I have heard that the way Russia treated Germany was a reaction to the devastation and cruelty with which the German army trampled across Russia.

“..this movie…essentially offers a sort of everybody-does-it (or might do it) rationale for the behavior it recounts. That, however, is not so.”

You’re living within a delusion Schickel if you believe that any military on the face of the earth doesn’t (or wouldn’t) do this. In fact, it’s a requirement of the military mindset.

diman,

Answering your pseudo-question:

“For three weeks the war had been going on inside Germany,
and all of us knew very well that if the girls were German they
could be raped and then shot. This was almost a combat
distinction.”
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Red Army troops raped even Russian women as they freed
them from camps
THE Red Army’s orgy of rape in the dying days of Nazi Germany
was conducted on a much greater scale than previously suspected,
according to a new book by the military historian Anthony Beevor.
The Daily Telegraph 12:01AM GMT 24 Jan 2002
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/1382
565/Red-Army-troops-raped-even-Russian-women-as-they-
freed-them-from-camps.html

They raped every German female from eight to 80’
Antony Beevor, author of the acclaimed new book about the fall of
Berlin, on a massive war crime committed by the victorious Red
Army.
The Guardian,    Wednesday 1 May 2002
“Red Army soldiers don’t believe in ‘individual liaisons’ with
German women,” wrote the playwright Zakhar Agranenko in his
diary when serving as an officer of marine infantry in East Prussia.
“Nine, ten, twelve men at a time - they rape them on a collective
basis.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/may/01/news.features11

I recommend another fantastic movie on the subject:
John Rabe.

This movie is a wonderful illustration of how masses
can be completely manipulated against another nation
or people, to view them as enemies. It is the story
of a German (a Nazi) who lives (had lived for 20
years) in Nanking when the war breaks out. He
believes from his distant posting that Hitler is good
for Germany (the economy especially) as is proud to
be a Nazi. Of course from Nanking, he doesn’t see or
know what Hitler is really doing. When the Japanese
attack Nanking, he naively believes that Hitler has
not been properly informed, and would react
differently towards the Japanese, if he knew the
truth. He bravely defends the Chinese people against
the Japanese, is finally ‘removed’ from his post by
another German Nazi official, sent back to Germany,
put under arrest for collaborating with the Chinese
and then at the end of the war, arrested again by the
Allied forces, for being a Nazi. His diaries were
later discovered and revealed that he saved the lives
of about 200,000 Chinese by creating a safety zone.

It just goes to show that brushes and labels are not
always accurate.

By Lisa Simeone

“Look at what the Russians did in
“liberating” Germany in WWII.  They raped not only
every German girl or woman they came across—with
explicit approval from their commanders—they also
raped their own country-women who’d been held in
prison camps”

Wow, every, mind you, every German girl or woman they came across and not only that, they did it with explicit approval from their commanders, where did you get this bullshit from? You have been definitely misled by some inaccurate pseudo-historian.

Richard Schickel is mistaken.  The Japanese are no
better and no worse than the rest of mankind.  Rape
has always been used as a tactic in war, everywhere,
throughout history.  Look at what the Russians did in
“liberating” Germany in WWII.  They raped not only
every German girl or woman they came across—with
explicit approval from their commanders—they also
raped their own country-women who’d been held in
prison camps.  And do you think Americans aren’t
doing some raping of their own in Iraq and
Afghanistan?

As for firebombing, nuclear bombing, and other kinds
of slaughter, others in this thread have already
pointed those out.

Barbarism is barbarism, no matter how you want to
parse it.

The story shows one particular form and instance of the barbaric nature of war.

However, this article makes the absurd claim that Japanese barabarism is somehow worse than human.  In a separate class. 

Not possible.  Unless, of course, the author has some new DNA evidence he didn’t mention.  Evidence, for example, that the Japs really aren’t homo sapiens, but rather some bizarre offshoot of, say, homo erectus.  That would certainly take racism to new heights.

I’m not buying it.  Japs are human and their barabarism was therefore an example of human capacity for evil. 

Nor am I convinced that sanitized forms of warfare are any less barbaric than old fashioned rape, plunder, murder and destroy. 

The author mentions the detonation of two nuclear devices over civilian population centers in Japan.  He also mentions fire bombing of two cities.  However, he doesn’t mention that the US firebombed dozens of Jap cities, burning to death millions of innocent civilians. The US even firebombed Jap cities AFTER the nuclear devices had been detonated.

The point here is that Japs are human and their barbarism falls right in line with that of other humans.

Well, Mister LaMotte, why don’t you just get real and go to Disneyworld for the day
instead?

World War II was caused by Wall Street, the international financiers and bankers, centralized in Wall Street, who used fraud, theft, deceit and cons to bankrupt most of the world, stole everyone’s money, threw millions out of work, took away people’s food and shelter, and adorned themselves in gold and jewels while the people of the world suffered.  When the “law,” the governments, refused to indict the criminals in charge of this massive crime, the people of the world silently fell into despair, from which arose rage, which provided the perfect breeding ground for war. 

I had lunch with a friend from Taiwan many years ago, and she told me the number of Chinese people who died during World War II—I think 20 million.  I was stunned.  I had never been taught this, nor had I been taught about the 20+million people in the Soviet Union who died, nor the non-Jewish people of Poland who were murdered by the Nazis.  I learned only this:  World War II was caused because Hitler hated the Jews.  6 million Jews died.

That’s it.  That was my American education.  So years later, when I learned that most of the 60 million victims who died in World War II were simply ignored by this very narrow version of history, one which also omitted the role of Wall Street in setting the scene from which the wars arose, I was disgusted with my teachers, my government, and my culture.

I’m glad to see that some of the other victims of this horrible war are finally being acknowledged.  Now if we could only imprison every person from Wall Street and bust up the international criminal financial syndicate, we might be able to end the current wars and prevent future ones.  Because, in the end, all these people died because of the greed of a few international bankers and their co-conspirators on Wall Street and in the government.

Just an aspect of man’s history on this planet we have been condemned to repeat over and over.

Better to go to East Asia Forum and read about efforts of China and Japan to repair their historically difficult relationship due to the ferocity of the Japanese conscripts in previous wars. Here in the U.S. we need information about all efforts toward peacemaking, locked as we seem to be in a militaristic syndrome of mechanized sadism ourselves—at tremendous loss of lives and resources.

A Japanese friend of mine just completed two years of teaching in a Chinese university.  He never said so, but I am sure he sought these assignments deliberately to improve relationships, having previously taught Chinese students in Japan before his retirement.

Who needs to hear any more about atrocities?

Wrong.

The CPC uses Nanking to stir the nationalistic pot so that its own politically naive masses do not think about CPC crimes.

During its various attempts to “reshape” China’s society, The Party has ruthlessly murdered over 70 MILLION Chinese.  These crimes are ongoing, and documented CPC slaughters are easy to research.  Paste in this Wikipedia url:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes#People.27s_Republic_of_China

Why knowledgeable propagandists like Richard Shickel play on the PR team of these gore drenched little beasts in Beijing is a mystery. But why Truthdig gives him the platform to commit his Truth-crime is a question to which readers should aggressively demand an answer. 

The time when blood-soaked little PRC pols can strut around the globe acting like real statesmen should be terminated. Let them ANSWER for their ongoing crimes.

I’m glad that the Nanking massacre is being covered in a film, the atrocities of Imperial Japan need to be chronicled.  Maybe one day someone will make a movie about the millions who died in Mao’s Great Leap Forward.

It would be great if Truthdig had a less mediocre film reviewer. Schickel knows
about films and its history, but he doesn’t understand film as art.

Images of more vivid brutality in this film wouldn’t have necessarily made it a better piece of work. And why does he think he has the definitive gauge to measure the suffering caused by the brutality of wars?  And even if he did, he doesn’t understand that moralizing is not what artistic expression is about.

Schickel seems to favor the typical Hollywood movie with a story, a villain and a
hero. In that case, he should stick to reviewing those films—there are tons of
them around, and a few can be good entertainment.

The Rape of Nanking was an act of racism, by a country gone mad. Japan at that time  
was ruled by a militaristic state apparatus, that had lost it’s humanity. Its important to
look at this and look deeply, to understand that reason alone does not guarantee that
our acts are sane or moral, and that reason often acts as a disguise under cover of
which brutality exists. A potential that exists in us now just as it did in the Japanese
Military then. The Nazi’s possessed reason, as did their Japanese allies. But that reason
was used to justify their horrors. Countries, can succumb to madness, just as individuals
do. And when they succumb, you will not see, Zombies in the streets, eating corpses
raw, at least not at first. What you see are politicians, convincing you that the end
justifies the means, and that our morality is not as important as your narcissism. How
does one know when a country had gone mad, for some kinds of madness always have
reasons that makes it appear perfectly sane. Those that rule us seem to purse the
endless gratification of their greed. Those values, now dominate our moral lives whether
we want them to or not.
  We no longer have institutions in this country that are devoted to the study of peace, if
we ever had them at all. Don’t wait for someone else, otherwise it will be too late.

This article has a lot of readers, but few commenters.  Not unexpected, because there is little to be said about such an utterly abominable atrocity as that perpetrated on the Chinese by the Japanese during the late 19th century up until the end of WWII.

The details and photos will drop your head down to your chest for a long, long time.  And your brain will never be the same.  Worse case of PTSD I ever had, I and I have had a lot of them.

Just what I want to do today, revisit the horror. This website is such an upper!

Interesting that the word “exceptionalism” is
explicitly used here; it’s the only reference to
today’s common use of the word to describe, correctly,
the U.S. position in today’s world.
Numbers are a curious lot, especially concerning the
dead/murdered; time seems to change their (numbers)
value; figures in the range of 1 million come to mind
regarding Iraq; and that seems not to faze us…