Japanese soldiers rushing to Tongzhou after the massacre encountered a horrific spectacle. “I saw a mother and child who had been slaughtered. The child’s fingers had been hacked off,” said one of them, Major Katsura Shizuo. He went on to describe the grisly scene at a Japanese store near the south gate of the city: “The body of a man, probably the owner, who had been dragged outside and killed, had been dumped on the road. His body had been cut open, exposing his ribs and his intestines, which had spilled out onto the ground.”23 A survivor told the Asahi Shimbun of the torture inflicted on some of the Japanese civilians before they were killed: “I chanced to see a man being dragged along by a wire. At that time I thought that he was only bound with it, but now I know that it was pierced through his nose.”24
After Tongzhou was recaptured, more carnage followed, but the tables had been turned. Japanese soldiers bent on revenge beheaded all the men they managed to capture, whether rebels or not, and raped the women. When they were done with Tongzhou, they swept the surrounding countryside searching for anyone who looked like a fleeing police officer, hard to determine at a distance, and gunned them down too. Finally, they set the town on fire. It created a dense column of black smoke that could be seen by the horrified residents of Beijing in the following days. Now they knew what life and death under Japanese rule would be like.25
Of the 385 Japanese and Koreans residing in Tongzhou, altogether 223 lost their lives. It appears that no one bothered to count the Chinese casualties, but there is little doubt they reached a comparable number. As horrific as it was, the violence in Tongzhou would quickly pale in comparison with the astonishing atrocities Japanese soldiers proved capable of as they entered China’s great population centers further down the east coast. However, in Tokyo the massacre was described in detail by a jingoistic press and triggered immense public anger. It made de-escalation of the China incident all the more unlikely, even if some in the Japanese hierarchy might still have hoped for a last-minute reversal of the descent into chaos.26 “The mood in the army today,” Hirohito’s brother, Prince Takamatsu, wrote in his diary, “is that we’re really going to smash China, so that it will be ten years before they can stand up straight again.”27
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As the Marco Polo Bridge skirmish set northern China ablaze with the rapidity of a prairie fire, Nationalist General Zhang Fakui was attending a routine training course for senior military personnel at Mount Lu in the southeastern province of Jiangxi. Short and small of build, even by the standards of the time, and with “a tapering pointed face” that made it impossible to call him handsome, Zhang did not stand out in any group. Indeed, when among fellow senior officers, he could easily be confused for an orderly. His physical courage, however, was legendary and had earned him the nickname “Zhang Fei,” after an ancient half-mythical general famous for taking a stand on a bridge and single-handedly facing down an entire enemy army.28
Approaching 41 years of age, Zhang Fakui had spent more than half his life in uniform, fighting first warlords, then Communists and, in a sign of the unpredictable and fast-changing nature of alliances in China, even the Nationalists. It was only a few years before that he had thrown in his lot with rebels campaigning against Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang, who wielded supreme power in the armed forces as chairman of the National Military Council, had forgiven him, and he was put in charge of weeding out Com-munist strongholds in a large area spanning several provinces south of Shanghai. But it was fast becoming clear that the enemy had changed. The Japanese threat loomed large as the summer activities at Mount Lu got underway. With war having broken out in the Beijing area, Zhang watched officers from the northern armies abruptly cut short the training and hastily return home.29
Mount Lu was also Chiang Kai-shek’s summer residence and there, on July 16, he gathered together 150 members of China’s political and cultural elite to discuss strategies for dealing with the Japanese.30 The savvy general-turned-statesman, who had only one year earlier preferred a cautious approach, now advocated staunch determination. “This time we must fight to the end,” Chiang told the participants. Two days later, the first period of the summer training was over, and Chiang met each of the graduating officers, explaining the duties and responsibilities they could expect to assume once the war spread southwards from Beijing, as seemed increasingly likely. Zhang Fakui was told to prepare for operations in the Shanghai area.31
Meanwhile, Chiang’s spy chief, Dai Li, was busy gathering information on Japanese intentions for Shanghai. It was not an easy matter. Dai, one of the most sinister figures of modern Chinese history, had spent vastly more energy and resources in the preceding years suppressing the Communists than spying against the Japanese. As a result, in the critical summer of 1937, he only had a thin network of agents inside “Little Tokyo,” the Hongkou area of Shanghai dominated by Japanese businesses.32 One was a pawnshop owner and the rest were double agents employed as local staff in the Japanese security apparatus. They could provide nothing but tidbits, rumors and hearsay. Some sounded ominous in the extreme, but there was almost nothing in the way of actual actionable intelligence. One of the double agents reported back a conversation he had carried out with an inebriated Japanese officer in July. “It’s only going to take a few days before Shanghai is going to be ours,” the officer had told the double agent, believing him to be on the same side. “Then your work is going to really get busy all of a sudden.”33
While Chiang was groping in the dark, deprived of the eyes and ears of an efficient intelligence service, he did have at his disposal an army that was at least somewhat better prepared for battle than in 1932. Chastised by the experience of fighting the Japanese, Chiang had set in motion a modernization program that aimed to equip the armed forces with the skills and materiel needed to not just suppress Communist rebels, but also face a modern fighting force supported by tanks, artillery and aircraft.34 He had made headway, but not enough. Serious weaknesses remained, and now there was no time for remedial action.
While in sheer numbers China seemed to be a power to be reckoned with, the figures were deceptive. On the eve of war, the Chinese military consisted of a total of 176 divisions, in principle divided into two brigades of two regiments each.35 However, only about 20 divisions had a full peacetime strength of 10,000 soldiers and officers, while 5,000 men was the norm for the rest. What’s more, Chiang exercised personal control over a mere 31 divisions,36 and he could not count on the allegiance of the others. In order to resist Japan successfully, Chiang would have to rely not just on his skills as a military commander, but also as a builder of fragile coalitions among maverick generals with fierce local loyalties.
Equipment was another issue. The modernization drive was not scheduled to have ended until late 1938, and it showed.37 In every weapon category, from rifles to field artillery, the Chinese were inferior to their Japanese foe, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Domestically made artillery pieces had a shorter range, and substandard steel-making technology caused the gun barrels to overheat adding the risk of explosion to the mix. Some arms even dated back to imperial times.38 A large proportion of the Chinese infantry had received no proper training in basic tactics, let alone in coordinated operations with armor and artillery. There was one important exception to this sorry state of affairs. The 20 full-strength divisions, all under Chiang’s control, were considered a roughly equal match for the Japanese foe as they had been through rigorous training designed by Chiang’s German advisors, a group of highly skilled professionals, who had attended the Prussian military academies before being steeled in the battles of the Great War less than a generation earlier.39
Chief of the German advisory corps was General Alexander von Falkenhausen, and it is hard to think of anyone more qualified for the job. True, the 58-year-old’s narrow shoulders, curved back and bald vulture’s head lent him an unmilitary, almost avian appearance, but his exterior belied a tough character that in 1918 had earned him his nation’s highest military awar
d, the Pour le Mérite, while assisting Germany’s Ottoman allies against the British in Palestine. Few, if any, German officers knew Asia as he did. His experience with the region stretched right back to the turn of the century. As a young lieutenant in the Third East Asian Infantry Regiment he had taken part in an international coalition of colonial powers that put down the Boxer rebellion in the year 1900. Ten years later, he had been an observant and curious tourist, traveling through Korea, Manchuria and northern China with his wife. From 1912 to 1914, he had been the German Kaiser’s military attaché in Tokyo.40 He was to put his knowledge to good use in the months ahead.
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If China’s ground forces were of uneven quality, this was even truer for its air arm. It was the pride of the Chinese military, and a resource considered so valuable that Chiang avoided sending any of the planes to the north after the Marco Polo Bridge incident. They were a key asset and as such not to be squandered. The hostilities in 1932 had proved to him and his generals that a modern air force was necessary. They had concluded with considerable prescience that leaving the skies to the enemy was simply too dangerous.41 The Chinese government had initiated an ambitious procurement program and set up the Central Aviation School outside Hangzhou, a little more than 100 miles west of Shanghai. Built on an American-inspired philosophy of rigorous training, its relentless pace winnowed down the aspiring pilots, leaving only the best.
China had more than 600 military aircraft by the middle of 1937, on paper at least.42 The figure was as impressive as it was misleading. The expansion of the air force had mainly been overseen by Italians, which was a mixed blessing. Mussolini’s Fascist government had sent a large number of pilots to China as advisors and had seen to it that its military aircraft manufacturers controlled a major part of the market. This enabled the Chinese to build up its air force at a rate it could not have achieved on its own, but it also gave rise to a number of startling inefficiencies. For starters, the Italian influence had triggered a practice in the Chinese Air Force of adding aircraft to the roster even if they had in reality been reduced to wrecks. This meant that of the 600 aircraft officially forming the air force at the start of the hostilities, only 91 were actually ready to fight. When a senior air force commander told Chiang Kai-shek this unwelcome truth, Chiang threatened to have him executed.43
The training of Chinese pilots provided by the Italian advisers was a disaster of equal magnitude, according to retired U.S. Army Air Force Captain Claire Lee Chennault, who was in China in the summer of 1937 to conduct a survey of the Chinese capabilities. The Italians had set up a separate flight school near the city of Luoyang in central China which, Chennault said, “graduated every Chinese cadet who survived the training course as a full-fledged pilot regardless of his ability.” This had deadly consequences. The American airman watched how “fighter pilots supposedly ready for combat spun in and killed themselves in basic trainers.” “The Chinese Air Force,” Chennault wrote in his diary after a visit to Luoyang, “is not ready for war.”44
The pilots trained at Hangzhou were in a different league. One of them was Gong Yeti, a 22-year-old lieutenant with the Fourth Air Group, who spent the summer of 1937 in intensive training. In the daytime, he would practice flight maneuvers in his Curtiss Hawk III, a modern biplane recently delivered from the United States and mainly used by the Chinese as a dive bomber. At night, he would read Fighting the Flying Circus by Eddie Rickenbacker, an American ace who flew in the skies over France during the Great War less than 20 years earlier. The prospect of finally facing the Japanese enemy filled Gong with boyish excitement. Sweeping down over mock targets near his airfield, he imagined they were Japanese battleships. “War cannot be avoided. The time for revenge has come,” he wrote in his diary on July 13.45
However, a shadow was hanging over Gong’s youthful thirst for adventure. One of his best friends during 18 months of training at aviation school had been killed the same month in a flying accident. It had been the saddest day of Gong’s life.46 Leafing through Rickenbacker’s war memoirs, he found advice that helped him out of the stupor caused by his friend’s death. “One of the greatest horrors of the war,” the American ace wrote, was the pilots’ “callous indifference upon the sudden death of their dearest chum.” And yet, Rickenbacker added, a certain emotional numbness was a simple necessity. Fighter pilots had to keep fit and clear-minded, and they could not allow themselves to be dulled by thoughts over lost friends. “I must learn from Rickenbacker,” Gong declared in his diary.47
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Despite considerable holes in China’s military preparedness, at some point in July Chiang Kai-shek decided that it was the time to openly resist Japan. Furthermore, he believed that Shanghai was the place where the first battle had to take place. It was a decision heavily influenced by Falkenhausen, and it made strategic sense. By initiating new hostilities in the Shanghai area, Japan would be forced to divert its attention from the north China front, thus forestalling a Japanese thrust towards the important city of Wuhan. It would also prevent any interruption of potential supply routes from the Soviet Union, the most likely source of material assistance given Moscow’s own enmity with Japan.48 It was a clever plan, and the Japanese did not anticipate it. Rather, intelligence officers in Tokyo were convinced that Chiang would send his troops to the north of China.49
One afternoon in late July, a group of high-ranking officers gathered at Chiang’s official residence in the capital Nanjing. Zhang Fakui, the officer who had taken part in the summer course, was among the attendees. Also in attendance was Zhang Zhizhong, the 46-year-old commander of military forces in the pivotal area stretching from Nanjing to Shanghai. Meetings such as this one happened on and off, and clearly they were much more than just social events for Chiang, an extreme ascetic who neither drank nor smoked and, despite being married, was said to never engage in sex. In order to achieve results, the gatherings always followed the same set procedure. First Chiang would raise an issue, then every person present would explain his view in turn, and in the end Chiang would draw the final conclusions. Afterwards, there would be dinner. The topic on this hot summer day was no surprise: Japan. After everyone had spoken, Chiang summarized the opinions that had been aired. Since China had decided to resist, he said, it should take the initiative in Shanghai. There was no turning back.
Zhang Fakui already knew that Shanghai was where his services would be required. The same afternoon, Chiang gave him more detailed instructions, putting him in charge of the right wing of the army, which was being prepared for action in the metropolitan area. He was given responsibility for the forces east of the Huangpu River in the part of Shanghai referred to as Pudong, an area of warehouses, factories and rice fields. Zhang Zhizhong, a quiet-spoken and somewhat sickly-looking man who had previously headed the Central Military Academy,50 was to command the left wing west of the Huangpu. The officers all welcomed the plan, immediately seeing the intuitive logic of taking on the Japanese in Shanghai, rather than around Beijing. There were not only strategic but also tactical benefits. The wide open north Chinese plains were ideal tank country and would give the Japanese armored columns a crushing advantage. The Shanghai area, by contrast, abounded in rivers and creeks, all favoring defensive operations. Logistically, too, the Chinese would benefit from a well-developed network of highways and railways radiating out from Shanghai. “We wanted to open a second front, to launch an offensive to split the enemy’s forces in China,” Zhang Fakui said many years later. “I approved of it. Everyone approved of it.”51
Zhang Zhizhong seemed to be an ideal pick to lead the troops in downtown Shanghai, where most of the fighting was likely to take place. The job as commandant of the military academy was a coveted position that enabled its holder to form links with junior officers earmarked for fast-track promotion. This meant that he personally knew the generals of both the 87th and 88th Divisions, which were to make up the core of Zhang’s newly formed 9th Army Group and bec
ome his primary assets in the early phases of the Shanghai campaign.52 Besides, he had the right aggressive instincts. Zhang Zhizhong felt that China’s confrontation with Japan had come in three stages. In the first stage, the Japanese invasion of the northeast in 1931, Japan had attacked and China had remained passive. In the second stage, the first battle of Shanghai in 1932, Japan had struck, but China had struck back. Zhang Zhizhong argued that this would be the third stage, where Japan was preparing to strike, but China would strike first.53
It appears that Zhang Zhizhong did not expect to survive this final showdown with the Japanese arch-foe. He took the fight very personally and even ordered his daughter to interrupt her education in England and return home to serve her country in the war.54 Even so, he was not the strong commander that he seemed to be. He had one important weakness. He was seriously ill. He never disclosed his actual condition, but it appeared that he was on the brink of a physical and mental breakdown after years in stressful jobs. He had in fact recently, in the spring of 1937, taken a leave of absence from his position at the military academy. When the war broke out, he was at a hospital in the northern port city of Qingdao and was preparing to go abroad to convalesce. He canceled his plans in order to contribute to the struggle against Japan. When his daughter returned from England and saw him on the eve of battle, it worried her to see how skinny he had become.55 From the outset, a question mark hung over his physical fitness to command.
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Liliane Willens, a nine-year-old girl born in Shanghai to Russian Jewish émigré parents, was vacationing in July 1937 at Mount Mogan—a cool inland retreat that was favored by Shanghai’s well-to-do after a popular seaside resort up north near Beijing had become unsafe due to the escalating conflict in the region. One day, Liliane’s four-year-old younger sister told her she had met Chiang Kai-shek, who sometimes spent time in the area. The Chinese leader had been strolling along a mountain path, and although surrounded by numerous guards, he had smiled at the small girl and said “Hello” in English. Her curiosity awakened, Liliane arranged an expedition to Chiang’s villa, but the children were stopped by a group of armed soldiers barking at them to leave immediately.56
Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze Page 3