All Intensive Purposes

Further to this post, and to the comments prompted by it and on Lawtalkers, one can fairly ask why the fighting on the Eastern Front and in the Pacific was more brutal than the fighting on the Western Front. Certainly the Germans and the Americans regarded the Russians and Japanese, respectively, as something less than fully human, although that is hardly a satisfying explanation, since the brutality was reciprocal. And, as Iris Chang wrote about, Japanese conduct towards Americans continued a pattern of brutality seen in Japan's fighting in China in the years before 1941. On this view, maybe the better question is, why did the fighting on the Western Front not generally reach the depths seen elsewhere around the world at that time. Surely the Geneva Conventions had something to do with it.