Who was more cruel in WW2 (Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan?)?

Question

Now I know that the Germans exterminated 6 million Jews. However the Japs were extremely cruel to POW's. They would experiment on them. Cut off their fingers and such, They also slaughtered over 10 million Chinese. This is a tough question.

Answer 1

Cruelty, barbarity, state-sponsored genocide, crimes against humanity, and other barbaric acts of modern man....how do you judge who's worse? Hmmm, seems ludicrous to do so, but here goes:

Germany had the sole intent after the Wannsee Conference in Jan. 1942 to settle the "Jewish question" via the "final solution." State-sponsored genocide required the complicity from all walks of life, the local bureuacrats, railroad men, the good folks at IG Farben that supplied the Zyclon B, the civilian contractors that constructed the crematoria, as well as the SS thugs that ran the death camps. The extermination of European Jewry was a national affair.

Japanese soldiers killed and slaughtered chinese people it is said by the millions, Hitler's action ensured that those loses were as high as possible. The German efficiency was shown by the high volume they achieved, topping out at 600,000 jews in 9 months (Mar-Nov, 1944) Extermination camps were designed specifically for mass killing.

The 'rape of Nanking' was not state-sponsored, the cruelty by the Japanese army knew no bounds, it was not high volume extermination, but rampant...bayoneting women and children, torching all the houses, etc...all done by the army. Cold-blooded murder for sure.

The result was the same in both cases, in Japan's case, it was the army, in Germany's case it was all walks of life and not the army. I still don't know how to weigh cruelty seeing a baby at the end of a Japanese bayonet, or a baby walking into the 'delousing' stations to be gassed. And like i thought before, the question is ludicrous, so just forget about it.

Answer 2

This is an interesting question.

In terms of their treatment of the populations of conquered countries and their treatment of enemy POWs, I would say the Japanese were worse for the following reasons. They were not only brutal to the people of the countries they conquered, ask the Chinese, but also POWs. The Bhaatan Death March is an example of that.

The Germans on the otherhand, while extremely cruel to the citizens of conquered lands, as well as citizens in their own countries, were very civil in their treatment of enemy POWs.

Overall though, the sheer number of atrocities committed by the Germans must outweigh those of the Japanese. Some would argue that the UNited States' dropping of the Atomic Bomb was one of the worst atrocities of World War II.

have a nice day.

Answer 3

They had the same cruelness as a mandate from their leaders. It was the energy and excuse for what they did, or what a small number of Germans did to the holocaust victims.
Because the Holocaust was so targeted at the Jewish people, man, woman and children the prize has to go to Germany during WWII.
However, in the long history of mankind, there are few who are not descendants of people who butchered other people, and I just know there are no people who are not descedents of murderers in the worst way possible.
So the lesson of the brutality during WWII is broader and deeper than just that periods in history. The big picture is that all of us humans are the children of the murdered at some point, or the murderer at some point, or whatever else humans do. We are all capable of the very worst behavior ever done by any human any time in history.
We have all been the slave and the master. We have all buried our victims. And we have all been buried by our murderers.
Human history is amazing, fascinating, revealing, ugly and beautiful at the same time. But it does not have to continue like it has through history. We humans have the ability to stop hurting and killing other humans. And I for one have faith that someday we will step over that line. Glory!

Answer 4

Late on the answer but think it's important.

Beyond the cruelty of POW camps operated by both Germans or Japanese there was the medical experiments
performed by both.

Every so often I catch a documentary or read a snippet about the Japanese experiments which, were so horrendous that the American Military kept much of it quiet in order to study what the Japanese were doing to the POW's. This included: Keeping the Japanese involved in the experiments from being tried as war criminals for their silence.

One thing is for sure, both Germans and Japanese were guilty of experimenting on POWS. We heard all about the Dr. Mengala's but zero about Japanese crimes, regarding live human experiments!

Answer 5

By all means it was the Japanese. They killed more people then the Germans. Takes this picture, your a P.O.W. in Germany, you have an 80% or better chance of coming home. Now if you were a P.O.W. in Asia you had around a 15% or less chance of coming home.

The Japanese would do surgery while people were awake, so the could "learn" . They would also tie prisoners to posts and shot artillery shells so they could see how to treat there injured.

Lets not forget how they treated civilians. In all I have to say that Japan stills owns Trillions of dollars to every country that they invaded.
By the way 10 million is to low, try upping it by 60 million, that will include everyone that suffered under them.

Answer 6

The Nazis also had travelling people(Romanies), homosexuals, intellectuals, disabled, Communists and any German that opposed the Nazi party sent to the concentration camps. They also sent Russians(20 million were killed by the Nazis) and other prisoners of war to the camps. However, during war many countries have been known to break the Geneva Convention. The Nazis also experimented on their prisoners. In war there is no real country more cruel than the other. Atrocities are documented better than others and kept secret longer than others.

Answer 7

Both are cruel and millions died.

The Japs got the Rape of Nanking hot on their list, death railway construction, routine beheading and torture, forcible opium addiction in Manchuria.

Unit 731 topped the list, it was hushed up by the American victors, that was in Manchuria, victims were tested with liquid nitorgen and disemembered to gauge pain levels, water soaked in minus zero temperature just ot gauge effects of hypothermia.

Nazis aint good too, tested mass killings with machines guns, gas, cyanide and eventually carbon monoxide. Dr. Mengele experimented with twins, surgery without anesthisia bla bla

Dont forget Stalin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot and so many others of today..........

Answer 8

Both sides were unique in terms of their crimes. You should try and place this in the perspective of the victim. Depending on how/where you were it mattered little that you were being killed because your were Jewish rather than Chinese. It was the fact you were being killed. Does it make the crime more or less atrocious because the victim was a healthy Jew or a poor China man? Or it is less cruel because the victim was being killed for political crimes rather than being of a particular race? The end result is the same in each case-mass murder.

Answer 9

So uh, at the same time as that change right into a effective little precis of censorship for the time of Nazi Germany, you probably did not truly address your own question, that is style of peculiar. at the same time as there might want to correctly be evidence to point that the regulation of information channels might want to correctly be a objective for both significant activities, i do no longer imagine it really is amazingly and fullyyt orientated in the direction of the left. also, Cicero: You do keep in mind that the political spectrum is a continuum, no longer a sliding scale perfect? bypass a approaches sufficient left and also you'll change right into a approaches top? bypass a approaches sufficient top and also you'll bypass a approaches left? Tyranny lies at both ends of the spectrum.

Answer 10

Nazi Germany was cruel. However, its prisoners of war were taken care of (however poorly) and survived. The Japanese considered surrender to be the most degrading and unrespectable thing a soldier could do, so they took few prisoners - usually they executed them on the spot. Those whom they did take were often killed.