Did japan have a choice?

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amphibulous

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Becuase by that point japanese became desperate. They needed oil and rubbe and had to choices go north or go south/hit usa.

Or to stop killing and raping Chinese people - in a war they were stalemated in - and just trade with the US. You really have to be pretty dedicated to the raping and the killing Chinese people to go to war with a country with 10 times your industrial output!

Although a bad case of National Stupidity is probably a big help...

The Chinese had choices: they rejected the one that both sanity and morality required.
 
Hmm then sadly that is probably true. By 1937 japan is doomed to fight the USA.
Yes but dfrom 1924-1930 a whole can of new worms is opened up which could profoundly change japan. Plus lessen the xenophobia and all that too at the same time and create a more accepting japan.

Also amphiblous thats what I said i previous post the long one felt redundant to say it again.

Also it wasnt national stupidity it was akin to what the avg germans and italians behaved like during the nazi and fascist times. Ever heard of the various experiments like in psychologgy the electrocution experiment. If pushed to the point or convinced enough people can act contrary to how they would behave normally. The wave is another good movie made int he west to show how people can act completly different from normal and do terirble things. Likewise the experiments with the children by the schoolteachear who split group into blue eyed and brown/black eyed children and the results that followed, etc. Even the prisoner experiment reflects this in the human psyche
 
Had the Japanese stopped with Manchukuo, which had a significant supply of important raw materials & space for colonists there would have been no war with the USA. Assuming that Europe would be involved in war, this would open the way for Japan to become economically dominant in China, and had the KMT made a deal with the Japanese it is entirely possible the KMT could have beaten or contained the communists. By the end of the war in Europe some time in the 1940s Japan would have been in a position to be the economically dominant power in China, even with a Chinese government that allowed fairly open trade (thus mollifying the US). This scenario, however, was not good enough for the elements in Japan who wanted the physical/formal empire structure that existed in Korea, Manchukuo, and Taiwan extended to a large chunk of China.

Attacking north to Siberia, even without the lessons of Khalkin Gol, was simply not an option. In 1941 all of the natural resources of Siberia were either totally unknown of not obtainable with then available technology - and there was precious little infrastructure to move said resources anywhere. On the other hand, SE Asia had all of the raw materials Japan needed, and well developed extraction and transportation infrastructure fo these resources. Also, don't forget that in the 5-8 years before PH the USA had been progressively strangling Japan economically so by summer 1941 Japan could not purchase the raw materials it needed, even had the British or Dutch been willing to sell them oil for example.

The choice was very simple: end the war in China or seize what you need to fight the war & maintain your economy. For many reasons, taking the latter course will necessitate war with the USA. Sadly, for many reasons, choice (b) was made. Even after Nanjing & other atrocities had Japan ended the war and "retreated" to Manchukuo a modus vivendi with the USA could have been worked out on terms that the Japanese would have found favorable.
 

amphibulous

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Also it wasnt national stupidity it was akin to what the avg germans and italians behaved like during the nazi and fascist times.

No, this is nonsense: the German's didn't attack a country with tens times their industrial output!

Ever heard of the various experiments like in psychologgy the electrocution experiment. If pushed to the point or convinced enough people can act contrary to how they would behave normally.

You're talking about the Milgram Electrocution Experiment - and you are talking nonsense. You don't understand the experiment or the Rape; Milgram was about closely supervised top-down pressure. And I emphasize **closely supervised** - its about why people follow specific orders under the eye of authority - not why they go off and invent fun things to do for themselves like raping 12 years olds with bayonets. For a professional opinion on the psychology of Nanking read

http://www.stanford.edu/~kcook/groupthink.html

- and this degree of groupthink is quite particular to the Japanese.
 

Cook

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Someone who do not understand Japanese culture should not call Japan evil for behaving like it did. Beheading for example was a total NORMAL thing in Japanese culture and nothing "inhuman" as westerners let it look like often.
Japan did not have a history of beheading prisoners of war or treating prisoners barbarously in other ways; their treatment of Russian and German POWs during the Russo-Japanese and First World Wars was exemplary. Japan was a signatory of the Hague Conventions, the Geneva Convention and the Kellogg-Briand Pact and a founding member of the League of Nations.

Japanese behavior during the Second World War was a consequence of a perverse ideology that took over the country following the Great Depression; it represented traditional Japanese culture about as much as the Nazis did traditional German culture.

That the Kempeitai would respond to any dissent within the Japanese civil population with a level of barbarity almost equal to that which they used on the subject races is an indication of just how aberrant the entire ideology of the regime was.

What seems to have been most staggering about the Japanese conduct in World War Two was just how casual the attitude to brutality indoctrinated into the troops of the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces was, as well as its frequency.

When the Japanese captured Rabaul in January of 1942 they captured 1050 Australians; members of Lark Force. On 4 February 1942 they bayoneted to death 130 near Tol Plantation. Six men managed to escape and report the massacre to Australian authorities.

When the Japanese landed at Milne Bay of the Far Eastern Tip of New Guinea they raped and mutilated the New Guinean women of the small village of Waga Waga. They then incinerated a small boy by flame thrower for ‘target practice’. The Webb Royal Commission later documented 59 Japanese atrocities against Papuans and 36 against Australian soldiers between 26 August and 6 September 1942. So in the space of 11 days in a small village in a remote part of Imperial Japan’s Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, 62 atrocities were committed, that’s nearly six per day in a single village! All were documented and presented as evidence during the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, in Tokyo in 1946.

Rabaul and Milne Bay were not major events in the Pacific War; just the opposite. The crimes committed by the Japanese against the native populations, European expatriates and surrendered prisoners of war are staggering. The conservative estimate is they are responsible for the deaths of 20 million people in China and the Pacific War.
 
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umm the germans attacked the USSR while fighting the UK..... all in support of their ideology.

Nanjing was perpetrated by the military not the avg civilian unless I read wrong. therefore your point is moot. I was referring to normal civilians not military personel. Unless your saying the Japanese people on avg were the ones causing the rape or stuff like that. Heck the Nazis and the Italian citizens fully supported Hitler and Mussoloni respectivly, I mean look at the popular sentiment. Basically their is ample proof the japanese vcivilian population was similiar to the views held by the German civilians on avg and the italian civilians on avg.
Also electrocution was only one experiment I mentione dth ehtird grade schoolteachear I beleive experiment and the prisoner experiment both of which showed effectivly what can happen. I also mentioned the wave which was indeed an experiment done to see why people would support demagouges like Hitler. The prison experiment was the one where the prison guards eventually abused their authority during role-play and soon did terrible things to the experimenters playing the prisoners. The blue eyed black eyed showed how when one group was praised as being superior and the other evil the superior group began treating the so calle d less superior group differently.

Besides as explained by cook, myself and others Japan before the militarists was in fact an exemplary less evil society as proven. They were arsholes yes but no different formt he avg imperial nation Unless your saying the japanese people became stupid by the 1930s and 40s. which differed from them in the 1900s till after 1932-33 when the evil became profound. Stop generalizin groupthink that occured within the military with negative consequences and extrapolating that onto the civilian population. Your anger if anything should be directed at the Japanese military. So yes the Japanese military should be blamed mainly for the murdering and disgustive acts they commited not every japanese civilian. The civilian populace while should be given some blame should not recieve all the blame most of which rests on the shoulders of the now defunct IJA and IJN. At the same time the politicians, govt officials who activly funded and supported the military knowing full well what they were doing should also receive blame as well.
 
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amphibulous

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umm the germans attacked the USSR while fighting the UK..... all in support of their ideology.

Congratulations: you almost as perfectly wrong as it is possible for a human being to be.

The Germans did NOT attack Russia for ideological reasons; read Tooze. And that they attacked when they did was necessary because they *were* fighting the UK and had no way of stopping doing - which meant the British blockade would continue forever. Again, read Tooze.

The Germans were optimistic and messed up their intelligence and logistics, but they did have a rational strategy. Which is completely unlike the Japanese!
 

CalBear

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Thats the only thing concerns me right now too.. but we might find a solution too. You dont need much soldiers for a war anyway, 40 million japanese with superior technology will do the thing vs billions of chinese. We will see.

WHAT THE HELL...

That one went off the reservation, way off.

Racism is ill thought of hereabouts.

You are kicked for a week. When you come back, you need to reign in that racism.

This isn't a Ban solely because it appears you are a non-native English speaker, as such it is conceivable that you are not aware of how this statement sounds. You get one break, and this is it.
 

CalBear

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Or to stop killing and raping Chinese people - in a war they were stalemated in - and just trade with the US. You really have to be pretty dedicated to the raping and the killing Chinese people to go to war with a country with 10 times your industrial output!

Although a bad case of National Stupidity is probably a big help...

The Chinese had choices: they rejected the one that both sanity and morality required.


You need to dial WAY back. You made your point.
 
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