Editing Second Sino-Japanese War (section)

==1937: Full-scale invasion of China==
{{Main|Marco Polo Bridge incident}}
[[File:Jiangjieshi-declare.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Chiang Kai-shek]] announced the [[Kuomintang]] policy of resistance against Japan at [[Lushan District|Lushan]] on 10 July 1937, three days after the [[Marco Polo Bridge Incident]].]]
On the night of 7 July 1937, Chinese and Japanese troops exchanged fire in the vicinity of the [[Marco Polo Bridge|Marco Polo (or Lugou) Bridge]] about 16&nbsp;km from Beijing.<ref name=":022">{{Cite book |last=Li |first=Xiaobing |title=The Cold War in East Asia |date=2018 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-138-65179-1 |location=Abingdon, Oxon}}</ref>{{Rp|page=29}} The initial confused and sporadic skirmishing soon escalated into a [[Battle of Beiping–Tianjin|full-scale battle]].

Unlike Japan, China was unprepared for [[total war]] and had little military-industrial strength, no [[Armoured warfare|mechanized divisions]], and few [[Armoured fighting vehicle|armoured forces]].<ref>{{cite web |last=L |first=Klemen |date=1999–2000 |title=Chinese Nationalist Armour in World War II |url=https://warfare.gq/dutcheastindies/china_armour.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110321233313/http://www.dutcheastindies.webs.com/china_armour.html |archive-date=21 March 2011 |work=Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941–1942}}</ref>

Within the first year of full-scale war, Japanese forces obtained victories in most major Chinese cities.<ref name=":022"/>{{Rp|page=29}}

===Battle of Beiping–Tianjin===
{{Main|Battle of Beiping–Tianjin}}
On 11 July, in accordance with the Goso conference, the [[Imperial Japanese Army General Staff]] authorized the deployment of an [[infantry division]] from the [[Chosen Army of Japan|Chōsen Army]], two combined brigades from the [[Kwantung Army]] and an air regiment composed of 18 squadrons as reinforcements to Northern China. By 20 July, total Japanese military strength in the Beijing-Tianjin area exceeded 180,000 personnel.

The Japanese gave Sung and his troops "free passage" before moving in to pacify resistance in areas surrounding Beijing (then Beiping) and Tianjin. After 24 days of combat, the Chinese 29th Army was forced to withdraw. The Japanese captured Beijing and the [[Taku Forts]] at Tianjin on 29 and 30 July respectively, thus concluding the Beijing-Tianjin campaign. By August 1937, Japan had occupied Beijing and Tianjin.<ref name=":022"/>{{Rp|page=29}}

However, the Japanese Army had been given orders not to advance further than the Yongding River. In a sudden volte-face, the Konoe government's foreign minister opened negotiations with Chiang Kai-shek's government in Nanjing and stated: "Japan wants Chinese cooperation, not Chinese land." Nevertheless, negotiations failed to move further. The [[Battle of Shanghai#Ōyama Incident|Ōyama Incident]] on 9 August escalated the skirmishes and battles into full scale warfare.<ref name="Hoyt2001">{{cite book |author=Edwin Palmer Hoyt |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xITp5N5hceEC&pg=PA152 |title=Japan's War: The Great Pacific Conflict |year=2001 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-0-8154-1118-5 |pages=152–}}</ref>

The 29th Army's resistance (and poor equipment) inspired the 1937 "[[Sword March]]", which—with slightly reworked lyrics—became the National Revolutionary Army's standard [[marching cadence]] and popularized the [[racial epithet]] ''[[guizi]]'' to describe the Japanese invaders.<ref>Lei, Bryant. [http://core.kmi.open.ac.uk/download/pdf/12207607.pdf ''"New Songs of the Battlefield": Songs and Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution'', p.&nbsp;85.] University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh), 2004.</ref>

===Battle of Shanghai===
{{Main|Battle of Shanghai}}
[[File:Bloody Saturday, Shanghai.jpg|thumb|A baby sits in the remains of a Shanghai train station on [[Bloody Saturday (photograph)|'Bloody Saturday']], 1937]]
The [[Imperial General Headquarters]] (GHQ) in Tokyo, content with the gains acquired in northern China following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, initially showed reluctance to escalate the conflict into a full-scale war. Following the shooting of two Japanese officers who were attempting to enter the Hongqiao military airport on 9 August 1937, the Japanese demanded that all Chinese forces withdraw from Shanghai; the Chinese outright refused to meet this demand. In response, both the Chinese and the Japanese marched reinforcements into the Shanghai area. Chiang concentrated his best troops north of Shanghai in an effort to impress the city's large foreign community and increase China's foreign support.<ref name="Crean"/>{{rp|71}}

On 13 August 1937, Kuomintang soldiers attacked [[Imperial Japanese Navy Land Forces|Japanese Marine]] positions in Shanghai, with Japanese army troops and marines in turn crossing into the city with naval gunfire support at [[Zhabei]], leading to the Battle of Shanghai. On 14 August, Chinese forces under the command of [[Zhang Zhizhong]] were ordered to capture or destroy the Japanese strongholds in Shanghai, leading to bitter street fighting. In an attack on the Japanese cruiser ''[[Japanese cruiser Izumo|Izumo]]'', Kuomintang planes accidentally bombed the [[Shanghai International Settlement]], which led to more than 3,000 civilian deaths.<ref name="Wakeman280281">{{Cite book |first=Frederic E. |last=Wakeman | pages=280–281 |title=Policing Shanghai, 1927–1937 |publisher=University of California Press |year=1996 | isbn=0-520-20761-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vT5GrHv4VcMC&q=August%2014%2C%201937%20Shanghai&pg=PA281}}</ref>

In the three days from 14 to 16 August 1937, the [[Imperial Japanese Navy]] (IJN) sent many [[sortie]]s of the then-advanced long-ranged [[G3M]] medium-heavy land-based bombers and assorted [[List of aircraft of the Japanese Navy|carrier-based aircraft]] with the expectation of destroying the [[Republic of China Air Force|Chinese Air Force]]. However, the Imperial Japanese Navy encountered unexpected resistance from the defending Chinese [[Curtiss F11C Goshawk|Curtiss Hawk II]]/[[Curtiss Hawk III|Hawk III]] and [[Boeing P-26 Peashooter|P-26/281 Peashooter]] fighter squadrons; suffering heavy (50%) losses from the defending Chinese pilots (14 August was subsequently commemorated by the KMT as China's ''Air Force Day'').<ref>{{cite web|url=http://air.mnd.gov.tw/English/Publish.aspx?cnid=906&p=13447&Level=2|title=-Brief history of military airplanes|date=19 September 2006|work=mnd.gov.tw|access-date=13 August 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160826110540/http://air.mnd.gov.tw/English/Publish.aspx?cnid=906&p=13447&Level=2|archive-date=26 August 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2012/02/13/2003525367|title=War hero's son seeks to establish museum in Taiwan|work=Taipei Times|date=13 February 2012|access-date=13 August 2016|archive-date=24 September 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210924090122/http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2012/02/13/2003525367|url-status=live}}</ref>

The skies of China had become a testing zone for advanced [[biplane]] and new-generation [[monoplane]] combat-aircraft designs. The introduction of the advanced [[A5M]] "Claude" fighters into the Shanghai-Nanjing theater of operations, beginning on 18 September 1937, helped the Japanese achieve a certain level of [[Air superiority fighter|air superiority]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/detail-page-2.asp?aircraft_id=619|title=Mitsubishi A5M (Claude) – Development and Operational History, Performance Specifications and Picture Gallery|work=militaryfactory.com|access-date=13 August 2016|archive-date=3 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303225928/http://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/detail-page-2.asp?aircraft_id=619|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Januszewski|first=Tadeusz |title=Mitsubishi A5M Claude (Yellow Series) |year=2013 |publisher=Stratus |location=Sandomierz, Poland |isbn=978-83-61421-99-3}}</ref> However the few experienced Chinese veteran pilots, as well as several Chinese-American volunteer fighter pilots, including Maj. [[Art Chin]], Maj. [[John Wong Pan-yang]], and Capt. Chan Kee-Wong, even in their older and slower biplanes, proved more than able to hold their own against the sleek A5Ms in [[dogfight]]s, and it also proved to be a [[battle of attrition]] against the Chinese Air Force. At the start of the battle, the local strength of the NRA was around five divisions, or about 70,000 troops, while local Japanese forces comprised about 6,300 marines. On 23 August, the Chinese Air Force attacked Japanese troop landings at Wusongkou in northern Shanghai with Hawk III fighter-attack planes and P-26/281 fighter escorts, and the Japanese intercepted most of the attack with [[A2N]] and [[A4N]] fighters from the aircraft carriers ''[[Japanese aircraft carrier Hōshō|Hosho]]'' and ''[[Japanese aircraft carrier Ryūjō|Ryujo]]'', shooting down several of the Chinese planes while losing a single A4N in the dogfight with Lt. [[John Huang Xinrui|Huang Xinrui]] in his P-26/281; the Japanese Army reinforcements succeeded in landing in northern Shanghai.<ref>{{cite web|title=Martyr Qin Jia-zhu|url=https://air.mnd.gov.tw/EN/PastCurrent/PastCurrent_Detail.aspx?FID=28&CID=176&ID=1327|access-date=2020-11-08|website=air.mnd.gov.tw|archive-date=5 November 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201105082630/https://air.mnd.gov.tw/EN/PastCurrent/PastCurrent_Detail.aspx?FID=28&CID=176&ID=1327|url-status=live}}</ref> The [[Imperial Japanese Army]] (IJA) ultimately committed over 300,000 troops, along with numerous naval vessels and aircraft, to capture the city. After more than three months of intense fighting, their casualties far exceeded initial expectations.<ref>Fu Jing-hui, An Introduction of Chinese and Foreign History of War, 2003, pp. 109–111</ref> On 26 October, the IJA captured Dachang, a key strong-point within Shanghai, and on 5 November, additional reinforcements from Japan landed in Hangzhou Bay. Finally, on 9 November, the NRA began a general retreat.

Japan did not immediately occupy the Shanghai International Settlement or the [[Shanghai French Concession]], areas which were outside of China's control due to the [[treaty port]] system. Japan moved into these areas after its 1941 declaration of war against the United States and the United Kingdom.<ref name=":02"/>{{rp|11–12}}

===Battle of Nanjing and massacre===
{{Main|Nanjing Massacre}}
[[File:Photo 07 (The "Shame" Album).jpg|thumb|upright|A Chinese POW about to be beheaded by a Japanese officer with a ''[[shin gunto]]'']]
In November 1937, the Japanese concentrated 220,000 soldiers and began a campaign against Nanjing.<ref name=":022"/>{{Rp|page=29}} Building on the hard-won victory in Shanghai, the IJA advanced on and [[Battle of Nanjing|captured the KMT capital city]] of Nanjing (December 1937) and [[Battle of Xinkou|Northern Shanxi]] (September{{snd}}November 1937).

Japanese forces inflicted heavy casualties on the Chinese soldiers defending the city, killing approximately 50,000 of them including 17 Chinese generals.<ref name=":022"/>{{Rp|page=29}} Upon the capture of Nanjing, Japanese committed massive war atrocities including mass murder and rape of Chinese civilians after 13 December 1937, which has been referred to as the [[Nanjing Massacre]]. Over the next several weeks, Japanese troops perpetrated numerous mass executions and tens of thousands of rapes. The army looted and burned the surrounding towns and the city, destroying more than a third of the buildings.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia| url=https://www.britannica.com/event/Nanjing-Massacre |title=Nanjing Massacre |date=13 December 2022 |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica}}</ref>

The number of Chinese killed in the massacre has been subject to much debate, with estimates ranging from 100,000 to more than 300,000.<ref name="highest death toll estimate">Daqing Yang, "A Sino-Japanese Controversy: The Nanjing Atrocity As History", ''Sino-Japanese Studies'', November 1990, 16.</ref> The numbers agreed upon by most scholars are provided by the [[International Military Tribunal for the Far East]], which estimate at least 200,000 murders and 20,000 rapes.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Askew |first=David |date=2002 |title="The Nanjing Incident: Recent Research and Trends" |url=http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/Askew.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180405031715/http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/Askew.html |access-date=2024-05-20|archive-date=5 April 2018}}</ref>

The Japanese atrocities in Nanjing, especially following the Chinese defense of Shanghai, increased international goodwill for the Chinese people and the Chinese government.<ref name="Crean"/>{{rp|72}}

The Nationalist government re-established itself in Chongqing, which became the wartime seat of government until 1945.<ref name=":022"/>{{Rp|page=32}}