Rationale Across The War

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       Since the end of World War II, many American historians have labeled it “The Good War.” This term in general may be used for certain aspects of the war, such as some of the people who fought in it, the reasons for coming, and the general victorious outcome for America as a country. However, many things occurred throughout the war that are now looked at as terrible occurrences, many of which should have never happened. The Germans are the prime example of this. With the brutal treatment, ghettoization, confinement to concentration camps, and the eventual plan of extermination of Jews, homosexual, gypsies, and other groups seen unfit to live, some of the worst actions known to mankind were committed by the German army during World War II. Germans were working behind racial ideologies and enslaving and killing groups of people simply because of who they were. Not only were they being enslaved and put to work which caused them starvation, disease, and eventually death, they were working in war factories to further the same regime that was putting them through these crimes against humanity. While slavery has been around for centuries, mostly confined to African Americans, simply because of their race, the complete extermination of a group of people because of their race was unheard of until World War II. While completely outrageous, Hitler was able to rationalize this to the German people by using the Jews as scapegoats for the failures of World War I as well as the failures of the current economic state.

          The Germans weren’t the only group working from racial ideologies. The Japanese saw themselves as the Yamato race; ancient people of pure blood and high culture, destined to lead other Asians. While genocide was not part of the Asian plan, they did want to rid the Asian countries of European colonial people and ideologies, creating what they called, an “Asia for the Asians.” They believed the Asian people should work together as one, under Japanese leadership. Each ethnic group within Asia would have its’ own proper place in the hierarchical order, with Japan at the top. They too were notably violent with the native people of newly obtained territories, especially the Japanese soldiers who raped many women while forcing them to be comfort women to fulfill the soldier’s needs. They simply rationalized these acts as a nationalistic view of Japanese people being the pure Asian race.

     In America, the questionable actions were seen through the propaganda, mostly against the Japanese people, and the creation of internment camps on the west coast where over one hundred thousand Japanese-Americans, many of them American citizens became displaced from their homes and forced to live in confined, guarded territories. While the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians has since made public that the “broad historical causes that shaped these decisions were race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership,” these acts were once rationalized by not only the American government, but everyday citizens as well (Kashima, 1982) . The President and government argued a need for national security, as well as propaganda and proper treatment within the camps to help rationalize this move and sell it to the general public. The ability to rationalize these actions helped protect them from the protest of the civilian population. Without a rationalization, the American public might be less understanding to why it was happening, and would be more likely to try and stop it or simply not support it.