Shanghai and Nanjing 1937: Massacre on the Yangtze

by Benjamin Lai, Giuseppe Rava (Illustrator)

Overview

From 1931, China and Japan had been embroiled in a number of small-scale conflicts that had seen vast swathes of territory being occupied by the Japanese. On 7 July 1937, the Japanese engineered the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which led to the fall of Beijing and Tianjin and the start of a de facto state of war between the two countries. This force then moved south, landing an expeditionary force to take Shanghai and from there drive west to capture Nanjing.

This fully illustrated book tells the story of the Japanese assault on these two great Chinese cities. The battle of Shanghai was the first large-scale urban warfare of World War II and one of the bloodiest battles of the entire Sino-Japanese War. The determined resistance by Chinese inflicted sizable Japanese casualties, and may well have contributed to the subsequent massacre of prisoners and civilians in the battle of Nanjing, tarnishing Japan's reputation in the eyes of the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472817495
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	06/20/2017
Series:	Campaign Series
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	7.10(w) x 9.70(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Benjamin Lai was born in Hong Kong, educated in the UK, and went on to serve as an officer in the British Territorial Army in the 1980s and 1990s. Fluent in both Chinese and English, he currently works as a development and business consultant in China.

Giuseppe Rava was born in Faenza in 1963, and took an interest in all things military from an early age. Entirely self-taught, Giuseppe has established himself as a leading military history artist, and is inspired by the works of the great military artists, such as Detaille, Meissonier, Röchling, Lady Butler, Ottenfeld and Angus McBride. He lives and works in Italy.

Table of Contents

Origins of the Campaign 5

The strategic situation

Chronology 9

Opposing Commanders 11

Chinese

Japanese

Opposing Forces 17

Chinese

Japanese

Orders of battle

Opposing Plans 27

Chinese

Japanese

The Campaign 31

Shanghai

The Chinese Verdun

The crossing of Suzhou Creek

The Chinese collapse

The road to Nanjing

The battle for Nanjing

The collapse and massacres

Aftermath 86

The Battlefield Today 90

Acronyms and abbreviations 92

List of Chinese and Japanese names 92

Further Reading 94

Index 95