[Editor's Note] This article was originally published by the author Professor Hu Maoren , a senior researcher at Kunlun Ce Research Institute, for research reference.
On the Internet, an author said that the main ethnic groups of British and American countries, Anglo-Saxons, , have always looked down on Germans, Slavs, . In the Western concepts of Britain and the United States, these two nations are generally excluded. We Orientals don’t understand this situation and think they are all Westerners and Europeans, so there should be no big difference between them. But this author believes that it is not the case.
The author gave an example, saying that when World War II was about to end, that is, when Britain and the United States opened up the second battlefield of Europe, the British and American air force carried out a very brutal bombardment of Dresden in eastern Germany. At that time, Lesden, Germany was a very beautiful city before the war and was once called "Florence of Germany". Moreover, Dresden did not have an arms industry, nor did it have much heavy industry, so Britain and the United States bombed Dresden not because of the need for war, but a revenge and vent to the German nation. According to information, at that time, the first wave of bombing by the British and American Air Force used high-explosive bombs, which lifted off the roof of the building, revealing the wooden structure of the building. In the second wave of attack, Britain and the United States used incendiary bombs to cause fire to the building. The third wave used high-explosive bombs to completely destroy the building. The number of civilian casualties suffered by Dresden in this bombing is now difficult to count and determine. The figures counted by Britain and the United States are at most 15,000, while the figures counted by Germany are at most hundreds of thousands, and the highest is at most 300,000. Then some people say that this was a number fabricated by the propaganda minister of the Nazi Party of Germany at that time, Goebbels, , to accuse Britain and the United States of committing war crimes. Now, since there is no particularly sufficient evidence, all these numbers cannot be used as a basis. Later, there was a number of burying corpses in Germany that were more than 21,000. Therefore, in this Dresden bombing , after all, some dead people were dead in the bombing, so the number of deaths must definitely exceed the number of the buried dead people.
Historically, the bombing of Dresden was not unilaterally decided by Britain and the United States themselves. According to Western information, the bombing of Dresden was first decided by the Soviet Union. It is not certain now whether the Soviet Union has really made such a plan, or whether Britain and the United States should blame the Soviet Union. Now this is impossible to confirm. The fact now is that whether the Soviet Union had such a plan or not, it was the British and American air forces that ultimately implemented the bombing of Dresden.
However, based on people's speculation about the Russian national character, it is not impossible for the Soviet Union to make a plan to bomb Dresden. After all, fascist Germany invaded the Soviet Union, which caused great harm to the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union counterattacked, it was necessary to retaliate against Germany to a certain extent and a certain scale. This possibility of course existed. As for whether such revenge is reasonable or barbaric, it is simply impossible to discuss in the war. If people accuse the Soviet Union of deciding to bomb Dresden was wrong, then what is the United States dropping two atomic bombs in Japan? Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not Japan's military sites, and these two atomic bombs resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians. Is this a war crime?
Japan has been saying for so many years that they are victims of the atomic bomb. Now the Japanese right-wing has come to power, trying to rebuild the militarism. People began to question Japan, why don’t you reflect on it, why the United States threw an atomic bomb on you. Japan's right wing is abominable, and Japan's war crimes that year also need to be held accountable. But the United States throws those two atomic bombs on Japan, which cannot be absolutely reasonable. So far, the only United States that has used nuclear weapon to kill many civilians is still unreasonable on this issue, and it is barbaric and cruel.
Perhaps, some people will say that Japanese civilians also enthusiastically supported Japanese militarism in the war to launch a war of aggressive foreign countries, so the Japanese people are not innocent. This statement seems to make sense. But people should not forget that this kind of fanaticism among the Japanese people was mainly incited by Japanese militarism. The main blame for the war of foreign aggression is still on the head of Japanese militarism. The Japanese nation itself may also need to bear responsibility, but the Japanese people cannot at least say that they must bear the main responsibility.
I do not agree with using the so-called national character to judge the advantages and disadvantages of the nation itself. Ethnic issues or ethnic conflicts, or even ethnic conflicts, in the words of Chairman Mao, are ultimately issues of class struggle. The so-called ugliness and evil of the Ansa nation ultimately depends on finding the root cause from the upper level of the bourgeois of this nation. Of course, there will be upward and downward results on ethnic issues. Therefore, the ugliness and evil of the Ansa nation may be seen by ordinary people in this nation. However, the root cause is the upper class of the bourgeoisie, and this is not wrong.
The same is true for the Japanese ethnic group. We can see from the Japanese documentaries that year that the Japanese people's fanaticism about the war of aggression is indeed shocking. This will also make it impossible for many Chinese people to have a good impression of this nation. But if we analyze it from a class perspective, this is the result of Japanese militarists inciting and confusing the people. After all, ordinary people under the rule of the bourgeoisie have limited cultural level and they themselves have defects of one kind or another, and some of the bad natures of the nation themselves cannot be ineffective. In this case, the Japanese people's support for the war of aggression ultimately harmed their interests. As for this, some people in Japan are still aware of this.
Compared with the large bombing of the United Kingdom and the United States on Dresden, the Chinese Liang Sicheng took the initiative to find the US military and asked the US military not to bomb the ancient buildings in Kyoto and Nara in the war against Japan. At that time, he also brought a map to mark all the buildings that needed protection. According to relevant information, Liang Sicheng visited these two ancient Japanese cities when he was a child and had a beautiful impression of those exquisite ancient buildings. Therefore, Liang Sicheng believes that it would be a pity and a pity if war destroyed all these great civilizations.
Some people may think that Liang Sicheng's approach is a bit too much like a good old man who doesn't know right or wrong. Such accusations are understandable from the perspective of national feelings. However, as one of the achievements of the creation of human civilization, it is better to protect these results than to destroy them. Destroying these ancient buildings has no direct causal relationship with whether the war is victorious. Some people may say that destroying these ancient buildings will help combat the irrational national irrational sentiment in Japan. Maybe this statement makes some sense. But from the perspective of pros and cons, the benefits of keeping these buildings in general are still more. After all, these buildings were greatly influenced by ancient Chinese civilization , so it is better to keep them than to destroy them.
(Author Hu Maoren is a professor of , , Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, senior researcher at Kunlun Ce Research Institute; source: Kunlun Ce.com [Original] , authorized by the author)
