Battle of Shanghai

This article is about the 1937 battle. For the 1932 Japanese attack on Shanghai, see January 28 incident. For other uses, see Battle of Shanghai (disambiguation).
Battle of Shanghai
Part of the Second Sino-Japanese War

Troops of the Imperial Japanese Navy Special Naval Landing Forces in gas masks prepare for an advance in the streets of Shanghai.
DateAugust 13, 1937 – November 26, 1937
(3 months, 1 week and 6 days)
Location
Shanghai, Republic of China
31°13′56″N 121°28′08″E / 31.2323°N 121.4690°E / 31.2323; 121.4690
Result

Japanese victory

  • Shanghai heavily damaged
Territorial
changes		 Japanese capture of Shanghai (excluding the Shanghai International Settlement and the Shanghai French Concession)
Belligerents
 China  Japan
Commanders and leaders
Units involved
National Revolutionary Army  Imperial Japanese Army
 Imperial Japanese Navy
Strength
    • 700,000 troops[1]
    • 70 divisions
    • 7 brigades
    • 180 aircraft
    • 70 tanks
    • 300,000 troops[2]
    • 9 divisions
    • 1 brigade
    • 500 aircraft
    • 300 tanks
    • 130 naval ships
Casualties and losses
Chinese Report dated November 5, 1937, to the War Council: 187,200 killed and wounded[3][4][5]
Japanese Estimate: 250,000 killed and wounded[6]

Official Japanese war records: 61,000+ (42,202+ including at least 11,072 killed in action before November 8. After that, there is additional 18,761 casualties for the 9th division alone before December 1); this figure does not include the sick, the repatriated and those who died because of injuries[7]
[8][9][10][11]
Osprey Publishing 2017 data: 18,800 combat killed (c. 17,000 plus about 1,800 illness-induced deaths), 35,000–40,000 wounded, and 40,000 sick, KIA figure seconded by General Iwane Matsui's Speech in 1938[7]

Chinese record: 98,417+ killed and wounded[12]

The Battle of Shanghai (traditional Chinese: 淞滬會戰; simplified Chinese: 淞沪会战; pinyin: Sōng hù huìzhàn) was a major battle fought between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China in the Chinese city of Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It lasted from August 13, 1937, to November 26, 1937, and was arguably the single largest and longest battle of the entire war,[13] with it even regarded by some historians as the first battle of World War II.[14] It resulted in the Japanese capture of the city and heavy destruction to the city.

It was the first of the twenty-two major engagements fought between the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Republic of China (ROC) and the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) of the Empire of Japan at the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese eventually prevailed after over three months of extensive fighting on land, in the air and at sea. Both sides accused each other of using chemical weapons during the battle, with Japanese forces confirmed to have illegally deployed poison gas at least thirteen times.[15][16] Historian Peter Harmsen stated that the battle "presaged urban combat as it was to be waged not just during the Second World War, but throughout the remainder of the twentieth century" and that it "signalled the totality of modern urban warfare".[17] It has also been called "one of the most incredible defensive battles ever waged on this planet".[18] It was the single largest urban battle prior to the Battle of Stalingrad, which occurred almost 5 years later.[19]

Troops of Chinese NRA in gas masks fight in the suburbs of Shanghai

Since the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 followed by the Japanese attack of Shanghai in 1932, there had been ongoing armed conflicts between China and Japan without an official declaration of war. These conflicts finally escalated in July 1937, when the Marco Polo Bridge Incident triggered the full advance from Japan.[20] Shanghai was China's largest and most cosmopolitan city, with it being the world's fifth largest city at the time.[21][17] Shanghai was known as the "Pearl of the Orient" and "Paris of the East", with it being China's main commercial hub and largest port.[22][23] Dogged Chinese resistance at Shanghai was aimed at stalling the Japanese advance, giving much needed time for the Chinese government to move vital industries to the interior, while at the same time attempting to bring sympathetic Western powers to China's side. During the fierce three-month battle, the forces of China and Japan fought in downtown Shanghai, in the outlying towns, and on the beaches of the Yangtze River and Hangzhou Bay, where the Japanese had made amphibious landings.

Chinese forces were equipped primarily with small-caliber weapons against much greater Japanese air, naval, and armor power.[24] In the end, Shanghai fell, and China lost a significant portion of its best troops, the elite Chinese forces trained and equipped by the Germans,[25] while failing to elicit any international intervention. However, the resistance of Chinese forces over three months of battle shocked the Japanese,[26] who had been indoctrinated with notions of cultural and martial superiority, and largely demoralized the Imperial Japanese Army, who believed they could take Shanghai within days and China within months.

The battle can be divided into three stages, and eventually involved around one million troops. The first stage lasted from August 13 to August 22, 1937, during which the NRA besieged the Japanese Naval Landing Force stationed in Shanghai in bloody urban fighting in an attempt to dislodge them.[27] The second stage lasted from August 23 to October 26, 1937, during which the Japanese launched reinforcing amphibious landings on the Jiangsu coast and the two armies fought a house-to-house battle in the creek country north of Shanghai,[28][29] with the Japanese attempting to gain control of the city and the surrounding regions. The last stage, ranging from October 27 to the end of November 1937, involved the retreat of the Chinese army in the face of Japanese flanking maneuvers, and the ensuing combat on the road to China's capital at the time, Nanjing. In addition to the urban combat, trench warfare was also fought in the outskirts of the city.[30][17]

Documentary film on Japanese Shanghai invasion. 淞滬會戰
  1. ^ Wilson, Dick (1982). When Tigers Fight: The Story of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945. Viking Books. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-670-76003-9.
  2. ^ Wilson, Dick (1982). When Tigers Fight: The Story of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945. Viking Books. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-670-76003-9.
  3. ^ Harmsen, Peter (2013). Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze. Casemate. p. 247.
  4. ^ Mitter, Rana (2013). Forgotten Ally: China's World War Two: 1937-1945. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 106.
  5. ^ Lai 2017, p. 87.
  6. ^ Harmsen, Peter (2013). Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze. Casemate. p. 247.
  7. ^ a b Lai 2017, p. 88.
  8. ^ 南京戦史 (in Japanese). Asagumo Shimbunsha. 1966. pp. 306–307.
  9. ^ 戦史叢書 [Senshi Sōsho] (in Japanese). Vol. 2. Asagumo Shimbunsha. 1966.
  10. ^ Ikuhiko, Hata (1986). Nankyo jihen. Chuo koronsha. p. 93.
  11. ^ Mitter, Rana (2013). Forgotten Ally: China's World War Two: 1937-1945. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 126.
  12. ^ Dai, Feng; Zhou, Ming (2013). 《淞滬會戰：1937年中日813戰役始末》 (in Traditional Chinese). Taipei City: Zhibingtang Publishing. p. 194. ISBN 9789868950924.
  13. ^ Wakeman, Jr., Frederic (1996). The Shanghai Badlands: Wartime Terrorism and Urban Crime, 1937–1941 (1st ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 6. ISBN 0-521-49744-2.
  14. ^ Sun, Lianggang. "Shanghai 1937 – Where World War II Began". Shanghai, August 13, 1937: Where World War II Started. Retrieved 2020-11-14. When did World War II begin? Americans might say December 7, 1941 ... The day the Japanese Imperial Navy attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. For Europeans, it was September 1, 1939 ... When Nazi Germany invaded Poland. But in China, people will tell you a different date. August 13, 1937.
  15. ^ Harmsen, Peter (2013). Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze (1st ed.). Casemate. pp. 178–179. ISBN 978-1612001678.
  16. ^ Paine, S. C. M. (2014). The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949. Cambridge University Press. p. 132.
  17. ^ a b c Harmsen, Peter (2020), Fremont-Barnes, Gregory (ed.), "Armageddon Rehearsed: The Battle of Shanghai, August–November 1937", A History of Modern Urban Operations, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 33–54, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-27088-9_2, ISBN 978-3-030-27088-9, retrieved 2024-02-24
  18. ^ Whitney, Matthew D. (2000). A Military Analysis of the Battle of Shanghai, 13 August - 8 November 1937 (Master's thesis). Cornell University. Retrieved 23 February 2024.
  19. ^ Rigg, Bryan Mark (2024). Japan's Holocaust: History of Imperial Japan's Mass Murder and Rape During World War II. Knox Press. p. 71. ISBN 9781637586884.
  20. ^ "Articles published during wartime by former Domei News Agency released online in free-to-access archive". The Japan Times. 2018-11-02. ISSN 0447-5763. Archived from the original on 2019-06-04. Retrieved 2019-06-04.
  21. ^ Davidson, Jason. "The story of the Royal Ulster Riflemen and the battle of Shanghai". Sky HISTORY TV channel. Retrieved 2024-02-24.
  22. ^ Lai 2017, p. 7.
  23. ^ Peck, Michael (2020-07-30). "Asia's Stalingrad: World War II's Battle For Shanghai Was A Hell Like No Other". The National Interest. Retrieved 2024-02-21.
  24. ^ Hsiung, James (1992). China's Bitter Victory. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-87332-708-4.
  25. ^ Macgregor, Douglas (2016). Margin of Victory: Five Battles that Changed the Face of Modern War. Naval Institute Press. p. 92. ISBN 978-1612519968.
  26. ^ Liu, Frederick Fu (1956). A Military History of Modern China, 1924-1949. Princeton University Press. p. 199.
  27. ^ Paulose, James (2013). "Three Months Of Bloodshed: Strategy And Combat During The Battle Of Shanghai". Report: West Point Undergraduate Historical Review. 3 (2).
  28. ^ "Battle of Shanghai 1937". Pacific Atrocities Education. Retrieved 2022-12-30.
  29. ^ Peck, Michael (2016-05-30). "Shanghai 1937: This Is China's Forgotten Stalingrad". The National Interest. Retrieved 2022-12-30.
  30. ^ Harmsen, Peter (2013). Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze (1st ed.). Casemate. p. 136. ISBN 978-1612001678.