The Worst WWII Alternate History Cliche
- Thread starter MorphyVSFischer
- Start date
I'm aware of the Kempetai and I don't see where the kempetai concerns the nature of the regime IN Japan. The Kempeitai was a militay police aiming at hunting non-japanese and ruling POW camps (in the most brutal way, we agree on this). At home, their business was limited to war propaganda. To compare Kempetai with Gestapo is lazy. They haven't the same objectives. If torturing people turns every agency into a version of the Gestapo, then the CIA in the early 2000's was a version of the Gestapo.
SsgtC
Banned
I guess if you define "war propaganda" as arresting anyone who even whispers the slightest negative opinion about the war and ensuring that they are either imprisoned or executed. You don't become despised at home for leading a patriotic sing along.
Ehhr, the Kempeitai wasn't authorized to execute or request the execution of a Japanese, just saying.
Archibald
Banned
The Douglas B-42 was quite a fantastic flying machine. Even more with two jets under the wings, it was fast, fast, fast.
Sure. Correct.
However, the proper and complete answer would have been something along the lines of: "the Kempeitai was a military police and not directly involved in Japan proper - but what you had in mind was the Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu".
Instead, you fail to even mention it.
You know, the civilian "special higher police" having nearly unlimited powers, which in Japan was also called the "Tokko" (an abbreviation, something in common with "GeStaPo") and "Shisō Keisatsu", or "Thought police".
Didn't you know about this police force?
I admit that I didn't and I learned something today. Kay', I guess that I lacked special knowledge about the subject and that I went too far too fast in my desire to show that Japan and Germany weren't the same thing. I'm going to crawl back into my shell now.
SsgtC
Banned
Thank you. I knew there was an internal secret police in Japan, but I completely blanked on what they were called.
Nothing wrong with that. You had a belief you defended but you also keep your mind open to hearing the counter argument. That's what honest debate is all about
The IJA was an INCREDIBLY well disciplined force, at least below the rank of Captain (once officers got there they started to become willing to ignore orders, by the time they hit Bird it sometimes seems like it was mandatory). Imperial other ranks didn't scratch without authorization and the NCO corps was, even for WW II era NCO, hard core and had their troops under total control. Yes, when left to their own devices IJA enlisted tended to go ape-shit, something would be expected given how strong the discipline was; the problem was how they let off steam, and what the chain of command tolerated. Senior officers who tried to rein in their troops were often reprimanded (the classic example being Tomoyuki Yamashita, who, despite being possibly the most effective of the early Pacific War generals, was shuffled off to watch the grass grow in Manchuria because of his lenient handling of Malaya and Singapore as Military Governor, he reward for that, in the end, was being executed in as bald faced a case of "victor's justice" as the WAllies perpetrated in the post-war period)
The Empire also had its own brutal version of racism, it wasn't as focused as that of the Reich, where there was a very clear set of targets (as can be seen when the occupations of different countries and the Reich's own planning documents are reviewed) and other were left mainly alone. The Japanese, simply put, treated everyone who was not Japanese like a sub-human. East Asian, SW Asian, White, Brown, Black, didn't matter, not Japanese? Well you're F###ed. This was a matter of policy, coming all the way from the highest "civilian ranks" of the Empire, intentional actions meant to reinforce to the IJA that they WERE superior to all others and to cow everyone in the occupied areas.
To even begin to claim that the Empire had a strong semblance to a democratic system is an insult to the term. The Constitution was SPECIFICALLY written to allow either the Army or Navy to collapse the government at will by withdrawing the IJA or IJN representative to the Council (who, under the law, had to be a SERVING OFFICER). That is exactly the opposite of a civilian run government.
Imperial Japan wasn't Nazi Germany. No nation state in the last thousand years can come close to the Nazi's (actually IMO, when placed into the overall morality of their era, there has never been a state that could hold a candle to the Reich when it came to evil). Being pushed off the top step of the dais by the most hellish regime ever to rule on this planet isn't exactly a recommendation.
I did say that Japan was a "Partial Democracy" in the sense that freedom of the press was never totally suppressed and that separation of powers was still more or less existing (see my examples in the following posts which I took from a specialized "Dictionnary of WW2" in French, edited by Robert Laffont if you want the full reference). Of course that's not a full democracy, but that was not a full military dictatorship either. In that regard, I think that more nuanced pov is more appropriate.
For the violence of the IJA, I've already admitted that I talked "too fast" and accepted other members' opinions: their arguments were solid and their examples accurate.
What's your point?
Saving face does not excuse the mass of war crimes that characterized Imperial Japan.
And bit about being lynched. Sure that's true, because of policies those same officers pushed.
cpip
Gone Fishin'
While the actions of the Showa Japan period are indefensible, during the Taisho period, they were hardly any more aggressive than other powers on the stage -- in between the 1st Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War are the Spanish-American War (as blatant a land grab as could be), the Second Boer War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Melilla War, various wars against Native American tribes by Americans and Canadians, British wars against various African or Asian potentates, American interventions in Latin America, and on and on.
The Taisho period was marked by a significant tension between those who wanted some kind of military/militarist dictatorship and those who wanted civilian rule. Ultimately, in the end, those pressing for civilian rule lost -- but even the civilians were in favor of asserting themselves upon the global stage, and particularly onto China -- the infamous Twenty-One Demands were drafted by one of the most pro-civilian, pro-parliamentary governments that Japan had in the entire period. Kato Komei was an Anglophile of the first order, and if Japan was overfond of imposing its will on China, it was not alone in doing so. The Yangtze gunboats of the USN and the RN weren't there as a favor to the Chinese government, after all.
Even so, the IJA of the first quarter of the twentieth century was a different creature than the monstrosity of the Showa period: the treatment of Russian POWs in 1905 is vastly different than what the IJA did a generation later to their captives.
Much as the Second Reich was not the Third (though the seeds were present), Taisho Japan was not Showa Japan.
Hell, didn't many European observers comment that during the Russo-Japanese War the IJA was actually more chivalrous to POWs than the average European army?
Up until the Showa Period, Imperial Japan was broadly speaking no worse than most European colonial powers. Not a great recommendation when one considers how many kept order in the colonies
but nothing special for the time. In the Showa era it seemed like much of their military was actively trying to be the most evil force in creation...I may be talking out if my butt here, but I swear I read somewhere that a lot of the radicalization within the Japanese military and civilian govt came after the rejection of Racial Equality Program proposed by Japan at Versailles. From my half understood prospective it seems like that made a number of Japanese leaders think "okay, if you won't recognize us as equals, we're going to prove our superiority."
Well, sure. If somebody tried to portray Japanese imperialism in those years as worse than anybody else's that would biased and, possibly, racist.
cpip
Gone Fishin'
Indeed. If someone were to say, for instance, "Imperial Japan was a hyper-agressive military dominated de facto, if not de jure, military dictatorship basically from the adoption of the Meiji Constitution until the document was entirely rewritten follow Japan's surrender"...
Obergruppenführer Smith
Banned
See, that's the type of double standard that brought up this discussion. With the Nazis we usually don't go "oh, but they committed war crimes, that doesn't excuse what they did," but rather "they had this kind of Weltanschauung due to this particular history and belief, so that was their logic." Why must the war crime issue always come up when discussing how people are utterly ignorant of why Japan went the path they did and just jump to "anarchic illogical loonies"?
If we had the same attitude on Italy as we do on Japan, there would have been massive posts explaining why Italy was in the position they were in without someone throwing in "but war crime!"
That's part of it. As I wrote before, I highly recommend The Way of the Heavenly Sword: The Japanese Army in the 1920's by Leonard A. Humphreys. It discusses the IJA's side of things, looking into the background of the 1930s radicalization and eternal war mindset. So far there is no work in English that manages to weave the numerous threads into a readable organized work, and this book is a must if you want to write a proper history of Japan's path into the dark side, from the IJA view.
Certainly around here, we also consider the Nazis anarchic illogical loonies. In the case of both them and the IJA we also take some pains to explain why they wound up that way. I think you're barking up the wrong tree here.
I honestly have no idea what you are trying to say here. It sounds like you are claiming we are willing to excuse the war crimes of Nazis and their European allies due to the views which caused them. Which is literally the opposite of views normally expressed.