Read Online Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze by Peter Harmsen - Free Book Online
Authors: Peter Harmsen
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Acknowledgments
N O ENDEAVOR IS A ONE-MAN UNDERTAKING . T HIS ALSO GOES FOR Shanghai 1937. The information needed to tell the untold story of the great battle on the banks of the Yangtze had to come from numerous sources, some less obvious than others. I have depended on the help of acquaintances, and the occasional kindness of strangers, without whom this book would never have made it into print.
I wish to acknowledge the following institutions for their generous assistance: Academia Historica, Taipei; the National Central Library, Taipei; the Department Military Archives, Freiburg im Breisgau; and Columbia Center for Oral History. The willingness of the Asahi Shimbun Photo Archives and of the American Geographical Society Library, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries, to share their rich and unique holdings of historical images was essential in putting together a pictorial record of the momentous events described in this book.
Among individuals who have contributed, I would particularly like to mention Kashiwagi Kazuhiko, editor at Asahi Shimbun Photo Archives, and Fang Jun, a Beijing-based amateur historian who shows by his own personal example that the memory of the Sino-Japanese War is very much alive in China today. Thanks should also go to my colleague Sam Yeh in the Taipei office of the French news agency AFP for his help in giving this book an Internet presence.
I am extremely grateful for the help provided by the staff at CasematePublishers, including editorial director Steven Smith, for his enthusiastic support during the entire process of preparing this publication; designer Libby Braden for ensuring that the book ended up as visually appealing as it did; and editor Anita Baker for polishing the manuscript with a keen eye for both the big picture and the small, but important, detail.
The patience of my wife Hui-tsung was crucial. Finally, thanks to my children, Eva and Lisa, for putting up with all the evenings and weekends Dad had to spend in front of the computer.
T AIPEI , F EBRUARY 2013
Prologue
I N THE EARLY PART OF 1937, THE CONCEPT OF URBAN WARFARE WAS still new to the world. Three months of battle in Shanghai in the fall of that year changed all that. The struggle between China and Japan demonstrated what happens to a major city when it becomes the arena for two vast armies, fielding hundreds of thousands of men and an array of destructive weapons. There had been other instances of war in an urban setting—indeed, earlier in the decade Shanghai was an example of that—but never on such a massive scale. The scenes of flattened housing complexes and gutted factories that were later to captivate and horrify the global public during the battle of Stalingrad had in fact already been played out more than five years earlier in China’s largest city.
In a sense, the struggle for Shanghai in 1937 was a dress rehearsal for World War II. Or more correctly, perhaps, it was part of World War II. Arguably, it could be considered to be the first major battle in a conflict that divided mankind into two major camps—one consisting of Fascist regimes in various guises, the other a motley group of democratic and totalitarian nations. To westerners it is natural to see World War II as starting in earnest with Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939. For Asians, it is just as logical to think of it as beginning two years earlier on the north Chinese plain and along the banks of the Yangtze.
Even if the battle of Shanghai is considered isolated from the larger context of World War II, it was undeniably an event that would leave anindelible mark on the two ancient civilizations caught up in it. It was the biggest clash between nations that East Asia had seen since the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and 1905. 1 It turned localized, and possibly manageable, Sino-Japanese friction into a full-scale war that would continue for eight bloody years. In fact neither side, Chinese or Japanese, has ever really found closure,
N O ENDEAVOR IS A ONE-MAN UNDERTAKING . T HIS ALSO GOES FOR Shanghai 1937. The information needed to tell the untold story of the great battle on the banks of the Yangtze had to come from numerous sources, some less obvious than others. I have depended on the help of acquaintances, and the occasional kindness of strangers, without whom this book would never have made it into print.
I wish to acknowledge the following institutions for their generous assistance: Academia Historica, Taipei; the National Central Library, Taipei; the Department Military Archives, Freiburg im Breisgau; and Columbia Center for Oral History. The willingness of the Asahi Shimbun Photo Archives and of the American Geographical Society Library, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries, to share their rich and unique holdings of historical images was essential in putting together a pictorial record of the momentous events described in this book.
Among individuals who have contributed, I would particularly like to mention Kashiwagi Kazuhiko, editor at Asahi Shimbun Photo Archives, and Fang Jun, a Beijing-based amateur historian who shows by his own personal example that the memory of the Sino-Japanese War is very much alive in China today. Thanks should also go to my colleague Sam Yeh in the Taipei office of the French news agency AFP for his help in giving this book an Internet presence.
I am extremely grateful for the help provided by the staff at CasematePublishers, including editorial director Steven Smith, for his enthusiastic support during the entire process of preparing this publication; designer Libby Braden for ensuring that the book ended up as visually appealing as it did; and editor Anita Baker for polishing the manuscript with a keen eye for both the big picture and the small, but important, detail.
The patience of my wife Hui-tsung was crucial. Finally, thanks to my children, Eva and Lisa, for putting up with all the evenings and weekends Dad had to spend in front of the computer.
T AIPEI , F EBRUARY 2013
Prologue
I N THE EARLY PART OF 1937, THE CONCEPT OF URBAN WARFARE WAS still new to the world. Three months of battle in Shanghai in the fall of that year changed all that. The struggle between China and Japan demonstrated what happens to a major city when it becomes the arena for two vast armies, fielding hundreds of thousands of men and an array of destructive weapons. There had been other instances of war in an urban setting—indeed, earlier in the decade Shanghai was an example of that—but never on such a massive scale. The scenes of flattened housing complexes and gutted factories that were later to captivate and horrify the global public during the battle of Stalingrad had in fact already been played out more than five years earlier in China’s largest city.
In a sense, the struggle for Shanghai in 1937 was a dress rehearsal for World War II. Or more correctly, perhaps, it was part of World War II. Arguably, it could be considered to be the first major battle in a conflict that divided mankind into two major camps—one consisting of Fascist regimes in various guises, the other a motley group of democratic and totalitarian nations. To westerners it is natural to see World War II as starting in earnest with Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939. For Asians, it is just as logical to think of it as beginning two years earlier on the north Chinese plain and along the banks of the Yangtze.
Even if the battle of Shanghai is considered isolated from the larger context of World War II, it was undeniably an event that would leave anindelible mark on the two ancient civilizations caught up in it. It was the biggest clash between nations that East Asia had seen since the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and 1905. 1 It turned localized, and possibly manageable, Sino-Japanese friction into a full-scale war that would continue for eight bloody years. In fact neither side, Chinese or Japanese, has ever really found closure,
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