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Originally Posted by Ferox13
Yeah the Americans (well General MacArthur) apparently gave UNIT 731 a free pass on prosecution of warcrimes in exchange for the info gained from their experiments.
This is allegedly also true about the nazi scientists brought over on Operation Paper clip..
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Cheers for that-couldn't remember the Number of the unit in China.
While we are comparing The Germans and the Japanese, I read a book on the psychology of war crimes-actually a history of Auswicz and it compared the motivations for the atrocities carried out by the Russians, Germans and Japanese and tried to considder the general reasons for the actions of soldiers from each country. The findings actually made sense;
The Russians acted on their orders because they were too terrified of the consequences of not following orders.
The Japanese Acted unquestioning on orders as they believed they came from their emperor and therefor it would be a disshonour not to obey.
Of the three countries, it is believed that only the German soldiers (of all rank) had freedom to choose their actions and to question orders, but still carried out attrocities- That is why the excuse of following orders is never accepted as a defense by the war crimes comission.