The Japanese army had pushed quickly through China after capturing Shanghai in November 1937.

The Japanese army had pushed quickly through China after capturing Shanghai in November 1937

. As the Japanese marched on Nanjing, they committed violent atrocities in a terror campaign, including killing contests and massacring entire villages.[11] By early December, their army had reached the outskirts of Nanjing.

The Chinese army withdrew the bulk of its forces since Nanjing was not a defensible position. The civilian government of Nanjing fled, leaving the city under the de facto control of German citizen John Rabe, who had founded the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. On December 5, Prince Yasuhiko Asaka was installed as Japanese commander in the campaign. Whether Asaka ordered the massacre is disputed, but he took no action to stop the massacre.

The massacre officially began on December 13, the day Japanese troops entered the city after a ferocious battle. They rampaged through Nanjing almost unchecked. Captured Chinese soldiers were summarily executed in violation of the laws of war, as were numerous male civilians falsely accused of being soldiers. Rape and looting were widespread. Due to multiple factors, death toll estimates vary from 40,000 to over 300,000, with rape cases ranging from 20,000 to over 80,000 cases. However, most scholars support the validity of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and its findings, which estimate at least 200,000 murders and at least 20,000 cases of rape. The massacre finally wound down in early 1938. John Rabe's Safety Zone was mostly a success, and is credited with saving at least 200,000 lives. After the war, multiple Japanese military officers and Kōki Hirota, former Prime Minister of Japan and foreign minister during the atrocities, were found guilty of war crimes and executed. Some other Japanese military leaders in charge at the time of the Nanjing Massacre were not tried only because by the time of the tribunals they had either already been killed or committed seppuku (ritual suicide). Prince Asaka, as part of the Imperial Family, was granted immunity and never tried.

The massacre remains a wedge issue in Sino-Japanese relations. Historical revisionists and nationalists as well as many government officials in Japan have either denied or minimized the massacre.The Second Sino-Japanese War commenced on July 7, 1937, following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, and rapidly escalated into a full-scale war in northern China between the Chinese and Japanese armies.[12] The Chinese Nationalist Forces, however, wanted to avoid a decisive conflict in the northern region and instead opened a second front by launching offensives against Japanese forces in Shanghai.[12] In response, Japan deployed an army led by General Iwane Matsui, to fight the Chinese forces in Shanghai.[13]

In August 1937, the Japanese army invaded Shanghai, where they met strong resistance and suffered heavy casualties. The battle was bloody as both sides faced attrition in urban hand-to-hand combat.[14] Although the Japanese forces succeeded in forcing the Chinese forces into retreat, the General Staff Headquarters in Tokyo initially decided not to expand the war because they wanted the war to end.[15] However, there was a significant disagreement between the Japanese government and its army in China.[16] Matsui had expressed his intention to advance on Nanjing even before departing for Shanghai. He firmly believed that capturing Nanjing, the Chinese capital, would lead to the collapse of the entire Nationalist Government of China, thereby securing a swift and decisive victory for Japan.[15][16] The General Staff Headquarters in Tokyo eventually relented to the demands of the Imperial Japanese Army in China by approving the operation to attack and capture Nanjing.[17]

Strategy for the defense of Nanjing

In a press release to foreign reporters, Tang Shengzhi announced the city would not surrender and would fight to the death. Tang gathered a garrison force of some 81,500 soldiers,[18] many of whom were untrained conscripts, or troops exhausted from the Battle of Shanghai. The Chinese government left for relocation on December 1, and the president left on December 7, leaving the administration of Nanjing to an International Committee led by John Rabe, a German national and Nazi Party member.

In an attempt to secure permission for this cease-fire from Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Rabe, who was living in Nanjing and had been acting as the Chairman of the Nanking International Safety Zone Committee, boarded the USS Panay (PR-5) on December 9. From this gunboat, Rabe sent two telegrams. The first was to Chiang through an American ambassador in Hankow, asking that Chinese forces "undertake no military operations" within Nanjing. The second telegram was sent through Shanghai to Japanese military leaders, advocating for a three-day ceasefire so that the Chinese could withdraw from the city.

The following day, on December 10, Rabe got his answer from the Generalissimo. The American ambassador in Hankow replied that although he supported Rabe's proposal for a ceasefire, Chiang did not. Rabe says that the ambassador also "sent us a separate confidential telegram telling us that he has been officially informed by the Foreign Ministry in Hankow that our understanding that General Tang agreed to a three-day armistice and the withdrawal of his troops from Nanjing is mistaken, and moreover that Chiang Kai-shek has announced that he is not in a position to accept such an offer." This rejection of the committee's ceasefire plan, in Rabe's mind, sealed the fate of the city. Nanjing had been constantly bombed for days, causing massive destruction and civilian casualties.

On December 11, Rabe found that Chinese soldiers were still residing in areas of the Safety Zone, meaning that it became an intended target for Japanese attacks despite the majority being innocent civilians. Rabe commented on how efforts to remove these Chinese troops failed and Japanese soldiers began to lob grenades into the refugee zone.[19]"