In the past hundred years, the cruelty of the Japanese army on Chinese soil has been witnessed by all and is unforgettable. In fact, the atrocities committed by the Japanese army in the wartime were not only directed at the Chinese, but the local people were devastated wherever they reached, even if they were as powerful as the United States and the Soviet Union, their soldiers and civilians were also subjected to the massacre and biochemical experiments of the Japanese army, such as the Bataan March, which is the ironclad evidence of the Japanese army's evil.
However, there are exceptions to everything. Under the violent nature of the Japanese army, there are still special cases.
A hundred years ago, the Japanese army had captured an army of nearly five thousand European powers through a difficult war. According to the usual case, the Japanese army paid such a huge price, and the prisoners of war of this army may not be able to escape the clutches of the Japanese army. However, this time, the Japanese army not only did not poison them, but also fed them with good food and drink, and even paid them wages.
Could it be that the Japanese army's conscience found out about this? Or is it that there must be a demon when things go wrong? To explore the reasons for this, we need to start from the aftermath of the Sino-Japanese War.
Pictured: Map of the signing of the Treaty of Maguan
At that time, the European and American powers burned and plundered on Chinese soil, each delineated its own sphere of influence, and divided the Chinese market cleanly. It was not long before Japan received reparations from China for the Treaty of Maguan, and during the partition of the great powers, they focused their main energy on digesting this money and dealing with Russia.
When Japan completely counterattacked through the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, it became the only great power in Asia. So it planned to set foot in China and divide Up China's power, but when it looked back, it found that China's interests had been divided up. So it lacks an opportunity to intervene in China at this time.
But it has to be said that Japan in the early 20th century was really lucky, just when it wanted to get a piece of China's interests, Germany actually joined forces with Austria-Hungary and Russia to challenge the world order built by Britain and France and other countries - on July 28, 1914, the Outbreak of World War I, the European countries were in chaos.
At this point, Japan was happy, because the European countries were busy fighting wars and had more than enough influence on China, so Japan could begin to "pry the corners" against them. At this time, Germany's power in China was mainly in the Shandong region, and Japan had won China's northeast and Taiwan through two crucial wars before, so it was trying to intervene in Shandong, which could be described as dry wood against the fire. As a result, Shandong became the only Far Eastern battlefield in World War I.
Of course, it was not so easy for the Japanese army to capture Shandong, after all, the German army at that time was no better than the decaying Qing army and the Russian army before, whether they were military strength or military philosophy, they were the top presence in the world at that time. Moreover, the German army also operated in the Shandong region for many years, building a large number of deep and hierarchical fortresses here, and also had high-lethal weapons such as coastal guns and Maxim heavy machine guns.
Therefore, Japan did not dare to neglect the German army, so it dispatched a total of 45,000 troops from the navy and the army (Japan did not have an air force during World War I). Although Germany was strongly defended in Shandong, its total strength at that time was only 5,050 people, and the Japanese army was almost ten times the strength.
In the end, even though the Germans were able to resist for two months with their strong fortifications and superb military qualities, they eventually lost out on a numerical disadvantage. After more than 300 dead, they raised their white flags to the Japanese.
Surprisingly, after this battle, the Japanese army gave unprecedented preferential treatment to these 4,700 prisoners of war.
First, they were examined every week by the German prisoners of war, and in order to worry about their health, they were only allowed to engage in mild labor. Secondly, Japan also abided by the provisions of the Hague Convention and paid monthly salaries to these Japanese troops in accordance with the standards of its own national army. You know, at that time, the salaries of the Japanese army far exceeded that of the ordinary Japanese masses, so the German prisoners still had a fairly good life in Japan. Third, the Living Conditions of the Germans were quite good, with football pitches, sports playgrounds, opera stages and so on.
Why, then, did the Japanese give such preferential treatment to this group of prisoners of war who had no effect on their country?
We know that Japan has always had a tradition of respecting the strong, for example, during the Tang Dynasty, after Japan discovered the strength of the Tang Dynasty, it comprehensively studied the advanced culture of the Tang Dynasty; and in modern times, after the Meiji Restoration, Japan believed that the West was the representative of advanced civilization, and Asia was only a barbaric region without enlightenment, so they were eager to get rid of their identity as "barbarians" and leave Asia and enter Europe.
Although the Japanese had proved their military strength through the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, their own progress had learned from the West, so in the deep-rooted thinking of the great powers, they did not have much change in Japan. Therefore, Japan wanted to prove to the West that they were also representatives of civilization through the preferential treatment of these prisoners of war, so as to achieve their ideological equality with the West. Yet they don't know that their ideas have made them inferior.
In fact, no matter how they change, they are always two-legged beasts, even if they can deceive everyone for a while, but they can't fool everyone forever. Their brutal acts such as the Lushun Massacre and the Nanjing Massacre on the land of China are enough to prove that they are barbaric and backward two-legged beasts in their bones. The word civilization was still a distant term for Japan at that time.