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from a warfare perspective, this is really bad strategy. it strikes fear into your enemies, but it's massively outweighed by making your enemies fight to the ab

from a warfare perspective, this is really bad strategy. it strikes fear into your enemies, but it's massively outweighed by making your enemies fight to the absolute last to not be captured

underbiding 2y ago
It's pretty classic in-group / out-group conditioning. In fact, incentivizing your enemies to also commit their own atrocities incentivizes your own to fight to the absolute last. The depravity and feedback loop is intentional for these kinds of extremely ideologically motivation groups.
roshin 2y ago
The idea was that the Japanese soldiers would see the atrocious that they were doing, realize that the Americans would want revenge, so the Japanese better fight to the death, since that's better than what the Americans would do to them in captivity. It ends up that the Americans weren't too in to revenge, so the captured Japanese were surprised.
- KennyBlanken 2y ago
  The idea was that the Japanese considered themselves superior and everyone else was inferior, sub-human, and needed to be punished for defying them.
- trissi1996 2y ago
  They dropped 2 nuclear bombs on, mostly on innocent civilians, seems like pretty good revenge to me.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    And even before that, burned > 500 square miles of Japanese urban areas to ash. Granted, by the last weeks of the war, the USAAF was dropping leaflets warning they'd be back with incendiaries in a few days, a masterstroke in psychological warfare.
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    Hot take, but Japanese civilians (all civilians, not just men) were to fight American soldiers if they invaded Japan. We'll never know what would have happened if America invaded, but Japan certainly was not making civilian evacuation plans. So maybe innocent-ish civilians? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kokumin_Giyutai.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kokumin_Giyutai.jpg
- Neonlicht 2y ago
  Japanese soldiers fought to the death because they knew that their families would be punished if they didn't. In Japanese culture at the time the sins of the father are inherited by the sons and daughters. If you surrendered you would be dooming your entire family to a life of poverty and shame. To most decent people that would be worse than death.
WalterBright 2y ago
Many wars would be cut short if the winning side offered amnesty. I suspect that Germany would have surrendered a year earlier if the Allies had offered some version of amnesty rather than unconditional surrender. The Nazis fought to the bitter end because they knew that unconditional surrender meant there would be hell to pay. And there was.
- VagabundoP 2y ago
  You run the risk of the old regime continuing in some form and a repeat in a decade of the same war. Germany surrender in The Great War and the world was back at it again 15 years later. This played a big part in the attitude of do it right this time.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    Perhaps you're right, but it did come with a very large cost in lives on both sides.
  - tsimionescu 2y ago
    None of the leaders of Germany in WWI were still in power by the time WWII started. The exact opposite lesson was in fact learned by the Allies from WWI: instead of crippling Germany and the other Axis powers like the French did after WWI, they went with the Marshall plan, rebuilding their economies and making sure they have an actual future. The Kaiser wasn't the problem after WWI, it was poverty that allowed the Nazis to rise to power.
    - andrepd 2y ago
      >None of the leaders of Germany in WWI were still in power by the time WWII started. This isn't really true. Hindenburg was instrumental in Hitler's rise to power. Ludendorff was the de facto dictator during WWI and proceeded to create the stab-in-the-back myth and to fight for the Nazis. There is absolutely lots of continuity between the WWI regime and the Nazis.
      - 2y ago
renewiltord 2y ago
Indeed. Modern warriors understand this concept. This is why Al-Julani of HTS (the group that has prevailed in Syria) has emphasized that he supports 'diversity' and that the Kurds and so on will be recognized. There were various forces at play in Syria and he'd be in a war with all of them if he was hardline right at the start. The constraints of peace apply to all, violent or not, and to win it's better to not be religious about your violence.
kleton 2y ago
It was deeply ingrained by their internecine conflicts. When factions would fight in their internal wars, they would expect the losing side to commit suicide if they happened to be defeated and not dead by enemy hands. Their military class was not introspective enough to consider that implication of this, if applied to its logical end in a conflict with an out-group, would be the total extinction of their ethnic group.

from a warfare perspective, this is really bad strategy. it strikes fear into your enemies, but it's massively outweighed by making your enemies fight to the absolute last to not be captured

underbiding 2y ago

It's pretty classic in-group / out-group conditioning. In fact, incentivizing your enemies to also commit their own atrocities incentivizes your own to fight to the absolute last. The depravity and feedback loop is intentional for these kinds of extremely ideologically motivation groups.

roshin 2y ago

The idea was that the Japanese soldiers would see the atrocious that they were doing, realize that the Americans would want revenge, so the Japanese better fight to the death, since that's better than what the Americans would do to them in captivity. It ends up that the Americans weren't too in to revenge, so the captured Japanese were surprised.

KennyBlanken 2y ago
The idea was that the Japanese considered themselves superior and everyone else was inferior, sub-human, and needed to be punished for defying them.
trissi1996 2y ago
They dropped 2 nuclear bombs on, mostly on innocent civilians, seems like pretty good revenge to me.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  And even before that, burned > 500 square miles of Japanese urban areas to ash. Granted, by the last weeks of the war, the USAAF was dropping leaflets warning they'd be back with incendiaries in a few days, a masterstroke in psychological warfare.
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  Hot take, but Japanese civilians (all civilians, not just men) were to fight American soldiers if they invaded Japan. We'll never know what would have happened if America invaded, but Japan certainly was not making civilian evacuation plans. So maybe innocent-ish civilians? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kokumin_Giyutai.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kokumin_Giyutai.jpg
Neonlicht 2y ago
Japanese soldiers fought to the death because they knew that their families would be punished if they didn't. In Japanese culture at the time the sins of the father are inherited by the sons and daughters. If you surrendered you would be dooming your entire family to a life of poverty and shame. To most decent people that would be worse than death.

WalterBright 2y ago

Many wars would be cut short if the winning side offered amnesty. I suspect that Germany would have surrendered a year earlier if the Allies had offered some version of amnesty rather than unconditional surrender. The Nazis fought to the bitter end because they knew that unconditional surrender meant there would be hell to pay. And there was.

VagabundoP 2y ago
You run the risk of the old regime continuing in some form and a repeat in a decade of the same war. Germany surrender in The Great War and the world was back at it again 15 years later. This played a big part in the attitude of do it right this time.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  Perhaps you're right, but it did come with a very large cost in lives on both sides.
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  None of the leaders of Germany in WWI were still in power by the time WWII started. The exact opposite lesson was in fact learned by the Allies from WWI: instead of crippling Germany and the other Axis powers like the French did after WWI, they went with the Marshall plan, rebuilding their economies and making sure they have an actual future. The Kaiser wasn't the problem after WWI, it was poverty that allowed the Nazis to rise to power.
  - andrepd 2y ago
    >None of the leaders of Germany in WWI were still in power by the time WWII started. This isn't really true. Hindenburg was instrumental in Hitler's rise to power. Ludendorff was the de facto dictator during WWI and proceeded to create the stab-in-the-back myth and to fight for the Nazis. There is absolutely lots of continuity between the WWI regime and the Nazis.
    - 2y ago

renewiltord 2y ago

Indeed. Modern warriors understand this concept. This is why Al-Julani of HTS (the group that has prevailed in Syria) has emphasized that he supports 'diversity' and that the Kurds and so on will be recognized. There were various forces at play in Syria and he'd be in a war with all of them if he was hardline right at the start. The constraints of peace apply to all, violent or not, and to win it's better to not be religious about your violence.

kleton 2y ago

It was deeply ingrained by their internecine conflicts. When factions would fight in their internal wars, they would expect the losing side to commit suicide if they happened to be defeated and not dead by enemy hands. Their military class was not introspective enough to consider that implication of this, if applied to its logical end in a conflict with an out-group, would be the total extinction of their ethnic group.