Dehumanization

Japanese attitudes toward Chinese

“Two Japanese soldiers became overnight celebrities in Japan as news was relayed about a competition to see which of them could cut off 100 Chinese heads first…. Everywhere, Chinese soldiers were hundred down and slaughtered using a variety of cruel forms of execution — prisoners hanged by the tongue, buried alive, burnt alive, used for bayonet practice, dropped naked into holes in the winter ice to ‘go fishing.’ … The unrestrained violence stemmed from the decision by the Japanese military to define Chinese soldiers as bandits, removing any legal barrier to their murder when they were caught.. … As Japanese soldiers became hardened to a life of savage combat, the habit of killing wounded and captured enemy became a way of life, ‘I told on the corpses of Chinese soldiers without care,’ wrote one witness of Nanjing to his journal, ‘for my heart had become wild and disturbed.’”

Overy, Richard. Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945. First United States edition. New York: Viking, 2022.

In Auschwitz, people became numbers

Frankl, Viktor E. Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy. 3rd ed. A Touchstone Book. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984.

pp. 18-19, 63

"...each of them was nothing but a number. On their admission to the camp (at least this was the method in Auschwitz) all their documents had been taken from them, together with their other possession. Each prisoner therefore, had had an opportunity to claim a fictitious name or profession; and for various reasons many did this. The authorities were interested only in the catpives' numbers. These numbers were often tattooed on their skin, and also had to be sewn to a certaon spot on the trousers, jacket, or coat. Any guard who wanted to make a charge against a prisoner just glanced at his number (and how we dreaded such glances!); he never asked for his name."

Frankle describes a transport of sick prisoners:

"If one of the sick men had died before the cart left, he was thrown on anyway--the list had to be correct. This list was the only thing that mattered. A man counted only because he had a prison number. One literally became a number: dead or alive--that was unimportant; the life of a 'number' was completely irrelevant. What stood behind that number and that life mattered even less: the fate, the history, the name of the man."

Racial attitudes in the Pacific Theater

“American marines and infantry held a widespread loathing and contempt for the enemy, fueled by propaganda that painted them as inhuman animals, products of an exotic and unfathomable culture. In the field the ‘good Jap’ was the ‘dead Jap,’ and few prisoners were taken. The wounded might be finished off with a slit throat. Trophy parts were cut from the bodies, some of the dead scalped and gold teeth praised out, to be kept in small trophy pouches.”

Overy, Richard. Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945. First United States edition. New York: Viking, 2022.