Children of the Vanquished

...there never was the period of disinterested, idealistic dedication to the creation of a new Germany which, however brief, was so important to the development of postwar Japan...

...and one finds among the more thoughtful a frank fear of the social and political implications of the present rearmament...

...And both are now being urged by the United States to a more rapid and comprehensive rearmament than their respective peoples are willing to undertake...

...but, he said, that situation had improved now, and "we'll win the next one...

...In both instances, my primary contacts were in voluntary work camps, youth hostels, and similar young peoples' activities, although I had opportunities to meet and talk with others as well...

...Morality was relative to the social web, and lacked the Judaeo-Christian absolutes which, even when ignored, govern Western societies...

...A German friend explained this to me by observing that for people who had done without for so long, the ability to buy plenty and eat plenty was too great a temptation to resist...

...For despite vast cultural differences, they share an industriousness, an indefa-tigability, which has made them, on different scales, miracles of postwar economic recovery...

...The result is that Japanese intellectual youth have focussed their aspirations heavily on the social and political problems of their country, while the energy of their German contemporaries has been siphoned off in shallower, more personal, ambitions...

...After living in japan for more than two years, I had an opportunity last summer while visiting Germany—including two months in Berlin—to compare the youth of these two vanquished nations...

...One does not find in Germany the dedication to occupation reforms which is so noticeable among Japanese liberals...

...Even the language expressed one's position on the web with immediate clarity...

...Stability, economic well-being, and a well-informed political assent, which typify so many German youth, may be the more valuable traits...

...Beyond this opposition to rearmament, beyond the simple desire not to be drafted into an army and perhaps killed, there seems to be an intense fatalism among the young Germans symbolized for me by a comment by one of the young people I met this summer...

...The threat of Soviet aggression is much closer to Germany, and the relationship between this threat and military alliance with the West, between rearmament and reunification, is tremendously complex...

...Given this social structure, the militarist clique could assume control of the government from the top, through domination of the Emperor, and rapidly gain the support of the Japanese people...

...The Japanese —all of them—simply don't talk about another war...

...Japan, despite her rapid recovery, was not capable of such economic luxury during the first postwar decade...

...Anyone who has visited Germany can probably supplement the variety of reasons which Germans offer for their defeat in the war: lack of supplies, bad allies, bad generals, and Hitler's madness...

...As Germany began its rapid climb toward recovery, there developed a tendency to consume for consumption's sake which to some extent continues today...

...While I was in Japan a much longer time, and speak Japanese rather better than German, I feel that my stay in each country was long enough to justify some comparisons...

...I saw very little evidence that most German youth have a dream...

...But Japan so far has no conscription with which to test the determination of its youth...

...Both, in the early postwar years, were restricted and in some measure reshaped by an American occupation...

...German youth seem satisfied to fasten the blame for failure on the faulty judgments of the older generation...

...It was this rigid discipline which made it possible for so many young Japanese to go uncomplainingly into military service, knowing that they were fighting and losing a wrong war...

...This high motivation, with its sweeping reforms of land ownership, education, and economic power, and with its rejection of Japan's prewar leaders, appealed immensely to all Japanese liberals, and in particular to the generation of youth who, like the occupation planners, sought drastically to improve their country...

...there it will go...

...But Japanese youth have not renounced the dream...

...Both, scarcely more than a decade ago, were at war with us, threatening democracy and our national safety...

...There are more pacifists—conscientious objectors who will refuse military service if called—than in Japan...

...The occupation of Germany never was free of the power struggle between the West and Russia...

...All a man's actions were governed by his position on the web, and a carefully detailed social code described explicitly how each man should act in order not to disturb his relationship with others...

...In 28 months in Japan I never heard a young Japanese use the phrase "the next war...

...The problem of reunification, for instance, seems to me to be one about which Germans are very unsure, and rely heavily on their leadership...

...There is a lunatic fringe of former generals, just as in Germany, who occasionally break into public attention with assertions of what they could have done "if...

...They are aware of the dangers which Russia or China or perhaps others might pose to them...

...Prewar Japan has been aptly described by Frank Gibney in his Five Gentlemen of Japan as a "web" society, in which no man could move without affecting his neighbors on the web in all directions...

...their conclusions have led them consciously to reject almost all the authorities and many of the social patterns of their parents...

...In so doing, they accept most of the values of their elders, inevitably weakening their own ability to judge their society, to question and analyze...

...Almost all are vehement in their rejection of militarism...

...Oh," he said, "some day Khrushchev will get drunk and push a button, and boom...

...Milton Mayer, in his book They Thought They Were Free, has suggested that the American occupation is in part responsible for Germany's failure to develop a crusading idealism...

...A hitchhiker in the Mosel Valley observed that Germany's choice of allies had been bad...

...They have, with remarkable courage and insight, gone to the core of Japanese society in their efforts to understand World War II...

...Later, the attempt to rebuild Japan as a Western ally resulted in recalling to power much of the prewar leadership...

...A young German in Frankfurt told me that Germany had lost the last war because her supply of vehicles had not been adequate...

...That the government has been unable to muster the majority necessary to institute conscription is in part a measure of the breadth of the Japanese attitude, as compared to the German, on this issue...

...but let them stand, for the moment, in order to compare them with the attitudes of Japanese young people...

...As Japan and Germany grow to maturity in alliance with the free world, the attitudes of their youth are of critical importance...

...For most Japanese, any such speculation is not only academic, but beyond that, one senses the Japanese feel it was a bad war and that any discussion of its strategic merits is irrelevant...

...Yet there are alternatives to the present course, and there are small groups who are finding and exploring them...

...During the early postwar years they found much of that inspiration in the American example...

...But these groups include all too few of Germany's youth, and the comparison between German youth, who neither seek nor find alternatives, and Japan's, who do seek and find them, presents a striking contrast...

...The imagination of German youth is staggered, and again they turn to the leadership of their authorities...

...Japanese youth have, in short, rejected the pre-1945 Japan, and are groping for inspiration with which to build a new one...

...The youth, of Germany have been swept into this eager quest for prosperity...

...But I am convinced that the explanation is deeper than that...

...Many are opposed even to the present watered-down symbolic status of the Emperor...

...and some, reluctantly, agree that an expansion of the self-defense force is necessary...

...Beyond the similarities of their histories in this postwar period, I think one might observe broad similarities in their national characteristics...

...An important factor is the vastly different economic situation of the countries...

...When he casually mentioned "the next war," I asked him how he thought such a war might start...

...and their response to left-wing wooing today is in direct proportion to the frustration, by the conservative government, of that dream...

...Both were initially disarmed by an Allied world determined to eliminate their potential threat to the future...

...In the meantime, Japanese youth have grown to maturity unencumbered by a search for material security...

...The keystone to the difference which I sense between the youth of the two countries is that the Japanese are critically examining the whole fabric of their society, seeking a solution to the construction of postwar Japan in a total re-evaluation and reorientation of Japanese values...

...Today, Japanese youth live in a vacuum...

...Next time," he said, pointedly referring to Germany's close tie to the United States, "we'll be on the right side...

...They aspire to, and get, good jobs with quick promotions, modern homes, and most of the luxuries, on a lesser scale, that we in America take for granted...

...My first impression of Germany, on DON C. NOEt, JR...

...the Japanese are too polite to imply that an outsider might have been wrong...

...The American occupation in those first few years was marked by a strikingly unselfish, highly idealistic program of demilitarization and democratization aimed at building a new Japan...

...they thought they had lost the war simply on a series of strategic errors...

...Many Japanese today see this as the first step in America's renunciation of the earlier dream of a new Japan...

...the strength of the first half-dozen young Germans I met, was shocking: these people (or so it seemed to me) had no idea why their country had succumbed to Nazism...

...Subsequent conversations and contacts somewhat modified these first impressions...

...One can argue that this is because of differences in national characteristics: the Germans are too proud to admit to an outsider that they were wrong...

...But I prefer to think that the Japanese search for spiritual values, in the midst of political and social ferment and economic insecurity, is a more wholesome climate for democratic health and growth...

...In sharp contrast, I seldom heard anyone in Japan discuss the strategic reasons for the Japanese defeat...

...What makes this analysis of prewar Japanese character especially significant is the fact that a large number of young, thoughtful Japanese subscribe to it...

...she is only now beginning to reach a point where domestic consumer buying can increase...

...But the probability that these factors will lead Japan into another war, or what the outcome of such a war might be, simply is not discussed...

...and they spoke altogether too glibly of "the next war...

...is an American free lance writer who has traveled extensively abroad...

...They have rejected Shintoism without fully accepting any other religion, and seek cautiously, anxiously, for a new spiritual commitment...

...Even employment opportunities are immensely limited for the Japanese, and one finds in Japan very little of the aspiration to "get ahead," to rise to leadership in one's profession, which typifies young German society...

...One must, of course, admit the more complex and imminent dangers which Germany faces...