The Neverending Final Battle of World War Two: Victimhood in Austria and Japan

By Noah Guilherme Plattner August 11th, 2024

estimated reading time: nine minutes

Cologne in 1945

The Allies did not win the final, inglorious battle of World War Two, nor did the Axis. There has been no clear winner, only one loser—the truth. Right after the last air raid sirens turned silent in 1945, defeated nations were confronted with troubling questions about their collective responsibility for the atrocities of World War Two. In the face of indescribable cruelties, some societies fought to bury the truth about their involvement. While the spotlight is often placed on Germany, other countries engaged in similar battles for their collective memory.

Austria and Japan fought alongside Nazi Germany, but in the aftermath of the conflict, the idea of being an unjust victim of the war started gaining traction in these two countries. While this happened in the shadow of global attention, the consequences of this idea of victimhood are all too visible in international politics to this day.

The First Act: The Birth of a Victim

In 1945, the provisional government of Austria was grappling with how the young nation should deal with the responsibility arising from Nazi crimes while the country was part of Germany. An important part of the supposed answer was the Moscow Declaration of 1943. It was the product of tense negotiations between the Allied powers on the future of Austria and it included a crucial sentence: “Austria, the first free country to fall a victim to Hitlerite aggression, shall be liberated from German domination…”

The provisional government took this assertion and worked it into their occupation doctrine which went on to define how Austrians viewed their history for decades. It states that due to Austria’s occupation, its statehood lay dormant so it could not be “held liable for the crimes of Nazi occupiers”. Austria’s foreign ministry worked hard to persuade the international community of Austria’s victimhood. What was drowned out in the swirl of Cold War politics was a second important sentence added by Stalin in the Moscow Declaration, stating that “[Austria] has a responsibility, which she cannot evade, for participation in the war on the side of Hitlerite Germany.”

In the first years after the war, there were efforts to deal with Austria’s past and to push through denazification policies. Courts dealt with 136,829 cases, passed 23,477 sentences, and carried out 30 death verdicts. Punishments for the 500,000 Austrian members of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party included the loss of jobs, the right to vote and sometimes even their freedom.

However, starting in the late 1940s, priorities began to change. The Cold War was ramping up and the culture of anti-fascism that dominated the immediate post-war era began to be overshadowed by a fierce anti-communist stance in the West. In 1948, communists instigated a

successful coup in Czechoslovakia, sparking fears that neighboring Austria would fall victim to a similar fate. Fighting Communism was perceived as a greater priority than punishing the already defeated Nazis, so the Austrian government started to roll back denazification policies.

Communist takeovers and flaring tension with the Soviet Union in mind, the allies decided to turn a blind eye.

Sentences for Nazis were reduced or entirely overturned, and lobby organizations asserted that soldiers were ‘just doing their duty.’ Ironically, in this nation of victims, the suffering of the real victims—the Jewish community, resistance fighters and other ethnic minorities—was repressed. The activities of Austrian resistance movements during World War Two were glorified and used to prove to the Western allies that Austrian society made an effort to rid itself of occupation. In order to support these claims, the Red-White-Red book was published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Its authors collected all the information they could find about Austrian resistance movements and constructed a narrative of widespread societal opposition to the German occupation. Tellingly, a planned second edition never materialized due to a lack of additional evidence for resistance.

The second important sentence in the Moscow Declaration —calling for Austria to recognize its responsibility— slowly faded into oblivion. Aided by this theory of victimhood, Austrian society buried the horrors of World War Two, at least temporarily.

The Second Act: New Course and Reverse Course

USS Franklin sinking off the Japanese Coast in March 1945

On the other side of Eurasia, another ruined nation engaged in a similar battle.

In the first few years after the war the Supreme Command for the Allied Powers (SCAP) made serious efforts to reform Japan politically, economically, and culturally. War time elites were purged from government, the allies set up the Tokyo trials for war criminals, and SCAP introduced social policies aimed at liberalizing Japan, notably giving women the right to vote and transferring land ownership to tenant farmers. This period of modernization was marked in 1947 with a new Japanese constitution which includes the famous Article 9–the Peace Clause. The document states that “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation” and will never maintain military forces. Athough Article 9 was challenged many times over the past decades, it still serves as the heart of Japanese pacifism to this day.

At the same time as Japan was introducing its new constitution, US foreign policy was undergoing a shift. Similar to the Austrian situation, “Reverse course” (gyaku kōsu) was a result of changing geopolitical headwinds. Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were rising while communists had gained the upper hand in the Chinese Civil War. Against this backdrop, the United States started searching for a strong ally in Asia to counter communist influence in the region. Japan turned from a defeated enemy to a prospective ally. From 1947 onwards, the SCAP’s objectives and policies changed decisively. Wartime leaders were allowed to return to government and protections for labor unions were stripped back. Japan also came

under pressure from the United States to partially remilitarize resulting in the establishment of the National Police Reserve in 1950 which was later transformed into the National Self-Defence Forces. When war broke out on the Korean peninsula, fears regarding the communist advance in Asia led the Japanese government to purge thousands of suspected communists from public and private sector jobs in what became known as the Red Purge (reddo pāji).

During this period of global upheaval Japan, like Austria, also had to grapple with how it should deal with its actions during World War Two. The question of how Japanese children should learn about crimes during the war arose and consequently high school history textbooks became a hotly contested field.

In Japan, textbooks have to undergo a pre-publication screening process conducted by the Ministry of Education. In the first years after the war, these processes rarely rejected books, but after Japan regained its sovereignty with the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco these practices started to change. According to the textbook writer Saburo Ienaga, certification standards started to increasingly reflect the ideology of the ruling conservative parties which have historically been critical of the idea that Japan should recognize responsibility for its actions during World War Two. In one case, the ministry ordered a textbook writer to change the phrasing “Japan’s aggression into China” to “Japan’s advance into China.” Another textbook was rejected because it included too many grim images of devastated cities which made “the overall tone too negative.”

In this context, Ienaga, stated that, though he had never been pressured to glorify war in his textbooks, the government had made a conscious effort to deflect guilt for war crimes. As a result, Japanese school children often learn very little about crucial events that shaped neighboring countries’ perception of Japan. The massacre of Nanjing and the existence of Korean sex slaves (euphemistically known as comfort women) are relegated to a side note in many textbooks while the suffering of Japanese citizens is highlighted above all else.

Most of these battles for collective remembrance in Japan and Austria were relegated to domestic politics, yet in some rare cases they are catapulted onto the international stage–with momentous consequences.

The Third Act: Breaking the Narrative

The 1986 Austrian presidential election was right around the corner when bombshell reports about one candidate started hitting the press. Kurt Waldheim was an internationally renowned diplomat who served as UN General Secretary from 1972 to 1981, but beginning in March 1986 reports about his past in the Wehrmacht surfaced. The New York Times reported that Waldheim served in a battalion in the Balkans that was involved in brutal massacres against Jewish and Yugoslav civilians. This was backed up by documents released by the World Jewish Congress (WJC) which went on to call Waldheim a “suspected war criminal”. Waldheim himself had omitted parts of his past in his autobiography leading to even more outrage.

In an interview following the publication of these reports, the embattled politician stated that he was just a soldier doing his duty like hundreds of thousands of other Austrians who were serving in the Wehrmacht. The attacks by the international press led to a surge of domestic solidarity for Waldheim, who was staunchly defended by most of the Austrian press. His election campaign used the controversy to appeal to the antisemitic prejudices in Austrian society. The revelations about Waldheim’s past for example were linked to a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.

Waldheim went on to win the election but became isolated on the international stage. The US Department of Justice placed him on a watchlist which prevented him from entering the US, and Israel recalled its ambassador while other Western leaders avoided contact. Austria’s international reputation not only took a beating, but the controversy also led to the debate that would question Austria’s victimhood for the first time. The effects of this highly polarizing phase of public discourse are controversial—with some people arguing that it just hardened the position of proponents of the victimhood theory, who saw their country being dragged into the mud. Notwithstanding, the debate managed to catapult Austria’s questionable handling of its past into the middle of public attention and set a slow process of collective retrospection into motion.

In a 1991 parliamentary speech, former Austrian Chancellor Franz Vranitzky publicly questioned Austria’s victimhood and admitted that Austrians were complicit in the war crimes associated with World War Two. The battle for Austria’s collective memory was anything but smooth, with many setbacks along the road, and to this day Austria’s past regularly stirs up political controversies, be it due to remarks by politicians or by questionable handling of historical monuments.

Much like in Austria, Japan’s domestic and international politics have also often been disrupted by historical disputes flaring up again.

The issue of Korean sex slaves has repeatedly led to tensions between South Korea and Japan. In 2018, a limited trade war broke out between the two US allies when the South Korean Supreme Court ruled that Japan’s Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries had to compensate former sex slaves and other forced laborers for their suffering. To protest this decision, which in Japan’s eyes was a violation of former treaties, the Japanese government blocked high-tech material exports while South Koreans boycotted Japanese products.

Recently, under the looming shadow of North Korean missile tests, the newly elected conservative South Korean government under President Yoon Suk Yeol made efforts to resolve this dispute with Japan again.

The Yoon administration proposed to compensate forced laborers by setting up a new fund that will be supported by private companies, but notably not by the Japanese companies who actually employed forced labor. Naturally, this was met with significant backlash by elements of South Korean society. Critics accused the government of “submissive diplomacy” while pointing out that this was a “complete victory for the Japanese government”.

Even though this particular dispute has partially cooled down in recent times, experts still caution that within Japan, the processing of its traumatic history has not progressed. The previously mentioned Saburo Ienaga warns that the increasing pro-military slant in Japanese education foreshadows an uncertain future with the possibility of a return to militarism.

The Final (?) Act: Landmines

The battle for the collective memory of a society is never an insular issue. Shifting geopolitical and domestic conditions can have a significant influence on how a society deals with its past.

When the United States suddenly needed an ally in East Asia after World War Two, ambitious social reforms in Japan were dropped in favor of a more pragmatic approach which allowed old war-time elites back into positions of power. Similarly, Austrian denazification efforts lost significant amounts of steam after it became clear that the country would occupy an important role at the intersection between East and West.

The unresolved historical conflicts that stem from this time have the potential to flare up again such as in the case of South Korea and Japan. It is important to view these disputes not as inconsequential leftovers from a long-gone era, but instead, as landmines that still have the potential to tear gaping holes into the fabric of international diplomacy.