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[Mothra]

This is a thread to post things you found out or found interesting about HISTORY. That is all.

I have just discovered the fucking horror that is Unit 731, the Imperial Japanese Army's Biological Warfare research and testing facility.

More than 10,000 people—from which around 600 every year were provided by the Kempeitai—were subjects of the experimentation conducted by Unit 731.

More than 95% of the victims who died in the camp based in Pingfang were Chinese and Korean, including both civilian and military. The remaining 5% were South East Asians and Pacific Islanders, at the time colonies of the Empire of Japan, and a small number of the prisoners of war from the Allies of World War II.

According to the 2002 International Symposium on the Crimes of Bacteriological Warfare, the number of people killed by the Imperial Japanese Army germ warfare and human experiments is around 580,000. According to other sources, the use of biological weapons researched in Unit 731's bioweapons and chemical weapons programs resulted in possibly as many as 200,000 deaths of military personnel and civilians in China.

Sweet jesus.

I am continually fucking astounded by the sheer scale of the casualties from any given event in World War 2.

that war was kind of crazy in hindsight huh

[Mongrel]

The Japanese have done a very very good job pretending that their version of Nazi atrocities never happened. It helps them immensely that the victims were primarily other Asians.

The reality is that Japan will probably never fully acknowledge those actions. Hell, they rarely even acknowledge the Kempeitai. Which is almost as if Germany was still pretending the Gestapo didn't exist.

Good old Cold War. Sure covered a multitude of sins.

[Büge]

It's also one of the reasons that the rest of Asia has a subtle undercurrent of anti-Japanese disposition. This is especially noticeable when you mistake certain Asian ethnicities for Japanese.

[Mongrel]

Well, that and the number times Japan outright conquered or was trying to outright conquer most of east Asia. And we're not talking about invaders who were kind to the victim populations here. Unit 731 was just one of the ultimate fruits of hundreds of years of the Japanese scorn for non-Japanese.

Not that the Chinese or Koreans can't be terribly racist themselves, but they've been on the losing end of this stuff for the past couple hundred years.

[François]

As a result of the first world war, there are still today over 450 square miles of uninhabitable land in France, contaminated by chemical weapons, lead shrapnel, millions of individual pieces of unexploded munitions and larger ordnance, as well as countless animal and human remains. Eight villages destroyed at the time were never rebuilt, though they are still assigned mayors. Their only duty is to maintain a symbolic record of the population, which is of course permanently set to zero.

[Brentai]

More like lol france surrenders easily amirite

I still think the difficulty of actually holding onto France is one of the larger unnoticed factors as to why the Nazi powerbase broke apart, and the French fucking well knew it would be.

(Yes I know we were talking about WWI.  I'm too lazy to segue properly.)

[Ziiro]

As a result of the first world war, there are still today over 450 square miles of uninhabitable land in France, contaminated by chemical weapons, lead shrapnel, millions of individual pieces of unexploded munitions and larger ordnance, as well as countless animal and human remains. Eight villages destroyed at the time were never rebuilt, though they are still assigned mayors. Their only duty is to maintain a symbolic record of the population, which is of course permanently set to zero.

Got any links to satellite imagery of these places of note? Villages, uninhabitable areas, etc?

[François]

Well, yeah, but there's not much to see. France isn't exactly desertic, and the affected areas have become overgrown, in no small part due to how logging there is forbidden for safety reasons.

For example, much of the territory between Lille and Cambrai is in the so-called "red zone", but you'd be hard-pressed to notice anything from the air. Similarly, if you look at Beaumont-en-Verdunois, Bezonvaux, or Louvemont-Côte-du-Poivre, it's mostly trees, with a chapel or a memorial.

The most striking pictures I've seen are before and after for the Bezonvaux main street. By the time the war ended, the place had been literally leveled by artillery fire, and there are so many unexploded shells in the fields it's pretty much impossible to grow anything there anymore.

[Ziiro]

I guess a better question then would be if anyone has gone in and taken extensive photographs of anything interesting? I understand it's a forbidden area and toxic/dangerous. But that generally doesn't stop people.

[François]

Probably, but after a while of searching just now, I really haven't come up with anything specific to red zones. There is a 1998 documentary called "Zone Rouge" that apparently presents old photographs (but that I can't find much trace of), and I found a site with photos taken around Verdun in 1915 (the "combat" and "destruction" sections in particular show the aftermath).

Apparently even the people of France don't know much about these areas today, or even that they exist at all. I guess there's just no use thinking about it. And it really does look like there's not much of interest left to photograph; it'd be like breaking into a minefield to take pictures of trees. Also, we're talking about small rural communities from the early 20th century that were pounded into dust by artillery fire for days and days. This isn't exactly Chernobyl, with its multiple-story concrete buildings made to stand the test of time that were "merely" irradiated.

I'm gonna keep looking though, because yeah, if anything did survive, it'd probably be interesting to look at.

[Mongrel]

From the looks of it, there are some trails. I expect that hikers and other nature lovers go through these areas fairly frequently. Obviously you wouldn't want to dig there, but walking may or may not pose a deadly hazard.

That said, just think of what we could do with modern weapons! 

[Brentai]

Probably a good number of people who ignore the warnings and go in there get exploded.  The place was mined for trench warfare, not the usual guerrilla warfare that leaves these things scattered around.  There are certain invisible boundary lines that exist solely to kill people who try to cross them.

[François]

In order to popularize the potato in 18th century France, famous agronomist Antoine Parmentier had his field at Plaine des Sablons guarded by armed men during the day. Figuring that this meant it was an exclusive, high-value crop, local peasants "broke" into the field at night to "steal" potatoes and replant them in their own fields.

[Doom]

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, one of my favorite dudes in all of history.

[Mongrel]

The Great Man theory may be long out of fashion with historians, but I do still believe that given a long enough lever and a place to stand a man might move the world.

The number of people who have had the right skills, the intelligence, the experience, the resources, and above all the insight to move such a lever, is vanishingly small. Of those people, the number blessed with the incredible good fortune of having all those things at exactly the right place and time to use them is even more minuscule. And of those people, the number who have used such power for truly long-lasting good is so tiny as to be no more than a rounding error.

Ataturk is one of those people.

[Mongrel]

Oh hey, on the subject of this thread. Some fellow is doing an hour-by-hour blow-by-blow of the entire Second World War on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/#!/RealTimeWWII

[Brentai]

Obviously it's a script but I like the idea of a single sweaty man staying up 24/7 for six years to tweet little messages at the exact right time.