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All of these have something going for them, but I put Imperial Japan. It was definitely the most savage enemy the US has ever waged war against. The idea lf honor and suicide, especially the horrors in places like Iwo JIma and Okinawa where Japanese forces brutally fought to death. There is also the massive Japanese war crimes, the kamikazes, etc. Imperial Japan has always seemed like a death cult, with a perverse pleasure in suicide and glorifcation of death stemming from the samurai days. That manifested itself in WW2. While the Nazis were a formidable and evil enemy, Japan was more fanatical and their soldiers rarely surrendered, nearly all of them fought to the death which made the Pacific war probably the most brutal conflict America has ever engaged in.
Another civilization obsessed with death was the Aztec Empire, an imperialistic and expansionist cult most famous for human sacrifices, which they depicted in most of their artwork like that found in Mexico. Its interesting that many Mexicans are proud to be desceded from such a civilization, that sacrificied children on alters. The Aztec homeland according to Mexican myth lies in the presnt day southwestern United States. There was also something savage about the Roman gladiator, how ordinary people watched poeple kill one another for sport.
I would say the most savage and barbaric civilization would be Imperial Japan, followed closely by Nazi Germany, and then in order.....Aztecs, Islamic fundamentalists, and Soviet Russia. The perennial debates is if Nazi Germany was more or less evil than the Soviet Union and the debate of Hitler vs Stalin. I think the entire Nazi society was deranged vs the Soviet Union was more of a single oppressive party controlling the country and oppressing its people and committing aggression against their neighbors.
Brutal to their own? Or brutal to their neighbors? Or brutal to foreign nations far away? Where is the US on that last? I think to be top dog means you have to be the most brutal and savage. So Japan was the hardest for us to beat...but we beat them. I vote for us.
I'm with Tom Lennox 70, but just want to add another aspect of Japanese brutality in World War II - their murderous treatment of the conquered peoples of Asia (Chinese, Burmese, Dutch East Indies, Korean, etc.). The fact that we beat them does not make us more brutal. Rather, it is a reflection of our superior industrial capacity and our more rational approach to prosecution of the war.
An excellent recent book by a professional historian which documents the above views is Retribution by Max Hastings; it covers the last two years of the Pacific war.
The worst IMO were the Germanic Vandals of North Africa during the 400's A.D. and the Spanish Conquistadores during the 1500's as both were just rotten to the core.
I think the entire Nazi society was deranged vs the Soviet Union was more of a single oppressive party controlling the country and oppressing its people and committing aggression against their neighbors.
We dropped atomic bombs on two of their cities, and firebombed many others killing countless civilians. We conducted unrestricted submarine warfare against their shipping even thought they didn't. We interned American citizens of Japanese descent who were living in our borders. But yeah, they are the savage ones....
BTW why do we always honor heroes who die for our country but think that people who die for theirs are crazy fanatics? Didn't someone say, "Give me liberty, or give me death!"?
The United States of America. Just ask anyone who lived through our mindless savagery in Hiroshima, Dresden, Vietnam, Iraq, Philippines, American Indian country, or Sherman's march through Georgia.
America sends more of its own non-violent offenders into the brutal savagery of the penal system than any other country in the world, and gloats over it on late night cable stations.
Our second amendment is heralded as a guarantee that simply killing a human being in cold blood is the first and best response in crisis resolution.
Even women, whom most societies depend upon as a counterbalance to sheer animal brutality, now in America widely demand torture, inhumane death, or dismemberment of anyone even so much as accused or suspected of crimes against women or children.
Last edited by jtur88; 10-17-2010 at 08:56 AM..
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Imperial Japan
