Chinese Memorial To 'The Good Nazi' Opens War Wounds

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 12-18-2005 | Peter Goff

[pganini]

Mao is bad, but i don't think he has ever orchestrated systematic rape of women from ages of 3 to 83 as the Japs did in Nanjing. We're talking about the entire city here (not to mention the human experiments and the millions die in executions.

Mao did kill a lot of wealthy landowners, that is true. He did have an economic policy that ended up with millions dead, that is also true. But there is simply no comparison between the barbarity of the Japanese SOLDIERS (we're not talking about just one or two, we're talking about almost the entire army) and what Mao has done.

Granted, his economic policies were evil and millions DIED because of his policies, but he didn't order the PLA to kill 20 milliion Chinese the way the Japanese did. And contrary to people's beliefs, most Chinese know what happened in the Great Leap Forward + the Cultural Revolution, and if you were asking the Chinese who would you rather live with, Mao or Japs, they'll choose Mao.

Why? The 1800's taught the Chinese to never let the control of the country fall under foreign hands, especially one that is as brutal as the Japs.

[Wombat101]

I never said China would attack anyone. To do so would be counter-productive to the real aim of Chinese political and economic strategy; i.e. the perpetuation of the Communist party by any means necessary. Even if it means adopting capitalism by stages.

Don't be fooled by what you see. China is a still a third-world nation ruled by an aging kleptocracy that is hanging on by it's fingernails.

As for the Japanese apologizing, don't hold your breath. It's (apologizing and making rstitution for sins) not a matter of the western conventions of morality, rather, it is the Oriental concepts of shame and defeat that will keep them from ever doing so. Concepts, curiously enough, that originated in China and spread elsewhere with her culture. I can guarentee you that had history been reversed (China invades and occupies Japan) the Chinese would not apologize and grovel for forgiveness for their atrocities and war crimes.

It's quite interesting to hear repeated calls for reparations and prostrations from a country that has killed more of it's own citizens in the name of peace and order than any foreign invader has.

[Wombat101]

You have totally misunderstood Japanese WWII strategy with regards to China.

China was to Japan what Eastern Europe and Russia were to Germany: as 'lebensraum' (sp?) for a growing population that was increasingly unable to feed itself.

The real prizes were the British and Dutch colonies of the South Pacific and Indian Oceans. Only these islands had the strategic raw materials Japan needed; oil, timber, tin, rubber, manganese, and others.

Japan went to war with the United States because;

a. Once Japan had seized Borneo, Malaya, etc., the American bases in the Philipines threatened the sea lanes of communication between these prizes and the home islands. You will note that after PEarl Harbor, Japan turned WESTWARDS to push the British and Dutch out of the Pacific, rather than follow up on the destruction of American sea power. This should tell you just what the priorities were. Japan does not actively seek out a major fleet engagement with the US Navy until June of 1942 (Battle of Midway).

b. The United States Navy, in the tradition of Alfred Thayer Mahan, by it's very presence as a "fleet in being" threatened the Japanese right flank, even without a state of hostilities between the two nations. The attack on Pearl Harbor was intended to drive what was left of the US Navy back to West coast ports where they were less of a threat than at Hawaii.

c. The Japanese, wrongly, believed that the Americans would go to war to save the British empire in a show of Anglo-Saxon unity. One only has to remember that Congress declared war on Japan ONLY on Dec. 8, 1941, after the attacks on Pearl Harbor, Midway, Guam, Wake Island and the Philipines, and not Germany or Italy. Germany declared war on the U.S. on Dec. 11, 1941, with no provocation.

d. The trickle of aid being given to China was a pretense, or even a conveinient excuse, if you like. Japan could not overcome China in any conventional sense of the word (it's simply too big to effectively occupy and administrate by an invader) and rather than face that fact (i.e. that Japan was not a world-class power capable of completing any task it set to hand) would rather blame an outside entity for it's problems. The Japanese really DID intend to control all of China --- they just didn't understand that they couldn't.

When the attacks of 7/8 December, 1941 finally occurred, it was taken for granted by the Japanese government that decadent Western powers shamed in such a hellacious way should simply fold their tents and give up. This is an Oriental philosophy (i.e. you should surrender when faced with a clearly superior foe), not the philosophy of a Western, democratic culture, which typically fights wars of annihilation. It is a mistake the Japanese paid for dearly.

Japanese strategy, basically, was to widen the war by taking advantage of opportunities afforded by the defeat of Western European powers by the Germans, weaken the remaining allied powers (especially America) to keep them from intefering, and then retreat behind a ring of defensive bases to keep other enemies at bay. The strategy was to widen the war against China in order to COMPLETE the war against China.

As for your assetion that Germany contained the Russians and China did the same with regards to the Japanese, you are only partially correct. Japan attacked Russian forces at the Amur River and at Nomonhan along the Mongolian border in 1939, and were defeated soundly by Marshal Zhukov, who was later to throw a beating on the Germans. The Japanese never intended to help the Germans in Russia after these defeats and merely planned to take Siberia after the Germans had done the real fighting (which is how Japan took Indo-China and the South Pacific Islands to begin with). There was no such thing as "containing Japan" -- that they did not advance against Russia was not a matter of containment, but FEAR.

As for the Germans, despite the conventional wisdom surrounding their losses in Russia; while the Red Army fought admirably in 1941-42, they were outclassed. What saved the Red Army were the supplies being shipped in from the United States, topography and the weather. Topographical barriers included the Pripet Marshes (known to the Germans as the Wermacht Hole) that left a gaping, several-hundred-mile-long hole in their front lines (from which the Russians conducted raids and guerilla warfare against the German supply lines), and the fact that the further the Germans advanced, the more territory, on a wider front, they had to cover. They simply ran out of soldiers.

The legendary Russian rasputitsa (fall and spring rains) turned the primitive roads into rivers of thick mud, making movement impossible. Ther Germans were stuck in place long before the winter ever closed in on them. The length of German supply lines (and their vulnerability to guerilla raids) added to this lack of movement. The Allies experienced similar problems in the run across France in 1944. The Russians simply waited them out, utilizing their massive manpower reserves while they resupplied (from Allied sources) and moved their native industry beyond German reach.

The Russian front, therefore, stopped German momentum, and when the Russians were ready, they threw everything they had at a weakened, scattered German army, short of supplies and manpower. This does not take anything away from the Red Army, which fought tenaciously and ruthlessly. I fully concur that the Allies could not have won against Germany without the Red Army, I just don't see the relationship you are trying to establish between the Russian front and the Chinese Front. The Russians FOUGHT, and took advantage of what was at hand: massive manpower, topography, weather and Allies willing to send them aid. The Chinese did none of these things.

[pganini]

"d. The trickle of aid being given to China was a pretense, or even a conveinient excuse, if you like. Japan could not overcome China in any conventional sense of the word (it's simply too big to effectively occupy and administrate by an invader) and rather than face that fact (i.e. that Japan was not a world-class power capable of completing any task it set to hand) would rather blame an outside entity for it's problems. The Japanese really DID intend to control all of China --- they just didn't understand that they couldn't. "

I don't agree with many of your points but I do agree with this one -- US support to China in WWII is really just a symbolic show. I do think though the Flying Tigers were what Chiang really needed -- an airforce. They thought they could take China in 3 months.

I would disagree with your claims that the Chinese didn't fight the Japanese. The fact that Japan could not control China means they were fighting them and resisting them and causing logistical issues, etc. If the Chinese didn't fight them, the Japs would have taken control of China in 3 months (which is what they were thinking), and the war would have turned out differently.

What Japanese have taken advantage of, is a divided China at war with each other. Prior to the Communist-Nationalist civil war, there were warlords fighting over for control. If China is one country like it is today, then the outcome would have also been much different.

Furthermore, China had virtually NO heavy armor (tanks, etc.) in the early stages of the war where the Japanese had the advantage. I'd agree that there were no real resistance against the Japanese until the battle around Shanghai where Chiang ordered his best troops (trained by the Germans, ironically) to make a stand which caused heavy casualties on both sides (and hence, the Japs were pissed off that Chinese actually fought them and started to rape/kill civilians in the next city, Nanjing - of course, the human experimentation started when Pu Yi became the "emperor" of manchuria and when Japan controlled it since 1931).

The thing is, had they controlled China (entirely) and was able to convert the Chinese to the Japanese way of thinking, then they would probably have won WWII. THe problem? No foreign power has ever controlled China and converted it to their way of thinking -- Mongolians controlled MOST of China but they were converted into Chinese culture rather than the other way around (they used the prior system to govern, rather than imposing their system) and the reign of mongolians in china is relatively short, about 150 years. So there is just no way even if they were to control China to be able to utilize China to their advantage (unless they were to become Chinese which isn't going to happen).

Hence, it brings us to today. The reason why you don't see massive uprising against the Communists rule is basically what happened 40-60 years ago when China was divided and the Japs came in and slaughtered all these people. Chinese figured that they'd rather put up with their own version of a central authoritarian regime than have an unstable regime that would weaken China and invite foreign occupation.

That's the fact. No regime can control its population unless the population allows it to be controlled. In 1989 when the students protested, the labor movement DID not particpate. Had they gotten popular support, the outcome would have been much different (and possibly another civil war too). again, there, what happaned in WWII resonated again.

So while the issue of WWII may seem silly to westerners, to the Chinese, it's basically the core policy that's allowing the communists to rule China further. It's not so much that the communists uses WWII to manipulate the population (they try to, but that's not it), it's more to the population PSYCHE that political instability in China = a weak China = inviting more foreign invasion such as the Japanese. Hence, they'd rather put up with the Communists than to rebel violently against it.