Significance of the Nanking Massacre

Alsina González
Specialist journalist and researcher

said the Gesta Francorum that when the crusaders entered Jerusalem in 1099, they unleashed such slaughter (of Muslims, Jews and even Christians who had remained in the city), that the blood that ran through the streets reached the ankles of the soldiers who had come from West.

Although we might think that this kind of killings were more typical of ancient, more "barbaric" times, one does not have to go back very far to have testimonies of other similar massacres (and we can even find them in a contemporary way), especially in the period that refers to the Second World War on all its fronts.

One of these “apocalyptic” episodes for a specific community was the Nanking massacre.

The so-called "Nanjing massacre", also known as the "Nanjing rape", was a massacre of Chinese civilians and soldiers hands of the Japanese imperial troops, when the latter were able to take the city of Nanking in December 1937.

We are talking, naturally, about a war crime that continues to be claimed by China and that has not been recognized (at least less, not for the most part) by Japan, which has not stopped causing tensions between the two countries since after the conflict armed.

Nanjing was the capital of the Chinese Nationalist forces and therefore a clear Japanese military objective in their invasion of the country.

Cosmopolitan Shanghai had fallen in October, and Japanese troops turned northwest to seize the administrative capital of the government Chinese.

The Chinese troops, beaten by their Japanese opponents, withdrew into the interior of the country to reorganize themselves and be able to counterattack, in a context of internal divisions (Manchukuo was the state Tokyo's puppet in China, occupying the Manchuria region and with the deposed Chinese Emperor Puyi as head of state) and scarcity of resources, which also affected the militia, which depended on foreign aid such as that provided by the States Joined.

The fall of Nanking was evident, but the mission of the units that had to resist in the city (a walled medieval city, by the way), was hold off the Japanese offensive for as long as possible to give the main body of the army time to withdraw and put distance between them and their enemies. For security reasons, the Chinese government abandoned the capital, which was closed by troops to prevent the escape of civilians, which in the end proved to be a fatal error, but which then sought to expedite the transfer of the troops.

Upon arrival in the vicinity of the city, Japanese troops surrounded it and demanded the unconditional surrender of the defenders.

Combat morale and population Chinese civilians were casualties, since they had been direct witnesses or knew from reliable sources of Japanese brutality and the crushing defeats suffered by their army up to then. Probably more than one would have fled if they could, or would have opened the gates to the Japanese.

In these circumstances, it is not surprising that the Japanese stormed the city four days after their arrival, on December 13, 1937, in the face of tepid Chinese resistance.

What followed next, and for several weeks, is the subject of controversy.

The most heinous crimes were committed in the conquered city, from looting to mass murder of prisoners of war and civilians, to rape.

There are documented cases of civilians buried alive, killed with bayonets or blows, burned alive, or even cut with sabers, in addition to killing them in groups by detonating charges explosive If ever there was hell on earth, Nanking is one incarnation it may have taken.

Chinese soldiers and soldiers were being shot en masse and buried in mass graves. Women were systematically raped, and many of them murdered after having committed the rape, also in the most abject ways.

And I am not counting here all the excesses of the Japanese soldiery with the Chinese civilians and military, since there are things that turn the stomach even more, and it is even difficult for me to write about it.

How was this possible? racist rhetoric and the abolition of international laws by the Japanese army explain the main causes.

The policy Japanese expansionist, based on the so-called "Asian co-prosperity sphere", did not hide a feeling of racial superiority of the doctrine Japanese officer, who transferred to the troops as a kind of "open bar" with Chinese civilians and, in general, from any town that did not outside Japanese, with a few exceptions (such as the case of native Taiwanese troops, considered excellent warriors by the Japanese).

Making a free comparison, for the Japanese ultranationalists and racists, the Chinese would come to be like the Jews for the Nazis.

In the military section, the high command of the Imperial Army decided that the imprisoned Chinese soldiers would not receive the consideration of war prisoners, which distanced them from the protection offered by the Geneva Convention, which would not apply to them, leaving them within the reach of the arbitrariness of the troops.

This same solution has been taken by various armies in different parts of the world over the years that mediate between the approval of said convention, and the present, with appellations such as "terrorists" to name the enemy.

The German John Rabe, representative of the German multinational Siemens in the city, led along with others 21 Western citizens, a security area in the city of Nanjing, which the Japanese agreed to respect.

Thanks to the action of Rabe and the other western citizens, between 200,000 and 250,000 Chinese lives were saved. He is known as "the Oskar Schindler of Nanking," and a recognized and honored hero in China.

As in other cases of genocide, the figures for this massacre are not clear, ranging from 100,000 recognized by Japanese sources, to 500,000 reported by North American studies.

Not all those responsible for this massacre could be tried; some died in the course of the war itself, and for others there was insufficient evidence to impose an exemplary punishment.

The Nanking wound remains open today, but not only for China and Japan, but for all humanity, as a sign of how low we can fall both individually and collectively.

Photo: Fotolia – Dan