Read Online Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze by Peter Harmsen - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Peter Harmsen
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and to this day, nearly 80 years later, they remain locked in mutual suspicion. Much of this is due to the appalling brutality exhibited by the Japanese Army in China, which was epitomized in the infamous Rape of Nanjing—a direct result of the Shanghai campaign.
Shanghai was Asia’s most cosmopolitan city and home to citizens from a range of nations, as well as a large number of stateless people. Although they lived in areas left mostly untouched by combat, they were often just yards away from scenes of carnage where men and women fought and died in their thousands. These foreign inhabitants became the unwilling witnesses of the battle that raged all around them, and in that way they helped write history themselves. Rarely before had so many civilians seen so much bloodshed at such close range. The analogy would have been if a district of Stalingrad had miraculously been left unharmed by the battle, allowing the residents to take in all of the fighting that devoured the rest of the city. Or, in the words of American correspondent Edgar Snow: “It was as though Verdun had happened on the Seine, in full view of a Right Bank Paris that was neutral; as though a Gettysburg were fought in Harlem, while the rest of Manhattan remained a non-belligerent observer.” 2
Verdun and Gettysburg are apt comparisons. These battles had been momentous events, and the battle that consumed the Yangtze River delta in the latter half of 1937 was, too. The rest of the world understood this and the fighting regularly occupied the front pages of major newspapers around the globe. Shanghai seized the imagination then for much the same reasons as it does so again today. It was a place of excitement and exotic adventure, and the public wanted to be informed when its fate was hanging in the balance.
Therefore, it is ironic that so little has been written in any language other than Chinese about the battle of Shanghai in past decades. Not a single monograph on this crucial encounter is listed among the hundreds of thousands of volumes dealing with World War II and its antecedents. In a time when academic and popular writers must use all their imaginativepowers to think up uncovered angles on the war in Europe and the Pacific, the battle of Shanghai and many other battles of the 1937—1945 Sino-Japanese War constitute a gaping hole in the historiography. It is my hope that this book can make a modest contribution towards rectifying this imbalance.
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In what follows, almost all Chinese names are spelled using the pinyin system of transliteration introduced in China after 1949 and now increasingly adopted elsewhere. Traditional spelling has only been kept in a few instances where the use of pinyin would confuse rather than enlighten. China’s supreme leader is referred to as Chiang Kai-shek rather than Jiang Jieshi. In addition, in bibliographical references, authors’ spellings of their own names are maintained, even if they do not follow the conventions for the use of pinyin, for example, Hsin Ta-mo instead of Xin Damo.
Geographical names are generally given in their modern rendering rather than the way they were described in 1937, e.g. Beijing instead of Beiping and Taiwan instead of Formosa. Here, too, exceptions have been allowed for the sake of clarity. Manchukuo is not spelled Manzhouguo, and Marco Polo Bridge is not called Lugou Bridge.
It is generally the custom to give the full names of Chinese persons in the first reference, and later refer to them by their family names only. I have frequently departed from this convention so that it is possible to make the necessary distinctions between people with the same family names, e.g. Zhang Zhizhong and Zhang Fakui, who were both pivotal commanders. My aim is also to make it easier for the reader to commit the often unfamiliar names to memory. For Japanese persons, family names are put before given names.
APPENDIX
Order of Battle
Names of commanders are given, in
Shanghai was Asia’s most cosmopolitan city and home to citizens from a range of nations, as well as a large number of stateless people. Although they lived in areas left mostly untouched by combat, they were often just yards away from scenes of carnage where men and women fought and died in their thousands. These foreign inhabitants became the unwilling witnesses of the battle that raged all around them, and in that way they helped write history themselves. Rarely before had so many civilians seen so much bloodshed at such close range. The analogy would have been if a district of Stalingrad had miraculously been left unharmed by the battle, allowing the residents to take in all of the fighting that devoured the rest of the city. Or, in the words of American correspondent Edgar Snow: “It was as though Verdun had happened on the Seine, in full view of a Right Bank Paris that was neutral; as though a Gettysburg were fought in Harlem, while the rest of Manhattan remained a non-belligerent observer.” 2
Verdun and Gettysburg are apt comparisons. These battles had been momentous events, and the battle that consumed the Yangtze River delta in the latter half of 1937 was, too. The rest of the world understood this and the fighting regularly occupied the front pages of major newspapers around the globe. Shanghai seized the imagination then for much the same reasons as it does so again today. It was a place of excitement and exotic adventure, and the public wanted to be informed when its fate was hanging in the balance.
Therefore, it is ironic that so little has been written in any language other than Chinese about the battle of Shanghai in past decades. Not a single monograph on this crucial encounter is listed among the hundreds of thousands of volumes dealing with World War II and its antecedents. In a time when academic and popular writers must use all their imaginativepowers to think up uncovered angles on the war in Europe and the Pacific, the battle of Shanghai and many other battles of the 1937—1945 Sino-Japanese War constitute a gaping hole in the historiography. It is my hope that this book can make a modest contribution towards rectifying this imbalance.
————————
In what follows, almost all Chinese names are spelled using the pinyin system of transliteration introduced in China after 1949 and now increasingly adopted elsewhere. Traditional spelling has only been kept in a few instances where the use of pinyin would confuse rather than enlighten. China’s supreme leader is referred to as Chiang Kai-shek rather than Jiang Jieshi. In addition, in bibliographical references, authors’ spellings of their own names are maintained, even if they do not follow the conventions for the use of pinyin, for example, Hsin Ta-mo instead of Xin Damo.
Geographical names are generally given in their modern rendering rather than the way they were described in 1937, e.g. Beijing instead of Beiping and Taiwan instead of Formosa. Here, too, exceptions have been allowed for the sake of clarity. Manchukuo is not spelled Manzhouguo, and Marco Polo Bridge is not called Lugou Bridge.
It is generally the custom to give the full names of Chinese persons in the first reference, and later refer to them by their family names only. I have frequently departed from this convention so that it is possible to make the necessary distinctions between people with the same family names, e.g. Zhang Zhizhong and Zhang Fakui, who were both pivotal commanders. My aim is also to make it easier for the reader to commit the often unfamiliar names to memory. For Japanese persons, family names are put before given names.
APPENDIX
Order of Battle
Names of commanders are given, in
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