Seventy-five years ago, on December 13, 1937, the world saw firsthand the scope of horror which followed the marriage of totalitarianism and modern technology. The Rape of Nanking, which lasted for weeks and produced perhaps 380,000 tortured and murdered women, children, and men, happened while the world watched. The sheer rate of murder has not been surpassed in modern history. The total number of deaths at Treblinka and Auschwitz was greater than at Nanking, but the rate of dying was not. The Gulag absorbed tens of millions of innocents with perhaps twenty million dead, but this happened over decades.
The savagery of Japanese soldiers at Nanking appalled European missionaries and businessmen, who had seen mind-numbing carnage twenty years earlier in the First World War. The sheer scale of rapine was not exceeded until the Red Army marched as our "liberating ally" through Eastern Europe and raped, often to death, young girls, old women, and pregnant women of all nationalities and creeds -- a crime against humanity which, like all crimes against humanity committed by communists, was mockingly dismissed by Stalin when confronted by Tito's deputy, Milovan Djilas.
The long and ugly war of Imperial Japan against China, often overlooked because of the Japanese maltreatment of European soldiers and civilians, would claim millions more and would include the deliberate dropping of all sorts of chemical and biological weapons on the Chinese -- something even the Nazis did not do in waging war. But Nanking was special.
Nanking was proof that great evil, inflicted on an innocent people while the whole international community watched, would not provoke war. In this respect, it differed from the genocidal campaigns of the Turks against the Armenians -- the Turks were already at war with the Allied Powers. It differed from the Holomodor, the mass extermination of millions of Ukrainians (and others) within the Soviet Union, because Ukraine had historically been part of Russia.
Nanking, in sheer numbers of deaths and atrocities, was perhaps one thousand times more murderous than Kristallnacht, which was also committed against German nationals (although Hitler had by then stripped German Jews of citizenship). Nothing in the Spanish Civil War, infamous for its bloodthirsty character, remotely approached the Rape of Nanking. Guernica, for example, the Spanish Nationalist attack on a small Spanish town, was as modest beside Nanking as the Spanish Republican artillery attacks on other towns of Spain (which have been scrupulously washed from most histories).
What happened at Nanking still lives in the heart of China. It is as real to Chinese as the Holocaust is to Jews, and for similar reasons: peaceful, civilized, established communities were disemboweled by totalitarian armies that belied the cultural heritage of their homelands. Japan and Germany have both proven civilizations as brilliant as any on earth. If we rely upon art, culture, social cohesion, and related creations of men to stop evil, then there should never have been a Rape of Nanking or a Holocaust.
Zitat . . . Those interested in what caused Nanking and Auschwitz need look no farther than the elevation of man above God, which was well understood at the time. . . .
This is the type of thing that has sadly been removed from education in the name of political correctness and moral equivalence. All ethical systems do not bear the same fruit.
Quote: algernonpj wrote in post #2Thanks for the post.
Zitat . . . Those interested in what caused Nanking and Auschwitz need look no farther than the elevation of man above God, which was well understood at the time. . . .
This is the type of thing that has sadly been removed from education in the name of political correctness and moral equivalence. All ethical systems do not bear the same fruit.
The 20th century mass genocides was one main reason why I never understood the humanist point of view that man was basically good. Man is inherently evil to the core.
Here are a couple of history links on the horrors that happened. I looked for a video on the topic and let's just say it's something I won't forget. I won't link it here as it's very graphic and not everyone can handle it.
The 20th century, the century where human centered ideologies dominated, has become the bloodiest and deadliest in the history of mankind. And it hasn't completed its run yet. This century may yet see its full completion and could well exceed it in destruction.
Quote: steph wrote in post #4Here are a couple of history links on the horrors that happened. I looked for a video on the topic and let's just say it's something I won't forget. I won't link it here as it's very graphic and not everyone can handle it.
I've always believed we are (mostly) all capable of both great goodness and sacrifice and great evil. 'Human centered' ideologies definitely bring out the dark side.
However . . . given the dearness to my heart of the Chinese people . . . it only takes reviewing a tiny fraction of this to leave me . . . well . . . I'll stop there.
The wise man sees calamity coming and prepares for it.
RIGHT'S RIGHT 
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Thu Dec 13, 2012 2:56 pm
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