Unforgivable Actions Japanese Wartime Atrocities and the Holocaust

Japanese Horrors

Bushido  Code of the Warrior  Dishonorable to suffer the humiliation of surrender  Fight to the death or kill yourself  If not, you are less than human and deserve no mercy

Japanese way of thinking  Uchi – Inside  Everything you are responsible for  Family and country  Soto – Outside  Everything for which you have no responsibility  Foreigners  Racism – the Aryans of Asia similar to German racial ideas

Emperor Worship  Die for the emperor if required of you

All that leads to…  Rape of Nanking  Dec 1937 – Feb 1938  300,000 civilians killed after violent scenes of rape and torture  Bataan Death March  Forced march of American and Filipino POWS  16,000 of 67,000 dead in 3 days

 Unit 731  Bio-warfare experimentation  10,000 dead in trials, 200,000 Chinese killed with results  VIVISECTION – the practice of performing operations on live animals fro the purpose of experimentation or scientific research  Comfort Women  200,000 Koreans raped dozens of times a day

German Atrocities

Eugenics  Eu- - well, genes – born  Aryan myth  From Social Darwinism

Divisions of Race to Hitler  Aryan (Germanic) – Culture creating  Middle (Non-German) – Culture Maintaining  Jews – Culture Destroying  Untermenschen (subhuman) – undesirable elements that need to be eliminated  Gypsies =, Jehovah Witnesses =, Homosexuals =, those deemed “work shy” =, Habitual Criminals =, Political Prisoners =

1933 – Boycott of Jewish goods  Hitler now in power blames the Jews for the loss of WWI, Treaty of Versailles, and the Depressions  Organizes Boycott of Jewish goods

Aryanism on Display  1935 – German Max Schmeling beats Joe Louis in boxing  Hitler vindicated  1936 – Cleveland’s Jesse Owens beats Olympic records at Berlin Games  Hitler upset

Nuremburg Laws  Jews lose citizenship, can’t get education, medical care, have phones, or marry non- Jews  Forced to wear Star of David

Many Jews who can leave

The Response of Democracies  Many hurting from the Depression and restrict Jewish immigration from Europe  Jews who cannot leave are the victims of the dictators  Picture: Jewish child dying in Warsaw ghetto

The Final Solution  Einsatzgruppen Killing Squads  Emotionally difficult after a time for the killers and inefficient  One of the reasons the Germans will move toward ghettos, concentration camps, and death camps

Another Mistake by Hitler  Many in Soviet Union originally greet Hitler as liberator from  Einsatzgruppen cause Soviets to resist more and support Stalin

Death Camps – 1941  Kill mass quantities in gas chambers using Zyklon – B gas

Auschwitz  million killed  Buchenwald  Labor camp and medical experiment center

Who died?  6,000,000 Jews  6,000,000 Others  Homosexuals  Gypsies  Communists  Catholics  Slavs  Mentally and physically handicapped

“The memory of starved, dazed men, who dropped their eyes and heads when we looked at them through the chain-link fence, in the same manner that a beaten, mistreated dog would cringe, leaves feelings that cannot be described and will never be forgotten. The impact of seeing those people behind that fence left me saying, only to myself, ‘Now I know why I’m here.’” – Richard Winters