Spindrift
Time Person of the Year, 2006
Because we see us easily becoming Nazis but not imperial Japanese.
Why Hitler Declared War On The United States
- Thread starter Mondial
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Because we see us easily becoming Nazis but not imperial Japanese.
Because the behaviour of the Japanese regime was an extreme example of imperialist conduct - sacking cities, enslaving populations and so on. It was at the far end of the imperial spectrum. Hitler, however, was off the scale of the behaviour of the societies from which his regime emerged. He is more surprising, perhaps.
There was also a concerted effort on the part of the US to down play Japanese war crimes after the war. Villifying the NAZI's doesn't hit any potential racist hot buttons in modern america either. The racist ideology of the imperial japanese government isn't well understood by most Americans. We tend so see all Asians as the same, so the Japanese thinking they were genetically superior to the Chinese seems as silly as the Irish thinking they are racially superior to Scots. We see it as an amusing form of racism rather than sinister. And this is also offset by the typical racist attitudes of white Americans of the day.
Most of all, the Japanese did not attempt to exterminate an entire group of people. Sure, they killed and raped a lot of their neighbors but they didn't have a plan for eliminating them. Except the Okinawans, they've tried to convince the Okinawans that they're just Japanese. Kind of like the French in North Africa.
Most of all, the Japanese did not attempt to exterminate an entire group of people. Sure, they killed and raped a lot of their neighbors but they didn't have a plan for eliminating them. Except the Okinawans, they've tried to convince the Okinawans that they're just Japanese. Kind of like the French in North Africa.
Belz...
Fiend God
Well, we're basically all Japanese and Americans now, anyway.
Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
Your question should rightfully be:
Why exactly are Nazis now allowed to (rightfully) be seen as for all practical purposes G.I. Joe villains come to life but now not Imperial Japan?
Years ago (but not as many as you might think) the Japanese were depicted as broad caricatures barely even recognizable as human.
These days, we've over-corrected and try to avoid using stock Japanese bad guys. For WWII, that really just leaves the Germans. They're predominantly white. Since America is predominantly white, racism can't be an issue.
It's a shame, though, because I think it causes ill feelings towards German people of today. It is home to rich cultures and histories as well as beautiful land and city-scapes, and wonderful people. (And I say that as a person who lost family in the Holocaust).
Seismosaurus
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BStrong
Penultimate Amazing
OP is a one-hit wonder
If the innocent victim doesn't have a funny mustache and a snappy uniform, he won't come to their defense.
I think there's more than a little mancrush going on here.
If the innocent victim doesn't have a funny mustache and a snappy uniform, he won't come to their defense.
I think there's more than a little mancrush going on here.
I'm really not okay with white guilt causing this level of revisionism, but it does makes sense.
I don't think he felt that was the case, pretty much from Sudetenland resolution in '38. He seems to have been a bit annoyed at being out-manouevred and robbed of his war. In '39 he ensured that wouldn't happen again. The one thing he wanted to avoid was a two front war, so he was all set for dealing with France before turning on Russia...it was part of the plan.
You may have a different perspective, I've never had that feeling. But then, I was brought up reading war comics in the 60s and 70s, where both the Nazis and Japanese were portrayed as the enemy. In my first summer job, I worked with someone who would have nothing to do with anyone from Japan, because he had been a POW and couldn't forgive them for the way he was treated. The view from the US may be different because although the American forces were fighting the Japanese in the Pacific, they didn't have the same numbers of soldiers captured and mistreated as the British Empire did, with the fall of Singapore and Burma.
(That said, I can separate what the Japanese and German nations did in the 30s and 40s from what those nations stand for today. I've happily worked with colleagues in both countries for many years, spent three months living and working in Japan, and in fact now work for a Japanese company.)
TubbaBlubba
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I think there are also some structural differences. Hitler not only had widespread public support, the atrocities of the Nazis was centrally ordered policy. Japan was a de facto military dictatorship, and its worst excesses were generally the consequence of a LACK of central directives on how to conduct operation, with officers being left to their own devices.
dropzone
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There is this, and I'm not sure I've heard it before.
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
My father gave me the third degree when I came home from my first leave after joining the Air Force, riding a 1974 Honda CB500/4 because he was very upset that I had chosen a Japanese motorcycle over a British one. I didn't have the heart to tell him that when I was buying, I was tossing up between the Honda and a 1973 BMW R50/5.
Belz...
Fiend God
I hope he was never been mistreated by a westerner, otherwise he'd be in big trouble.
What a very strange thing to say. Are you trying to be funny about something that manifestly was not?
Doubt
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Why did Hitler attack the US?
Because he was an arrogant jerk guided by ideology and not intellect.
Germany did not have the industrial capacity to take on the Soviet Union let alone the United States. They did not have a navy that could fight on equal terms with the British let alone the United States. Their army was a one trick pony that was hobbled by a logistics system that had not improved all that much since WWI.
But other than that, everything was fine. Just fine. It is not like megalomaniacs have a history of going down in flames or anything.
Because he was an arrogant jerk guided by ideology and not intellect.
Germany did not have the industrial capacity to take on the Soviet Union let alone the United States. They did not have a navy that could fight on equal terms with the British let alone the United States. Their army was a one trick pony that was hobbled by a logistics system that had not improved all that much since WWI.
But other than that, everything was fine. Just fine. It is not like megalomaniacs have a history of going down in flames or anything.
Belz...
Fiend God
Nothing funny about it. If he has a problem with all Japanese because some of them treated him very poorly, then one would assume he would have a problem with all people of, say, his own ethnic group if some of them did the same.
I assume this is not the case and wouldn't be one way or another. In other words, my point is that he only reacted that way because the people in question were not part of his ethnic group. They were different.
You're making a big leap, I didn't say anything about ethnicity, only nationality. I imagine he would have felt the same way about Germans if he'd been mistreated in the same way by them. Is it logical? Probably not, but Bill's surname was not Spock. The human brain makes a lot of shortcuts to save energy; thinking is an expensive activity. If all the people from an identifiable grouping that you've encountered, however that group might be identified, were bent on your destruction, you will tend to have a prejudicial reaction to anyone else you encounter from that group. That can be unlearnt, but it takes an effort, and requires a certain awareness and perspective; things that may be missing if you've been severely traumatised.
Given that he must have been around 60 at the time, and we're talking about 40 years ago, Bill is probably no longer with us. We should also return to the topic in hand.
I've heard it argued before that it is better to look at World War 1 and World War 2 as a single conflict with an unusually long lull in the middle.
Given how Germany the country was at the end of WW1 politically and socially... yeah the rise of a nationalistic military expansion was probably as close to inevitable as anything can get in international relations. I don't thinking looking bad the end of World War 1 being unstable in the long term is easy to argue against.
Was another World War inevitable? No not as such. But the lines drawn at the end of WWI were simply not going to stay that way forever. Too much pride, too much wounded pride, too much to lose, too many groups with nothing to lose. Something was going to give.
The problem was the thing that "gave" was a rabidly anti-semantic monster who rose to power at such a time as the first chance for someone to try to put the raw, efficient might of industrialization toward the sadly common goal in history of wiping out the undesirables.
Hitler was an idiot who decided to take on the world and the idea that the world might be stronger just seemed to never occurred to him.
Given how Germany the country was at the end of WW1 politically and socially... yeah the rise of a nationalistic military expansion was probably as close to inevitable as anything can get in international relations. I don't thinking looking bad the end of World War 1 being unstable in the long term is easy to argue against.
Was another World War inevitable? No not as such. But the lines drawn at the end of WWI were simply not going to stay that way forever. Too much pride, too much wounded pride, too much to lose, too many groups with nothing to lose. Something was going to give.
The problem was the thing that "gave" was a rabidly anti-semantic monster who rose to power at such a time as the first chance for someone to try to put the raw, efficient might of industrialization toward the sadly common goal in history of wiping out the undesirables.
Hitler was an idiot who decided to take on the world and the idea that the world might be stronger just seemed to never occurred to him.
