To thelistman on Russian history in WWII, have you ever read 800 Days on the Eastern Front by Litvin, it's quite good and even documents his time in a penal battalion. One thing I loved was when some Russian soldiers found a large supply of vodka left behind by German troops they got drunk and then the Germans ambushed them. During the ambush a drunken Russian soldier emerged on horseback with a bottle of vodka in one hand and a PPSh in the other, he survived the encounter.
I studied WWII in a Topics in Military History class, mostly causes that lead up to the war focusing on Japan, Germany and to a much lesser degree the Soviet Union. Stalin's purges of the Red Army hindered him but thankfully Zukov was left alive, managed to defeat Japanese invaders (who due to this decided not to invade the Soviet Union again allowing Zukov to be redeployed with his army to the east allowing the Soviet Union to fight a one front war instead of a two front. This greatly helped).
The parts on Imperial Japan were quite interesting. Ever since the Meiji resteration the Japanese had wanted to expand. They joined the allies in World War I and took German colonies but still wanted much more. They were raised, well, brainwashed, to believe in their ethnic superourity over Koreans, Chinese and basically all other people and saw their Emperor as a literal Sun God. The Samuri class took over all Japanese buisiness (many are still in their hands) and turned the regular Japanese citizen basically into their workers.
It can be said WWII began in the 1930s due to Japanese invasions of their neighbors for the purposes of expansion. During this time period the Japanese Army and Navy were two very different organizations. The Navy was well traveled and had seen much of the world while the Army remained at home feeding on Imperial propoganda. In the early '30s (I don't know the exact time) an Army group of Officers called the Imperial Way got together to overthrow the peaceful civilian government officials (by peaceful I mean they wanted to further build their military before expanding through conquest). They took Tokyo, execuited a couple officials and held the rest prisoner. The Navy steamed into Tokyo and turned their guns at the Army, forcing them to surrender. They sent the officers to the one place they believed they couldn't get in trouble, Manchuria. Long story short they got in trouble, they invaded China and waited several weeks to inform Tokyo. The Navy and rest of Japan was forced into war due to this.
The Japanese homefront before the war was reflective of a nation ruled by dictators. Secret police, literal translation of their name is thought police, arrested people for speaking out against the government and even for not reporting anti-government speech. Children were introduced to the military lifestyle in school and had to enter the military after leaving school, this was not a pleasant experience. Abuse was common. The Japanese government understood the inferiority of their weapons and told their people that their superiour spirit would save them and make up for this. This was incorrect, though human wave tactics sure made up for it. However, to die for the Emperor was the best thing one could hope for in many young soldier's minds so it was no problem. This idea also seeped into the Navy and fire control on Japanese ships was pathetic, they did not believe the enemy would ever penetrate far enough to hit their ships in the first place so why bother teaching sailers to fight fires. They were wrong.
Back in China the Japanese Army managed to do one thing no one else could, unite the Chinese Nationalists and Communists. The Japanese soldier saw the Chinese as subhuman and in Japanese held territory Chinese, Koreans and other peoples were treated as easily replaced slaves. The men were worked to death in mines with little to no safety procautions, the women were used as prostitutes. One famous event is known as the "**** of Nanking" and comes from when the Japanese Army besieged the then capital of China, Nanking, for one (maybe two, I'm not quite sure) months. When they finally broke into the city they commited enough war crimes to make the German ambassador, a Nazi party member, feel sorry enough for the local civilians to organize with the permission of his superiours an international zone alongside the British, American and French embassies using their embassy guards to enforce the zone. This saved many of the locals, but thousands were ***** and murdered by the Japanese army in numerous ways I won't mention here. The only reason they didn't attack the international zone started by a NAZI was they did not want war with the west, yet.
Fighting the Japanese soldier was an experience no one in their right mind would want. They used human wave tactics, shot medics, left their own to die (often giving them a grenade to speed up the process) and never learend. Islands guarded by over 10,000 men would only yield at best 2-300 prisoners with the rest dead. Bodies couldn't be cleared due booby traps and the islands were hot, humid tropic "aradises." The Japanese soldier rarley if ever surrendered, the only way to survive and encounter was to kill him before he killed you.
As the war drew on and reached islands closer to the Japanese homeland the US soldier and his allies saw more than the horrors of war, they saw the horrors of Imperial Japan. On one island whose name I forget there was a civilian population. Not wanting them to fall into Allied hands the Japanese soldiers killed as many as they could. There is a famous and true story of a U.S. infantryman watching in horror as his unit fought to try and stop the even as a Japanese soldier threw a pregnant woman off a cliff. As she fell she gave birth, mother and child then hit the rocks below. They were far from alone and bones can still be found near that cliff to this day. Other times the Japanese soldier used the civilians as human shields, having them go to the allied soldiers and then attacking from behind, often shooting through them. This I know occured on Okinawa and possibly some other islands, I am a little bit rusty on some of this.
At Okinawa the Japanese Army began to learn the lessons of war and focused on the defense, using lessons they had ignored up to that point. To say it was difficult to take the island is a gross understatment, no video game or movie could ever do it justice and Okinawa is what convinced U.S. command to use nuclear weapons against Japan to try and prevent a land invasion of Japan.
As the war neared its conclusion the Japanese people prepaired to fend off the invaders. Every firearm in the country was handed out and many people were even given bows when the rifles ran out. Children were given sharpened bamboo sticks to fight the invaders and preparations were met. U.S. estimates for a ground invasion included around 1 million U.S. dead, Purple Hearts made for the planned invasion are still handed out today. Thankfully, the invasion never came, instead the nuclear bomb was dropped and convinced the Japanese to surrender. Please not this was not a unanimous decision and it did take TWO atomic bombs. The Japanese Army wished to continue fighting but the Emperor, a far from innocent man (he was a fan of biological warfare I believe) decided to surrender. In order to maintain order in occupied Japan the U.S. let the Emperor continue being the Emperor, though stripped him of much power. If that invasion of Japan had come to pass, not only would there no longer be an Emperor there would quite likely be much fewer Japanese people. It would have been a truley terrible war even by WWII standards and the death toll would have been horrific. One can wonder if Japan itself had been invaded if Japan would even still be there today. Millions would have died, a culture would have been truley destroyied and the nation would still be in ruins today.
Alright, that's enough for now, sorry for all the text. There is a lot more, The Pacific War is a good book to describe life in Imperial Japan so if anyone is interested look it up on Amazon I guess. Go to Wikipedia for Nanking as I don't feel like listing all of what happened there.
