The myth of Japanese cruelty

Reading The Devil of Nanking, by Mo Hayder.

The Rape of Nanking is the worst the Japanese are accused of in some 12 years  of war.

Three or four hundred thousand civilians killed by an army gone wild in one city in December, 1937.

But compare that to Germany's worst in 6 years of war.

The final solution. Auschwitz. Six million dead.

Still, while the final solution is the most frightful cruelty of the war, over all, the Rape of Nanking (some 200 thousand women raped, and most killed, for a total of about 300 thousand killed) might be the worst of its kind.

But maybe not.

The infamy of Guernica has survived through nearly a century, now, of much more awful aerial slaughter.

Dresden, say.

Or the Doolittle air raids.

Or Hiroshima.