Hardcore History 66 – Supernova in the East V
"Take the way the Germans treated civilians in villages where partisan activity was nearby. If somebody took a shot at German soldiers, they'd line up civilians in the village and kill them. And of course, the goal wasn't to just be cruel, it was to try to deter them through terror, something that is generally frowned upon today. It's called collective punishment.
And it's funny because everybody believes in collective punishment to one degree or another. I mean, you ever been in the classroom where the teacher’s got a couple kids talking, you know, amongst the 30 students and says, if the talking doesn't stop, all 30 students have to stay after school? Or how about the football coach who says if you know, anybody starts, you know, fooling around, everybody's going to have to run laps, I mean, that's a way to sort of get the group to enforce behavior, right?…
The idea may be completely flawed. In fact, evidence seems to show that in the Second World War, German atrocious attitudes toward the civilian population to stop partisan activity actually leads to more partisan activity. It's long been understood that the Germans were welcomed in some places as virtual liberators when they took over areas that had been occupied by the Red Army. And they turn those people against them by their cruelty. This is not a Second World War thing. Of course, though, I mean, in the First World War, go look at the Rape of Belgium, it's based on a similar sort of thing. Killing civilians in villages in an effort to deter partisans.
What's going on in Asia is a different story, and much harder to pin down. I mean, as far as I can tell, and I could be wrong about this, I can see like three levels of responsibility here. What's going on with Japanese soldiers in this cruelty could be happening at the soldier level, which is an excuse that the Japanese sometimes use, I mean, in the Nanking situation in China, there was sort of a well, you know, boys will be boys kind of excuse. Yes, the soldiers did things that were out of control. But you know, can you blame them, it was a very hard fight to take the city, they lost a lot of buddies. You know, sometimes people lose their minds a little bit, you know, maybe a lack of institutional control.
But, but this was not a deliberate effort to wipe people out. That would be the excuse. And listen, soldiers have been misbehaving since caveman times. So there's some validity to that maybe. Of course, there's no excuse for the loss of institutional control. But we'll we'll play with that as one of the possible levels that atrocities happen at, the actual ground level where the soldiers are right. Then there's a high level responsibility possibility, which is what's going on in Europe, right? You could say, listen, the Emperor and the major leaders decided they wanted to have a, you know, Iron Fist. And this would be very in keeping with sort of fascist, intellectual doctrine, right, an iron fist sort of strength, and we will crush dissent, and we will teach these people you know, that sort of thing. And then that can be true too.
But where we left the story, was in discussing an affidavit from an Australian officer that was introduced in the post World War crimes trials in the Asia Pacific Theater, it was recounted in Lord Russell of Liverpool's book, the Knights of Bushido. Where in New Guinea, Australian troops were being atrociously killed. I think we used as an example of Samuel Eliot Morrison, I think it was, incident where he said some Australians had been tied to a tree, tortured and killed and some Japanese soldier who spoke English, had put a placard above the head of one of them that said, he took a long time to die. What do you think that's going to make the Australian soldiers react when they capture a Japanese soldier? Well, according to this affidavit, that's exactly what the Australian officer had done. A Japanese soldier had fallen into their hands, which is unusual. And the guy spoke English, which is a double rarity. And the Australian soldier who gave the affidavit says they took the Japanese soldier to the Australian corpses, not the ones tied to a tree, but some other ones. And basically said, why did you do this? And his excuse was the officers ordered us to. And his rationale was, that he says, and these are my words, but this is what he essentially points out, that they were trying to create an intentional tit for tat retribution cycle of atrocities as a way to discourage their own troops from surrendering...
A Japanese wounded soldier calling out for help. An Australian officer goes over to try to help him and the Japanese soldier throws a grenade at him from close range. Once again, that poisons the well for any other Japanese who might legitimately want to surrender and get medical treatment or anything like that. And the Australians start doing what the British and the Americans have already begun doing in their theatres, not taking any chances. I remember one soldier saying we just never stopped watching Japanese dead. And they would run them through with bayonets and shoot at the corpses. They just, it was a little like having vampires rise from the grave. They just never knew when it was safe to consider, you know, a corpse, a corpse...…
As this campaign goes on, you start to see the really good Australian troops up against the really good Japanese troop. There's a line that I loved, I believe it was quoted in Eric Bergeren’s book, where they asked a veteran who was talking about, you know how they rank the jungle fighters. And after a while, it was always thought the Japanese were now these super jungle fighters. But after a while, they will say that the Australians are the best jungle fighters in the war, that the Japanese are the second best jungle fighters in the war, and that the Americans really you can't judge because they sort of knock the jungle down first and then fight in what's left...
[On friendly fire] In Europe and North Africa and other theaters, it was usually very understandable things like artillery, for example, your famous phrases. The short round, for example, short round meaning a round that lands way short and hits your own people instead of an enemy. It happens. Or aircraft coming in for close air support that hits friendly troops instead of enemy. Again, hard to avoid over the long haul.
But in the Pacific, due to the terrain, jungle, especially, and all the night fighting, the friendly fire was often much more up close and personal and many more people were killed by their own people using small arms. Australian medics, I was reading one account, were continually horrified by the number of slugs they pulled out of their own people that were of a caliber that the Japanese didn't use, but the Australians did. Meaning, those people were friendly fire victims. And when you look at the rates of friendly fire, they are shocking. Eric Bergerund quote, some of them, the worst was it ,on the island of New Georgia. 24%. That means one out of every four Americans shot on New Georgia were shot by their own people. But there were reasons for this.
The jungle jitters was one of the famous ones you, people got trigger happy and the number of people that were found when daylight first hit outside their foxholes killed by other Marines or US Army soldiers is legendary. You have to go out to go to the bathroom. But everybody's so afraid of the Japanese that anything that moves get shot out at and in the morning you find out that you killed a water buffalo or you killed a deer or you killed a civilian or one of your own. These are the sorts of incidents that are so troubling and upsetting that they don't sell a lot of tickets for movies after the war. And they prompt phrases like the real war will never make it into the books"
But of course we know that the atomic bombs were dropped when Japan was on the verge of surrendering, just to frighten the Soviet Union
