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Comment by dntbnmpls | Hacker News Reader

> Another point of evidence that the author probably omitted out of politeness are the nations that freely violated rules of war yet did not make (much) use of chemical weapons: the nazis on the eastern front and wwii japan.

Why single out germany and japan? Are you really pretending the US, Britain, Soviet Union, etc didn't freely violate the "rules of war" also? Also, the nazis aren't a nation.

Edit: I guess some here think nuking hiroshima/nagasaki, firebombing and burning millions of civilians to death, mass rape of women, etc are within the "rules of war". Interesting.

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>Are you really pretending the US, Britain, Soviet Union, etc didn't freely violate the "rules of war" also

No but The US and UK are far less notorious and so are not as good examples.

> Also, the nazis aren't a nation

Given the foulness of the topic but limited space, I wanted to emphasize the enormous difference between the Germans and Japanese of today vs 80 years ago. In retrospect, I should have written Tojo instead of Japan even though he is not a country either.

It isn't singling out, dude. It's just an example. Obviously from the guys avoiding signing anti-cluster-munitions and anti-landmines you can tell that they're all concerned about their military effectiveness.

Fine, go ahead and say that Admiral Donitz only got away because we used Unrestricted Submarine Warfare just as much as he did. Okay. There we go. Now we're all even.

Give the man his due. That's Führer Donitz to you. Even if it was for a shorter period of time than William Henry Harrison fighting a cold after a a chilly wind.

"Nazis" in the context of WWII is commonly understood to mean the nation of Germany under control of the Nazi party.

I think people just generally have a lot less sympathy for literal Nazis, who the Germans voted into power, and any aggressors in a military campaign. America didn't just nuke Japan out of nowhere, the Japanese opened the door to that when they bombed pearl harbor and attempted to conquer the Pacific.

When the bad guys get what's coming to them, people don't feel so bad about it. And don't pretend civilians are completely innocent in these cases. You blame Americans for voting Trump into power, right? Then you also have to blame Germans for putting Hitler into power, and the Japanese for supporting their leaders' violent colonialism. The conflict was hugely popular on the home front in Japan. Until they started losing, of course.

Japan and Germany were not the victims of WWII.

Who ever identifies themselves as the bad guys? Even an aggressor has an excuse for why he believes he's morally right. The US invading Afghanistan for instance was obviously the aggressor but blamed the victim for deserving it. The Nazis blamed their victims too and their victims did do things to deserve it, in some sense. Your simple goodies vs baddies view is wrong.

I agree with your point about blaming voters though. In a democracy, politicians are only a reflection of what voters demand. They don't have much independent power themselves. Even in a non-democratic country, the populace is tacitly supporting their leaders and placing their immediate personal safety ahead of the enemies of their leaders.

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