ABSTRACT
The Allied occupation of Germany and Japan took place in the aftermath of the most devastating war in history. The Allies divided Germany into four zones with Britain, France, and the US controlling two thirds of Germany, and the Soviet Union in charge of the rest. Occupation policies varied considerably in each zone, though Britain, France, and the US worked to denazify their zones with any eye toward creating a viable democracy in what would become West Germany. Stalin followed a different path in East Germany, seeing it as a cornerstone of his efforts to create a Soviet empire in eastern and central Europe. Yet all of the occupying forces, with the exception of France, adopted aggressive efforts in bringing German war criminals to justice, which laid the groundwork for Germany’s efforts later to deal openly with its horrific war crimes.
The situation in Japan was quite different because the US government, and more importantly Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who had vast authority to transform Japan politically, economically, and socially along American lines, was more concerned about encouraging democracy in Japan as a bulwark against the growing communist threat in East Asia, than the question of Japanese war criminality, and conducted only one major war crimes trial in Japan. This, coupled with the collective Japanese horror over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, saw Japan follow a very different path historically when it came to the question of war guilt.
