statistics that establish these facts were mainly compiled at the behest of agencies whose explicit mission was to attribute essential and unparalled blame solely to the Japanese, and remove blame from other parties..."
When confronted with facts about the preventable starvation of 2 million Vietnamese and 4 million Indonesians by the Japanese fascists, your response was "that the U.S.A. had destroyed the Japanese navy and merchant marine and that Japanese soldiers were starving. Under those circumstances, the Japanese fascists did what anyone would naturally do, feed themselves first. - What, in countries that produced rice surpluses? What, the Japanese fascists had to feed themselves first - all two or four million of them?
"... and eventually had the shrieking and crying toddlers burned alive..."
I bet you spanked off when you read that.
During the rape of Nanking, the Japanese fascists bayoneted, decapitated, smashed, buried alive, roasted in bonfires, thousands of shrieking and crying infants. Thousands of women were raped, including underage girls and the elderly. Even pregnant women were not spared. Foetuses were ripped from the womb for sadistic amusement.
So you fuck off Cueball, you fucking self-righteous sanctimonious fucking nazi loving fucking hypocrite.
Cueball tries but often trips over his self-inflated ego. I sometimes wonder if he uses a bicycle pump. Anyway...
The US doesn't do British or even Tocquevillian colonialism in quite the same ways. They do predatory capitalism, which is a modern form of colonialism. They genocided more than 3 million Vietnamese in order to pave the way for US domination. US Military colonizes other countries by setting up military bases and communications installations manned by relatively small number of troops and intelligence gatherers, air force bases etc.
The US has colonized much of the developed and developing world by petro-dollar imperialism since the 1970s. This method sometimes eliminates the need for direct military conquest of other countries. Other countries' national savings are plowed back into US militarism and propping up US trade and budget deficits when those countries buy US debt on open markets. Or at least, this was the way for several decades until now. The 700-1000 foreign military bases are to project American power in the colonies subjected to a globalizing neofeudal financial regime backed by the US and Britain and NATO countries. The world is run like the mafia with godfathers controlling things from Washington and London.
"... and eventually had the shrieking and crying toddlers burned alive..."
I bet you spanked off when you read that.
I wasn't the one promoting "ilsa She Wolf of the SS" as some kind pertinent and interesting example of Nazi war crimes in popular culture. I don't usually "Flag as Offensive", but this one really deserves to get you banned, and I really hope they do. If only to stop you promoting false history as fact, and speaking as if you have authority... when it is quite clear that your "history" is a hodgepodge of common knowledge BS you made up, or heard somewhere, and so on and so forth.
During the rape of Nanking, the Japanese fascists bayoneted, decapitated, smashed, buried alive, roasted in bonfires, thousands of shrieking and crying infants. Thousands of women were raped, including underage girls and the elderly. Even pregnant women were not spared. Foetuses were ripped from the womb for sadistic amusement.
I never said that the Rape of Nanking "never happened". like you did about what happened in Poland, going on for paragraph after paragraph PRETENDING to know something about something that you knew absolutely nothing about.
And not one mention of "nationalist socialists" either. You're slipping.
Imperialism, does not in and of itself require "colonialism". That is why we have two words. One, "colonialism", the other "imperialism". These are not the same thing. All colonial pojects are by definition imperial, but not all imperial projects are colonial. Colonialism is imperialism that requires population displacement in order to allow for the colonial project. Imperialism can simply be the imposition of power over another people, without necessitating the displacement of population.
For example. US war in Vietnam: Not colonialism. No attempt to emigrate an American population to Vietnam. Japanese conquest of Korea; Imperial, for the most part as opposed to colonial, since the object was to incorporate the Koreans as Japanese subjects of the empire. This is not to say that no Japanese moved to Korea as part of the imperial project, but the main thrust of the issue was subjugation and exploitation, not population transfer. British empire in North America: Colonialism, since its primary purpose was population transfer.
Population transfer usually requires, and in fact to my knowledge has always included ethnic cleansing.
That would be my understanding, but I would add to that:
Imperialism has a capitalist economic component that is very strong.
Colonialism has either a weak or non existent capitalist economic component.
"Population transfer usually requires, and in fact to my knowledge has always included ethnic cleansing."
Not true.
British empire in North America. Debatable. By far the majority of American Indians died from the spread of communicable diseases from contact with the European settlers. Diseases like smallpox, chicken pox, measles, German measles, scarlet fever, etc., that had low fatality rates for the Europeans, but devastated American Indian communities across North America - the Western Hemisphere, in fact.
Apartheid South Africa.
U.S. Imperialism/Neocolonialism
During the rape of Nanking, the Japanese fascists bayoneted, decapitated, smashed, buried alive, roasted in bonfires, thousands of shrieking and crying infants. Thousands of women were raped, including underage girls and the elderly. Even pregnant women were not spared. Foetuses were ripped from the womb for sadistic amusement.
I never said that the Rape of Nanking "never happened". like you did about what happened in Poland, going on for paragraph after paragraph PRETENDING to know something about something that you knew absolutely nothing about.
I never said that you never said that the Rape of Nanking never happened.
But what you HAVE never done is admitted that when it comes to atrocities the Japanese fascists were in the same league as the German nazis.
What I said was that the modus operandi of these two states was entirely different. Of course being the completely obtuse asshole that you are you used my attempt to define a precise definition of the operational purposes and how they compare to other imperial powers, such as the UK and the United States, as some kind of defense of Japanese war crimes. Something I never defended.
Be that as it may, I am highly doubtful that you are the right person to be talking about Japanese war crimes, seeing as how its really hard for anyone to believe anything you say, when you say nothing happened in Poland, that the US invaded Iceland, that Czechoslovakia was annexed in late 1939, and that the Wehrmacht "professional officer" class didn't sully themselves with the day to day slaughter of Jews, Gypsies, communists, and Slavs. And that is just the tip of the iceberg of false "facts" you have promoted on these thread, so many I can't recall them all.
Sounds like a case of 'But-but, they were Japanese while committing atrocities and crimes against humanity' racialicious meme. B-BTWJWCACAH for short. How could Japanese criminals possibly compare with white European ones? It's obvious that Asian fascists are an inferior brand.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
And now we have this gem:
British empire in North America. Debatable. By far the majority of American Indians died from the spread of communicable diseases from contact with the European settlers. Diseases like smallpox, chicken pox, measles, German measles, scarlet fever, etc., that had low fatality rates for the Europeans, but devastated American Indian communities across North America - the Western Hemisphere, in fact.
The people of the First Nations of North America just "happened to die". No one killed them, or forced them from their territories, or intentionally spread disease among them and the rest of that crap, which we know is crap if we study the historical record of the invaders:
Lord Jeffrey Amherst's letters discussing germ warfare against American Indians
Wow. This thread is way over the line. Frmrsldr, you are taking three days off for your egregious comments at #81. And I'm closing this "for length."