Battle of Shanghai

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Shanghai began on the 13th of August, 1937, and would not end until November 26 of that year. By the time it was over, roughly one million troops had fought across the streets, creek banks, and coastal villages of China's most cosmopolitan city. Some historians consider it the first battle of World War II. Others describe it as the single largest urban battle the world had ever seen before Stalingrad.

  Shanghai was not just a city. Known as the "Pearl of the Orient" and the "Paris of the East", it was China's main commercial hub, its largest port, and the fifth largest city on earth at the time. When fighting erupted there in August 1937, the eyes of the Western world were watching from inside the city's International Settlement, close enough to see the bodies and smell the smoke.

  American correspondent Edgar Snow observed the battle from that neutral zone and reached for the largest comparisons he knew: "It was as though Verdun had happened on the Seine, in full view of a Right Bank Paris that was neutral; as though a Gettysburg were fought in Harlem, while the rest of Manhattan remained a non-belligerent observer."

  Historian Peter Harmsen wrote 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". What happened in Shanghai across those three months raises questions that cut to the heart of modern conflict: How does a nation fight with inferior weapons and still hold a superior enemy for ninety days? And what does it cost?

• 2. The Spark

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  On the 9th of August, 1937, Naval Sub-Lieutenant Ōyama, head of the Western Detachment of the Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces in Shanghai, was found dead near the gate to Hongqiao Airport on Monument Road. So was his driver, First-Class Seaman Saito Yozo. A guard from the Chinese Peace Preservation Corps was also dead at the scene.

  Several accounts allege Ōyama opened fire first, killing the guard before being shot himself. But historian Peter Harmsen argued the scene had been staged to conceal the killing of the two Japanese personnel by Chinese soldiers disguised as Peace Preservation Corps members. Whether Ōyama had attempted to enter the military airport under higher orders has never been established.

  What followed was a rapid diplomatic collapse. On August 10, the Japanese Consul General demanded China withdraw its Peace Preservation Corps from Shanghai and dismantle its defense works. He made it clear that the shooting of a Japanese officer was considered a humiliation and that any further incident would escalate the situation. Both sides began moving troops toward the city.

  On August 1, representatives from the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Italy, Japan, and China had already met in Shanghai to discuss ceasefire terms. The Western powers feared a repeat of the January 28 Incident, which had previously disrupted foreign economic activity in the city. But Chinese representative Yu Hung-chun dismissed Japan's demands as unacceptable; Japan had already violated the terms of any ceasefire, he said. In Nanjing, last-ditch negotiations collapsed on the same point: Japan demanded a unilateral Chinese withdrawal, which the Chinese refused since both nations were already fighting in North China.

  By the time Mayor Yu declared that the most China would offer was a pledge not to fire unless fired upon, the two armies were already in position. War in central China was no longer avoidable.

• 3. Why Shanghai

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  China chose to fight in Shanghai. That decision was not accidental, and the Chinese leadership believed it served several interlocking purposes.

  Since Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and a separate attack on Shanghai in 1932, armed conflict had simmered without a formal declaration of war. After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in July 1937 triggered full-scale hostilities, Chinese strategists believed that forcing a massive engagement in Shanghai would divert Japanese attention away from the north-to-south advance they feared most. Fighting in the Yangtze delta would buy time, the thinking went, for the Chinese government to relocate vital industries to the interior.

  Chiang Kai-shek also hoped that combat this close to the International Settlement, where Western powers had significant economic stakes, might finally draw outside intervention to China's side. Shanghai was the kind of city where European and American nationals lived, worked, and watched from apartment windows.

  Whether the strategy succeeded remains contested among historians. What is not contested is that Chiang's opening plan called for speed. His German advisor Alexander von Falkenhausen recommended Entscheidungsschlacht tactics: numerically superior Chinese forces would strike the Japanese garrison by surprise and drive them into the Huangpu River before reinforcements could arrive. The Chinese would then blockade the coast.

  The Japanese garrison in Shanghai, however, was dug into fortifications of thick concrete, barbed wire, sandbags, and machine gun nests. Their bunkers could withstand 150mm howitzers, which were the heaviest weapons the Chinese possessed. The plan assumed shock and numbers would be enough. They were not.

• 4. Opening Assault

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  Around 9 am on the 13th of August, 1937, Chinese Peace Preservation Corps troops exchanged small arms fire with Japanese soldiers in the Zhabei, Wusong, and Jiangwan districts. By 3 pm the Japanese army had crossed the Bazi Bridge in Zhabei. By 4 pm, Japanese ships of the Third Fleet on the Yangtze and Huangpu rivers had opened fire on Chinese positions across the city.

  The next morning, the Republic of China Air Force began bombing Japanese targets. That same day, August 14, a bomb meant for the Japanese flagship Izumo went wrong. The flagship was moored directly in front of the International Settlement on the Huangpu, and errant bombs fell instead onto Nanking Road and the Great World entertainment centre, where civilians had gathered after fleeing the fighting. Between 700 and 950 people were killed outright; total casualties from the accidental bombing reached around 3,000. The day became known as "Black Saturday".

  On August 14, the ROCAF also scored a genuine victory: the 4th Flying Group, commanded by Captain Gao Zhihang and based in Henan, shot down six Japanese planes without suffering a single loss. The government later announced that August 14 would be observed as Air Force Day. From August 15 to 18, Chinese pilots fought Japanese squadrons in intense air battles and destroyed two of them. But China could not replace its aircraft; Japan could. Every American-made fighter lost brought China closer to depletion, until Soviet aircraft provided under the new Sino-Soviet Treaty offered a partial lifeline.

  On the ground, the operation designated Iron Fist, launched on the morning of the 17th, tried to use German Stosstrupp shock tactics: a fierce artillery barrage followed immediately by infantry rushing through the gap. Progress came quickly on the first day, but coordination between infantry and artillery broke down. Chinese reluctance to fight inside the International Settlement, for fear of alienating Western opinion, blocked flanking maneuvers around weaker points in Japanese lines. By August 18, Iron Fist had been called off. The battle for Bazi Bridge alone cost the Chinese 88th Division heavy casualties in seesaw fighting against Japanese armor. Brigade commander Huang Meixing was killed when an artillery shell destroyed his position near the bridge.

• 5. War Comes to the Coast

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  On the 23rd of August, 1937, the Japanese 3rd and 11th Divisions landed under heavy naval cover at Chuanshakou, Shizilin, and Baoshan, coastal towns roughly 50 kilometers northeast of downtown Shanghai. Japan had used the same maneuver in the 1932 battle; it should have been expected.

  The landings stretched China's defensive line from the urban center along the Huangpu River all the way out to the coast. Chinese troops who had been fighting in downtown Shanghai now had to be redeployed to the beaches. The urban stalemate held for three months, while the war's center of gravity shifted to the narrow towns and creek-laced fields along Jiangsu's coast.

  In those coastal towns, Chinese soldiers had only small-caliber weapons and almost no naval support. An entire regiment could be reduced to a few survivors in a single engagement. Trenches dug in the sandy coastal soil collapsed in rain. Soldiers scavenged bricks and beams from bombed buildings to shore up their fortifications. It was commonplace for the Japanese to take a town during the day under naval support, only to lose it to Chinese counterattacks at night.

  Baoshan, a walled coastal town, became the site of one of the battle's most remembered stands. Facing imminent Japanese encirclement by September 5, lieutenant colonel Yao Ziqing was assigned one battalion to defend the town and pledged to die at his post. He sent a single soldier out of the city with a message: "We are determined to continue fighting the enemy until each and every one of us is killed." That soldier delivered his message. Baoshan fell on the 6th of September 1937. Japanese artillery had reduced it to rubble. Yao was killed in house-to-house fighting. Every soldier in the battalion except the one messenger was killed in action.

  On August 19, the SNLF garrison's numbers reached 6,300 after reinforcements arrived from Sasebo. Emperor Hirohito's cousin-in-law was among those killed by Chinese soldiers during the landings.

• 6. The Grinding Mill

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  German adviser Alexander von Falkenhausen warned Chiang Kai-shek as early as August 29 that the small town of Luodian was "the most crucial strategic point" in the entire campaign. The transportation hub connecting Baoshan, downtown Shanghai, Jiading, Songjiang, and several surrounding towns, Luodian had to be held at all costs.

  The Japanese had recognized this too. Around Luodian, China concentrated some 300,000 soldiers. Japan deployed more than 100,000, backed by naval gunfire, tanks, and aircraft. The fight earned a nickname that has lasted: "the grinding mill of flesh and blood".

  Japanese assaults followed a fixed rhythm. At daybreak, concentrated aerial bombing. Then observation balloons rose to pinpoint surviving Chinese positions for artillery and naval strikes. Then infantry advanced under smoke screens with armored support. Aircraft strafed Chinese reinforcements moving up from the rear.

  The Chinese adapted. They garrisoned forward lines with fewer troops to reduce casualties from the bombardments, then emerged from rear positions to engage the enemy once Japanese land forces advanced. At night they mined roads and used darkness to cut off Japanese advance units. In close-quarters street fighting, the technological gap between the two armies nearly closed.

  The casualty rate in General Chen Cheng's group army exceeded fifty percent, with more than 15,000 losses. The 59th and 90th Divisions of the 4th Army suffered seventy to eighty percent casualties in just five days. The Training Brigade of the 66th Army suffered 3,003 casualties after several days of fighting. By the end of September, China was forced to give up Luodian.

  At the defense of a fortified position called the "white house", the 44th Infantry Regiment of the Japanese 11th Division and a single Chinese battalion had been in a standoff since Luodian was occupied. On the 23rd of September, Japanese engineers used a tunnel to plant explosives in the walls and stormed through the gaps. The defenders retreated after taking more than fifty percent casualties. Despite losing the position, Chinese battalion commander Lin Yindong was awarded the A-2 grade of the Medal of the Armed Forces and promoted to lieutenant colonel for holding the "white house" for nearly a month against a numerically superior force.

• 7. Dachang and the Final Retreat

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  By the 1st of October 1937, Japan had more than 200,000 troops in the Shanghai region. The new Japanese objective was Dachang, a walled town that served as the communications link between Chinese forces in downtown Shanghai and those in the northwest. If Dachang fell, the Chinese troops in the urban center would face encirclement and would have to withdraw.

  Chiang Kai-shek's forces had fortified the Wusong Creek south of Dachang using lessons drawn from the Battle of Verdun and the Battle of the Somme, as transmitted by their German advisers. A six-foot embankment and a channel up to three hundred feet wide was reinforced with barbed wire, machine gun nests, artillery emplacements, pillboxes, and trenches. Buildings along the bank had been sandbagged. Trees had been cut to clear fields of fire.

  On October 5, Japan smashed into these defenses. Six Chinese artillery battalions opened concentrated fire on the Japanese bridgeheads, reinforced with anti-aircraft guns deployed against low-flying aircraft. From September 11 to October 20, Japan advanced only five kilometers. The Japanese suffered their heaviest losses of the entire campaign in this stretch: roughly 25,000 casualties with some 8,000 killed over a twenty-day period between October 5 and October 25. The 101st Division alone lost 3,000 men in four days. The 9th Division suffered 9,556 casualties for an advance of just 2.5 miles.

  On October 14, the Guangxi Army under Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi arrived to join the battle. On October 21, four Guangxi divisions launched a counteroffensive. Japanese forces met them with artillery, tanks, and poison gas on October 23. The counteroffensive collapsed, costing the four participating divisions two-thirds of their soldiers. The three-division 48th Army alone suffered 9,731 killed, wounded, or missing in just eight days.

  Japan then deployed roughly 700 artillery pieces and 400 aircraft including 150 bombers against Dachang itself, reducing the town to rubble before sending in an armored spearhead of approximately 40 tanks. Dachang fell on October 26. The commander of the 18th Division, Zhu Yaohua, attempted suicide out of a sense of personal responsibility for its loss. He survived.

  Chiang Kai-shek ordered the main forces to withdraw from downtown Shanghai, which they had held for nearly three months. One battalion of the 88th Division stayed behind.

• 8. The Last Stand at Sihang

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  Whampoa Colonel Xie Jinyuan led 411 men and officers into the five-story Sihang Warehouse on the northern bank of the Suzhou Creek on the night of the 26th of October 1937. The building sat directly across the water from the International Settlement, where foreign observers, journalists, and civilians could watch from windows and rooftops.

  The warehouse had been chosen deliberately. Its position alongside the International Settlement made it visible to the world, and its reinforced construction offered real defensive value. Xie's battalion had been drawn from the 1st Battalion of the 524th Regiment, part of the 88th Division, the same unit that had fought at Bazi Bridge in the battle's first hours.

  The broader battle was over. China had lost Shanghai, had lost its best German-trained elite forces, and had failed to draw international military intervention. Japan had taken a city it believed it could seize within days. It had instead taken three months, at a cost that shocked Imperial General Headquarters. Japanese Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe had announced in August that the conflict could only be resolved through total war, with Japan demanding full Chinese cooperation with its economic and political demands. The battle's outcome would drive Japanese forces toward Nanjing, China's capital at the time, and the next phase of the war.

  Both sides had accused each other of using chemical weapons during the Shanghai campaign. Japanese forces were confirmed to have deployed poison gas at least thirteen times. The battle had shown that Chinese infantry, stripped of heavy weapons and naval support, could fight one of the world's most modern armies to a bloody standstill in close-quarters urban terrain. Whether the cost was proportionate to what was gained remained, and remains, a question with no agreed answer.