Capitalism in Decay

Briefly quoting Yuki Tanaka’s Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II, pages 8–9:

The estimated death toll of each nation in the Asia‐Pacific War is based on official statements by those countries and other available data: 200,000 Koreans, 30,000 Taiwanese, more than 10 million Chinese, 2 million Vietnamese (mainly due to famine), 1.1 million Filipinos, 4 million Indonesians; 100,000 Malays and Singaporeans, 150,000 Burmese, and 1.5 million Indians (due to the Bengal famine of 1943). In addition, apart from soldiers who were killed in action, more than 60,000 Allied POWs and civilian detainees died.^23^

(Possibly NSFL.)

At the risk of stating the obvious, I would like to confirm that I have no interest in inciting hatred against ordinary Japanese—some of whom rightfully despise Japanese Imperialism!—nor do I want them to feel guilty by association. Most people within the Axis empires couldn’t help living under their bourgeois governments, which have values and interests that transcend national boundaries. As a matter of fact, there were significant numbers of non‐Japanese Asians who intentionally served Japanese Imperialism. For example, quoting Peter J. Seybolt in Chinese Collaboration with Japan, 1932–1945, pages 221–2:

Support for the argument that there was an internal struggle among Chinese concurrent with an external war against [the Empire of] Japan is found also in the statistics compiled by the Communists during the war. […] It would be tedious to recount these battles in detail, though sufficient information exists to do so.

Probably in none of them did [Imperial] troops constitute a majority of those confronting the Communists and their allies, and in only two—a “mop-up” in June 1940, and the devastating mop‐up in April 1941 in which 4,000 villagers were slaughtered—did the number of [Imperial] troops come even close to the number of Chinese collaborators.

(Emphasis added.)

To paraphrase something that I wrote earlier, I realize that some of this history may seem elementary, but I never see anticommunists even mention it, and I am willing to bet that you don’t either. I have little else to add.

Events that happened today (August 17):

1911: Martin Sandberger, SS functionary and Shoah perpetrator, was unfortunately born.
1942: German Army Group A established bridgeheads across the Kuban River while the Reserve Police Battalion 101 massacred 1,700 Jews were in the Polish village of Łomazy. (Coincidentally, U.S. Marines raided the Axis‐held Pacific island of Makin while the USAAF made its first air raid on occupied Europe, bombing railroad marshaling yards at Sotteville‐lès‐Rouen. These were somewhere around the same time that the Second Moscow Conference ended.)
1943: The Axis took down 60 bombers from the U.S. Eighth Air Force during the Schweinfurt–Regensburg mission, but it lost Sicily to the Allies as the U.S. Seventh Army under General George S. Patton arrived in Messina, Italy, followed several hours later by the British 8th Army under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. Somewhere around the same time that the first Québec Conference of Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and William Lyon Mackenzie King began, the Royal Air Force commenced Operation Hydra: the first air raid of the Operation Crossbow strategic bombing campaign against the Third Reich’s V‐weapon program.
1945: At Talitzou by the Sino-Korean border, Puyi, then the Kangde Emperor of Manchukuo, formally renounced the imperial throne, dissolving the state, and ceding its territory to the Republic of China. (Coincidentally, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta proclaimed the independence of Indonesia, igniting the Indonesian National Revolution against the Dutch Empire.) Meanwhile, the Third Reich’s last submarine, U-977, surrendered to the Allies.
1971: Siegmund Wilhelm Walther List, Axis field marshal, dropped dead.
1987: Rudolf Walter Richard Heß, leading members of the NSDAP, hung hisself in prison… I have no comment.