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Soviet Attack Hastened End of World War II (Read 695 times)
Aug 15th, 2005 at 11:46am

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LONDON - On Aug. 8, 1945 — a week before Japan's surrender in World War II — 1.5 million Soviet troops launched a massive surprise attack against Japanese occupation forces in northern China and Korea, an area the size of Western Europe. Within days, Tokyo's million-man army in the region had collapsed in one of the greatest military defeats in history.

"It was a massive campaign and a crushing blow for Japan which was already in a bad way after fighting for almost four years in the Pacific War," said Nigel Steel, a World War II historian at the Imperial War Museum in London.

Historians say the now largely forgotten Red Army victory — codenamed August Storm — not only hastened the end of World War II but also set the stage for the Korean War and for the victory in 1949 of the Chinese communists in the civil war against the Nationalists.

Some Japanese historians believe it had a greater effect on the decision of the Japanese leadership to end the Pacific War than the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which came within days of the Soviet attack.

"The impact of atomic bombs (on Japanese army's decision to surrender) is being overestimated," says Arai Shinichi, historian and professor emeritus of Ibaragi University and Surugadai University.

More important in persuading Tokyo to surrender were the Soviet decision to enter the war in the Far East, the Red Army's lighting advance through Manchuria, and the collapse of Japanese efforts to enlist the Soviets as peace intermediaries, Arai said.

Still, because August Storm came in the midst of the two atomic blasts, it has been largely neglected by Western historians.

"Cold War propaganda contributed to their being largely overlooked from the Anglo-American perspective," Steel said. "We always have focused on the atomic attacks, which for us represented the definitive blow."

In Russia, too, the far-off campaign was eclipsed by the bloody life-and-death struggle against Nazi Germany, dubbed the Great Patriotic War, said Alexander Koltyukov, director of Moscow's Institute of Military History.

Despite the unprecedented scale of the Soviet victory in the Far East, the relatively light casualties suffered by the Red Army in the Asia campaign also contributed to it being viewed as a sideshow, Koltyukov said.

Japan's forces in northeast Asia, known as the Kwantung Army, had already tangled with the Russians in 1939 when the Japanese tried to invade Mongolia. Their crushing defeat at the hands of Gen. Georgy Zhukov — an up-and-coming commander who later crafted the Soviet victory against the Nazis — persuaded Tokyo to turn against U.S., British, French and Dutch forces in Southeast Asia instead.

Moscow and Tokyo eventually signed a neutrality pact that kept the U.S.S.R. out of the Pacific War that followed Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. In fact, following the Nazi surrender on May 8, 1945, Tokyo looked to Moscow to mediate an end to the war in the Far East.

But unbeknownst to the Japanese, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had promised Washington and London that he would attack Japanese forces within three months of Germany's defeat.

A force of 1.5 million Soviet troops under the command of Marshal Aleksander Vasilevski poured across the Manchurian frontier in a huge battle of encirclement on Aug. 8, catching the Kwantung Army completely off guard. Despite tenacious, often suicidal, resistance by the Japanese, within days the quick-moving Soviets had penetrated 560 miles into China, Korea and the Kuril islands.

Up to that point — although Japan had been weakened by defeats in Burma, the Philippines and a string of Pacific islands — the Imperial Military Command believed it could still hold out against an Allied invasion of the home islands if it retained control of Manchuria and Korea, which provided Japan with the resources for war.

But then came the Soviet attack. After the death of 80,000 troops — compared to about 8,200 Soviet casualties — and the loss of the Kuril islands within striking distance of Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido, Tokyo finally accepted the inevitability of defeat.

"The impact of the blow in Manchuria persuaded Japan's civilian and political leadership more than the atomic strikes to recognize they stood no chance at all of holding out even in the home islands," Steel said.

Although Moscow and Tokyo normalized diplomatic relations in 1956, Japan has refused to sign a peace treaty formally ending hostilities until the Soviet Union returns the "Northern Territories," four small islands off the coast of Hokkaido, which Tokyo claims have always been Japanese territory.
 

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Reply #1 - Aug 15th, 2005 at 11:47am

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Interesting...  Kind of puts a new light on the Japanese surrender and whether the use of the atomic bomb was as necessary as has been told...
 

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Reply #2 - Aug 15th, 2005 at 12:02pm
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Hi Kevin Smiley

I often wonder about why people question the use of the two atomic bombs being dropped.

War is hell, it is as simple as that.

The two bombs saved countless Allied lives.  Talk to any veteran who came back from the Pacific Theater and they will tell you that not using the bombs would have been irresponsible of the Govenments in power.

Cheers...Happy Landings...Doug
 
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Reply #3 - Aug 15th, 2005 at 1:13pm

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The Soviet aspect of WWII is often ignored except for a few battles, I am finding this area more and more interesting these days.
For example did you know that the Germans killed more Soviet soldiers as slave labour than all the Jews and Gypsies put together, but no one talks about it....
 

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Reply #4 - Aug 15th, 2005 at 2:22pm
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The two bombs saved countless Allied lives.  Talk to any veteran who came back from the Pacific Theater and they will tell you that not using the bombs would have been irresponsible of the Govenments in power.


That's just one point of view. Did someone ever ask Japan for their opinions on the bombs?
 
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Reply #5 - Aug 15th, 2005 at 4:09pm

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Quote:
The Soviet aspect of WWII is often ignored except for a few battles, I am finding this area more and more interesting these days.
For example did you know that the Germans killed more Soviet soldiers as slave labour than all the Jews and Gypsies put together, but no one talks about it....

I've often wondered of that myself, but don't say anything about it because I'm automatically a neo-nazi. Tongue Wait!  That's exactly what they used to call me at school!  Nickname: Nazi! Roll Eyes Not sure how that one works out; I'm half Polish/Russian.

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That's just one point of view. Did someone ever ask Japan for their opinions on the bombs?

I'm quite convinced the amount of American souls saved is laughable when compared to Japanese souls.  As far as I've known, the average Japanese citizen practically never hears of the war, as they're quite ashamed of it.  All they know of World War II is the atomic bombs and Pearl Harbor - not unlike the US.
 

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Reply #6 - Aug 15th, 2005 at 4:11pm

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The conflict there provides the famous story about the Il-2 that was attacked until the japanese guy was out of ammo. The russian tailgunner was quoted afterwards "... and then i blew him out of the sky."
 

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Reply #7 - Aug 15th, 2005 at 4:14pm

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That's just one point of view. Did someone ever ask Japan for their opinions on the bombs?

In fact they have been asked & I believe the great majority agrees that it was the right thing to do. The Japanese tend to be more philosophical than Westerners about these things.
 

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Reply #8 - Aug 15th, 2005 at 4:29pm

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They attacked the US w/o a formal declaration of war.

War Crimes:
Japan and Japanese citizens, mostly military forces, carried out a campaign of terror during World War II that is unsurpassed in bestiality and savagery in modern times. On top of combat losses, Asian and Allied nations lost millions of non-combatant dead to all causes: bombardment of cities, slave labor, massacres, summary executions, medical experiments, germ and gas warfare, beheading, beating and rape, stabbing, gun shot, hanging, torture, boiling alive, impaling on bayonets, burning alive, starvation, medical neglect, etc. Japanese businesses and the Kwantung Army cooperated in the operation of the Opium Monopoly Bureau to finance Japan's war machine with the creation of millions of Chinese addicts. At least 200,000 women were forced to serve as sex slaves. Allied POW survived World War II at a 2% rate in Nazi camps, but POW held by the Japanese died at more than a 37% rate ( list of camps). Of all the belligerents, only the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics treated POW with the same brutal indifference as Japan. In 1945, Japanese leaders ordered the death of all remaining POW, "leaving no trace". The Japanese reign of terror began in earnest in 1931. The nightmare did not end until late 1945, only after allied forces entered territories held by the Japanese, often days, weeks and even months after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 1945).

My estimate is that 11M civilians and 4.5M soldiers died in the Asian/Pacific War. That's 15,500,000 deaths which can probably be blamed on the Japanese to one extent or another.


Nuff said
 
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Reply #9 - Aug 15th, 2005 at 6:13pm

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Minotaur you have to consider that the only reason that war was not declared was due to the cock-up by the Japanese Embassy taking so long to translate the message for delivery to the US...
All in all a bit of a mess really.....
 

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Reply #10 - Aug 15th, 2005 at 7:54pm

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Minotaur you have to consider that the only reason that war was not declared was due to the cock-up by the Japanese Embassy taking so long to translate the message for delivery to the US...
All in all a bit of a mess really.....


Yes, I understand that and agree with you. But the fact remains that up until the Japanese attacked the US. They were trying to stay out of the war. Yes, they were sending aid to Britain all along. Yes, they would have probably eventually entered the war anyway.

I had 2 uncles that served in the Pacific during WWII and both had stories of the atrocities committed by the Japanese. One was even on a destroyer that was attacked by Kamikazes that injured him badly.

But when you consider the horrific things perpetrated by the Japanese on Nanking that are most notorious. Over the six weeks of the massacre, in addition to the murder of about 300,000 civilians, the Japanese troops raped over 20,000 women, most of whom were murdered thereafter.

Women of all ages (including children as young as seven and elderly women in their seventies) were violated, many of them being gangraped or attacked on multiple occasions. Some women were held captive so that the could be repeatedly abused. Rapes were committed in broad daylight, in front of spouses, children, or other family members, and with appalling frequency. The soldiers' usual practice, officially condoned by high-ranking officials so as to "avoid difficulties," was to murder the women when they were finished with them. This was most often done by cutting off their breasts and/or disemboweling them with a bayonet to the abdomen. Senior officers were not only aware of these acts, but participated in them as well.

Particularly disturbing is that the Japanese perpetrators derived great pleasure from these heinous crimes, while their superiors condoned and even supported them. One outstandingly revolting account is of several soldiers who, after raping and killing a pregnant woman, presented her fetus on a bayonet to their commanding officer, who replied with laughter. There were innumerable gruesome occurrences like this ...
acts of cruelty seemingly beyond human capacity ...but commonplace, in the massacre of Nanking.

This is but one in a long history of atrocities committed by the Japanese from 1931 through 1945. The Japanese as far as I'm aware are completely unrepentant about this, so why would one expect the US to be repentant about saving the lives of an estimated 1 million soldiers and God only knows how many non-combatants?

BTW, I have no hatred for the Japanese, in fact I dearly loved the country and it's people after my short stay there in the 1970's. I'm just stating historical facts.
 
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Reply #11 - Aug 15th, 2005 at 10:10pm

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Quote:
Minotaur you have to consider that the only reason that war was not declared was due to the cock-up by the Japanese Embassy taking so long to translate the message for delivery to the US...
All in all a bit of a mess really.....



Ozzy - but it doesn't change the basic fact - the attack was already going ahead, and had the Japanese ambassador delivered the "declaration of war" it would only have "formalized" a few minutes before the actual events.

For a hitorical parallel, just look at the Austro-Hungarian "ultimatum" to Serbia.  It was basically a document that no country could be expected to accept.  Serbia accepted the ultimatum, but Austria-Hungary nevertheless declared it wasn't enough and invaded anyway.

I think that the Russian entry into the war was more of a self-serving action on the part of the Soviets than a gesture of "solidarity"  with the Allies.  The Soviets most probably realized that if they weren't at war with Japan, they could not expect to be at the table when the the Japanese empire was partitioned up.

Another historical note.  THe Soviet Army of 1945 was not the purge-ravaged mass of 1938/39 (Nohoman incident which was basically a cock-up, unintentional border crossings while pursuing bandits that got out of control.  neither side was really going for territorial gains beyond what they already had.).  The Japanese Army of 1945 was not the same battle hardened army of teh Chinese conquest.  They were still solid and powerful, but by then the did not have the logistics, and possibly the experience,. the best troops having been sent elsewhere.   The Soviets already had better armament, tactics, and were more than capable of fighting over basically open ground.



 

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Reply #12 - Aug 16th, 2005 at 2:01am

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Wasn't there some documentary awhile back about Allied Pacific atrocities?

There's two sides to every page...
 

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Reply #13 - Aug 16th, 2005 at 2:16am

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Quote:
Ozzy - but it doesn't change the basic fact - the attack was already going ahead, and had the Japanese ambassador delivered the "declaration of war" it would only have "formalized" a few minutes before the actual events.

I fully appreciate that Felix, I was just clarifying one of the statements made by Minotaur. For combat to be favourable you need at least two out of the three elements speed, aggression and surprise. The Japanese had all three at Pearl Harbour, the result was horrific but inevitable....
If the use of Ultra and other intelligence mechanisms hadn't been so closely guarded that commanders on the ground didn't know of intelligence coming from it then maybe Pearl Harbour could have been less damaging. Alas hindsight is always twenty-twenty Sad
 

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Reply #14 - Aug 16th, 2005 at 4:44am

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Wasn't there some documentary awhile back about Allied Pacific atrocities?

There's two sides to every page...


I'm certain there were and normally these came as a response to atrocities that have been witnessed. But I honestly haven't heard of any that on the scale that the Japanese or Germans did to allied troops.

Quote:
I fully appreciate that Felix, I was just clarifying one of the statements made by Minotaur. For combat to be favourable you need at least two out of the three elements speed, aggression and surprise. The Japanese had all three at Pearl Harbour, the result was horrific but inevitable....
If the use of Ultra and other intelligence mechanisms hadn't been so closely guarded that commanders on the ground didn't know of intelligence coming from it then maybe Pearl Harbour could have been less damaging. Alas hindsight is always twenty-twenty Sad


The Pearl Harbor attack was far worse than it should have been. The Japanese aircraft had been picked up on the then new fangled invention known as radar and though a trained operator figured it out in time to warn his superiors. Those superiors put it off as a flight of B-17's. Despite the fact that it was coming in from the NW instead of the East. That and the exceptional intelligent move of placing all aircraft in a group where they could be easily destroyed.
 
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Reply #15 - Aug 16th, 2005 at 4:49am

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Quote:
Wasn't there some documentary awhile back about Allied Pacific atrocities?
There's two sides to every page...

The "condoned" equivelent is not comparable. Revenge is not a scarcity but there are 'criminal' elements in all societies that will use the "they did it first" excuse against the innocent (civilians, etc.).
 
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Reply #16 - Aug 16th, 2005 at 5:07am

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The "condoned" equivelent is not comparable. Revenge is not a scarcity but there are 'criminal' elements in all societies that will use the "they did it first" excuse against the innocent (civilians, etc.).


Well said and I agree with you on that point. During WWII even the allied normal carpet bombing was indiscriminate and they purposely targeted civilian targets for the terror effect. Look at the fire bombing of Dresden and Tokyo. The unfortunate fact of war is it's not only hell for the combatants, but also for the non-combatants. The mind set of war is, "You attack me, I attack you". But even in war there are certain things you shouldn't do like attack hospitals, kill POW's and injured soldiers. Hence the Geneva Convention rules of warfare that dictate these rules. Germany, Japan and Russia openly ignored the Geneva Convention. The allies tried to adhere to them, but there are always going to be those that get frustrated or angry and use what ever force is necessary to get information that is vital to saving their countrymen.
 
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Reply #17 - Aug 16th, 2005 at 5:48am

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Quote:
rules of warfare

I always found it puzzling that you can have 'rules of war'. This is total war on a grand scale & most aggressors will not abide by any rules. Apart from things like treatment of prisoners this puts those that do adhere to them at an immediate disadvantage.
 

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Reply #18 - Aug 16th, 2005 at 7:01am

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Quote:
The "condoned" equivelent is not comparable. Revenge is not a scarcity but there are 'criminal' elements in all societies that will use the "they did it first" excuse against the innocent (civilians, etc.).

I say it more in the sense that we (The Allies (That being America and West Europe)) shouldn't mount ourselves too high on our horse, as we're not so pure as we like to make ourselves out to be.

Definitely not justifying Japanese crimes.
 

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Reply #19 - Aug 16th, 2005 at 7:35am

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Quote:
I always found it puzzling that you can have 'rules of war'. This is total war on a grand scale & most aggressors will not abide by any rules. Apart from things like treatment of prisoners this puts those that do adhere to them at an immediate disadvantage.


You are definitely correct on that point. Germans and especially the Japanese saw the Geneva Conventions as useless and a sign of weakness. They figured, if your going to fight a war, fight a war. If you are to win a war, you must become war.

The Japanese didn't believe in surrender and even after the 2 A-bombs were dropped. There were radical eliminates in the Japanese military that refused to even consider surrender. These people tried to prevent the Emperor from recording his capitulation on the 2 discs that were to be broadcast. They tried to overthrow the Emperor and his government in order to continue the war and to avoid the shame of surrender. Luckily for the Japanese and the Allies, they failed. If it hadn't failed, I can't imagine the chaos and the amount of lives that it would have cost on both sides to invade Japan.
 
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Reply #20 - Aug 16th, 2005 at 8:20am
Heretic   Ex Member

 
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Germans and especially the Japanese saw the Geneva Conventions as useless and a sign of weakness. They figured, if your going to fight a war, fight a war. If you are to win a war, you must become war.


If the Germans really ignored any "standards" of warfare, there would have been no surviving allied PoWs. Plus, people like Douglas Bader would have been killed instantly , rather than being invited for dinner with Galland. Roll Eyes
 
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Reply #21 - Aug 16th, 2005 at 8:24am

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The Gestapo and the SS ignored the standards expected, the other German services tended to respect their prisoners (of course every camp had the odd loon for a goon). A good example of this was the camp commandant at Stalag Luft III when he had to tell the British prisoners that 50 of their colleagues had been murdered by the Gestapo following the Great Escape. Apparently he was nearly as rough as the British over this news. An honourable man....
 

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Reply #22 - Aug 16th, 2005 at 8:37am
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The SS and Gestapo were the zits of the german miltary. Formidable fighters, but as whacked in the head as their commanders.
 
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Reply #23 - Aug 16th, 2005 at 9:04am

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I'd never thought of them as acne before Grin Grin Grin
 

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Reply #24 - Aug 18th, 2005 at 2:37am

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Quote:
Heretic: The SS and Gestapo were the zits of the german miltary. Formidable fighters, but as whacked in the head as their commanders.
ozzy72: I'd never thought of them as acne before Grin Grin Grin

Ozzy, I rather question whether you've never thought of them as festering pimples, howbeit, perhaps, not in such a polite term Wink. As to the SS and Gestgapo being "formidable 'whacked in the head' fighters": rather reminiscent of their ancestral cousins' "berserkers"? Rage and insanity both add a certain numbness to the effects of battle.
 
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Reply #25 - Sep 13th, 2005 at 1:10pm

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According to Mitsuo Fuchida, the Soviet attack was a doublecross.  In a Japanese phrase, the Soviets were "the thief at the fire", which is a huge insult.  Although, the Soviet attack contributed to the watershed of events that led to the Japanese surrender, the primary actor for the surrender was the Emperor.  The militarists were prepared to fight to the last, Soviet attack or not.  The one event that caused Hirohito to make his unprescedented action were the two atomic bombs.  It wasn't the deaths from the bombs, especially since the B29 raids were killing more japanese citizens.  It was the shock factor of one bomb rendering so much destruction.  Prior to the A-Bombs, Hirohito had made it known, in his traditionally subtle, and court-etiquette manner that he wanted the war to come to an end.  But after the A-Bombs, he resolved that he must go against tradition and take personal action.

I never did buy the Soviet theory, and after re-reading Fuchida's autobiography - as dictated to Gordon Prange, I'm convinced it's wrong.  And besides, Fuchida was there, and he had the extremely rare honor of being a mere captain and participating in the imperial court, not once, but twice.
 

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Reply #26 - Sep 13th, 2005 at 1:14pm

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ozzy72


I agree.  Especially how the Luftwaffe were honor-bound and treated their fellow airmen prisoners with respect.
 

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Reply #27 - Sep 19th, 2005 at 1:29pm

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Quote:
Wasn't there some documentary awhile back about Allied Pacific atrocities?

There's two sides to every page...


I never heard of such a documentary.  However, the marines on Guadalcanal learned the hard way that the Japanese soldier could not be counted upon to surrender when defeated, or treat their prisoners decently when captured, even if they allowed their prisoners to live.  So, when fighting  the Japanese soldiers, the marines gave no quarter, nor asked for any.  It was how both sides treated each other.  The marines also quickly learned that many Japanese soldiers, when severely wounded would wait for a marine approach himself, then detonate a gernade, taking himself out as well as his would-be rescuer.  So the marines just shot the wounded enemy rather than risk their own demise.  However, when it was safe, the marines did take prisoners, but Japanese prisoners were very rare.

Now, if anyone construes this as atrocities, then they are revising history.
 

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