Violence Against Civilians
Be aware that some of the readings contain warnings (written in red), as some parts describe sexual
violence; you may skip over these parts.
Directions: Get out a separate sheet of paper and title it Violence Against Civilians (you may type this
assignment, only if you have it printed for the due date).You will read 2 articles and answer the
question(s) associated with the article, using complete sentences. After reading the 2 articles, answer the
“General Discussion Question(s)” at the bottom of this page.
Table of Contents for this Document
1. Article 1: Article 1: Excerpts from: 'Less Than Human': The Psychology Of Cruelty
2. Article 2: Case Study--The Rape of Nanking
3. General Discussion Questions
Article 1: Excerpts from: 'Less Than Human': The Psychology Of Cruelty
In the following article, author David Livingstone Smith describes the process of dehumanization--what makes
people appear to others as less than human. This process begins with language (or word choices), specifically
non-human labels. The people being targeted are then thought of as non human creatures because of these non-human
labels. Finally, those being targeted are seen as less than human, undeserving of life. Ultimately, when the
government utilizes the process of dehumanization, average civilians and soldiers then think it is ok to
use significant violence against the targeted people.
Answer the following questions on your separate sheet of paper. You do not need to write the question.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
What types of names and/or labels do governments use to dehumanize the “other” or enemy?
List 2 examples of dehumanization of targeted/minority groups outside of WWII.
Why is the act of dehumanization more than just a comparison?
How did the Russian propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg describe German soldiers?
When you think of animals/insects--like lice or rats--how does that make you feel? What types of
emotions does it evoke?
During the Holocaust, Nazis referred to Jews as rats. Hutus involved in the Rwanda genocide called Tutsis
cockroaches. Slave owners throughout history considered slaves subhuman animals. We all know, despite
what we see in the movies," Smith tells NPR's Neal Conan, "that it's very difficult, psychologically, to kill
another human being up close and in cold blood, or to inflict atrocities on them." So, when it does happen, it
can be helpful to understand what it is that allows human beings "to overcome the very deep and natural
inhibitions they have against treating other people like game animals or vermin or dangerous predators."
Rolling Stone recently published photos online of American troops posing with dead Afghans, connected to
ongoing court-martial cases of soldiers at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. In addition to
posing with the corpses, "these soldiers — called the 'kill team' — also took body parts as trophies," Smith
alleges, "which is very often a phenomenon that accompanies the form of dehumanization in which the
enemy is seen as game."But this is just the latest iteration in a pattern that has unfolded time and again over
the course of history. In ancient Chinese, Egyptian and Mesopotamian literature, Smith found repeated
references to enemies as subhuman creatures. But it's not as simple as a comparison. "When people
dehumanize others, they actually conceive of them as subhuman creatures," says Smith. Only then can the
process "liberate aggression and exclude the target of aggression from the moral community (become
violent towards and exclude them from society)." In the 18th century, white Europeans — the architects of the
theory — "modestly placed themselves at the very pinnacle (the top)." The lower edges (bottom) of the
category merged with the apes, according to their thinking. So "sub-Saharan Africans and Native
Americans were [at the bottom] of the human category," when they were even granted human status. Mostly,
they were seen as "soulless animals." And that dramatic dehumanization made it possible for great atrocities
to take place.
More than seventy million people died in the war, most of them civilians. Millions died in combat. Many
were burned alive by incendiary bombs and, in the end, nuclear weapons. Millions more were victims of
systematic genocide. Dehumanization made much of this carnage possible.
... Thinking sets the agenda for action, and thinking of humans as less than human paves the way for
atrocity. The Nazis were explicit about the status of their victims. They were Untermenschen — subhumans
— and as such were excluded from the system of moral rights and obligations that bind humankind together.
It's wrong to kill a person, but permissible to exterminate a rat. To the Nazis, all the Jews, Gypsies and
others were rats: dangerous, disease-carrying rats.
Jews were the main victims of this genocidal project. From the beginning, Hitler and his followers were
convinced that the Jewish people posed a deadly threat to all that was noble in humanity. In the
apocalyptic Nazi vision, these putative enemies of civilization were represented as parasitic organisms —
as leeches, lice, bacteria, or vectors of contagion. "Today," Hitler proclaimed in 1943, "international Jewry
is the ferment of decomposition of peoples and states, just as it was in antiquity. It will remain that way as
long as people do not find the strength to get rid of the virus." Both the death camps (the gas chambers of
which were modeled on delousing chambers) and the Einsatzgruppen (paramilitary death squads that roamed
across Eastern Europe followed in the wake of the advancing German army) were responses to what the
Nazis perceived to be a lethal pestilence. What's most disturbing about the Nazi phenomenon is not that
the Nazis were madmen or monsters. It's that they were ordinary human beings.
When we think of dehumanization during World War II our minds turn to the Holocaust, but it wasn't only
the Germans who dehumanized their enemies. While the architects of the Final Solution were busy
implementing their lethal program of racial hygiene, the Russian-Jewish poet and novelist Ilya Ehrenburg
was churning out propaganda for distribution to Stalin's Red Army. These pamphlets seethed with
dehumanizing rhetoric: they spoke of "the smell of Germany's animal breath," and described Germans as
"two-legged animals who have mastered the technique of war" — "ersatz men" who ought to be
annihilated. "The Germans are not human beings," Ehrenburg wrote, "... If you kill one German, kill
another — there is nothing more amusing for us than a heap of German corpses."
CAUTION! The following paragraph discusses sexual violence. If you are sensitive to this subject, you
may skip the below paragraph and move on to the Case Study: The Rape of Nanking.
East [Germany] was the first German region [invaded] by the Red Army ... In the course of a single night the
red army killed seventy-two women and one man. Most of the women had been raped, of whom the oldest
was eighty-four. Some of the victims had been crucified ... A witness who made it to the west talked of a poor
village girl who was raped by an entire tank squadron from eight in the evening to nine in the morning. One
man was shot and fed to the pigs.
Full article located here: https://www.npr.org/2011/03/29/134956180/criminals-see-their-victims-as-less-than-human.
Article 2: Case Study--The Rape of Nanking
From World War I to World War II, Japan began to increase its desire to become an Imperial world power.
Japan’s desire to conquer other regions heightened during World War II, as Japan became increasingly
militaristic. This increased militarism is marked by an emphasis on military control, conquest and
glorification of the military. To ensure the Japanese population supported the military’s invasion of other
regions, the Japanese government often dehumanized captured soldiers and civilians. The dehumanization of
the civilians justified, to once ordinary soldiers, brutal acts of murder and violence.
Answer the following questions on your separate sheet of paper. You do not need to write the question.
1. What percentage of the population of Nanking had been killed?
2. Why did Japanese soldiers look down upon Chinese soldiers?
3. Describe the way the Japanese press reported on the Rape of Nanking.
In December of 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army marched into China's capital city of Nanking and
proceeded to murder 300,000 out of 600,000 civilians and soldiers in the city. The six weeks of carnage
would become known as the Rape of Nanking and represented the single worst atrocity during the World War
II era in either the European or Pacific theaters of war.
After finally defeating the Chinese at Shanghai in November, 50,000 Japanese soldiers then marched on
toward Nanking. Unlike the troops at Shanghai, Chinese soldiers at Nanking were poorly led and loosely
organized. Although they greatly outnumbered the Japanese and had plenty of ammunition, they withered
under the ferocity of the Japanese attack, then engaged in a chaotic retreat. After just four days of fighting,
Japanese troops smashed into the city on December 13, 1937, with orders issued to "kill all captives."
Their first concern was to eliminate any threat from the 90,000 Chinese soldiers who surrendered. To the
Japanese, surrender was an unthinkable act of cowardice and the ultimate violation of the rigid code of
military honor drilled into them from childhood onward. Thus they looked upon Chinese POWs
(prisoners of war) with utter contempt, viewing them as less than human, unworthy of life.
The elimination of the Chinese POWs began after they were transported by trucks to remote locations on the
outskirts of Nanking. As soon as they were assembled, the savagery began, with young Japanese soldiers
encouraged by their superiors to inflict maximum pain and suffering upon individual POWs as a way
of toughening themselves up for future battles, and also to eradicate any civilized notions of mercy.
Filmed footage and still photographs taken by the Japanese themselves document the brutality. Smiling
soldiers can be seen conducting bayonet practice on live prisoners, decapitating them and displaying
severed heads as souvenirs, and proudly standing among mutilated corpses. Some of the Chinese POWs
were simply mowed down by machine-gun fire while others were tied-up, soaked with gasoline and
burned alive.
CAUTION! The following paragraph discusses sexual violence. If you are sensitive to this subject, you
may skip the below paragraph till you see “YOU CAN CONTINUE READING HERE (BELOW).”
After the destruction of the POWs, the soldiers turned their attention to the women of Nanking and an
outright animalistic hunt ensued. Old women over the age of 70 as well as little girls under the age of 8 were
dragged off to be sexually abused. More than 20,000 females (with some estimates as high as 80,000) were
gang-raped by Japanese soldiers, then stabbed to death with bayonets or shot so they could never bear
witness. Pregnant women were not spared. In several instances, they were raped, then had their bellies slit
open and the fetuses torn out. Sometimes, after storming into a house and encountering a whole family, the
Japanese forced Chinese men to rape their own daughters, sons to rape their mothers, and brothers their
sisters, while the rest of the family was made to watch.
YOU CAN CONTINUE READING HERE (BELOW).
News reports of the happenings in Nanking appeared in the official Japanese press and also in the West, as
page-one reports in newspapers such as the New York Times. Japanese news reports reflected the
militaristic mood of the country in which any victory by the Imperial Army resulting in further
expansion of the Japanese empire was celebrated. Eyewitness reports by Japanese military
correspondents concerning the sufferings of the people of Nanking also appeared. They reflected a
mentality in which the brutal dominance of subjugated or so-called inferior peoples was considered
just. Incredibly, one paper, the Japan Advertiser, actually published a running count of the heads
severed by two officers involved in a decapitation contest, as if it was some kind of a sporting match.
Back in Nanking, however, all was not lost. An extraordinary group of about 20 Americans and Europeans
remaining in the city, composed of missionaries, doctors and businessmen, took it upon themselves to
establish an International Safety Zone. Using Red Cross flags, they brazenly declared a 2.5 square-mile area
in the middle of the city off limits to the Japanese. On numerous occasions, they also risked their lives by
personally intervening to prevent the execution of Chinese men or the rape of women and young girls.
These Westerners became the unsung heroes of Nanking, working day and night to the point of exhaustion to
aid the Chinese. They also wrote down their impressions of the daily scenes they witnessed, with one
describing Nanking as "hell on earth." Another wrote of the Japanese soldiers: "I did not imagine that such
cruel people existed in the modern world." About 300,000 Chinese civilians took refuge inside their Safety
Zone. Almost all of the people who did not make it into the Zone during the Rape of Nanking ultimately
perished.
Full article located here: https://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/nanking.htm
General Discussion Questions
Choose 1 of the following questions to answer on your separate sheet of paper.
1. Why do you think governments (from totalitarian to democratic) commit war crimes or crimes
against humanity? (3 sentences minimum)
2. What makes soldiers and normal people willing to commit such horrendous acts of violence? (3
sentences minimum)
3. How would you characterize/describe the process of dehumanization in your own words? (3
sentences minimum)