Quote:
Originally Posted by CroFlames
The crimes are, of course, awful. But in addition to that, what is sometimes lost on people is the sheer aggressiveness of their national policy/direction for the entire first half of the century. Their entire culture and identity was focused solely on becoming a great power. It was mass production of warships and warplanes, and marching into any country they laid eyes on. It was staggering.
I have absolutely zero concern with Germany ever becoming aggressive again because they came to terms with their past, and actively take steps to prevent extremists from rising up again. Japan actively denies their past, so if they rearmed, I would be more than a little concerned that they would start "liberating" their Asian neighbors.
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It's not a time where you can just do immediately to turn yourself into some kind of powerful military from having basically no uber military at this point in time. We are well past the time where you can just roll up with a zillion guys and have a good army.
They are also a rapidly aging population and shrinking population as it is. If they just throw a bunch of people into an army and lost a bunch of them - their problems gets worse.
And yes - they should admit to what they did, but in the grand scheme of things - it doesn't matter that much. As we've seen in the US - it doesn't take a heck of a lot for people to decide that something they've always valued (fair democratic elections) to something they don't care about.