This, literally no excuse, completely fucked up.
Mhm
I dislike to say this, but how is forcing your enemy to surrender worse than raping and burning down villages? Japan was the one who attacked first.
This, literally no excuse, completely fucked up.
Unit 731 gets a special mention. There's fucked up, then there's even more fucked up, then there's Unit 731
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
Saw it just today. Here.
We had Gaffers specifically defending that unit. In a thread about celebrating the Yamato and mourning the loss of its crew, someone pointed out it was as distasteful as mourning the loss of the Bismarck. Several people jumped immediately jumped in saying Japan didn't do anything that bad. Every single one of them had anime avatars...
Many historians believe that the Second Sino-Japanese War should actually mark the start of the 2nd World War.
But yeah, if you go by the standard definition of September 1st 1939 then this happened before the war broke.
You're not going to persuade anybody and it will just help people who love to steer any such discussion toward the victimization of Imperial Japan to do so.
It's a pointless exercise in frustration.
We had Gaffers specifically defending that unit. In a thread about celebrating the Yamato and mourning the loss of its crew, someone pointed out it was as distasteful as mourning the loss of the Bismarck. Several people jumped immediately jumped in saying Japan didn't do anything that bad. Every single one of them had anime avatars...
You're not going to persuade anybody and it will just help people who love to steer any such discussion toward the victimization of Imperial Japan to do so.
It's a pointless exercise in frustration.
This, literally no excuse, completely fucked up.
I don't think it's particularly useful to rank the atrocities committed in World War II, but yeah, The rape of Nanjing was fucking terrible, as was the Japanese occupation of China as a whole.
Fuck imperial Japan and fuck its apologists.
We had Gaffers specifically defending that unit. In a thread about celebrating the Yamato and mourning the loss of its crew, someone pointed out it was as distasteful as mourning the loss of the Bismarck. Several people jumped immediately jumped in saying Japan didn't do anything that bad. Every single one of them had anime avatars...
I agree with that 100% percent.For the record, I do understand why it was done and why they felt it had to be done but I still think its pretty fucked up.
Guess the point is all of this shit was fucked up and you can't really "rank them" nor should we.
Did everyone just forget the Holocaust? The Witcher 3 debacle a while back, and now this?
This, literally no excuse, completely fucked up.
This could be considered ignorance since its not a wide known atrocity like the holocaust. I doubt anyone was actually defending Unit 731?
WW2 had atrocities and butcheries committed by every side, although the scale and intentions varied.
What is striking, is the historical interpretations and consequences that followed after the war. Germany outlawed every Nazi symbol, made denying the holocaust a crime, and is still paying reparations to some countries. The general population has assimilated the responsibility of these events, and that in turn has made them bep tter individuals in regards to how they see conflict and dissenting opinions.
Japan, on the other hand, is at turns ignorant or willfully obstinate about it's role in the war, always trying to pose themselves as victims. The modern youth has, by and large, no idea of what happened in WW2 or what their country did. Major politicians deny the slavery of comfort women, they deny the Nanjing massacre, they wave away their colonial suppression of Korea and China, the untold butcheries of occupied territories.
That lack of understanding, of responsibility for those crimes, and the fear and ignorance to face them, is the worst kind of crime.
We had Gaffers specifically defending that unit. In a thread about celebrating the Yamato and mourning the loss of its crew, someone pointed out it was as distasteful as mourning the loss of the Bismarck. Several people jumped immediately jumped in saying Japan didn't do anything that bad. Every single one of them had anime avatars...
In the other hand Americans are quite boastful and proud of the fact they dropped the most heinous weapons ever devised by mankind onto civilian centres.
I can't think of two more peace loving countries on the planet than modern day Japan and Germany.
fuck. i should not have googled that..
Just seen a soldier holding up a baby by the end of his gun....FUCK
Just out of curiosity, what do you think would of happened if they hadn't dropped the atomic bombs? The firebombing (Technically more devastating than the Atom bombs) wasn't going to stop anytime soon, and the fighting wasn't really winding down.
Ranking WWII atrocities is probably a bad idea.
But if we were, the atomic bombs don't even break the top 5. Seriously.
I don't like to stereotype, but that thread sticks with me.
you betcha. Right down to extolling all 731 had done for medical science. He got banned.
Nah I think I'm gonna stick with dropping two atomic fucking bombs on them. There's fucked up, then there's that.
There's no boasting or pride, but it is perfectly fine to correct ignorance. To argue that using the bombs was, on balance, more harmful than not using them, ignores reality. You can be sad at that and you should, but to plug your ears and insist it was unreasonable, unjustifiable and/or unthinkable is just incorrect.
There's no boasting or pride, but it is perfectly fine to correct ignorance. To argue that using the bombs was, on balance, more harmful than not using them, ignores reality. You can be sad at that and you should, but to plug your ears and insist it was unreasonable, unjustifiable and/or unthinkable is just incorrect.
There are a few actuallyThis, literally no excuse, completely fucked up.
While the atomic bombings were horrific and a stain on human history as a whole, they were considered a necessary evil in making Japan surrender with as little casualties as possible, and that's something I agree with to this day. They were used to shock them into surrender, since the U.S.'s only other alternative into making Japan surrender was to either starve them out slowly or commit to a land invasion, both of which would have likely caused far more death (the land invasion in particular likely would've caused a million+ casualties).
I feel like Nanking is probably the most concentrated war crime of WWII. Others were bigger in scope, certainly, and you can argue which is more heinous or brutal, but the sheer degree of malicious, disgusting, brutal activity that was jammed into six weeks - less than 50 days - is probably unparalleled.
It doesn't quite compare to stuff like firebombing or the atomic bombs, which were certainly callous and inhuman, but lacks the visceral, personal nature of stuff like Nanking. I'm no apologist for Allied war crimes in WWII, but I think there's an important difference between ignoring the civilian cost of your actions and enjoying it. Some of the brutality of the Pacific theater, on both sides, feels significantly crueler to me.
There are several big ones, including the fact that the alternative, a conventional invasion of Japan, would have been many times deadlier. You could also argue that without those two horrific bombings, the world would not be so cowed by nuclear weapons that they have helped to keep the peace between the major powers for 70 odd years.This, literally no excuse, completely fucked up.
Again, I don't think that ranking the horrors of WWII is particularly useful, but the fire bombings were pure nightmare stuff.As someone who knows a lot about burn injuries, I would say firebombings were the worst crimes of WWII. Third degree burn injuries are horrifying, they're basically unrecoverable. Skin cannot heal from these injuries and you basically have no protection left at all for the nerves beneath the thin scar tissue. Even 20 years later, people who survived significant burn injuries describe a life of pure agony. They feel as if they constantly have a mild acid that's been poured on them and they can't get it off. The thought of having to do basic day to day activities like walking fills them with dread. People with significant burn injuries of over half their body usually wish they had just died instead.
Nowadays we have advanced techniques to recover from burn injuries, like tissue expansion or skin grafting. But back in the 1940's you were just out of luck. At least with most other WWII war crimes people were either outright killed, or they survived near starvation or a death march and were able to recover and have some hope for a normal life. If you were badly burned however you only had a half life left in front of you.
I don't believe that the ends justify the means. I think it's fine to correct ignorance. But I think justifying atrocious actions are just as bad if not worse even if the utility calculus comes out in your favour. I think it's a silly argument to get into anyway which is why I edited it out out.
Japan surrendered because of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. The biggest fear was that Japan would become a soviet vassal state.
Japan surrendered because of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. The biggest fear was that Japan would become a soviet vassal state.
It was horrific but "an estimated 40,000 to over 300,000" is hardly comparable to the Holocaust.