This article is the second half of the WiLL January dialogue “Japan’s War History Research Has Become Siloed.” It exposes the hidden realities of postwar international politics overlooked by orthodox narratives: the Morgenthau Plan and the looting of German wealth, Harry Dexter White’s role, the myth of unconditional surrender, the Stalin–Mao alliance, and the China Hands’ propaganda that distorted U.S. China policy. It further traces how America’s punitive war ideology legitimized total war and links these historical dynamics to the ongoing Ukraine war, analyzing Trump, Putin, NATO, shifting Ukrainian public opinion, and the fate of the Zelensky administration.

Below is the continuation of the previous chapter.
Even plunder of wealth took place.
Watanabe: Hoover warned that if the Morgenthau Plan were applied to Germany, the United States would be forced to support Germany indefinitely, and he succeeded in having it canceled.
The Allies’ retaliatory postwar policies toward Germany require historical reexamination.
Centered on White, monetary policy itself was used for the purpose of plundering German wealth.
It was also White who handed the printing plates for occupation currency over to the Soviet Union.
The Soviets printed occupation currency freely and without restraint.
The plunder of German wealth by the Allied forces was this brutal.
Yet Shūsen-shi makes not a single reference to either the Morgenthau Plan or White.
Japan knew of the inhumane occupation policies imposed on Germany.
That is why Japan hesitated to accept unconditional surrender.
It was the fear of not knowing what would be done to them.
Fukui: The Japanese military also knew that soldiers on the front were being annihilated, so it was only natural that they resolved to defend the homeland to the death.
When the U.S. Army occupied the Pacific islands, not only did Japanese soldiers fight to the death, but many Japanese women also committed suicide.
There is no doubt that fear of being raped by American soldiers existed.
In Europe, Soviet troops were said to have raped virtually all German women, but at the same time rapes by American soldiers were also widespread.
Watanabe: Shūsen-shi states that unconditional surrender was only natural.
That alone proves that American documents were never consulted.
At the Casablanca Conference in 1943, FDR suddenly demanded unconditional surrender.
Later, Churchill testified that it was “news to him,” and FDR himself admitted that it was something he had “suddenly thought of.”
FDR said the idea came from the so-called unconditional surrender of General Robert E. Lee in the American Civil War, but this too is inaccurate.
In Lee’s case, it was not unconditional surrender.
Many of the Southern soldiers were farmers.
They negotiated that their horses, which would become farm horses after the war, not be taken, and General Ulysses S. Grant of the Union approved this.
It was not complete unconditional surrender.
Therefore, it was only natural that Japan hesitated to accept unconditional surrender.
The analysis of Shūsen-shi gives the impression of being an empty theory divorced from diplomatic documents.

Stalin and Mao.
Fukui: Another strange point in Shūsen-shi is that it depicts Stalin and Mao as though they were on bad terms.
That contradicts the facts.
Michael Sheng, emeritus professor at the University of Akron, has demonstrated that Stalin and Mao were in close alliance.
For example, in the Comintern organ published immediately after the signing of the Nazi–Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, an interview with Mao appeared in which he praised the pact and denounced British and French imperialism rather than Germany.
Watanabe: In 1945, the American “China Hands,” such as John Carter Vincent, repeatedly insisted to the State Department that China could be rebuilt as a coalition state led by the Nationalists with the Chinese Communist Party beneath them.
In fact, in August 1945 Mao traveled from Yan’an to Chongqing to negotiate with Chiang Kai-shek.
Having never flown before, Mao feared assassination and was terrified.
Yet, on Stalin’s orders, Mao went to Chongqing with grim resolve.
It was also to please the China Hands.
Fukui: Mao believed that Stalin was the greatest, and that he himself was second.
After Stalin’s death, he believed that he himself was the greatest.
Mao paid no attention whatsoever to Nikita Khrushchev, who became General Secretary after Stalin’s death and criticized Stalin.
Watanabe: There is no doubt that Mao moved exactly in accordance with Stalin’s directives.
Fukui: The seizure of Manchuria was also done at Stalin’s instruction.
Originally, the plan was to communize Manchuria and confront Chiang Kai-shek.
However, after Japan’s surrender, since the United States did not sufficiently support Chiang, Mao was able to achieve victory with ease.
Chiang must have regretted not having joined hands with Japan.
Watanabe: I never imagined that the American China Hands would side with the Chinese Communist Party to such an extent.
Fukui: In the United States, the China Hands’ propaganda that Mao was a nationalist agrarian reformer rather than a communist proved effective.
Meanwhile, Chiang Kai-shek was regarded as a corrupt dictator.
General Albert Wedemeyer, a realist and commander on the China front, continued to advocate support for the Nationalists even after returning to the U.S., but his former superior, Secretary of State George Marshall, influenced by the China Hands, refused to listen.
Watanabe: Wedemeyer understood that unless the U.S. deployed its full army rather than merely the Marines, communist domination of China could not be prevented.
But from the White House’s perspective, China at that time was of little importance.
Germany was the primary enemy, and everything moved around how to defeat Germany.
There was absolutely no intention of dispatching American troops to Manchuria.
Although the Hull Note demanded Japan’s total withdrawal from China, its real purpose was merely to provoke Japan.
There was no plan for building a post-withdrawal Manchurian state.
Fukui: U.S. foreign policy is strongly influenced by public opinion.
After defeating Germany, ordinary Americans would oppose their soldiers dying in Japan or China.
This made full-scale operations difficult, and this also worked in favor of the Chinese Communist forces.

The Transformation of the Concept of War.
Watanabe: As Professor Fukui pointed out in our co-authored book “Duplicitous” Modern History, after World War I, the manner of beginning and ending wars changed radically.
The old way of ending wars through territorial cessions and reparations was no longer possible.
War became terrifyingly punitive.
Fukui: Japan failed to catch up with this transformation in the concept of war after World War I.
Germany fought to the death out of fear of enslavement after surrender.
Japan, too, gradually came to understand that the nature of war had changed.
Although it knew it could not win, it sought to inflict as much damage as possible on the enemy and to achieve surrender under slightly better conditions.
The battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in fact shocked the U.S. military.
Watanabe: That is precisely why the United States never seriously considered a homeland invasion.
Plans existed, but there was no intention of executing them.
Fukui: Fundamentally, there is no such thing as a good or bad war.
Yet America’s concept of war is that of a civil war.
Watanabe: Without invoking the notion of a “just war,” America cannot fight.
Fukui: In that framework, one’s own country becomes the police and the enemy becomes a criminal.
From limited wars between sovereign states, World War I became total war framed as democracy versus tyranny.
Thus, the distinction between soldier and civilian blurred.
Yet even in World War II, Japan did not employ guerrilla warfare.
Even when its army surrendered, it never ordered remaining civilians to become guerrillas.
The military and civilian populations were regarded as distinct.
Watanabe: Japan maintained a traditional concept of war.
Fukui: In China, however, soldiers and civilian guerrillas attacked as one.
As a result, even elderly women walking in the street came to be suspected as potential guerrillas, leading to the killing of civilians who were not guerrillas.
Many of what are now called “massacres” on the China front stem from such circumstances.
The U.S. military is said to have changed its thinking after the Korean War.
Having never fought such a war before, the U.S. had previously viewed Germany’s brutal anti-partisan warfare on the Eastern Front as war crimes.
But after experiencing guerrilla warfare on the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. view of Germany changed, contributing to German rearmament.

The Irony of History.
Watanabe: Looking back on history, one grows disheartened at America’s folly.
One cannot help asking, “Were you truly this ignorant?”
Fukui: The postwar period was the same.
8月の時点で米ソ対立は決定的であり、米本国ではニューディーラーは退けられていたのに、日本占領初期はニューディーラーがGHQの主導権を握り、日本は大混乱に陥りました。
However, because of the intensifying U.S.–Soviet confrontation and the Chinese Communist conquest of the continent, the Truman administration had no choice but to support Japan.
Had China been unified under Chiang Kai-shek, Japan might have been turned into a purely agricultural nation under U.S.–China cooperation, just like “the peace of Carthage.”
Watanabe: An irony of history indeed.
Fukui: I repeat again, wars are not fought according to Japan’s convenience.
Japan is not such an important power in the world.
Watanabe: Shūsen-shi also assumes that wars can be stopped according to Japan’s convenience.
But Japan’s wishes are irrelevant.
Even if Japan had made sound decisions, there was no such thing as a “better” way to end the war.
Fukui: Many Japanese historical documents, including Shūsen-shi, devote much space to domestic human relationships, but that hardly determines the outcome of war.
Japanese documents are well researched, yet from them alone it is difficult to grasp the true nature of the war.
Watanabe: The Japanese historical academy, including figures such as Hando Kazutoshi, Hata Ikuhiko, and Hosan Masayasu, remains deeply siloed.
They refuse to look beyond Japan to the wider world.
They limit themselves to Japanese sources and focus solely on the issue of government and military responsibility.
Japan was not the main actor of that era, but only a supporting player.
Fukui: Ultimately, it is merely an “inverted imperial historiography” that depicts only Japan as evil.

The Course of the Ukraine War.
Watanabe: Ending a war is difficult.
Arguments that it could have been stopped sooner through this or that measure easily become empty theory, as the current Ukraine war demonstrates.
Russia wants to stop.
The Ukrainian people, of course, want it to stop.
The United States also wants to stop it.
Yet the war cannot be stopped.
Once a war has started, it is extraordinarily difficult to end it.
Still, there is no doubt that things are moving, however slowly.
Trump and Putin are working closely together.
For that very reason, Putin does not want the Trump administration to weaken.
Thus, before the midterm elections, Putin may wish to end the war in Ukraine and turn Trump into the president who stopped the war.
Fukui: How does Trump’s declining approval rating factor into this?
Watanabe: The economy is strong, so it cannot be that.
That leaves the failure to bring about a ceasefire in Ukraine.
There is also media manipulation, but the impression is that neoconservatives such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are pulling Trump’s administration down.
Fukui: In the midterm elections, the president’s party almost always loses.
Winning is the exception, so one should not be overly concerned.
Watanabe: Because of neoconservative maneuvering, the second U.S.–Russia summit in Budapest was postponed, but I take this in a positive light.
It means that the landing point has not yet been found.
Putin will absolutely not accept a Korean-War-style solution.
Such a solution would leave a permanent zone of conflict.
What Putin seeks is to make Ukraine a neutral state, and on this point he will not compromise.
The defeat of the Ukrainian army is inevitable.
The Azov Battalion has been deployed to the fierce battlefield of Pokrovsk, but it is completely encircled by Russian forces.
Supplies cannot be properly delivered.
By the time this issue is released, the city will likely have fallen.
Fukui: The Ukrainian army is collapsing in effect due to a shortage of personnel.
Watanabe: In the past, Trump requested that Ukraine’s encircled forces be rescued by Russia, but this time he has said nothing.
Trump may be waiting for the collapse of the Ukrainian army, or more precisely, of the Zelensky administration.
Another development is the decision to reduce U.S. troops stationed in Romania by nearly half.
For NATO, this is a troubling matter.
Fukui: The Ukrainian people, too, are saying that enough is enough.
According to a July 2025 Gallup survey, 69 percent of Ukrainians responded that they support ending the war through negotiations as soon as possible, while only 24 percent supported continuing to fight until victory.
In 2022, over 70 percent supported fighting until victory; the situation has completely reversed.
How the Zelensky administration will collapse, or whether Zelensky will quietly retire without running in the next presidential election, remains to be seen.
Watanabe: Ukrainian legislators and former legislators have begun to voice explicit criticism of the Zelensky administration.
Such things were previously impossible.
For instance, MP Mariana Bezuglaya stated that “Zelensky is now openly lying about the battle situations in Pokrovsk and Kupiansk. Our decisions are being made on the basis of this rotten lie reeking of corruption from the General Staff.”
Former MP Ihor Mosiychuk stated, “The Ukrainian defense line in Pokrovsk has been destroyed, and the city of Myrnohrad has been placed under Russian encirclement.”
At this point, it is only a matter of time.
Fukui: The leading candidate for the next presidency is said to be former commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
He was dismissed after clashing with the hard-line Zelensky and is currently serving as ambassador to the United Kingdom.
Watanabe: There is also information that the FBI is cooperating in exposing corruption around Zelensky.
Since the Trump administration appears to be getting serious about removing Zelensky, the possibility of a coup has also emerged.
In any case, the course of the Ukraine war must continue to be watched closely.

(264) John Lennon – Help Me to Help Myself – YouTube