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Controversial Historical Opinions You Have

Arthur Frayn said:
Sure, but the occupation/re-building certainly could have gone better. Not half-assing the trials of the military leaders, for one, or forcing Hirohito to step down in favor of one of his brothers. I mean, if you ask me Chichibu should've been fucking executed for being buddy buddy with Unit 731 (the man enjoyed watching live vivisection's) and the Kwangtung Army, but Nobuhito would've been a good choice.
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Why not abdicate in favour of Akihito? Akihito is the son of Hirohito.


SuperTechmarine said:
"Good guys" is relative, obviously. Every single agent in the Great War is some kind of shade of dark grey, with some farther on the scale. I'm not really under any illusion that the German's colonial empire wasn't bad, but again, relative. Their colonial empire was much smaller and had less opportunity to jackboot the natives so by a question of simple quantity theirs was less evil. The Entente's empires on the other hand covered a significant portion of the globe and oppressed and exploited millions more. The Russians don't need any explanation, and I doubt I have to recount their Russification policies or the history of anti-Semitic pogroms. The British killed millions in India through starvation (unintentional or otherwise), and they were just done putting Boers in concentration camps before WW1 started, and they'd go on to starve hundreds of thousands of civilians to death during the Great War itself. The French's conduct in their colonies was utterly heinous, and they were regularly angling for a military confrontation against Germany since 1904-5 (I haven't read Sleepwalkers in a while so I'm unsure on the exact date when their relationship became more confrontational). Their golden boy Serbia was al-Qaeda with a state - where the proto-fascistic ultranationalist Union or Death! (or by its popular name, the Black Hand) had half the government in their pocket, and the other half was sympathetic to them - exporting terrorism into the Ottoman Empire then Austria-Hungary for reasons of naked irredentist expansionism, while they were regularly abusing the minorities in the territories they did conquer in the Balkan Wars.

And you'd be right on the point of A-H. They're not totally clean but they're certainly much less distasteful than pretty much everyone else. Transleithania was still pretty oppressive owing to the Magyars' policies of forcibily assimilating their minorities while denying them suffrage and representation, but even that policy was slowly changing by 1913 and 1914. Cisleithania on the other hand was expanding civil rights to their minorities, had already instituted universal suffrage (something even Britain hadn't done yet). Their economy was booming and prospects were fairly optimistic for everyone involved, and even the radical nationalists didn't even want independence, but reform which was slowly being instituted step by step. Shit, their administration of Bosnia was actually unequivocally a net good.

Again, all ultimately relative. Everyone did really shitty things during the war (British food blockade and the CP occupation of Serbia comes to mind as the worst examples, and the Armenian Genocide which is why I have to excise the Ottomans from my statement), the Entente just managed to edge them out prior and the only real reason we're not more critical of them is because the historical narratives favour them, from the Fischer thesis which is only now going out of the market, Ottoman decline thesis, the black legend of Austria-Hungary being some kind of prison of peoples, etc.

(Source for all of the above are Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clarke, Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I by Alexander Watson, The Deluge by Adam Tooze, Castles of Steel by Robert K. Massey and The Habsburg Empire by Pieter M. Judson)



Ah, so it was just bait. Carry on then.
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I consider the dissolution of Austria-Hungary a good thing, but the Treaty of Trianon was unfair to Hungary. Hungary ought to at least have kept southern Slovakia and the Hungarian triangle in Vojvodina. The Hungarians, Poles, Czechoslovaks and Yugoslavs deserved full independence from Austria.

Concerning the other outcomes of WW1. Russia ought to have defeated the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East and annexed Kurdistan and Western Armenia (I like the Ottoman Empire, but a Russian conquest of Kurdistan would have prevented Iraqi rule in South Kurdistan, and a Russian conquest of Western Armenia would have prevented the Armenian Genocide). Russia ought to have made a compromise separate peace with Germany, in which Russia granted Congress Poland independence and kept the rest of its territory.
 
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Arthur Frayn said:
Sure, but the occupation/re-building certainly could have gone better. Not half-assing the trials of the military leaders, for one, or forcing Hirohito to step down in favor of one of his brothers. I mean, if you ask me Chichibu should've been fucking executed for being buddy buddy with Unit 731 (the man enjoyed watching live vivisection's) and the Kwangtung Army, but Nobuhito would've been a good choice.
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as Azadi pointed out, the current Emperor of Japan was in fact alive at the time a six year regency for a 12 year old emperor would be nothing in a modern country.
 
Going by Japanese history emperors resigning in favor of a younger emperor isn't exactly something that would have been unheard in Japanese history, at least 62 out of the 125 emperors and empresses that japan had resigned with the last being in 1817, well at least until Akihito resigns in April.

I imagine the only real change other than any possible charges is they likely would have insured that Hirohito unlike previous resigned emperors had no power at all.
 
Alane1 said:
Going by Japanese history emperors resigning in favor of a younger emperor isn't exactly something that would have been unheard in Japanese history, at least 62 out of the 125 emperors and empresses that japan had resigned with the last being in 1817, well at least until Akihito resigns in April.

I imagine the only real change other than any possible charges is they likely would have insured that Hirohito unlike previous resigned emperors had no power at all.
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I think you know, but just to clarify for the rest of the audience, resigning was in fact the next stage of political power, and most of those 'resigned' Emperors maintained as much or even *more* power than they did before they resigned. It became this other stage of things. You're the prince, you're the Emperor with your father being the Retired Emperor in Charge, he dies, you have kids, you 'resign' they become Emperor.

The Tokugawa Shoguns did the same thing, too.
 
The Laurent said:
I think you know, but just to clarify for the rest of the audience, resigning was in fact the next stage of political power, and most of those 'resigned' Emperors maintained as much or even *more* power than they did before they resigned. It became this other stage of things. You're the prince, you're the Emperor with your father being the Retired Emperor in Charge, he dies, you have kids, you 'resign' they become Emperor.

The Tokugawa Shoguns did the same thing, too.
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Yeah. The various layers of de facto and de jure power in Japanese history could get wild.
 
Feudal and Imperial Japan's politics and power can best be described as unusually complex, and unusually fascinating. It's something I adore studying. Politics gets fun when you add more complexity to it.
 
Silvrose said:
Feudal and Imperial Japan's politics and power can best be described as unusually complex, and unusually fascinating. It's something I adore studying. Politics gets fun when you add more complexity to it.
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Exactly!

The amount of interesting in a given conflict is always dependent on how many different factions with different goals get involved!
 
Well it kinda depends on what you're looking for. IMO, Japanese history is more interesting than Chinese history for the same reason Greek history is more interesting than Persian history: Big empires are boring :p

...which, I suppose, qualifies for this thread!
 
Well, if we want to escalate: Greece is only considered civilized despite being barbarians only because they were annexed by an even more barbaric Romanss.
 
Sumeragi said:
Well, if we want to escalate: Greece is only considered civilized despite being barbarians only because they were annexed by an even more barbaric Romanss.
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Wasn't it also a little bit that the Romans were massive hella-boos? As I understand it, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony both claimed to be the successor of Alexander, and there was the whole Aenied thing.
 
Susano said:
*ehem*

It weren't the Celts who overrun the Roman Empire in the Migrations Period and created all the states that became the direct predecessors of the modern European countries - hence, in a sense, founding modern Europe :p
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Curse you Germans! You guys always overrun the rest of Europe!
 
Susano said:
Germanics. Germany wouldn't come to be for another 300-500 years :p But yeah, those guys. The Germanic tribes, not the Celtic ones :p
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if I said Germanics i'd have to acknowledge the bastard spawn of Franks, Nordics, and Anglo-Sadons, that is the English. I'd rather not acknowledge that monstrosity. Even if like a third of my ancestry is English.

Edit: /s just to be safe.
 
The real pity is that McArthur didn't die with his command. Fuck that guy. He was a selfish sexual abuser who deserves very little of the respect he gets.

The fact the Kimmel and not MacArthur was the one tossed out as a bad officer after being surprise-attacked is gross miscarriage of justice. The admiral legitimately got no solid warning until it was too late. The general had 7 hours to work with after recovering explicit warning and still managed to get his air assets destroyed on the ground.
 
Susano said:
Well it kinda depends on what you're looking for. IMO, Japanese history is more interesting than Chinese history for the same reason Greek history is more interesting than Persian history: Big empires are boring :p

...which, I suppose, qualifies for this thread!
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This makes me sad. I consider Persian history far more interesting than Greek history. The pre-Islamic Iranic empires and ancient Israel as described in the Tanakh are the most interesting ancient civilizations.
 
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The HRE is a more interesting entity to study than Rome of antiquity.
 
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