Germany admits what they did but they did it. Japan does not deny what they did. At the end of the war they not only apologized but took a vow to never war again.

There was a concerted effort, by both America and Japan, to obliterate all records of what Japan did in WWII. Japan's war crimes have been purposefully obliterated from history, with only a bit surviving. The reason is a bit troubling: President Truman believed that Japan was needed as an ally to protect against the spread of communism. In order to have this alliance, the prosecution of Japan for war crimes was desisted almost as soon as it began and Japan's war crimes were shoved under the carpet. They actually stopped already started war crime prosecution. Here is something a bit disturbing: "the United States called a halt to further war crimes prosecutions when twenty-five "Class A" war criminals had been sentenced to death or imprisonment at the end of 1948. The decision to halt the prosecutions was entirely based on political expediency. It had nothing to do with issues of legality, morality, or humanity." http://www.users.bigpond.com/battleforAustralia/JapWarCrimes/USWarCrime_Coverup.html Everybody, including the American government, scrambled to hide ALL evidence that the Emperor had done anything wrong. Hirohito was painted as an almost saintlike individual. The Japanese government scrambled to obliterate all evidence of their crimes. America ensured that they would succeed. That is why there are so few pictures of Unit 731. Germany tried to do that as well but the crime was too massive and America would not have had any benefit from Germany's alliance. http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/641524 -------edited in from the comment thread: Amongst the government's original obliteration of Japan's war crimes, both here and in Japan, was not allowing mention of it in history texts. It is, from what I have been told, not mentioned AT ALL over there and I do not remember it here. . That is the government. We cannot hold the Japanese people to blame. They did not and do not know until recently. I have spoken with Japanese folks who recently learned about this and they are horrified. . Governments suck. What the Japanese government did in this was, in and of itself, a crime. I do not hold any onus on Japanese people for this. . I have a personal love for traditional Japanese culture and history. This was a huge black smudge on Japanese history but it has not changed my opinion on traditional Japanese culture and most of its history. All nations and cultures have their atrocities. I do not think that a culture should be tarred by them. . I stick responsibility for this in Truman and Hirohito's laps.

The reason we concentrate so much on Germany's actions during World War II is not because of what Germany said or did after the War. In Asia the Japanese actions in China get great attention. In the academic world these atrocities are not at all forgotten, even in the west. The United States however had MANY Jewish people of German decent that came here, before and after the war. The Holocaust has a much larger voice in the United States then do the atrocities in China and other Japanese crimes. Germany has admitted it did wrong and I commend them for that. However you don't learn from the past by forgetting it. That is a good question though and one that more research could be done on.

Because German people voted with their clear conscience for Hitler , unlike Japanese people for their ruler. This bad reputation will stick Germany until the end of the humanity, because it was done through democracy.

After my opinion it is a part of German history which is accepted by the Germans in their very vast majority. Nothing but shame I feel when think of it and so I am extremely proud that Germany plays a clear role in defense of humanity and like most Germans it is my clear opinion that German soldiers are wrong in any foreign country. Like many Germans I would completely abolish our Army because there is not any need any more that we have an army. If other countries think they need an army let them have their army but we in Germany do defintively not need an army anymore. So I am very glad to see that almost 70 % of the young men refuse to do army service. If there are conflicts in the world there are bigger and much more important nations as Germany who can send their troops elsewhere. German soldiers have nothing to do outside of Germany whatever may happen to other countries. Our history is strictly forbidding that there are German soldiers in any foreign country. LIke 70 % of the German population it is also my opinion that German troops should get instantly moved back home from all foreign countries and even the German navy should keep off from any action abroad because anything Germans will do, they always will make it wrong cause of our history.

The very bad reputation of Germany today is also based on the fact that Germany built up a new army only a few years after WWII and became became a member of the NATO. The right way would have been to stay strictly neutral without any army and without any foreign troops in Germany. So today Germany should leave the NATO and all other bi-national organisations and stay extremely neutral. Germany should strictly keep off from all kinds of conflicts in teh rest of the world because it is not the job of Germany to solve conflicts far around the whole world. Abolishing all kind of military in Germany would save a lot of money for much better purposes. There are quite more important and bigger nations in the world than Germany who are much better able to take part in military interventions all around the world. The USA and the British have more and better troops as Germany ever had and so it is an immense mistake that Germany takes part in US/British campaigns with its little means. The leading nations are the USA and Britain and so it is their job to solve problems in the world and Germany should stay strictly neutral and let the Americans and Bitish do their job. They make it better ad they do it better. The history of Germany is clearly forbidding for ever that Germany will ever play an important role again. So Germany should concetrate on its own problems and keep off from any foreign problems. What happens outside of Germany should not mind Germany at all. Nobody in the world need the Germans to solve their problems. Germany and Holocaust are for most of the people in the world the same and every German should be aware that most people in the world will just hate every German for that and we have to be aware that this will never end.

relax kid its all about power. and we the people provide the power so we are led to beleive in "popularity" if your popular you have alot of power, loose popularity...

From the point of view of Western civilization, German were supposed to be civilized people with a great culture. So Western nations were very shocked of them making those systematic genocides, as their existence was discovered. There was also more concern in the West for the killing of people in Western Europe than for what happened in the Soviet Union or in China. But war crimes should not be forgotten. "The Japanese government considers that the legal and moral positions in regard to war crimes are separate. Therefore, while maintaining that Japan violated no international law or treaties, Japanese governments have officially recognised the suffering which the Japanese military caused, and numerous apologies have been issued by the Japanese government. For example, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, in August 1995, stated that Japan "through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations", and he expressed his "feelings of deep remorse" and stated his "heartfelt apology". Also, on September 29, 1972, Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka stated: "[t]he Japanese side is keenly conscious of the responsibility for the serious damage that Japan caused in the past to the Chinese people through war, and deeply reproaches itself." However, the official apologies are widely viewed as inadequate or only a symbolic exchange by many of the survivors of such crimes or the families of dead victims. On October 2006, while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed an apology for the damage caused by its colonial rule and aggression, more than 80 Japanese lawmakers from his ruling party LDP paid visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. Many people aggrieved by Japanese war crimes also maintain that no apology has been issued for particular acts or that the Japanese government has merely expressed "regret" or "remorse". On 2 March 2007, the issue was raised again by Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, in which he denied that the military had forced women into sexual slavery during World War II. He stated, "The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion." Before he spoke, a group of Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers also sought to revise Yohei Kono's 1993 apology to former comfort women. However, this provoked negative reaction from Asian and Western countries." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes

The Germans have to accept that they are seen by a huge majority of Americans and British this way and so any effort to change this point of view is senseless. Nor the American people nor the British people will ever see the Germans in a positive way. I would say that hatred and scorn are the basic feelings and the public opinion in both countries which were even increasing in the last 20 or 30 years. I expect a very strong drive of this development the next few years with increasing campaigns of public hatred and so the only thing Germans can do that is reduce contacts to both countries and people from these countries as low as possible. It makes no sense to discuss on this topic because it will last for ever and the Germans know that they have to deal with it. Americans or British can therefore never be seen as partners because partnership would mean something very different and so contacts with members of these people should be an exception. In reality Germany does not need the UK nor the USA and so it would be better to invest friendly feelings into people of other nations which are more open and who have less bias.

Did every German support Hitler?

Just by the way an important point of view: Among all countries in the world Germany is an extremely small and absolutely unimportant country so that it is quite trivial what bigger and more important countries are thinking about Germany today. So, we should not overestimate the history of a country which has since more than 50 years almost not any importance. There are countries today which are really important and they make the politics and economy the last 50 or 80 years. So the whole discussion is overestimating the little importance of a small country somewhere in Europe. As long as Germans stay at home they can give a damn on that what somewhere in the world think about them. And as a little country Germany does not need a good or bad reputation. The last 50 years gave proof that Germany could do well with a good reputation as well as with a bad reputation. So they don't have to mind how they think elsewhere as long as they do not want to visit America or Britain.

I'm not sure they do. I don't know anybody under the age of 50 who would automatically think of the war when they thought of Germany. Most younger British people, like, I suspect, most younger Germans, are sick and tired of hearing about the war and want to move on. Yes, we understand terrible things happened - any country is capable of doing terrible things and many genocides have happened before and since - but we can't keep on harping on WW1 and WW2. If you asked young British people what they thought of Germany, they would say: Berlin's club scene Beer Great Cars I agree that Japan has never acknowledged what they did and they were as bad. But I think we have reached the point now where it is like the British being asked to apologise for slavery and colonialism... WE didn't do it, our ancestors did, I wasn't born until nearly 50 years after WWII ended. Can we move on please? All the talk about WWII gets boring in the end, even if we do have to learn about it. I am sorry if some older people find that insensitive, but the younger generation of Europeans just wants to start afresh without that whole weight on our shoulders.

I don't think they have a bad reputation with the rest of the world. There are certain companies, BMW for example, that carry a stigma for having manufactured instruments of war for Germany during WW2 but even that has been mostly been forgotten.

Who says Germany has a bad reputation?

Being honest, in most countries Germany has a very good reputation and according to different polls in most countries Germany has an excellent reputation. Quite in contrast to the widely positive reputation in the world, Germany has in a few European countries an extremely bad reputation because this is in some countries a matter of their national basics and character. The worst reputation Germany surely has in Britain as there are over more than a hundred years all time long vast campaigns of hatred and hostility against Germany and in the last few years the campaigns of hatred campaigns on the lowest and meanest level even were increasing worse than in any racial campaign we ever had in history before. British are educated and enforced to hate and they are encouraged daily by their politicians and medias. So Britain is probably a unique example of public racism which is initiated by their politicians and medias. So it is no surprise that most British are filled up with hatred and hostility towards their eternal and natural enemies. No way at all to change such a public opinion full of hatred and racism. In France there are some little reservations but mostly in the political class and those whio are thinking they could belong to the leading class. In general the reconciliation which was initiated by General De Gaulle and who spoke fluent German, was quite successful. In France there is no hatred and if people can get across the barriers of language they usually have no problems and often become friends. Poland is quite different, but most of the young generation who worked in Germany and who like to stay in Germany see things quite different as the elder people and the hatred seems to be more in the medias than in the mind of the people. In all other countries I know there is very little hatred and you do not find even reservations. The unique exception in the world seems to be Britain and I think it depends on their school system where little children are already educated in perfect German-bashing and the right way to hate similar to the brain-wash in North Korea. Even in Israel Germans are much better respected than in Britain and to my surprise a hell of a lot young Israelis even speak excellent German and even old people were glad to speak some words in German telling me that they were born in Germany. Although those old people would have had any reason being angry- they were not and some gave me the feeling that they were a little homesick. So in summary I would say that in most countries Germany has a good reputation and the only exception are the British as a whole and a few American magazines which are not representative.

I don't think Germany has a bad reputation. Yeah, there are a lot of movies where the Germans are the bad guys but lets face it, during a major event in recent world history they were. Also, people like using stereotypes and this is what stuck with the Germans. In regards to that previous comment that claims that dislike of Germans is growing, I think you need to check the facts. Germany is one if the main countries to trade with the US. I bet you have something in your apartment that is made in Germany. Did you know that the choice was between German and English when it came to the official language in the United States?

I also think that in most countries people regard most things that happened in the past as a fact of history without any reproaches to the people who live today. The people who live today were not even born when WW II happened and so I think it is rather unfair to blame the people from today for things which were committed by their ancestors. Nobody could blame the British of today as slave-traders or the Americans of today as slave-owners. The generation of today have nothing to do with that. But there are a few countries in the world who love to keep these things alive and which try to put an everlasting blame on a generation which has nothing to do with all that. And this is for me even worse than any kind of racism by stigmatising a whole country for things which happened over 65 years ago.

I think that bad reputation will last for ever and the Germans as well as the rest of the world are pretty good used to it. Like most Germans I do not care much about all that what other people might tink about us and we all know that it is hardly anything positive they think and feel about us. So why waste any time or effort in changing that reputation if you know very well that you will fail whatever you will do. So, I for my part can deal with it very well and if I meet people from Britain or America I avoid contact to them as well as posible. If you keep on distance to foreigners of certain nations or if you ignore them completely, I think it is not a problem for most Germans. On the other side it is a mere illusion to believe that you ever could change the mind of Americans or Brits so that they would give up their bias and hostility. In most other countries I think Germany has not at all that bad reputation as in Britain or in America. In the whole of Europe I mostly met people who were quite unbiased and quite friendly. May be in Malta or in Poland you find people who hate the Germans but not that much as Brits and Americans are used to do.

I think most Germans are quite aware that in some foreign countries they have a bad reputation and that they are just disliked by the fact being German. It makes no sense to discuss about those often extremely hostile feelings and opinions and so Germans are used to avoid countries and foreigners who dislike them. If the bad reputation is justified or not makes no difference at all and so you better just take notice of a hostile and biased opinion and don't give any comment. Every German knows very well which nationalities you better should avoid and never begin a discussion. It works and people can deal with it. And what other people outside of Germany think about them should not bother any German. I think the holocaust and the two worldwars will be the most important things that will stay in the minds of some people in other countries. You cannot change it.