Updated 3 years ago
1. MacArthur was an overrated jackass, basically a Donald Trump figure. Imagine Paul Stanley of KISS with Gene’s vanity and ego and Peter Criss’ ability to play guitar.
2. The Japanese were not authoritarian; quite the contrary it was, ironically, a dictatorship of the proletariat, given the general martial orientation of the populace. The various armed services were always quarreling, the emperor came in and out of the picture, and generals did not have a lot of power. Assassinations of those deemed too soft were constant.
3. The Japanese inherited both their beards and their samurai culture from the Ainu, a white-skinned ancient strand of relatives to the Aboriginals of Australia.
4. The internment of the Japanese would happen again today given similar circumstances. It proved to be complete unfounded and overkill, but understandable given the unknowns. German and Italian Americans were also rounded up, though not as much.
5. Using the atomic bomb against the Japanese saved millions of lives.
6. FDR and Eisenhower were two of our greatest presidents
7. Although it was a team effort, and the Americans would have eventually defeated both, the Russians and Chinese bear the greatest responsibility for the defeat of the Axis
8. If the Germans had other strains of nationalist leaders, and not Nazis, and thus not Antisemitic, they would have kept Einstein and others, thus the bomb, and would be a superpower today.
9. If the Nazis had recognized Slavs as part of the master race (they did have nordic blood, especially in the Ukraine) they would have done far better in the Eastern Front and might have even prevailed in Operation Barbarosa, although fighting a two-front war was always doomed to ultimately fail.
10. Both Germany and Italy were only recently formed nation-states, thus were less developed than, say, Britain, France, Sweden et al, thus were more prone to authoritarian thinking. The Meiji Restoration had a virtually similar effect on Japan.
