What Really Happened In Nanking?

Question

and why do our history books omit this and only focus on Germany?

Answer 1

Like Genpanzer said, the "Rape of Nanking" was an example of horrific brutality committed by a maruading Japanese Army. I can't give you loads of specific detail, but there is all kinds of anecdotes of how disgustingly blood thirsty it was. Rapes, theft, arson, murder. You name it. The one thing that bothered me most was I had an East Asian history professor show me a picture of one of the main thouroughfares in town where the Japanese Army had been executing civilians by decapitation. He claimed it was done for "practice". When they were finished, the army had the bodies carted off, but left the heads, neatly stacked in two-three foot tall pyramids, about every fifteen-twenty feet along the street for as far as the camera could see. Try and imagine just exactly how many people's lives a display like that took.

Now as to why this doesn't appear in our history books. Well, Euro-centrism first of all. That's part of it. There's other things though. During this time, China was pretty much every imperialist industrial countries' b*tch. It was disorganized, run by warlords, prone to revolution etc and for years western countries had been taking ever greater spheres of political and economic influence. It wasn't an outright colony, but when you run the banks, the ports, the airlines, the railways, the trading houses etc etc, you were in control. Japan decided to take it one step further, and engage in outright conquest. In a way it was seen as a good thing at the time because it brought order. At the very least no one was willing to begrudge Japan it because all the western countries were actively engaged in a lesser form of the same. Over time, the western nation's influence declined, and the Japanese became the dominant political/military power. Soon they were just ignoring the war Japan was waging because they had other problems to deal with (Hitler) and it just didn't seem that bad to them.

This is all compounded by the positions China and Japan ended up on at the start of the Cold War. Japan was remade into a western ally by the Americans while Mao won the civil war and turned China communist. Given that, no one would want to readily admit the big sacrifices the Communists had made in the war, nor would they really want to besmirch an ally who didn't want to admit their own mistakes. Germany on one hand had been split up and confronted with their atrocities. Nothing even close happened in Japan. They hanged the war leaders and then got back to business. It's for reasons like these and others that Nanking is somewhat of an obscure subject in western military history.

Hope I helped.

Answer 2

I don't know what really happened in Nanking, but I'm guessing the history books only focus on Germany because they (the government & other authority) don't want anyone to know what happend or are very ashamed of what did end up happening.

Answer 3

if you mean the Japanese rape of Nanking in 1937 then...
Nanking was the capital of China at that time. During the undeclared war on China by Japan, Japanese troops were able to raid and conquer Nanking. the capital was then moved to Hankow, then Chungking.
although the Japanese army was already causing innumerable atrocities to the Chinese people, Nanking was a little different. the prize of the hard fought for capital was exhilarating for them. they went on a massive killing spree killing any Chinese they found. not to mention rapes, thefts, etc. that come with a marauding army.
as for history books, Nazi Germany was seen as a more menacing enemy, in the "European" mind at the time; what could Japan do? they still fought with swords?

Answer 4

The text cited below tells the story.