Mark Felton produces some of the most informative videos about military history that can be found anywhere. I suspect though, that even he harbors some biased sentiments. I left a comment under one of his most recent productions, which I encourage everyone to view, even if some biases slip out here and there.

“I’m not sure that the atrocities committed by the Japanese in China and WW2 are all that remarkable a phenomenon in Asian warfare. During the Korean War, the Communist Chinese enjoyed tormenting POWS, and the Communist Vietnamese did the same or worse in Indochina. When China was a patchwork of feuding warlords, little mercy was extended toward any Chinese taken prisoner. When in Japan a frog disemboweled alive is considered a delicacy, or it is accepted practice among Chinese to torture a dog, to improve its flavor at the dinner table, I think more than the confluence of historical trends is responsible for what the West and China witnessed in Asia: there is an inborn cruelty, which is stronger than the inborn cruelty of Europeans. Lastly, I would like to point out that your narrative in this case seems to lay fault for the foundations of Japanese cruelty, at the feet of the Germans. That may as well be part of the script for “Inglorious Bastards”, as a way to justify the characters’ merciless brutality toward Germans, whatever uniform they are wearing – just Hollywood’s way of dehumanizing the Germans who still live today – but if they do it, it ain’t racist, is it?”

Mr. Cloutier is the author of Mussolini’s War in Spain 1936-1939. Italian Intervention in the Spanish Civil War.