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Yoc:
Thanks for starting this interesting topic kusunoki.
:)

kusunoki:
Yeah, it was really the celebrating of the bombing of civilians that surprised me. The Second World War was the first conflict (other than the Spanish Civil War) in which civilians in Western, industrialized countries were specifically targeted in military attacks. My impression had always been that these actions had always been vilified by governments and media when their nations were the victims and covered up when they were the aggressors. To see them actually promoted and celebrated in the entertainment media was not something I expected to see. Although, come to think of it, independent (heavily censored, but still independent) newspapers in Japan also gave infamously encouraging coverage to a contest between imperial army field commanders to collect the heads of Chinese men during the southward advance in China. Still, I think that these victims were at least reported as being enemy combatants, rather than civilians.

Does anyone know how the London Blitz was treated in the German popular media? I'd be curious to know whether it was justified as an actual attack on military targets or whether it might have been celebrated as an attack on the British people.

darkmark (RIP):
I can still recall the low-grade horror I felt when reading an ish of BILL BARNES that showed Japan literally being wiped off the face of the Earth when our "hero" dropped what amounted to an atom bomb down a volcano.  The good guys, in the aftermath, didn't seem to feel any remorse at all. 

narfstar:
It is easy to vilify those who are different. Remember Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps. So there was a hatred for the Japanese people in general after Pearl Harbor. It was doubtful the Germans were pleased with civilian death in England. They did not see the English people as evil just not Aryan. The Jews on the other hand....

kusunoki:
I might be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure that I've read somewhere that there were limited forms of internment camps for German-Americans and Canadians in some areas as well. I better get on top of this info, I'm supposed to co-teach a class on WWII history next year...

Also, that Bill Barnes thing sounds interesting, in a horrifying way. Do you remember what issue it's from, DM? I have sort of been collecting these kinds of things with the idea of someday making them into some sort of project.

Actually, I've been thinking less about the horror implicit in all of this than of the willingness of private publishers operating in relative autonomy to toe so willingly official propaganda lines, particularly in military conflicts or even just atmospheres of general military hostility. Thinking from this angle, the rabid anticommunism from the late 1940s through the 1970s is especially interesting. The change from Japanese people as warlike beasts-Chinese people as virtuous but overwhelmed victims to Japanese people as plucky American allies-Chinese people as marauding red hordes came really abruptly following the end of the war. My favorite capsule expression of this trend is in a story from Simon and Kirby's Fighting American in which the heroes go to Tokyo to help out an Uncle Sam outfit wearing Tokyoite conman type to outwit some gorilla-like and aggressive Chinese agents. This sort of thing continued all through the 60s, probably reaching its zenith in the frothingly anticommunist stories in the early Marvel superhero and monster stories. Japanese people had mostly disappeared by then, but the red Chinese popped up everywhere as a constant menace and there were endless references to the "bamboo curtain" around China.

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