Cases of war efforts that developed into horrors when the bystanders came under coercion, shouldn’t be treated the same way as those who were in some wise free to go.
If we ask heroics of one under pain of death, oughtn’t we ask heroics of all?
And note they never asked who prayed to God. Shouldn’t that count in a physical coercion situation?
The Japan approach of America worked a lot better. By all means however drastic suppress the revolt, but then forgive. Would anybody even be thinking of Nazis today if they hadn’t kept getting forced into the news? Could this prolonged revenge quest be helping, not hurting, the Nazi meme?
Crimes are defined under a civilized society. Wars, when civilization has been lost. This was war.
“The Japan approach of America worked a lot better. By all means however drastic suppress the revolt, but then forgive.”
A lesser known fact is that approximately 900 former Japanese civilian and military officials were executed after the war, including Hirota and Tojo among a group of seven who were hanged in 1948 after a Nuremberg-style trial.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/japanese-war-criminals-hanged-in-tokyo