What would the Heer/Waffen SS have thought of the IJA?

If they had the opportunity to observe them in combat, their treatment of POWs and their atrocities against civilian populations, what would the Heer/Waffen SS have thought of the Imperial Japanese Army during WW2?
 
There was a embassy, several consulates, and a number of military attaches in japans empire. They sent reports back. Maybe some of those are still preserved?
 
There was a embassy, several consulates, and a number of military attaches in japans empire. They sent reports back. Maybe some of those are still preserved?

A German foreign ministry's report below. The IJA reported back to the Germans it was overzealous troops that the IJA was reigning in.

On 10 February 1938, Legation Secretary of the German Embassy, Rosen, wrote to his Foreign Ministry about a film made in December by Reverend John Magee to recommend its purchase.

"During the Japanese reign of terror in Nanking – which, by the way, continues to this day to a considerable degree – the Reverend John Magee, a member of the American Episcopal Church Mission who has been here for almost a quarter of a century, took motion pictures that eloquently bear witness to the atrocities committed by the Japanese ... One will have to wait and see whether the highest officers in the Japanese army succeed, as they have indicated, in stopping the activities of their troops, which continue even today.

On December 13, about 30 soldiers came to a Chinese house at #5 Hsing Lu Koo in the southeastern part of Nanking, and demanded entrance. The door was open by the landlord, a Mohammedan named Ha. They killed him immediately with a revolver and also Mrs. Ha, who knelt before them after Ha's death, begging them not to kill anyone else. Mrs. Ha asked them why they killed her husband and they shot her. Mrs. Hsia was dragged out from under a table in the guest hall where she had tried to hide with her 1 year old baby. After being stripped and raped by one or more men, she was bayoneted in the chest, and then had a bottle thrust into her vagina. The baby was killed with a bayonet.

Some soldiers then went to the next room, where Mrs. Hsia's parents, aged 76 and 74, and her two daughters aged 16 and 14 [were]. They were about to rape the girls when the grandmother tried to protect them. The soldiers killed her with a revolver. The grandfather grasped the body of his wife and was killed. The two girls were then stripped, the elder being raped by 2–3 men, and the younger by 3.

The older girl was stabbed afterwards and a cane was rammed in her vagina. The younger girl was bayoneted also but was spared the horrible treatment that had been meted out to her sister and mother. The soldiers then bayoneted another sister of between 7–8, who was also in the room. The last murders in the house were of Ha's two children, aged 4 and 2 respectively. The older was bayoneted and the younger split down through the head with a sword."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre
 
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The SS Einsatzgruppen probably used that film as a training manual.

Having said that, even the SS could be appalled by the behaviour of their allies - the Croatian Ustache in Serbia were so brutal they made the SS look liberal.
 

CalBear

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The Heer military attache's were not overly impressed with the IJA. By the time the Waffen SS became a serious military element the IJA was already being ground to dust (although given the mindset of those who were IN the SS, their perspective on all things Japanese would tend toward the hyper-critical).
 
Back when rummaging through the Field Artillery Journal circa 1925 I came across a article written by a US Army Captain of artillery. Ha had spent two years as a exchange officer with the IJA artillery & offered his observations. One point that stuck with me; is when on the march the army expected the civilian population along the way to provide luch for the soldiers. The was commonly organized by veterans organizations, tho other groups participated. Typically the food would be rice balls with some vegetables set out on tables along the road which the soldiers would eat on the march or during a quick halt.

It occurred to me this practice could contribute a culture of expectation of direct support from any civilian population the army marched through.

Anyway, I'd recommend digging out the article & taking a look.
 
The Heer military attache's were not overly impressed with the IJA. By the time the Waffen SS became a serious military element the IJA was already being ground to dust (although given the mindset of those who were IN the SS, their perspective on all things Japanese would tend toward the hyper-critical).
Would they have an issue with their brutality and sadism towards the Chinese and other nationalities under their control?

Or would they find it to be similar to their own practices?
 
Would they have an issue with their brutality and sadism towards the Chinese and other nationalities under their control?

Or would they find it to be similar to their own practices?

Probably have an issue, if a hypocritical one. The Nazis were perfectly straightforward honest in bleating about the atrocities the Soviets committed in their revenge march across Eastern Germany... blatantly ignoring that this was pretty much just the Germans reaping what they had sown.
 
Probably have an issue, if a hypocritical one. The Nazis were perfectly straightforward honest in bleating about the atrocities the Soviets committed in their revenge march across Eastern Germany... all the while ignoring that this was pretty much just the Germans reaping what they had sown.
I read a quote from a Nazi official who was speaking about the Soviet massacre at Katyn and he said that since the Reich committed atrocities as well, they would be hypocrites for criticizing the USSR but for the "fact" that the Reich was justified in its killings.
 
Did the Japanese think much of the Germans? They were just as racist and just as imbued by a sense of superiority...
 
The Japanese murdered in ways that would make the Nazis blanch. The beheading contests in Shanghai, the Comfort Women, the death marches of every captured soldier, even the insane Banzai charges; even to the Nazis this had to seem a bit off. The Germans were in a racial struggle while the Japanese claimed they were giving Asia back to the Asians. The Germans could claim ideology. The Japanese proved sadists through and through.
 
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