What's Going on in China?

The germans were welcomed in some places as virtual liberators when they took over a areas that had been occupied by the red army. They turned those people against them by their cruelty. And this cruelty could be happening at the soldier level, which is an excuse that the japanese sometimes used. In the nanking situation in china, there was sort of a, well, you know, boys will be boys kind of excuse. What's going on in asia's a different story, and much harder to pin down. I can see like three levels of responsibility here. The emperor and the major leaders decided they wanted to have a iron fist, and this would be very in keeping