There is introspection and there is revisionism.

> My observations have been that most people in America believe Japan just attacked Pearl Harbor for no good reason. This story is told in the hollywood movie Pearl Harbor. In the movie, there were just kids playing, good people BBQ'ing, and beach volleyball and then these evil bastards just attacked for no reason. They don't know who Perry was or what we did to Japan before this happened.

Admiral Perry engaged in a bit of light imperialism. Japan was luckily able to understand the threat facing it from the west and resisted heavy imperialism by modernizing. Unfortunately it modeled itself after some of the worst of Western imperialism and decided to go conquer territory. Just because the west was hypocritical doesn't make Japan good or right.

Also more importantly Pearl Harbor wasn't revenge, it was a strategic preemptive strike hoping to keep US out of the war while Japan engaged in bloody imperialism over european/american imperial possessions. It failed.

The whole total war thing (mass bombing) was ugly and arguably a war crime but nukes weren't worse then other bombs. And it's a myth that Japan was willing to surrender at best they were considering negotiating for surrender under conditions (including not demilitarizing, keeping substantial colonies, self punishment of war criminals in addition to keeping the emperor). Even after 2 nukes some argue it was the addition of the soviet invasion of manchuria that got them to surrender, barely.

> I think most Americans know that Germany committed horrible mass murder against races of people, but not that their economy was destroyed by through financial schemes (even Keynes, mainstream macroecon's hero, told of this).

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4hneeq/was_t...

I understand the treaty conditions that were imposed were harsh but the weren't just for punishment, they were intended to help prevent another war. Many people including American President Woodrow Wilson thought the conditions were too harsh. Others thought they were too soft. Either way history showed that the treaty failed to prevent another war.

The conditions weren't harsher then Germany imposed on France in the French-Prussian war or on the soviet union in WW1.

And a good deal of blame for the economy lies on the German government that purposefully tanked the economy trying to get out of the treaty.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/39wikd/to_wh...

> The only way the Treaty of Versailles actually contributed to the downfall of the Weimar Republic is because the Germans used it as a scapegoat, not because it actually was particularly punitive.

> The "Deutsches Reich" (which was the real name of the Weimar Republic) was particularly incensed by three key factors: firstly, the so-called "stab in the back," where it seemed that a nearly triumphant Germany utterly collapsed in a matter of months, ostensibly by speculators (particularly Jews), the idea of German responsibility for the war, which (despite being true) was heavily resented by the average German: and lastly, the rise of Poland out of former German territories. Never mind that the population of those territories was primarily Polish, that the Germans had gone out of their way to antagonize the Poles (in the case of Silesia and Posen), and that the Germans had resurrected the Polish state in the first place (as part of Brest-Litvosk).

> These factors, combined with the arms limitations, meant that a large section of the population, primarily former soldiers and nobility, became extremely reactionary. This was not helped by attempted communist uprisings that were put down brutally by both German troops and paramilitary forces known as Freikorps. Incidentally, the forced disarmament of Germany was a massive boon to the government budget, so any excuse that Germany could not afford the reparations payments (which had already been diluted to a third of the face amount by the Entente powers prior to the signing) is ludicrous.

> These factors led to the German government attempting to sabotage their own economy to renegotiate the reparations. During the period known as Weimar hyperinflation, rather than do something sane like raise taxes or cut spending, the German government chose to print marks and use the marks to buy gold for reparations, thus rapidly inflating the currency and destroying the economy. This coincided with a refusal to properly pay the reparations, prompting French and Belgian troops to move into the industrial Ruhr region to force Germany to satisfy payment. But in response, Germany declared a general strike that further crippled the German economy but in return made the Franco-Belgian occupation unprofitable (and also started another communist uprising). In effect, Germany decided to be the petulant little child that whines that he's hungry and throws his food on the floor because he wants ice cream.

> This did cause the Entente to further renegotiate Germany's reparations, in what became known at the Dawes Plan. And the reactionaries were still upset about it, considering the deal to be treason. Germany still did not consistently make its reparation payments, albeit with slightly more regularity.