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Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Kim Jong-il, Nicolae Ceausescu, Idi Amin...
That does not make them lawful neutral.
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Well, there is the Pacific theatre…
I‘d say it’s extremely easy to argue, given that Japan started the second Sino-Japanese war (and started committing atrocities, like the Nanjing massacre) two years before Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and Germany had pretty warm relations with the Chinese at the time; while the Anti-Comintern Pact predates the start of war in Asia, it took until 1938 for Hitler to end the alliance with China (and align Germany with Japan) and recognise Japanese holdings, and 1940 for the Tripartite Pact.
My understanding of the historical consensus on this is that the Pacific theatre and the European theatre largely didn’t affect each other that much; neither Germany nor Japan were exactly dependents on the other, and if one fell, the other would still struggle as per history. In fact, if anything, Hitler was rather hoping for a Japanese invasion of the USSR that didn‘t materialise in the end (but also never told the Japanese that he would invade the USSR - Axis coordination was pretty shit, and trust was pretty low).
(It is true that Japan benefitted from technology transfers during the war, but it‘s difficult to argue that Japan couldn’t have done what she did without German backing when, in history, she was literally doing that without German backing for years.)
You should read a few more books about the Pacific campaign.
It was indeed insanity that Japan thought they could defeat the US, which is why very few Japanese thought they could. Even Admiral Yamamoto knew going to war was a terrible idea, which was why he took such a gamble with Pearl Harbor. The general thinking among the Japanese Imperial staff was that if they struck hard enough early on, they could convince America that the fight wasn't worth it. (Yamamoto himself didn't really believe this, it was just their only shot.) Of course their terrible decision-making was driven in part by a core of fanatics who really believed the Japanese "bushido spirit" would prevail against the weak Americans, and the peculiarities of Japanese decision-making gave these fanatics undue influence in what followed.
The European front didn't really factor into their thinking. There was no point where they were calculating "With Germany behind us, we can win." They were going to go to war with the US with or without Germany. The Japanese certainly did not think of Germany as the "senior partner" in their alliance.
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That would make sense for the conquest of European colonies in Southeast Asia etc., but as above, the second Sino-Japanese war is part of the pacific theatre, tied down the majority of Japan’s army, was started before any German involvement, and saw some 20 million deaths. That single point I think torpedoes the idea that hitler was responsible for all deaths in ww2, and really undersells Japanese agency in this matter.
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Idi Amin was straight CE. He was downright psychotic, and dimwitted into the bargain.
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