Atrocious Acts Committed by the “Good Guys”

As the old saying goes, history is written by the winners. That’s as true today as ever. Despite the fact that the media has been much more comprehensive in the past 100 years or so, many people are unaware of abuses committed by the groups that most people consider to be the “good guys.” Much time is spent on propaganda to make your own side seem as nice as possible — highlighting the good and covering up, or minimizing, the bad. However, despite their best attempts, the countries that are often seen as the good side of the conflict do many things that are beyond what most would consider acceptable in order to achieve victory — or just because they want to.

The Bodo League Massacre Saw South Korea Murder Countless Suspected Communists

Many people wonder why the North Koreans have such a feisty relationship with the South Koreans to this day… apart from the fact that they are both still technically at war with each other. After all, these days South Korea seems like a very nice country that has all of its business together and takes good care of its citizens. At least compared to their neighbors to the North, the South Koreans are seen as a model country by most of the world. However, back during the days leading up to (and into) the Korean War, things got increasingly brutal in a desperate bid to stop the advance of Kim Il-sung from the North.

In the days leading up to the start of the Korean War, the fear of communism was on the rise. The South Korean government had about 300,000 people enrolled in the so-called Bodo League — they were basically being registered as suspected communists or communist sympathizers. In 1950, during the Korean War, countless Bodo League members who had been imprisoned were executed rather than left behind to potentially join the enemy. To make matters worse, many civilians in multiple villages were killed for being Bodo League members; again, for fear they’d throw their lot in with the North Koreans.

For several decades, the South Korean government did their best to cover the whole thing up and make it look like it had all been done by the communists in the first place. Unfortunately, due to the cover-up, the total death toll may never be known. Some estimate that the death toll could have been in the 100,000-to-200,000 range, while others put the number considerably lower. Regardless of the final death count, there is also knowledge that the United States military leadership was aware of the massacres, and at the very least, was fully complicit in the South Koreans’ actions.

The United States Mercilessly Firebombed North Korea During The Korean War

The North Koreans hate the United States with a blazing passion that many in this country can only understand as a level of propaganda well beyond the norm. However, while the North Koreans do make use of a staggering amount of national brainwashing and propaganda, they actually have very, very good reason to hate the United States of America. To begin with (and keep in mind that the United States is allied with the South), the Korean War went into a ceasefire but never officially ended (though both sides are closer than they’ve ever been to doing so). That means that the US is still their enemy. Worse, however, is that America’s actions during the war were far worse than the Bodo League Massacre.

Fresh off bombing every living thing on the island of Japan, General Curtis LeMay — in charge of the bombing campaign of North Korea — wanted to get this done as quickly and efficiently as possible, using the same methods he used to such brutal effect in Japan during World War II. He decided to just bomb every bit of infrastructure he could, especially civilian towns or installations, and used firebombing on a regular basis. The North Koreans didn’t have the kind of anti-air capabilities that Japan had, so they were largely helpless to defend themselves from this kind of sustained bombing campaign. Many, many years later when there was no real chance of him being punished for his actions, LeMay casually bragged that we had probably killed about 20% of the North Korean population.

The United States Forced Interned Japanese To Stand And Salute The Flag

One of the things the United States really, really hates for you to mention is the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. While it is something well known at this point, many of the worst abuses are still not talked about much in history class and most people know little about it if they are not of Japanese American ancestry. While we won’t get into all of the abuses here, the irony is that most of the people interned didn’t have the kind of recent enough connection to Japan to have any chance of turning spy for the enemy.

If that wasn’t silly enough, adults and (especially) children were still expected, despite being forced into camps, to say the pledge of allegiance before the American flag each morning. It’s a tragic bit of irony that this was happening at the same time that the United States was fighting for those being unfairly treated and denied freedom in other parts of the world. It also calls into question the reasoning behind the practice of forced patriotism. If you’re forcing loyalty, how can you even be sure it’s genuine? In the end, it was a dark and bitter period in American history, with so many loyal Japanese Americans having their lives ripped out from under them while simultaneously being forced to show loyalty to the very people, and patriotism for the country, that put them into the camps to begin with.

At The End Of World War II, A Huge Portion Of Eastern Europe Was Ceded To Stalin

For those who weren’t aware of this issue, it’s actually quite a big deal in some parts of Europe and is often referred to as “Western Betrayal.” The claim is that, in the lead up to World War II and the days following, the West did not fulfill their obligations to Eastern Europe, and pretty much gave them up to others to gain their own safety. For starters, the first argument is that the United Kingdom and Europe at large had a moral and legal obligation to protect Poland when Germany first invaded, and failed to properly fulfill their part of that bargain.

The term is also used to refer to how the United Kingdom and the United States basically just ceded a huge portion of Eastern Europe to Stalin, and consigned many countries to decades of horrific Soviet rule. At several meetings with Stalin, especially the Yalta conference, the Allies — especially the United States — gave away most of Eastern Europe to Stalin without any real fight, diplomatic or otherwise. Churchill was so alarmed, especially by how much Franklin Roosevelt gave up, that he wrote his famous speech about the Iron Curtain and penned a plan called “Operation Unthinkable,” which consisted of a plan to go to war directly with the Soviets and stop them as quickly as possible. Many in Eastern Europe will never forget that the Allies allowed Stalin to have much of what he wanted with little real argument, so they could have their own comfortable peace and security.

The US Interned And Enslaved German Civilians In Old Concentration Camps

History is written by the victors, and the West won World War II with a lot of help from Russia, so the West has written a rather rosy version of its part in the war. However, the United States and the other Allies have a lot to answer for when it comes to their postwar behavior. Far from acting like wonderful liberators who cared deeply about the rest of the world, they went about acting as ruthless conquerors who only wanted to punish and control. Tens of millions of ethnic Germans were forcibly migrated back to the ruins of the former Third Reich, even though they had done nothing wrong and were simply civilians living their lives. Hundreds of thousands are believed to have died due to this migration.

To make matters worse, the Allies used many German civilians as slave labor in order to make the German people pay for what had happened in World War II. They kept many of these Germans in former concentration camps throughout the once proud Nazi Empire, and while some try to justify this sort of action, most simply try to sweep it under the rug because of the terrible implications it has. Many former Nazi leaders were tried for war crimes at Nuremberg. Simultaneously, the Allies were still committing what could be argued as their own war crimes and not holding others, like Curtis LeMay, responsible for their past atrocities. It’s sad evidence that the victors can easily cover up any awful things they do, and make it hard for it to ever take hold in the minds of future generations just how cruel they could really be.

There Were Reports After World War II Of American Soldiers Raping French Women

The United States likes to boast that they saved everyone during World War II, and that the world should be ever grateful. However, there are many countries that were liberated by the United States who may not necessarily feel that we did such a great job, or that we didn’t already extract more than enough “payment” for our services. One country that probably doesn’t think we were such stand-up guys are the French, a country that has a very, very long history with the USA. In a way, the French are in large part responsible for the very independence that the United States enjoys today, and the United States put a lot of work into liberating France from the Nazis. However, when the French came to help the United States back in the colonial days, they were not known for abusing our citizens, something that we couldn’t help but do to them.

After the invasion of Normandy, reports started to creep in into the hundreds — and there may have been many more unreported — that the French were having a problem with American servicemen raping French women. The French even complained that the rape problem hadn’t been nearly as bad with the Germans. Yikes. After the war ended, there were many American soldiers waiting in France to go home, and some complaints said they were not only raping women, but also basically looting whatever they wanted, while walking around with a swagger that did not make the French feel like they were dealing with their friendly neighborhood liberators. Unfortunately, war brings out the very worst in people, and too many United States soldiers in France during World War II were no exception to this rule.

Many French Citizens Went Vigilante And Humiliatingly Punished Nazi Sympathizing Women

Many French citizens went full vigilante after the war ended and decided to punish those who had collaborated with Nazis. However, instead of going after powerful men who had aided the enemy, they decided to take out their ire on civilian women. Gangs of men would round up women suspected of being former Nazi sympathizers and bring them before a crowd, where their heads would be shaved to mark and humiliate them. In many cases, the women would then be further humiliated by being forced onto an open truck and paraded around to a drumbeat, often being stripped half naked first and either tarred or covered with Nazi imagery to mark them as a collaborator.

While some people may think this was one of the lighter things done to Nazi collaborators, part of the issue is that many of these women did little to nothing wrong at all. A great deal were prostitutes who slept with anyone, German or otherwise, for sheer survival, and may have found their lives in danger if they went around refusing to sleep with German soldiers during the occupation. Many of the young victims were teenagers who hung out with German soldiers because they were bored and didn’t really even understand fully what they were doing. Some had just worked as cleaning ladies at Nazi offices. This awful and ugly display showed how nasty humans can be. Rather than seeking out the true collaborators who caused actual harm, a bunch of angry citizens basically humiliated and punished a bunch of women who, in many cases, simply gave up their bodies in order to survive.

The Ukrainian Canadian Internment And The War Measures Act In World War I Canada

Today, Canada is pretty universally seen as the nicest and most polite country on Earth. Canada loves taking in refugees and helping them become useful Canadian citizens, and is known for being tolerant of anyone of any nationality or religious background. However, Canada has not always been the same place it is today, and has not always been quite so kind. Back during World War I, Canada was at war with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and was so worried about influence of potential “enemy aliens” within their relatively sparsely populated country that they took a very hard line.

There were about 80,000 Ukrainians who had Austro-Hungarian citizenship, and all of them were forced to register with the government. On top of that, almost 9,000 Ukrainians Canadians were actually rounded up and forced into internment camps and were often used for forced labor. As if that wasn’t cruel enough, a large amount of the young men who ended up in these camps had been trying to cross the border into the United States to find work, because they had found it increasingly hard in Canada after registering and looking bad to their fellow citizens. It may sound ridiculous to be arrested for trying to leave, but after being registered, if you were an “enemy alien” you were not allowed to leave until all suspicion was cleared. While the majority were never interned, they still found it very hard to get work, and those who were interned had their money at least temporarily confiscated by the government of Canada.

Hundreds Of Thousands Of Torture Instances By French Military In Algeria

Most in the United States probably haven’t heard about it, but starting back in 1954 and lasting until 1962, Algeria had a war for independence with France. The Algerians were trying to fight their way out of colonial rule, and brutally fought with all they had to gain their independence. As the war dragged on, the Algerians committed countless acts of torture against the French forces. However, instead of trying to stick to the Geneva Convention, the French forces decided to fight fire with fire and went full on torture mode right back at them. They used a rather convenient excuse, claiming that the Algerian National Liberation Front — the group fighting for independence — were simply a group of terrorists and there was no war going on.

As far as France would publicly declare it was only attempting to quell terrorism, so they didn’t need to treat people captured as prisoners of war, or pay attention to any kind of international rules they agreed to about how to treat said prisoners. This atmosphere led to an absolutely horrific amount of abuses, and is something the French dislike being brought up to this day. Some historians estimate that there were hundreds of thousands of instances of torture by the French military against the ANLF during the Algerian War of Independence. If that wasn’t bad enough for the French, despite completely ceding the moral high ground and torturing countless people, the French did not even succeed and Algeria gained its independence.

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