TIL that March 16 is a national holiday in Latvia celebrating Latvians who served in the Nazi Waffen-SS during World War II

All the sides in WW2 were awful. The only major participant (unless you deem them as minors) that didn't have blood on their hands was arguably Finland and Greece.

Japanese: genocide, enslavement, sexual enslavement throughout Asia of Asians and non-Asians. Tried to unleash biological weapons on the U.S. Even doing insane stuff like bayoneting nurses in Hong Kong and beheading competitions in Nanjing. Arguably they were the worst in overall numbers and amount of crimes.

Allies: bombed and firebombed many civilians in WW2. Concentration camps of Japanese in USA. Unleashed two nuclear bombs on Japan and tries to justify it (arguably losing Manchuria and Korea in like 2 weeks is what convinced Japan to give up. Not 2 bombs that looked super minor compared to the firebombings).

Soviet Union: Genocide of millions of Ukrainians a few years before WW2. During WW2: ethnic cleansing of Tartars, Chechens, Germans, Scandinavians, Dutch, Poles, et cetera. Many German PoWs, of which 95%+ probably weren't Nazis, were worked to death after the war. Even in the former Baltic Republics: they killed heaps of people.

Sure the 8 year old's version and comprehension of WW2: there were the "good guys" (Allies and Soviets) and the "bad guys".

A 3 digit IQ adult should know that all the sides were awful. There were no gentlemen in that conflict except for Greece and Finland.

/r/todayilearned Thread Link - en.wikipedia.org