Martyrs, Morale, and Militarism: The Political Impact of Devastation and Slaughter

Do wars push the communities that suffer them left or right? We argue that the answer depends on the nature of the loss: communities respond differently to losing people and losing places. We show this using data from Japan’s WWII experience, where military deaths, civilian bombing deaths, and urban destruction varied across cities for reasons plausibly unrelated to their politics. Across sixty-three years of elections, cities that lost more soldiers voted disproportionately for Japan’s right-wing, pro-rearmament Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), while cities that suffered more physical destruction voted for left-wing, pacifist parties. Civilian bombing deaths move the vote in the same direction as military deaths. This pattern reconciles why WWI battle deaths pushed interwar Italian and German communities toward the right while building destruction in the Blitz pushed British cities toward the left. Survey, testimony, and organizational data indicate that deaths created “martyrs” whose commemoration benefited the right, whereas devastation durably lowered pro-war “morale”. Our estimates imply that absent U.S. area bombing, the LDP would have won the two-thirds majority of Japan’s House of Representatives that is a necessary first step toward revising Japan’s pacifist constitution and rearming.