It was certainly understandable during the war years, Backwoodsman, but I find it very sad that people still feel they must keep that sort of hatred burning and alive for many years after a war has been won and is over. It disgusted me as a kid to see my own young generation being taught to hate the Germans and Japanese when most of us had never even met one, and I think it's shameful for any nation to continue its wartime hate propaganda after the war is over. It doesn't help anyone to do that, it just perpetuates something very negative that people should let go of and be done with. It's as if the war didn't teach the older people anything, but just deepened their need for further revenge on nations that were already utterly crushed.

It made me want to learn a lot more about the Germans and Japanese, because I suspected that they were just normal human beings like the rest of us, and I was right about that. They are. Normal human beings tend to do awful things during wars, because they're under incredible pressure from irresponsible leaders and commanders.

Terrible things always happen in war. Atrocities get committed by both sides, but you heard nothing about Allied war crimes in those days. Not a peep. They were still giving us North American kids the same crude, hysterical hate propaganda in the 50s and 60s as if they wanted to recruit us all to go out and kill yet more Germans and Japanese long after the war was already won! I see no point in that at all. It's stupid. It's vengeful. It's unnecessary. And it's arrogant in the extreme.

If I'd been forced to witness the dreadful wartime German and Japanese hate propaganda, I'd have despised it just the same. I despise all that kind of stuff, no matter who is spouting it at the time. People should have enough maturity to respect their enemies on the field of battle (even if they disagree with their political leaders) and recognize their common and shared humanity and respect the danger and horror the "enemy" soldier is facing, just like they are facing themselves..........but if they did have that kind of maturity, well, maybe our politicians couldn't get us to go off to war so easily, could they?

And that applies to the Germans and Japanese too. You need to trick a people into going to war. You trick them by making them hate and fear some other people. Most will fall for it...and then you have your war...and the arms manufacturers get very, very rich.