What the Potsdam Proclamation conveyed most clearly was the rage in the Allied camp over Japanese maltreatment of prisoners. Long after the war had ended, and notwithstanding the revelation of the enormity of Nazi atrocities, great numbers of Americans, British, and Australians continued to believe that the enemy in Asia had been even more heinous than the German one. A statistic that emerged in the course of the trials reinforced this impression. Whereas 4 percent of American and British servicemen taken prisoner by the Germans and Italians were calculated to have died in captivity, the
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