Comments by "John Walsh" (@johnwalsh4857) on "The Front" channel.

  1. Im not surprised the Americans sometimes did not take Japanese prisoners they were probably outraged that the Japanese committed atrocities on POWs and civilians, and rarely took prisoners, So I find it crazy that the Japanese thought the Americans are dishonorable when they themselves were even more dishonorable and brutal as hell.
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  2. the Italian L35 was also used by the Chinese KMT vs. the Japanese army. the only battle they were used in was at the battle of Kunlun pass 1940. Well many were supposedly destroyed by Japanese infantry. and anti tank guns.
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  3. and the long term effect of the border war, very high crime rates in South Africa as massive amounts of Soviet weapons flooding into fighting two decades of the war in Angola and Namibia came flooding into South Africa after the fall of apartheid. A combination of porous borders cheap weapons and the criminals willing to use it insured South African murder and crime rates as some of the highest in the world since 1990.
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  4. another one are KMT Chinese military formed Dare to Die Corps which were troops who would charge Japanese tanks and other troops with dynamite and bundles of grenades strapped on them like a sucidie bomber, yah that was an effective way of taking out Japanese tanks when the Chinese did not really have anti tank guns to take out Japanese tanks. If they did not have explosives, they would just charge the Japanese troops straight up armed with swords spears, and fire arms.
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  5. 2nd Congo war of the 90s to early 2000s was probably the worst , Africa's world war, nearly a decade long civil war plus intervention from neighbouring African countries of the DRC formerly known as Zaire. basically its Rwanda/Burundi/Uganda vs. Angola/Zimbabwe/Chad/Namibia and their local proxies fighting it out in a bloody war using ex Soviet weapons bought from the decades long massive military buildup of the USSR mainly from Russia and Ukraine. Also add in foreign mercs from former Yugoslavia in the mix.
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  6.  @persepolis4836  I remember my dad was taking a taxi in Johannesburg back to his hotel in the hillbrow distrcit back in the early 80s, the Indian taxi driver told him that when the White SA gov. falls and its inevitable, SA will collapse into crime and civil war.
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  7. yaha cause the KMT Chinese leader Chiang Kai Shek identified his ideology with Nazi Germany, the KMT under Chiang Kai Shek was traditionalist Chinese nationalistic with fascistic elements in its ideology. So from 1926 to 1937, Germany was the largest trading partner to KMT China. Germany developed Chinese railways , the KMT military , tech know how in exchange for natural resources like Tungsten. Germany abandoned China for Japan in 1937 but Germany still had close ties with teh KMT gov. and even sold it weapons under the table and the ties ended with the Chinese declaration of war vs. Germany in Dec 1941. Many German military leaders in the Wehrmacht actually liked the KMT Chinese over the Japanese who they were really suspicious of.
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  8. Another big one, Ethiopia Eritrea war of the 90s over a useless strip of border land called Badme again both sides used IMF borrowed money to buy lots of ex USSR weaponry from the Ukraine and Russia. Also fought like WW1 with trenches and lots of tanks and modern weaponry. Ended since the IMF and USA threatened to stop lending money to the combatants.
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  9. If you want something stranger , the KMT under CHiang cut off ties with the USSR in 1926 and was considred an enemy but when Germany sided with Japan, the KMT which was very anti communist was helped a lot by the biggest commie in the world the USSR. who sent massive amounts of weapons and even advisers , engineers volunteers to fight for the KMT. THe USSR did little to help the Chinese communists as Stalin viewed the KMT to be the best enemy vs. Japan, and Stalin wanted to bog down the Japanese in China.
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  10. at least the German version of the spear soldiers the Volkstrumm actually had guns .
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  11. in the British empire troops the Japanese feared the Gurkhas and Aussies, as well as African commonwealth troops.
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  12. The KMT Chinese army had very poor leadership and coordination between units. due to the fact the KMT army was fractured into different opposing political factions, like the KMT high command had to negotiate with political factions to get them to order their units to fight the Japanese, the Japanese were stalled into conquering China since the Japanese did not have enough men to fully pacify China with a hostile population ten times their own along with very poor interior transport infrastructure rugged terrain and at times fierce Chinese resistance and the KMT Chinese were heavilly supported in weapons by the USSR and later 1941 onwards the USA.
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  13. I agree many Chinese historians points out the start of the Second Sino Japanese war as not in 1937 but in 1931, from 1931 to 1937 the KMT and the Japanese would fight numerous battles. in a undeclared war. Also the battle of Shanghai in 1937 is the second battle of Shanghai, the first one was in 1932.
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  14.  @AirWolfAT6  Yep that one too, also a crazy war, lots of atrocities. A lot of the weapons went north to the the DRC. and even Liberia. and Sierra Leone.
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  15. USMC utterly terrified the Japanese enough they fought to the death rather than be captured. The Marines Obliged. WW2 in the Pacific really built the USMC rep. to mythic status. The elite of the US armed forces.
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  16. and the Japanese did not originate Kamikazes, the Soviet pilots during the desperation years of 41-43 would crash their planes on nazi planes and tanks kamikaze styles . or at the battle of Kursk , Soviet tankers rammed German tanks esp. targetting tigers. and panthers. in a suicide run. The only difference the Japanese organized these suicide pilots.
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  17. which nation the Japanese feared the most it was the USA of course they got their asses kicked to hell by the yanks. In fact, among the US armed forces they feared the US marines the most. The USMC was probably the best branch of the US armed forces and at the time the USMC was a branch of the USN. USMC were probably the best trained branch of the US armed forces. with fanaticism morale brutality approaching that of the Japanese but with abundant equipment weapons superiority and a more flexible leadership. I find it amusing the Japanese hated fighting the USMC due to their deaths being dishonorable while they were committing brutal dishonorable acts vs. POWs and civilians. Japanese troops of WW2 are hypocritical brutal and disgusting.
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  18. yah the Soviets exacted a brutal revenge on the Germans, my turning half of Germany and their capital Berlin into ruins, parking lots, looted the crap out of half of German , looted and destroyed infrastructure, killed millions of German troops and civilians, raped thousands of women old and young, sent hundreds of thousands of German troops to USSR to be forced slave labour which only 50 thousand came back alive. then subjected half of Germany to Communist dictatoship for the next 45 years, I would say that is revenge paid in full and its not finished yet, as of 2022, the Germans are much dependent on Russia for energy and the Russians are threatening to make it a cold winter for the Germans in 2022.
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  19. and the Soviets also had a no mercy policy on the Germans in 1945. when they turned Berlin into a parking lot. millions of German POWs were worked to death to rebuild the USSR. out of the 3 million German POWs 1 million plus died. I call that karma
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  20. as said before Crystal meth was quite pervasive in the Japanese military gave them to soldiers , factory workers, pilots etc. Only the Japanese leaders and generals were probably not on meth. This had a bad effect in post war Japan where a large portion of the Japanese population were meth addicts. and whiule the Japanese gov. post war cracked down on crystal meth use and distribution, there were lots of supplies from the war, and were used by Japanese factory workers and officer workers to build post war Japan and meth use really waned in the 70s(probably due to the ww2 supply being mostly consumed).
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  21.  @Dick_Sanormus  also true. and the USMC were fighting in some of the most rugged terrain in the world Jungle hills swamps in very hot humid climate and doing amphibious assaults against probably the most fanatical axis enemy whcih are the Japanese, the Japanese were probably less well equipped and had poorer tactics than the Germans but they were a lot more fanatical and were hard to dig out on the defense. the USMC had to contend with an enemy who mostly fought to the death. and the USMC was also mainly a infantry heavy force with some tank units.
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  22.  @frederickoftheartic2209  Yep haha.
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  23. Heard about that East Germans deployed their special forces along with Soviets managing the Angolan MPLA and Cuban logistics and command, control and communications.
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  24.  @johnnybravo9096  quite true, like we can rely on stalin 2.0 Putin to behave....NOT.
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  25.  @arthas640  Quite true.
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  26.  @vihurah9554  the Japanese do not like to dwell on ww2 , which is considred a much major embarassment for htem.
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  27. Not surprised the Japanese feared the Americans the most and the USMC in particular. Interestingly this fear led the Japanese to fight to the death in the face of the US army and marines. probalby fearing that they would be tortured if they were captured alive.
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  28. a correction The Battle of Wuhan 1938 was the bloodiest battle of the 1937 to 1939 part of the Second Sino Japanese war and the most important, this battle was the start of the stalemate in central China which would not end until 1944 which Operation Ichigo
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  29. Another forgotten African war is the 2nd Congo war, africa's world war. Probably the largest most bloodiest sub saharan African war fought. I would say the 30 years war of Africa. fought with modern weapons(mainly ex USSR weaponry)
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  30. another war is the Ethiopia Eritrea war of the 90s. both sides mostly fighting over a useless strip of arid border land called the Badme, WW1 style war with trenches and again ex. USSR weaponry bought with IMF money. Ended when the IMF and USA threatened to halt IMF loans to both sides.
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  31. I think the initial first phase of operation downfall , the invasion of Kyushu wouuld be so bloody and protracted the USA would most likely just blockade the islands of Honshu Hokkaido and Shikoku. blockade, round the clock daily bombings, and use of more nukes on them, I think the US will not only fire bomb the cities, but start fire bombing the forests and rice fields, maybe even use chemical defoilants, on rice fields, sinking of fishing vessels, the war will end with probably a Japanese surrender due to massive famines but this would not happen, for the next say 3-5 years, by that time, the Soviets would have invaded Hokkaido, Japanese gov. will really be forced to surrender with the fear of Soviet invasion of Honshu. You probably would have a quarter of the Japanese civilian population dead from disease starvation , etc. USSR would probably annex Hokkaido turning it into a Soviet oblast. deport all japanese from its territory. with probably a few hundred thousand US casualties, the Japanese home islands would be so devastated the USA would probably spend a bit more resources to fix Japan , rebuild more of its infrastructure etc. USA would probably execute a bit more of Japanese war criminals due to the extension of the war. USA would probably give Japan self gov. at a later period and US military forces would have a bit bigger deployment noting substantial Soviet military forces are just a short distance away in Hokkaido. the SLDF would actually be stronger in thsi what if due to facing Soviet forces off the Shimonseki straights
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  32. the emperor was a mediator and umpire between the army and navy. and yah their could have been a civil war between the army and navy.
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  33.  @johnemmert9012  also it was political suicide for any Chinese leader esp. Chiang Kai Shek to agree to any negotiation or armistice from the Japanese, not only political suicide but also literal suicide like someone would probably assasinate or execute him. Also the Japanese demands were so onerous that it was just plain unacceptable to accept any of the Japanese demands for an armistice. So the war was prolonged due to a combination of unreasonable Japanese demands and Chinese political and physical suicide for any chinese leader to do so.
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  34. and the LIberian civil war 1st and 2nd which also ports over to the Sierra Leone civil war. Probably the craziest war and one of the most brutal modern day African wars. Both wars lasted more than a decade side by side which also caused a civil war in Sierra Leone. Yah you had children soldiers naked high on drugs and liquor wearing mickey mouse costumes armed with AKs and RPGs and lots of juju anti bullet amulets who would fight each other then for R&R, rape cannibalize and loot the locals. Training for the combatants consisted of watching Rambo and Delta force movies and a less than one day training on how to shoot AKs and RPGs. and how to machete people to death. Fuelled by gold, diamonds and timber resources. THe Sierra Leone war saw the intervention of Executive outcomes merc group manned by ex SADF special forces and elite troops fresh from the Angolan and SA border wars. along with British troops later. wars ended when Charles Taylor was exiled to Nigeria and Sanko was jailed plus the LIberians and Sierra Leoneans so many died their countries devastated they basically got tired of the wars.
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  35. KMT and CCP used child soldiers as young as 12 to fight as regular soldiers or as guerillas vs. the Japanese from 1937-1945. . Time were desperate for hte Chinese . Using child soldiers was a normal practice for the China as China was in civil war mode since 1911 and China did not have a national mobilization program, the KMT, CCP and local warlords drafted men from the areas they had control, and there were accounts of KMT troops forcing most of the village men from the age of 12 to 40 in rope leading them off to be forced recruit to fight in the front lines. warlords recruited in a simliar fashion and the CCP recruited via volunteers from the local populace.
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  36. #1 looter and rapist THE SOVIET ARMY....
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  37. Soviet troops captured by Germans got starved beaten and massacred. So not surprised the Soviets fought very hard and to the death vs. the Germans.Why surrender when they will brutalize you just fight to the death and take many of them down with you. German abuse of SOivet POWs greatly helped the Soviet fight on. and later defeat the Germans.
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  38. the stupid twisted bs Japanese bushido code of killing and abusing POWs and civilians proved their undoing and made their enemies fight harder and to the end. That was why they only conquered 25 percent of China, and got stalled bloodily.
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  39. not exactly but their soldiery definitely fought harder and to the end than any other major power. Also the fact that they gave out crystal meth which was discovered by a Japanese chemist to their soldiers (and have been doing so since 1937) have greatly added to their fighting ability. and of course that was also why the Japanese were brutal , like crazy brainwashed fanatical meth addicts well...
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  40. interestingly while the Germans may have rated the Americans the lowest the German most feared An American general named Patton, hitler even gave a grudging admiration for him calling him that crazy cowboy general hahaha, German generals feared him much more than monty who they preferred to fight.
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  41. Battle of Wuhan 1938 was also the largest battle up until operation ichi go in 1944.
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  42.  @Dick_Sanormus  Be interesting to see how the Marines fared if they were deployed to Europe to fight the Germans.
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  43.  @Dick_Sanormus  and the US army also I think had better leadership than the USMC, while Patton was a dick , he was good at manuever armoured warfare flexible and in the end his tactics actually lessened casualties. However in a rugged terrain of the pacific which was not friendly to armoured maneuver warfare Patton may have to resort to possibly frontal infantry assaults. Also the army leadership in the Pacific was also not as good as the ones sent to Europe, US army general like Buckner, and Stillwell resorted to frontal attacks like the USMC. A US army general who was a standout in the pacific was General Frank Merill of the Merills Marauders who used infantry commando style tactics vs. teh Japanese in Burma. Stillwell totally misused the Merrill's Marauder in Burma using them for frontal attacks in the battle for Myitkina 1944. which resulted in the end the unit was disbanded and rendered kaput with 99.9 percent casualties.
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  44. As of 2021 you can buy a AK47(or more likely an AKM) in the South African black market for 100 USD, noting Im not surprised many of these weapons are smuggled in from Angola, and other neighbouring African countries and may be even ex Angolan war vintages, like these AKs if reasonably maintained could still be used decades later. and its a profitable and popular criminal job in SA for local gangs to hire AK gunmen for 14 USD per job.
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  45.  @Josh93B93  Not sure probably more expensive.
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  46.  @Josh93B93  LOL....also include cheap narcotics with it too(meth and crack) and cheapo hard liquor for bravery.
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  47.  @brycewalker3726  probably thought they were USMC haha we all look alike to them.
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  48.  @brycewalker3726  yep however the toughest battles were fought by the marines. when it came to securing beach heads taking islands they were the main force. Japanese were fanantical and they met an equally high elan morale force. also propoganda. too played a role.
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  49.  @redaug4212  and the USMC took all the glory
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  50. I noticed no German generals in this list, hmm. how about General Ernst Bush , commander Army group center during operation bagration 1944.
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