I know itās a bit off topic here, but please let me comment on this.
The idea of a āclean Wehrmachtā is indeed very popular with German nationalists.
However, this seem long proven to be just a myth. And as far as I can tell, the large majority of Germans accepts that as fact.
As for ājust a few evil Nazis were responsible for the atrocitiesāā¦ Wellā¦ Itās similar. It seems to imply most Germans were innocent, didnt know and/or approve of the atrocities, and maybe even could be called victims of a small group of evil Nazis. I donāt find a good article about that right now, but Iām 100% sure this is thoroughly disproven as well.
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From the document you linked:
The records of other nationsā war crimes trials are
not subject to the Disclosure Acts because they were
never in the possession of the U.S. Government. For
instance, the Nationalist Chinese Governmentās trials of Japanese war criminals held in Nanjing did not re-
sult in American records despite the heinousness and
notoriety of the war crimes committed there by the
Japanese.
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I am not suggesting that the Wehrmacht was clean, merely that it was somewhat more disciplined and/or humane than the Japanese equivalent. Hitler would not have come to power if a sizeable fraction of Germans hadnāt agreed with his views. But he had a weird sense of honour which had its own nightmarish consistency: for example, the British he regarded as cousins and regarded the submission of the UK merely as an important military objective, not a philosophical one like the elimination of Jews. Therefore, he didnāt treat the British with quite the same violent contempt that he reserved for other ālesserā peoples.
On the other hand, I think the fact that Germany did take full responsibility, and apologise profusely, suggests that there was something fundamentally different in the German psyche as a whole, compared to the Japanese.
Iāve read a few accounts written by German soldiers during the war, and while (of course) they might want to portray themselves as regular Joes just doing a job, their accounts are mostly corroborated by Allied accounts. The German rank-and-file did look askance at the SS boys, who were often recruited at a young and impressionable age and given a lot of leeway to live out their violent fantasies. They got the best weapons, a badass uniform, and dirty jobs to do.
Letās be clear: war is about brutality, and thereās a fine line between tactical brutality and meaningless cruelty. Both Germans and British/Americans considered their enemies as ā¦ well, enemies, who should be shown no mercy. But there was a certain amount of restraint. Allied soldiers did not hate the Germans with the same depth of feeling that they reserved for the Japanese, who they perceived as subhuman because of their incomprehensibly-cruel behaviour.
The distinction Iām trying to make, I think, is between those soldiers who were (broadly speaking) kept under proper military discipline, were accountable to their peers, and followed the rules of war (such as they are), and those who were sent to the furthest outposts of the empire to crush the peasants. People who are let off the leash do tend to plumb the depths of human depravity.
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Itās important to also note that only a small proportion of the SS were Death Head units, and many members of those units were foreign (often Ukrainian or other formerly Soviet occupied countries).
At the same time I recall reading that upwards of 40,000 Germans were employed at Dachau, although the biggest concentration camps were outside German borders.
I donāt know, the German people knew something was very wrong but during the initial incredible war victories they turned a blind eye and as the war turned against them they were too scared to do anything. Probably the same with any population anywhere, but at least they have accepted it which the Japanese havenāt. It could be argued that the British still havenāt about brutalities during the Empire, but at least there is a degree of acceptance.
EDIT: The behaviour of all branches of the SS on the Eastern Front was another matter, but there was no code of war on either side in the East.
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I think the point is that the āfinal solutionā was arrived at by the top naziās. The industrialization of murder was (in part) employed to remove the individual Wehrmacht soldier from the trauma of shooting, say, children. It was simply too harmful to morale within the Wehrmacht.
That didnāt happen with the Japanese, though. Individual Japanese soldiers, in some cases, seemed to take brutal delight in murdering, say, children, and sometimes not with a quick bullet.
At the end of the war those Japanese soldiers may have been acted monstrously because they knew their lives were ending very soon, but it doesnāt explain atrocities committed in, say, China in the 30s.
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I donāt think this held among Russians. The war in the East, between Germany and Russia, saw a total collapse of the Hague convention ārulesā of war, on both sides.
For example, Hitler allowed German snipers to use exploding bullets in Russia, but their use was expressly forbidden elsewhere. One might wonder why the kinetic energy of an 8mm Mauser wasnāt sufficient for the intended result. I think it was; the whole point was hatred and terror. (By the way, the Russians used exploding bullets, too.)
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It all boils down to feelings of racial superiority. The Aryans were superior to the Slavs. Not so much to the British. Japanese were superior to, well, everyone else and while they were winning it was proven. The Japanese policy of kill all, burn all, loot all supported this.
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While weāre on the topic of bad behavior, Iāve read that the Soviet take-over of Manchuria as the Japanese empire collapsed is unlikely to win a nice guy award.
And the British in Kenya. And the French in Algeria. Terrible stuff as these empires and their front-line soldiers tried to reassert control.
Guy
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Or Leopold II in the Congo. Donāt forget the Belgian contribution.
This is why powerful nations should minimise involvement in overseas wars. The USA has taken a break from that and itās been a welcome relief.
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@finley I see, that sounds less revisionist to me. And for the Western front it seems to make sense, mostly.
Still, consider the eastern front: undeniably German rank and file soldiers routinely treated their Soviet enemies as sub-human, just like they had learned in the decades before the war. So Iām not completely convinced that Japanese were indeed much more cruel than Germans. I would instinctively say probably still a bit worseā¦ but Iām afraid we are in territory where a bit worse or a bit less bad doesnāt make a lot of difference. And Iām quite sure that, as mentioned by others above, the indoctrination and belief in their own superiority played a big role in this.
Now, how Germans and Japanese treat the darkest areas of their history - there seems to be a huge difference, both on government level, education level and individual level.
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I know, eh? Here we are in 2020, and the German military is still teeming with Nazis, or at least wannabes.
To be fair, maybe teeming isnāt the right word, but itās definitely a thing.
US President George H W Bushās squadron was shot down over Chiwo Jima. 2 pilots, Bush and one other, parachuted into the sea and were retrieved by the US Navy. Japanese officers ate the rest. Japanese often ate POWs as war trophies and their excuse was that theyād been told nonJapanese were subhuman.
āThe Birdā, the psychopath in the movie UnBroken returned to Japan and became successful. Japanese didnāt blame him at all
There were over 800 concentration camps large and small. āEverybody knewā says one German in āthe Readerā film. I visited the Synagogue in Berlin that was destroyed on Krystalnacht. After Krystalnacht, no German could feign ignorance.They just didnāt care. Japanese the same. If one has spent time in Berlin and Tokyo ( I have), Germans and Japanese seem similar - obsession with rules, emotionally cold, good at math and science, blind worship of authority, etc. Among Western generals, Patton was the first to find a camp, Birkenau, I think. The townspeople pretended to know nothing. Eisenhower and Patton made the townspeople bury the corpses.
Who here has visited either a concentration camp or even a death camp in another country (Cambodia for example)? I visited Dachau as a tourist and my experience was pretty intense. I was fine viewing the general exhibits and walking round the grounds but as soon as I started to follow the signs towards the gas chambers I was absolutely traumatized. Made it to the door and then had to flee. Just too upsetting. And I grew up next to a cemetery so Iām not that squeamish. (In point of fact I think Dachauās gas chambers werenāt ever used.)
Iāve visited some of the commemorative sites in Cambodia: the S-21 prison and the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center (aka the ākilling fieldsā). These sites are powerful (especially S-21) but they often tell us more about the present than the past. The Choeung Ek site, for example, is now managed by a private Japanese company, not by Cambodians. Atrocity tourism is a thing in these neoliberal times.
Guy
To take your suggested exampleā¦
The stupa filled with 1000ās (or whatever) of skulls isnāt likely to make a strong impression on anyone whoās seen bones before, I think, but this one tree, itāsā¦ something. 
Artistās impression:
I hear you. But to be fair, (1) someone needs to run the place, and the not-up-to-first-world-standards-of-democracy government there is not famous for its efficiency, and (2) itās still presented in a reasonably respectful manner, as these things go. I mean itās not like they have karaoke parties or instagram competitions there (afaik).
The problems with the Choeung Ek memorial siteāwith its public display of human remains: a big no no in Cambodia!āactually go back to the folks who first set this up: the Vietnamese following their invasion and overthrow of the Pol Pot regime. Itās important that this memorial site exists, but for Cambodians it has never been seen as ārespectful.ā
Guy
I avoided the Killing Fields. Iām just too affected by this stuff.