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this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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chapotraphouse
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I think it was Mao that talked about how much it demoralizes the enemy when their soldiers are treated humanely when captured.
One of the upshots of treating prisoners well and doing exchanges frequently is that all those prisoners you had are gonna tell their friends, and next time you're in an attrition battle it's more likely that they'll just surrender when it even remotely starts looking bad for them.
Wilfred Burchett was a journalist who covered major conflicts during the Japanese nukings and the Cold War. During the Korean and Vietnam Wars, he reported that American POWs were treated very humanely and many of them weren't even shackled, just allowed to roam around outside in the prison yard. He received a bunch of hate and slander for this, but even his detractors stepped in to defend him saying the reports were accurate because the returning POWs confirmed it. Although the US would later accuse a lot of them of being traitors and brainwashed.
The term “brainwashing” was invented to dismiss the accounts of actual POWs in favor of phantom POWs that didn’t/don’t exist who are definitely still being kept prisoner there at 90 years old.
“Stockholm syndrome” was later invented to serve the same purpose.
I saw an interview with a Japanese veteran who was conscripted to fight in the IJA. He was captured by the PLA and he thought he was going to be tortured to death. Instead, the PLA treated him well and he eventually went on to fight for the PLA. After the war, he returned to Japan and spent the rest of his life trying to educate the public about Japanese war crimes and campaigning for peace.
any chance you have the link around or remember his name?
Can't find the link with the interview, but I think it was Hirosumi Kobayashi
Source?
ty
It's interesting how reactionary regimes tend to take the opposite approach. Bad strategy on their part, or do they get some benefit from inflicting torture that revolutionaries don't?
That's for internal consumption. Settlers see what the Zionist occupation does to Palestinians and they're cowed into silence.
The point is to make everyone complicit, so they would support the government out of fear for retribution.
It's a form of dehumanization that makes the soldiers more willing to commit warcrimes. The soldiers who torture Palestinian children will feel less guilt and hesitation bombing hospitals.
For real, the United States made up the concept of brainwashing when American POWs in North Korea said how they were treated humanely.
If im not wrong i think there were even Japanese Defectors who fought for the PLA in the civil war
i mean that's how the Communist Party of Japan was founded