ABSTRACT
The ‘‘Holocaust’’ is the term that is usually used to describe the persecution
and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators
between 1939 and 1945. In fact, the very dating of the Holocaust is open to
debate. Were one to agree with those Functionalist historians who argue that the decision to kill the Jews of Europe was reached in stages and was
not intended from the beginning, then one could make out a good case for
the Holocaust beginning in 1941. On the other hand, if one accepts the
argument of the Intentionalists, that Hitler planned from the very beginning
of his reign the destruction of Europe’s Jews and that he just waited for
favorable circumstances in which to implement his intention of finally sol-
ving the problem of Europe’s Jewish population, then one could date the
Holocaust from 1933, if not earlier. Although there was no Japanese equivalent to the ‘‘final solution’’ for the Chinese people, Japanese policies
of persecution were the result of planned and systematic decisions taken
over a period of time. The Japanese government intended to wipe out
everyone in certain regions of China. One example of this was the ‘‘three-
all’’ policy (loot all, kill all, burn all) practiced in Northern China, where
Communist Chinese guerrillas had fought the Japanese furiously and effec-
tively. Japan had entered China as a result of the September 18 Incident in
1931, and did not stop its incursion until the US dropped the atomic bombs on Japanese soil in August 1945. About 30 million Chinese people died as a
direct result of Japanese action during the Japanese occupation. The Nanj-
ing Massacre is the most noted historic example of Japanese crimes against
humanity.
