True Left

This is post-WWII, but you've probably heard about all kinds of wacky Nazi plans to sink the entire Netherlands, or Himmler trying to colonize the USSR with a bunch of Nordicist neo-feudalist fiefdoms, or any other kinds of crazy things. I think due to post-war propaganda, we'll never really know if most of these things were always considered to be far too impractical to ever leave the drawing board, or whether they were actually semi-serious.

But here's a barbaric plan that was serious and quite frankly dwarfs any 'evil plans' that WWII Germany allegedly had. During the Korean war, General Douglas MacArthur (the highest-ranking General in the US Army and commander of the US forces in the Korean war) wanted to drop 30-50 atomic bombs on the border of North Korea in order to stop Chinese reinforcements. Think about that. 50 atomic bombs in the small Korean peninsula. By 1950, the Soviets had their own nuclear weapons, and MacArthur was also so antagonistic toward China that many believed he would lead to a full-on WWIII with them. For these reasons, General MacArthur was removed from his command in Korea.

How many times have we heard about the "audacity" of NS Germany using scorched earth tactics on the Eastern front, on the frontlines of a total war situation? Meanwhile, MacArthur wanted to turn parts of China and Korea into nuclear wastelands which would remain impenetrable for over an entire lifetime.

At a press conference on 30 November 1950, Truman was asked about the use of nuclear weapons:

    Q. Mr. President, I wonder if we could retrace that reference to the atom bomb? Did we understand you clearly that the use of the atomic bomb is under active consideration?
    Truman: Always has been. It is one of our weapons.
    Q. Does that mean, Mr. President, use against military objectives, or civilian—
    Truman: It's a matter that the military people will have to decide. I'm not a military authority that passes on those things.
    Q. Mr. President, perhaps it would be better if we are allowed to quote your remarks on that directly?
    Truman: I don't think—I don't think that is necessary.
    Q. Mr. President, you said this depends on United Nations action. Does that mean that we wouldn't use the atomic bomb except on a United Nations authorization?
    Truman: No, it doesn't mean that at all. The action against Communist China depends on the action of the United Nations. The military commander in the field will have charge of the use of the weapons, as he always has.[88]

The implication was that the authority to use atomic weapons now rested in the hands of MacArthur.[89][90] Truman's White House issued a clarification, noting that "only the President can authorize the use of the atom bomb, and no such authorization has been given," yet the comment still caused a domestic and international stir.[88]
[...]
On 9 December 1950, MacArthur requested field commander's discretion to employ nuclear weapons; he testified that such an employment would only be used to prevent an ultimate fallback, not to recover the situation in Korea.[92] On 24 December 1950, MacArthur submitted a list of "retardation targets" in Korea, Manchuria and other parts of China, for which 34 atomic bombs would be required.[92][93][94][95] In June 1950, Louis Johnson released a study on the potential uses of radioactive agents. According to Major General Courtney Whitney, MacArthur considered the possibility of using radioactive wastes to seal off North Korea in December 1950, but he never submitted this to the Joint Chiefs. After his dismissal, Senator Albert Gore Sr. put a similar proposal to Truman.[96]
[...]
In early April 1951, the Joint Chiefs became alarmed by the build up of Soviet forces in the Far East, particularly bombers and submarines.[98] On 5 April 1951, they drafted orders for MacArthur authorizing attacks on Manchuria and the Shantung Peninsula if the Chinese launched airstrikes against his forces originating from there.[99] The next day Truman met with the chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Gordon Dean,[91] and arranged for the transfer of nine Mark 4 nuclear bombs to military control.[100]
[...]
 In interview with Jim G. Lucas and Bob Considine on 25 January 1954, posthumously published in 1964, MacArthur said,

    Of all the campaigns of my life, 20 major ones to be exact, [Korea was] the one I felt most sure of was the one I was deprived of waging. I could have won the war in Korea in a maximum of 10 days.... I would have dropped between 30 and 50 atomic bombs on his air bases and other depots strung across the neck of Manchuria.... It was my plan as our amphibious forces moved south to spread behind us—from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea—a belt of radioactive cobalt. It could have been spread from wagons, carts, trucks and planes.... For at least 60 years there could have been no land invasion of Korea from the north. The enemy could not have marched across that radiated belt."[110]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relief_of_Douglas_MacArthur#Nuclear_weapons

Oh, and another thing:

There were numerous atrocities and massacres of civilians throughout the Korean War committed by both sides, starting in the war's first days. On 28 June, North Korean troops committed the Seoul National University Hospital massacre.[393] On the same day, South Korean President Syngman Rhee ordered the Bodo League massacre,[150][394][395] beginning mass killings of suspected leftist sympathizers and their families by South Korean officials and right-wing groups.[396][397] Estimates of those killed during the Bodo League massacre range from at least 60,000–110,000 (Kim Dong-choon) to 200,000 (Park Myung-lim).[398] The British protested to their allies about later South Korean mass executions and saved some citizens.[396][397]

In 2005–2010, a South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigated atrocities and other human rights violations through much of the 20th century, from the Japanese colonial period through the Korean War and beyond. It excavated some mass graves from the Bodo League massacres and confirmed the general outlines of those political executions. Of the Korean War-era massacres the commission was petitioned to investigate, 82% were perpetrated by South Korean forces, with 18% perpetrated by North Korean forces.[399][400][398]
[...]
In the most notorious U.S. massacre, investigated separately, not by the commission, American troops killed an estimated 250–300 refugees, mostly women and children, at No Gun Ri in central South Korea (26–29 July 1950).[401][402] U.S. commanders, fearing enemy infiltrators among refugee columns, had adopted a policy of stopping civilian groups approaching U.S. lines, including by gunfire.[403] After years of rejecting survivors’ accounts, the U.S. Army investigated and in 2001 acknowledged the No Gun Ri killings, but claimed they were not ordered and "not a deliberate killing".[404]:x South Korean officials, after a parallel investigation, said they believed there were orders to shoot. The survivors’ representatives denounced what they described as a U.S. "whitewash".[405][406]
[...]
In December 1950, the South Korean National Defense Corps was founded; the soldiers were 406,000 drafted citizens.[436] In the winter of 1951, 50,000[437][438] to 90,000[439][440] South Korean National Defense Corps soldiers starved to death while marching southward under the PVA offensive when their commanding officers embezzled funds earmarked for their food.[437][439][441][442] This event is called the National Defense Corps Incident.[437][439] There is no evidence that Syngman Rhee was personally involved in or benefited from the corruption.[443]
[...]
Throughout the Korean War, "comfort stations" were operated by South Korean officials for UN soldiers.[445]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#War_crimes

If you changed the names to make it seem like it happened at the hands of Germany or Japan in WWII, no one would have batted an eye. But since it happened by a different nation in a different war, it's never in regular history books. If the point of the history books was to simply teach certain actions and principles were bad in a sincere and unbiased manner, there wouldn't be such an extreme double standard focusing on the (alleged) actions of a single regime during a single time period, while ignoring all the comparable (and often worse) things that happened at the hands of other regimes (in more recent time periods!).