Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure! Japanese people are human and the base morality that evolution has endowed us with. This divides humanity into two groups, in group and out group. Morality only applies to the in group. It takes a lot of acculturation and education to expand an individual's conception of the in group is, from family/tribe to nation/culture to humanity. As such, any sub-culture that can take over the public sphere of a culture w…
Thats a very simplistic and in the end not really satisfactory explanation. After all not every conflict ends in genocide and Ausschwitz. And as evil as it is when women are raped by soldiers in war, normally they are not tortured to death and their genitals mutilated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre
a) Not only allowed by authority figures (Soviet officers) but also heavily promoted by propoganda coming out of Russia via pamphlets saying to show no mercy
b) Done by soldiers who faught for months/years in some of the bloodiest and most zero-sum fighting in the entire war, as the soviets fought their way to Berlin against Germans who were given an obvious suicide mission - to buy as much time as possible for Htiler futile end-game strategies. The Russians also passed many Ukranian/Belorussian towns that were ravaged by Germans.
c) There was basically total anarchy that existed in that area between Russia and Germany. It existed well before the Russians arrived. This stateless anarchy was largely how the Nazis were able to conduct their genocide so effectively and without worrying about punishment.
So this is the same enviornment that the Russians commited their horrible mass rape of German citizens.
China was similarily going through their own anarchistic transition with the battle between communisits (Mao) and nationalists (Chiang Kai-shek) taking place in the power-vacuum. So the pesants who were caught in between existed in a similar brutal enviornment as in eastern europe/Germany and a similar war-ravaged army with a superiority complex operating in an anarchistic state.
Although whether Russia/Japan military were special in their brutality, even in a greater historical context, it's hard to say. There were definately some differences between the Japanese empire/early Soviet Union compared to the west that stand out even today, in terms of harshness of the military towards their opponents/civilians - which may make it stand out.
While many people will say "but the Nazi's were evil too"... the abuse of civilians by Germans was largely kept hidden from their military. The secret police would only come in after the military left an area and it was kept as much a secret from them as possible.
