The soldier quoted here could only arrive at this sort of conclusion if he valued bravery and persistence in battle as well as military success. Moreover, conversations about the shameful conditions in their own army, including cowardice among their commanders and corruption, suggest that many Italian soldiers regarded such deficiencies as deviations from what should have been the military norm.745 When Italian soldiers were well equipped and competently led, they also showed signs of being willing to fight bravely.
Nonetheless, men like Field Marshal Giovanni Messe had no desire for camaraderie with German detainees in his British POW camp. On the contrary, he maintained that Italians were completely incompatible with their German allies. In so doing, he arrived at a flattering explanation for Italian military failings: “They [the Germans] haven’t got [a soul]. We are generous, and in reality we are incapable of hatred. Our mentality is like that, that is why I have always maintained that we are not a warlike people. A warlike people knows how to hate.”746
By any standards, the Japanese were more soldierly and oriented toward traditional military virtues than the Italians. The most important Japanese military codes of behavior—the Gunjin Chokuyu, Senjinkun, and Bushido—formed a unique frame of reference that required soldiers to demonstrate loyalty, bravery, daring, and, above all, absolute obedience. Retreat was forbidden, and soldiers were never supposed to surrender. These values were also effective in practice because they were based on the deeply rooted conviction in Japanese society that any sort of imprisonment was dishonorable. Being taken captive brought shame not only on oneself, but one’s family as well. For this reason, countless Japanese soldiers preferred to commit suicide rather than fall into enemy hands. As an American GI wrote from New Guinea in 1944, the Japanese ethos was to achieve victory or die trying, so that Japanese troops were incapable of giving up or allowing themselves to be taken prisoner.747 In the years up until March 1945, American troops succeeded in capturing only around 12,000 Japanese POWs—a tiny number compared to the millions of soldiers in European internment camps.748
Such facts alone hardly provide a differentiated picture of Japanese soldiers’ frame of reference. Interrogation protocols and war diaries show that Japanese soldiers’ will to survive was in fact sometimes more powerful than their sense of cultural duty. In addition, the American practice of not taking Japanese POWs meant that fear of being killed or tortured by the Americans created a fear of capitulation. The shame of capitulation alone, according to historian Hirofumi Hayashi, would not have prevented Japanese soldiers from laying down their arms, had they not been convinced they would have been killed or tortured if they did so.749 Even in the relatively early phase of the war, fall and winter 1942, the Battle of Guadalcanal had shown that the Japanese weren’t always willing to charge to their deaths, weapons drawn. Mostly, situational factors were what prevented Japanese soldiers from capitulating.
Moreover, interrogations of POWs in Burma suggested that behind their facade of discipline and obedience, Japanese soldiers thought about the same sorts of issues as their German allies at the time. Among the major points of reflection were the rapidly worsening course of the war in 1944 and ’45, the diminishing respect enjoyed by the military leadership, insufficient supplies, and the disappointing performance of the Japanese air force. Other parallels were the tendency of Japanese soldiers to be apolitical and the comparatively high morale and confidence in the navy versus the army. As was the case with the Wehrmacht, this may have been down to the fact that navy men experienced a different sort of war than ground troops.
A comparison between German, Italian, and Japanese soldiers shows that cultural factors had significant influence on their respective frames of reference. What from the Japanese perspective was a model soldier was an idiot for Italians and a partly admired, partly despised fanatic for Germans.
