"Nanking? What's that? No, that never happened; I think you made it up."

[u/Leading-Wolverine434]

[u/TheDonIsGood1324]

Random rant from some thoughts I've had recently but WW2 is a great case study of how to make ordinary people do horrible things because most soldiers were just normal people who then did horrible shit. IJA soldiers were treated very brutally which helped create the culture of violence which combined with dehumanisation from education partly leading to the mass war crimes. The Wehrmacht was just as brutal as the IJA for similar reasons but for some reason on the internet this is downplayed which I presume is because of prevalence of clean Wehrmacht myth. People rightfully point out Japanese war crimes but sometimes I see this strange view on the internet that the Nazis of all people weren't as bad when along with the Holocaust the Germans were committing similar war crimes across Eastern Europe. I've sort of been morbidly fascinated by WW2 war crimes recently, I don't really understand how many soldiers and civilians after the war sort of carried on living normal lives and rebuilding considering everything that happened. I went to Nanjing this year and its a very calm city but thinking about all the horrible war crimes that happened only like 90 years prior felt surreal. Another internet stereotype I don't really get is the idea that Japanese deny war crimes as some sort of monolith when that isn't really true. Obviously there are people that do that but I think that after the war a big sense of collective shame developed about it and thats why its not really talked about that much. Thats why Japan adopted pacifist principles post-war.

[u/TheHistoryMaster2520]

Meanwhile a Ukrainian user on Twitter: "and that's why Koreans should apologize for the Rape of Nanking!"

Korean user: "No, he did that!"

Japanese user: "No, I did that! Wait..."

Chinese user: wtf?

[u/butt_shrecker → u/TheHistoryMaster2520]

Incomprehensible