Peter Harmsen | Nanjing 1937: Battle for a Doomed
Nanjing 1937: Battle for a Doomed City
ASIN : B0169GGSI6
Publisher : Casemate Publishers (November 17, 2015)
Publication date : November 17, 2015
Language : English
A true story of the Sino-Japanese conflict: A “valuable account of a little-known event [and] a grim reminder of the darker side of war” (Military History Monthly).
The infamous Rape of Nanjing looms like a dark shadow over the history of Asia in the twentieth century, and is among the most widely recognized chapters of World War II in China. By contrast, the story of the month-long campaign before this notorious massacre has never been told in its entirety. Nanjing 1937 by Peter Harmsen fills this gap.
This is the follow-up to Harmsen’s bestselling Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze, and begins where that book left off. In stirring prose, it describes how the Japanese Army, having invaded the mainland and emerging victorious from the Battle of Shanghai, pushed on toward the capital, Nanjing, in a crushing advance that confirmed its reputation for bravery and savagery in equal measure.
While much of the struggle over Shanghai had carried echoes of the grueling war in the trenches two decades earlier, the Nanjing campaign was a fast-paced mobile operation in which armor and air power played major roles. It was blitzkrieg two years before Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Facing the full might of modern, mechanized warfare, China’s resistance was heroic, but ultimately futile.
As in Shanghai, the battle for Nanjing was more than a clash between Chinese and Japanese. Soldiers and citizens of a variety of nations witnessed or took part in the hostilities. German advisors, American journalists, and British diplomats all played important parts in this vast drama. And a new power appeared on the scene: Soviet pilots dispatched by Stalin to challenge Japan’s control of the skies.
This epic tale is told with verve and attention to detail by Harmsen, a veteran East Asia correspondent who consolidates his status as the foremost chronicler of World War II in China with this path-breaking work of narrative history.
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Peter Harmsen has written a very important book about the Japanese defeat of Chinese Nationalist forces in defending their national capital, Nanjing... His final chapter on the Rape of Nanjing is one of the most powerful descriptions of those events as well as perhaps the very best analysis of why this most horrendous event occurred."--J. Bruce Jacobs, emeritus professor of Asian Languages and Studies, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
"Peter Harmsen has once again ingeniously woven a vast range of Chinese, Japanese and Western source materials into a vivid tapestry of intense personal experience and world-shaking international conflict... Where the great Alan Furst's taut novels of wartime Europe stay just inside the fiction side of the boundary with history, Harmsen's dramatic style adds a gripping and novelistic quality to the powerful writing of 20th-century history."--Robert A. Kapp, author and past president, The US-China Business Council
"This terrific piece of work fills a conspicuous void in English language literature on the Second Sino-Japanese War by providing the first comprehensive treatment of the 1937 Battle for Nanjing. The spritely narrative weaves research in Chinese, Japanese and Western sources into inside views of the top and bottom of the military, diplomatic and civilian levels. Harmsen achieves a remarkably even yet clear-eyed account that perhaps only a foreigner could achieve in approaching this searing collision of China and Japan."--Richard B. Frank,author of Guadalcanal and Downfall
"Carefully researched... a valuable account of a little known event... a grim reminder of the darker side of war."--Military History Monthly
"Harmsen deftly explains events from diplomatic and martial perspectives, movements from armies down to individual soldiers, including strategic and tactical concerns, both Chinese and Japanese, while skillfully laying the background for Nanjing's fall... Harmsen continues to offer a welcome, readable, multi-faceted look at the origins of World War II in Asia which other reports usually gloss over in their haste to reach the events after Pearl Harbor."--Strategy Page
"The journalist's narrative skill combines with the researcher's thoroughness of approach to produce a riveting account of the battle for Nanjing between Chinese and Japanese forces in early winter 1937... The book offers plenty for readers interested in military detail, and it also adds perspective and stimulates thought by including aspects of high politics... Brilliant."--Weekendavisen
"Peter Harmsen's new book tells the whole story in great detail... Nanjing 1937 offers a detailed account of the campaign illustrated with numerous useful maps. It presents a point of view which most readers will not have encountered before. It's well worth a read."--Asian Review of Books
"Outstanding... Balanced, analytical and level-headed account emphasizing the military aspect... 'Nanjing 1937' is a formidably researched book, and Harmsen's dramatic narrative style makes the reader feel part of the events."--Jyllands-Posten
"Meticulously researched... If we are fortunate, Harmsen will continue writing these histories. A golden age of Chinese military history is still far away, but if books like Harmsen's continue to be published, a golden age of China's World War II history may be just around the corner."--Strategy Bridge
"Distinguished from other books on the Second Sino-Japanese War not only by its use of diverse primary sources, but also by its global perspective... Harmsen's journalistic writing style makes Nanjing 1937 a pleasant book for readers with a general interest in military history. Analysis of military tactics is balanced with vivid accounts of the combat experiences and psychologies of soldiers and officers in both armies, as revealed in their diaries and memoirs... Nanjing 1937 offers a remarkable account of a critical battle in the early stages of the Second Sino-Japanese War, reinforced by numerous photographs and maps."--The Journal of Military History
About the Author
Peter Harmsen, a foreign correspondent in East Asia for two decades, has worked for Bloomberg, the Economist Intelligence Unit, and the Financial Times. A fluent speaker of Mandarin Chinese, Harmsen is also the former bureau chief in Taiwan for French news agency AFP. His book Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze inspired a US Public Television documentary by three-time Emmy Award winner Bill Einreinhofer, which started airing in the fall of 2018, reaching 80 percent of the American television audience. Harmsen’s work has been translated into Chinese, Danish, and Romanian.