However, you must also put into perspective some of those events. Remember it was Germany and Japan who started the war. It was Germany and Japan who committed the first atroscities. It was Germany and Japan who brought the wrath of the Allies down on their heads.

Dropping of the Atomic bombs on Japan ended a brutal war and actually saved lives in the long run. I probably would not be writing this now had the U.S. been forced to invade the Japanese main Islands. My dad fought on Leyte and Okinawa and was training for the main invasion. His task was to have been to take out re-inforced bunkers using satchel charges…an expected better than 50% casualty rate for those involved.

The dropping of the A-bombs prevented that from having to happen. although Japan as a nation was all but defeated, the Japanese Army was largely still intact on the mainland and would have put up a tremendous fight. They were the ones who put us in the situation to have to do such a thing as drop those bombs. To not have done so would have resulted in tremendous casulties on both sides…including civilian.

No one likes a bully…Japan and Germany were state sponsored bullies to the highest degree who got what they deserved. The unfortuante thing was that as bullies often do, they hide behind the innocent for protection…and thus we are having this discussion.

By far the Japanese committed the worst War Related Atroscities with the deplorable treatment they subjected toward POW's. A much higher percentage of POW's died in captivity at the hands of the Japanese than did at the hands of Germany. Although being a POW in German hands was no picnic by any stretch of the imagination, the Germans for the most part seemed to provide at least a reasonable level of care of the POW's they possessed…where as the Japanese tended to live by the Bushito code where surrender was seen as dishonable and anyone who did so deserved to be treated as cowards.

When you look at the state sponsored atroscities…both Japan and Germany rank very high in total…pretty much a wash. What the Japanese did in China prior the US getting involved ranks as one of the most brutal occupations of all time. No one will ever know how many died at their hands, but it was probably in the millions. What Germany did during the holocost is well documented and scorned…what they did in the over-ran Soviet territories was unfathomable…and probably one of the worst miscalculations of the war. Most of those people probably would have helped Germany get rid of Stalin, they for the most part hated the man…but instead, the German SS turned on the people and lost all hope of ever converting them to their cause.

Speaking of miscalculations of war…maybe this forum could interject a question related to what was the worst mis-calculation of WWII.

If we are to limit the comparison as to whether Russia, Germany, or Japan during WWII commited the "worst" attrocities, by including a rationale, then the clearly Japan is the least among the three for the time period. The Russians were brutal across the board, commiting attrocities in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and the Ukraine prior to Operation Barbarossa when they were invaded, and Germany targeted atrocities towards ethnic groups that affected them at home as part of policy in occupied areas. The Japanese did not have a systematic program of violence targeting populations, and when their Armies began to get out of control, the higher command (eventually) corrected the paradigm as can be seen in the Japanese actions in SE Asia (Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, etc).

Russia wins, Germany second, and Japan a distant third.

If we look a few years outside of WWII we can see that China wins overall in shear volume of barbaric massacre with 60 to 80 million civilians killed in the 50s and 60s.

THE OLD MAN SPEAKS

I remember back in the late 1960’s and most of the 1970’s everything that had to do with the military was considered evil. Military = war = atrocities. Now in 2010, how society has changed, in Japan, Germany, Russia and America. Today we feel different.

The question was; was one nations atrocities worse than anothers. How do we compare or rate a nations atrocities?
Number of victims?
Amount of time it goes on?
Ancient or Current?
Dropping two atomic bombs on Japanese civilians?

The only nation in the history of the world that used nuclear destruction in warfare. Perhaps, we should put or own house in order before rating other nations.

Or perhaps, we should open our eyes and open our ears, because atrocities didn’t die sixty five years ago, it has an old ally, called genocide. And its going on right now, even as you read these words.

The Old Man, Kenneth Miller

It must be added that when Germany had attacked Russia and had invaded the Ukraine, it was the beginning of their demise that took no Ukraine prisoners; they demolished the villages, raped the women & had hung the men. How little did the Germans realize that the Ukraine was at odds with Stalin & had hated him.

Once the Germans had ruined their opportunity by having the Ukarines side with them to defeating Russia, The Ukrainians, along with the Germans, were knocking on Germany's door at the end of the war.

It was also revealed the German army would had rather surrendered to America and her allies than the Russians, because they were unequivically afraid of their own life in prisonment. When Paulus, the comander-in-chief had surrenedered his forces to the Russians, only a handful ever had returned home out of 250,000 troops.