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New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 21:15 - Aug 19 by CiderwithRsie
Verging a bit off-topic, but I've seen/read plenty on the issue of how the Nazis took power, why did so many Germans go along with it etc [all perfectly good questions] but I've recently started wondering just why were the Japanese such b*stards in the 30s/40s? Didn't lose WW1, didn't have the de-humanising effects of the trenches, didn't have hyperinflation, don't think they were hurt by the Depression more than anyone else, didn't really have an equivalent of Hitler or Stalin [various leaders seem to have come and gone,] but no-one seems to ask why they suddenly swept across Asia massacring millions of Chinese and Koreans, not to mention unspeakable treatment of PoWs etc. Then back home for a few exquisite haikus about cherry blossom and a tea ceremony.
Japan was at war with China I believe as early as 1938 and at the turn of the century Japan was at war with Russia, Its so long ago that I used to read about various wars that my memory has 'gone' I'd have to look it up but I'm pretty sure that Finland invaded Russia circa 1939 or the other way round. The barracks I was based in in what was called West Germany in the 1960's was used by German Officers and troops that were stationed at Belsen about 20 Kilometres away, It was mentioned amongst us squaddies but was sort of taboo and nobody ever hardly talked about it.
My Father had a profound influence on me, he was a lunatic.
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New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 23:05 - Aug 19 with 3774 views
New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 22:32 - Aug 19 by ted_hendrix
Japan was at war with China I believe as early as 1938 and at the turn of the century Japan was at war with Russia, Its so long ago that I used to read about various wars that my memory has 'gone' I'd have to look it up but I'm pretty sure that Finland invaded Russia circa 1939 or the other way round. The barracks I was based in in what was called West Germany in the 1960's was used by German Officers and troops that were stationed at Belsen about 20 Kilometres away, It was mentioned amongst us squaddies but was sort of taboo and nobody ever hardly talked about it.
A lot of re-used barracks, I expect, Ted. Recall my Dad telling me that when he was in occupation of Austria - early 50s I think - they once marched out with the band playing some famous piece of Austrian marching music as a bit of PR for the locals. Got lots of funny looks but couldn't work out why - turned out it had been the regimental march of the SS unit formerly based in that barracks.
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New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 23:12 - Aug 19 with 3771 views
New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 21:15 - Aug 19 by CiderwithRsie
Verging a bit off-topic, but I've seen/read plenty on the issue of how the Nazis took power, why did so many Germans go along with it etc [all perfectly good questions] but I've recently started wondering just why were the Japanese such b*stards in the 30s/40s? Didn't lose WW1, didn't have the de-humanising effects of the trenches, didn't have hyperinflation, don't think they were hurt by the Depression more than anyone else, didn't really have an equivalent of Hitler or Stalin [various leaders seem to have come and gone,] but no-one seems to ask why they suddenly swept across Asia massacring millions of Chinese and Koreans, not to mention unspeakable treatment of PoWs etc. Then back home for a few exquisite haikus about cherry blossom and a tea ceremony.
State Shinto, the subversion of Japan's bushido traditions, the idea of dying for the demi-God Emperor, etc.. A lot of them were off their tits on meth as well. Anyone who dishonoured themselves by surrendering were considered to not worthy of life.
New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 19:07 - Aug 19 by Rblock_James
Any idea if it's based on the book 'The Forgotten Soldier'?
'The Forgotten Soldier' is the book I have re-read more than any other ever since I was about 9/10. I can't see a German company making a film on the Grossdeutschland Division just yet.
It would make an amazing series though. 'Memel' 'The death of Herr Hauptmann Wes...' Episode titles already sorted.
Beer and Beef has made us what we are - The Prince Regent
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New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 09:43 - Aug 20 with 3697 views
New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 21:15 - Aug 19 by CiderwithRsie
Verging a bit off-topic, but I've seen/read plenty on the issue of how the Nazis took power, why did so many Germans go along with it etc [all perfectly good questions] but I've recently started wondering just why were the Japanese such b*stards in the 30s/40s? Didn't lose WW1, didn't have the de-humanising effects of the trenches, didn't have hyperinflation, don't think they were hurt by the Depression more than anyone else, didn't really have an equivalent of Hitler or Stalin [various leaders seem to have come and gone,] but no-one seems to ask why they suddenly swept across Asia massacring millions of Chinese and Koreans, not to mention unspeakable treatment of PoWs etc. Then back home for a few exquisite haikus about cherry blossom and a tea ceremony.
Oil (just like today)
This is a great book on the Fall of Singapore I read last year. Worth reading.
Beer and Beef has made us what we are - The Prince Regent
New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 21:15 - Aug 19 by CiderwithRsie
Verging a bit off-topic, but I've seen/read plenty on the issue of how the Nazis took power, why did so many Germans go along with it etc [all perfectly good questions] but I've recently started wondering just why were the Japanese such b*stards in the 30s/40s? Didn't lose WW1, didn't have the de-humanising effects of the trenches, didn't have hyperinflation, don't think they were hurt by the Depression more than anyone else, didn't really have an equivalent of Hitler or Stalin [various leaders seem to have come and gone,] but no-one seems to ask why they suddenly swept across Asia massacring millions of Chinese and Koreans, not to mention unspeakable treatment of PoWs etc. Then back home for a few exquisite haikus about cherry blossom and a tea ceremony.
The Japanese came late to empire-building, without the recognition of universal rights of Man which had entered Western thinking by then from the enlightenment and the protestant revival. This had given the British empire the justification of civilising "mission", however meaningful it was in practice, and helped raise opposition to the idea of Imperialism in whole nations (eg the US, although they had slipped into the role of Imperialist by then, justifying it as a temporary "lesser evil"), and in large sections of many others.
The Japanese had a view of their own uniqueness, and didn't extend that regard to other people, though in this their thoughts and practice were fundamentally no different to the Spanish Empire of Cortez and Pisarro, the Belgian exploitation of the Congo, the British extermination of Tasmanian Aborigines, and lots of et ceteras, albeit that their actions were better publicised and more criticised than what happenend at an earlier time.
Even though they were particularly vile to the Chinese, their rule was not wholly unwelcome. On the principle of "my enemy's enemy", their occupation in Taiwan is fondly remembered by native Taiwanese, though not by descendants of Chiang Kai-Shek's supporters who went there after the revolution. Local nationalists worked with them. Aung San, (father of Suu Kyi) was trained in sabotage in Tokyo, and then used his guerillas to support the Japanese in their invasion, though he turned on them once it was obvious the Allies were going to win. Many of the South Korean military and police leaders had served the Japanese authorities and been trained there. Mahathir Mohammed, later Prime Minister of Malaysia, was a student leader in a pro-Japanese movement in occupied Malyasia, and was very pro-Japanese in office in the 1980s and 90s. I went to the military museum in the notorious Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, and the very last exhibit is a map of Asia showing the flags and dates of independence of all the local states, as if their whole activity had been a successful "Bolivarian" mission to bring freedom to their fellow Asains, rather than an attempt to replace one foreign domination with another.
As for the PoWs, as one poster has noted, they didn't understand surrender and weren't signatories to the Geneva Convention. But they also were incredibly violent to their own soldiers, who also received terrible food.
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New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 14:27 - Aug 20 with 3651 views
New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 14:52 - Aug 19 by Metallica_Hoop
Thanks for that.
I'm already sold, any trailer that starts with a Tiger I advancing to explosions gets my attention.
Think it looks good, too. Hope it appears down here.
Btw, in 'Band of Brothers', they used USSR T-34's tricked up as Tigers. Apparently you can tell by looking at the track wheels (they can't be disguised). Maybe that is why the Tigerin that trailer is only seen above the waist.
New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 14:27 - Aug 20 by isawqpratwcity
Think it looks good, too. Hope it appears down here.
Btw, in 'Band of Brothers', they used USSR T-34's tricked up as Tigers. Apparently you can tell by looking at the track wheels (they can't be disguised). Maybe that is why the Tigerin that trailer is only seen above the waist.
Ahhh interesting.
Well the only working one is at Bovington so it's either replica's or a cunningly disguised ringer.
I just enlarged it and the one in the foreground looks like a tiger but the other two in the background look like KT hybrids.
New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 21:15 - Aug 19 by CiderwithRsie
Verging a bit off-topic, but I've seen/read plenty on the issue of how the Nazis took power, why did so many Germans go along with it etc [all perfectly good questions] but I've recently started wondering just why were the Japanese such b*stards in the 30s/40s? Didn't lose WW1, didn't have the de-humanising effects of the trenches, didn't have hyperinflation, don't think they were hurt by the Depression more than anyone else, didn't really have an equivalent of Hitler or Stalin [various leaders seem to have come and gone,] but no-one seems to ask why they suddenly swept across Asia massacring millions of Chinese and Koreans, not to mention unspeakable treatment of PoWs etc. Then back home for a few exquisite haikus about cherry blossom and a tea ceremony.
2012 movie Emperor throws some light on what appears to have been a very complicated set-up in Japan. Starring the guy who was the main character in the awful Lost (the doc) enough said.
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New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 16:52 - Aug 20 with 3615 views
New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 15:27 - Aug 19 by ElHoop
The picture has an 'Enemy at the Gates' sort of feel to it -- loved that film.
Call me controversial, but I hated Enemy at the Gates and spent the whole film hoping someone would blow-up Jude Law or at least make him go into hiding for the duration.
Fulham FC: It's the taking part that counts
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New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 18:21 - Aug 20 with 3588 views
Thanks guys - some useful answers esp from Mr Sheen. That room in the museum/shrine sounds pretty perturbing. I remember sharing a B+B in Berlin with 2 Japanese guys, one quite a free-thinker who'd taught himself English by watching Hollywood films, the other a real conformist who had no conception that Japan might have been even a little out of line in WW2.
Will have to track down that "Emperor" film.
I just find it interesting that we study the Nazis to death in a don't let-it-happen-again way [quite right too], trying to figure out how a country could get that way, but seem to treat Japan as just business as usual.
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New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 19:20 - Aug 20 with 3309 views
New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 18:21 - Aug 20 by CiderwithRsie
Thanks guys - some useful answers esp from Mr Sheen. That room in the museum/shrine sounds pretty perturbing. I remember sharing a B+B in Berlin with 2 Japanese guys, one quite a free-thinker who'd taught himself English by watching Hollywood films, the other a real conformist who had no conception that Japan might have been even a little out of line in WW2.
Will have to track down that "Emperor" film.
I just find it interesting that we study the Nazis to death in a don't let-it-happen-again way [quite right too], trying to figure out how a country could get that way, but seem to treat Japan as just business as usual.
Possibly dropping two f*cking great atomic bombs on them has something to do with a modifying attitude.
New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 19:20 - Aug 20 by TheBlob
Possibly dropping two f*cking great atomic bombs on them has something to do with a modifying attitude.
Well, yes. But given that estimates for the death toll in the "Rape of Nankin" come in at slightly more than the combined estimated death toll from both atomic bombs, you'd have thought it wouldn't rule out any consideration of what had preceded said bombs, no?
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New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 19:38 - Aug 20 with 3298 views
New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 18:21 - Aug 20 by CiderwithRsie
Thanks guys - some useful answers esp from Mr Sheen. That room in the museum/shrine sounds pretty perturbing. I remember sharing a B+B in Berlin with 2 Japanese guys, one quite a free-thinker who'd taught himself English by watching Hollywood films, the other a real conformist who had no conception that Japan might have been even a little out of line in WW2.
Will have to track down that "Emperor" film.
I just find it interesting that we study the Nazis to death in a don't let-it-happen-again way [quite right too], trying to figure out how a country could get that way, but seem to treat Japan as just business as usual.
It's easy to get creeped out by the Yasukuni shrine museum: one of the exhibits is a ride-on suicide torpedo (unused), and while other WW2 museums focus on civilian deaths, this is all about the military. There are piles of spectacle frames unearthed from mass graves of Japanese soldiers, rather than civilian victims, and the only civilian deaths mentioned in the whole museum is of Japanese settlers stranded in Manchuria and Korea when the Red Army swept over them in the last weeks of the war. Against this, it's a fair way smaller than the Imperial War Museum and not that well-attended, in a city of 30 million people. I read somewhere that 20th century history is covered in one school term, and ends with the surrender. If the teacher has fallen behind, they just drop the last bit. Japanese people are more ignorant of their colonial history than in wilful denial.
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New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 22:49 - Aug 20 with 3226 views
New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 19:37 - Aug 20 by CiderwithRsie
Well, yes. But given that estimates for the death toll in the "Rape of Nankin" come in at slightly more than the combined estimated death toll from both atomic bombs, you'd have thought it wouldn't rule out any consideration of what had preceded said bombs, no?
The perception that the method of despatch outweighs the numbers still lingers.This was a new and shocking device of mass death,the guilt complex pervades today,as you might have noticed.Somehow the human race has become anaesthetised to mere shooting and stabbing etc.,but somehow one lays more restlessly in the grave(sic)by being bathed in nuclear fire or corroded by radiation.
New German War Drama coming to BBC2 on 22:39 - Aug 20 by MrSheen
It's easy to get creeped out by the Yasukuni shrine museum: one of the exhibits is a ride-on suicide torpedo (unused), and while other WW2 museums focus on civilian deaths, this is all about the military. There are piles of spectacle frames unearthed from mass graves of Japanese soldiers, rather than civilian victims, and the only civilian deaths mentioned in the whole museum is of Japanese settlers stranded in Manchuria and Korea when the Red Army swept over them in the last weeks of the war. Against this, it's a fair way smaller than the Imperial War Museum and not that well-attended, in a city of 30 million people. I read somewhere that 20th century history is covered in one school term, and ends with the surrender. If the teacher has fallen behind, they just drop the last bit. Japanese people are more ignorant of their colonial history than in wilful denial.
Yasukuni-jinja is also the place where Japan's war dead from WWII are honoured. It's like the Cenotaph in that aspect but with a more religious slant as it's also a Shinto shrine so the souls of the dead are considered to be interred there. Problem is that a dozen or so Class A war criminals are included in the mix so that's why Korean and China get so irate every time a new Japanese Prime Minister (they only last around 18 months on average) goes to pay his respects after taking office. The sooner the visit, the more conservative the PM. Plays well to the elderly, the traditionalists and those on the right in Japan but doesn't do much good for regional diplomatic relations.
I was there in April but managed to completely miss the museum. Thinking about it I did know it was there but it obviously had slipped my mind at the time. As shrines go, it's quite a nice one, plenty of cherry blossom and shrine maidens, but if Meiji-jinja knocks it into a cocked hat as far as shrines in Tokyo go.
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