The Battle of Nanking (or Nanjing) was fought in early December 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War between the Chinese National Revolutionary Army and the Imperial Japanese Army for control of Nanjing (Chinese: 南京; pinyin: Nánjīng), the capital of the Republic of China.
Following the outbreak of war between Japan and China in July 1937, the Japanese and Chinese forces engaged in the vicious three-month Battle of Shanghai, where both sides suffered heavy casualties. The Japanese eventually won the battle, forcing the Chinese army into a withdrawal. Capitalizing on their victory, the Japanese officially authorized a campaign to capture Nanjing. The task of occupying Nanjing was given to General Iwane Matsui, the commander of Japan's Central China Area Army, who believed that the capture of Nanjing would force China to surrender and thus end the war. Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek ultimately decided to defend the city and appointed Tang Shengzhi to command the Nanjing Garrison Force, a hastily assembled army of local conscripts and the remnants of the Chinese units who had fought in Shanghai.
In a five-week campaign between November 11 and December 9, the Japanese army marched from Shanghai to Nanjing at a rapid pace, pursuing the retreating Chinese army and overcoming all Chinese resistance in its way. The campaign was marked by tremendous brutality and destruction, with increasing levels of atrocities committed by Japanese forces against the local population, while Chinese forces implemented scorched earth tactics to slow the Japanese advances.
Nevertheless, by December 9 the Japanese had reached the last line of defense, the Fukuo Line, behind which lay Nanjing's fortified walls. On December 10 Matsui ordered an all-out attack on Nanjing, and after two days of intense fighting Chiang decided to abandon the city. To prevent the Nanjing defenders from being surrounded and annihilated by the enemy, Chiang Kai-shek considered ordering a retreat at noon on the 11th. He then instructed Gu Zhutong, then in Jiangbei, to convey this message by phone to Tang Shengzhi. Gu instructed Tang to cross the river north that night and order the defenders to break out if necessary. Tang Shengzhi, having previously advocated for a firm hold, feared the potential liability of a sudden withdrawal. Therefore, he demanded that the Supreme Commander's intentions be clearly conveyed to the defending generals before any withdrawal could be allowed. Tang Shengzhi, a man of urgency, insisted on receiving Chiang Kai-shek's personal order before retreating. That evening, Chiang Kai-shek indeed telegraphed Tang Shengzhi: "If the situation cannot be sustained, you may retreat if necessary to regroup and prepare for a counterattack." Tang ordered his men to launch a concerted breakout of the Japanese siege, but by this time Nanjing was largely surrounded and its defenses were at the breaking point. Most of Tang's troops collapsed in a disorganized rout. While some units were able to escape, many more were caught in the death trap the city had become. By December 13, Nanjing had fallen to the Japanese.
Following the capture of the city, Japanese forces massacred Chinese prisoners of war, murdered civilians, and committed acts of looting, torture, and rape in the Nanjing Massacre. Though Japan's victory excited and emboldened them, the subsequent massacre tarnished their reputation in the eyes of the world. Contrary to Matsui's expectations, China did not surrender and the Second Sino-Japanese War continued for another eight years, leading to the surrender of Japan.
Background
Japan's decision to capture Nanjing
The conflict which would become known as the Second Sino-Japanese War started on July 7, 1937, with a skirmish at Marco Polo Bridge which escalated rapidly into a full-scale war in northern China between the armies of China and Japan. China, however, wanted to avoid a decisive confrontation in the north and so instead opened a second front by attacking Japanese units in Shanghai in central China. The Japanese responded by dispatching the Shanghai Expeditionary Army (SEA), commanded by General Iwane Matsui, to drive the Chinese Army from Shanghai. Intense fighting in Shanghai forced Japan's Army General Staff, which was in charge of military operations, to repeatedly reinforce the SEA, and finally on November 9 an entirely new army, the 10th Army commanded by Lieutenant General Heisuke Yanagawa, was also landed at Hangzhou Bay just south of Shanghai.
Although the arrival of the 10th Army succeeded at forcing the Chinese Army to retreat from Shanghai, the Japanese Army General Staff had decided to adopt a policy of non-expansion of hostilities with the aim of ending the war. On November 7 its de facto leader Deputy Chief of Staff Hayao Tada laid down an "operation restriction line" preventing its forces from leaving the vicinity of Shanghai, or more specifically from going west of the Chinese cities of Suzhou and Jiaxing. The city of Nanjing is roughly 300 kilometers (190 miles) west of Shanghai.
However, a major rift of opinion existed between the Japanese government and its two field armies, the SEA and 10th Army, which as of November were both nominally under the control of the Central China Area Army led by SEA commander Matsui. Matsui made clear to his superiors even before he left for Shanghai that he wanted to march on Nanjing. He was convinced that the conquest of the Chinese capital city of Nanjing would provoke the fall of the entire Nationalist Government of China and thus hand Japan a quick and complete victory in its war on China. Yanagawa was likewise eager to conquer Nanjing and both men chafed under the operation restriction line that had been imposed on them by the Army General Staff.
On November 19 Yanagawa ordered his 10th Army to pursue retreating Chinese forces across the operation restriction line to Nanjing, a flagrant act of insubordination. When Tada discovered this the next day he ordered Yanagawa to stop immediately, but was ignored. Matsui made some effort to restrain Yanagawa, but also told him that he could send some advance units beyond the line. In fact, Matsui was highly sympathetic with Yanagawa's actions and a few days later on November 22 Matsui issued an urgent telegram to the Army General Staff insisting that "To resolve this crisis in a prompt manner we need to take advantage of the enemy's present declining fortunes and conquer Nanking ... By staying behind the operation restriction line at this point we are not only letting our chance to advance slip by, but it is also having the effect of encouraging the enemy to replenish their fighting strength and recover their fighting spirit and there is a risk that it will become harder to completely break their will to make war."
Meanwhile, as more and more Japanese units continued to slip past the operation restriction line, Tada was also coming under pressure from within the Army General Staff. Many of Tada's colleagues and subordinates, including the powerful Chief of the General Staff Operations Division Sadamu Shimomura, had come around to Matsui's viewpoint and wanted Tada to approve an attack on Nanjing. On November 24 Tada finally relented and abolished the operation restriction line "owing to circumstances beyond our control", and then several days later he reluctantly approved the operation to capture Nanjing. Tada flew to Shanghai in person on December 1 to deliver the order, though by then his own armies in the field were already well on their way to Nanjing.
China's decision to defend Nanjing
On November 15, near the end of the Battle of Shanghai, Chiang Kai-shek convened a meeting of the Military Affairs Commission's Supreme National Defense Council to undertake strategic planning, including a decision on what to do in case of a Japanese attack on Nanjing. Here Chiang insisted fervently on mounting a sustained defense of Nanjing. Chiang argued, just as he had during the Battle of Shanghai, that China would be more likely to receive aid from the great powers, possibly at the ongoing Nine Power Treaty Conference, if it could prove on the battlefield its will and capacity to resist the Japanese. He also noted that holding onto Nanjing would strengthen China's hand in peace talks which he wanted the German ambassador Oskar Trautmann to mediate.
Chiang ran into stiff opposition from his officers, including the powerful Chief of Staff of the Military Affairs Commission He Yingqin, the Deputy Chief of Staff Bai Chongxi, the head of the Fifth War Zone Li Zongren, and his German advisor Alexander von Falkenhausen. They argued that the Chinese Army needed more time to recover from its losses at Shanghai, and pointed out that Nanjing was highly indefensible topographically. The gently sloping terrain in front of Nanjing would make it easy for the attackers to advance on the city, while the Yangtze River behind Nanjing would cut off the defenders' retreat.
Chiang, however, had become increasingly agitated over the course of the Battle of Shanghai, even angrily declaring that he would stay behind in Nanjing alone and command its defense personally. But just when Chiang believed himself completely isolated, General Tang Shengzhi, an ambitious senior member of the Military Affairs Commission, spoke out in defense of Chiang's position, although accounts vary on whether Tang vociferously jumped to Chiang's aid or only reluctantly did so. Seizing the opportunity Tang had given him, Chiang responded by organizing the Nanjing Garrison Force on November 20 and officially making Tang its commander on November 25. The orders Tang received from Chiang on November 30 were to "defend the established defense lines at any cost and destroy the enemy's besieging force".
Though both men publicly declared that they would defend Nanjing "to the last man", they were aware of their precarious situation. On the same day that the Garrison Force was established Chiang officially moved the capital of China from Nanjing to Chongqing deep in China's interior. Further, both Chiang and Tang would at times give contradictory instructions to their subordinates on whether their mission was to defend Nanjing to the death or merely delay the Japanese advance.
Prelude
China's defense preparations
Following the Manchurian Incident of 1931, the Chinese government began a fast track national defense program with massive construction of primary and auxiliary air force bases around the capital of Nanjing including Jurong Airbase, completed in 1934, from which to facilitate aerial defense as well as launching counter-strikes against enemy incursions; on August 15, 1937, the IJN launched the first of many heavy schnellbomber (fast bomber) raids against Jurong Airbase using the advanced G3Ms based upon Giulio Douhet's blitz-attack concept in an attempt to neutralize the Chinese Air Force fighters guarding the capital city, but was severely repulsed by the unexpected heavy resistance and performance of the Chinese fighter pilots stationed at Jurong, and suffering almost 50% loss rate.
On November 20 the Chinese Army and teams of conscripted laborers began to hurriedly bolster Nanjing's defenses both inside and outside the city. Nanjing itself was surrounded by formidable stone walls stretching almost fifty kilometers (31 miles) around the entire city. The walls, which had been constructed hundreds of years earlier during the Ming Dynasty, rose up to twenty meters (66 feet) in height, were nine meters (30 feet) thick, and had been studded with machine gun emplacements. By December 6 all the gates into the city had been closed and then barricaded with an additional layer of sandbags and concrete six meters (20 feet) thick.
Outside the walls a series of semicircular defense lines were constructed in the path of the Japanese advance, most notably an outer one about sixteen kilometers (9.9 miles) from the city and an inner one directly outside the city known as the Fukuo Line, or multiple positions line. The Fukuo Line, a sprawling network of trenches, moats, barbed wire, mine fields, gun emplacements, and pillboxes, was to be the final defense line outside Nanjing's city walls. There were also two key high points of land on the Fukuo Line, the peaks of Zijinshan to the northeast and the plateau of Yuhuatai to the south, where fortification was especially dense. In order to deny the Japanese invaders any shelter or supplies in this area, Tang adopted a strategy of scorched earth on December 7, ordering all homes and structures in the path of the Japanese within one to two kilometers (1.2 miles) of the city to be incinerated, as well as all homes and structures near roadways within sixteen kilometers (9.9 miles) of the city.
China's forces
The defending army, the Nanjing Garrison Force, was on paper a formidable army of thirteen divisions, including three elite German-trained divisions plus the super-elite Training Brigade. The reality was that nearly all of these units, save for the 2nd Army Group, had been severely mauled from the combat in Shanghai. By the time they reached Nanjing they were physically exhausted, low on equipment, and badly depleted in total troop strength. In order to replenish some of these units, 16,000 young men and teenagers from Nanjing and the rural villages surrounding it were speedily pressed into service as new recruits.
The German trained units, the 36th, 87th and 88th Divisions, had each taken heavy casualties in Shanghai and saw their elite quality drop as a result. As of December, each division consisted of between 6,000 and 7,000 troops, of which roughly half were raw recruits. In addition to these units, the defenders of Nanjing and the outside defensive lines were composed of four Guangdong (Cantonese) divisions in the 66th and 83rd Corps, five divisions and two brigades from Sichuan in the 23rd Group Army, and two divisions from the NRA Central Army in the 74th Corps. Additional units were provided in by the Nanjing Gendarmerie and Nanjing Capital Garrison. However, most of these units had also suffered very high losses from the months of fighting in and around Shanghai. The 66th Corps had been reduced to half its original size, and its two divisions had to be reorganized into regiments. To replenish the Chinese garrison, 40,200 men from 44 supplementary battalions, 4 supplementary regiments, and 1 Jiangxi security regiment were sent towards the 36th division, 87th division, 88th division, 51st and 58th divisions of the 74th corps, and the Training Division of the Central Army. An additional 16,000-18,000 fresh soldiers were brought in from Hankou in the ranks of the 2nd Army, with 80% of their strength composed of recent recruits. However, due to the unexpected rapidity of the Japanese advance, most of these new conscripts received only rudimentary training on how to fire their guns on their way to or upon their arrival at the frontlines.
No definitive statistics exist on how many soldiers the Nanjing Garrison Force had managed to cobble together by the time of the battle. Ikuhiko Hata estimates 100,000, and Tokushi Kasahara who argues in favor of about 150,000. The most reliable estimates are those of David Askew, who estimates via a unit-by-unit analysis a strength of 73,790 to 81,500 Chinese defenders in the city of Nanjing itself. These numbers are backed up by the Nanking Garrison staff officer T'an Tao-p'ing, who records a garrison of 81,000 soldiers, a number which Masahiro Yamamoto argues to be one of the most probable figures.
Japanese mass bombings
Even before the conclusion of the battle of Shanghai, Japan's Navy Air Service was launching frequent air raids on the city, eventually totaling 50 raids according to the Navy's own records. The Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service had struck Nanjing for the first time on August 15 with Mitsubishi G3M medium-heavy bombers, but suffered heavy losses in face of the aerial defense from Chinese Air Force Boeing P-26/281 Peashooter and Hawk II/Hawk III fighters based primarily at Jurong Airbase for the defense of Nanjing. It wasn't until after the introduction of the advanced Mitsubishi A5M fighter did the Japanese begin to turn the tide in air-to-air combat, and proceed with bombing both military and civilian targets day and night with increasing impunity as the Chinese Air Force losses mounted through continuous attrition; the Chinese did not have the aircraft industry nor comprehensive training regimen to replace men and machines to contend against the ever-growing and ever-improving Japanese war machine.
However, experienced fighter pilots of the Chinese Air Force still proved a danger against Japanese air power; combat aces Col. Gao Zhihang, Maj. John Wong Pan-yang and Capt. Liu Cuigang who were outnumbered by the superior A5Ms entering Nanjing on October 12, shot down four A5M fighters that day, including Shotai leader W.O. Torakuma who was downed by Chinese fighter ace Col. Gao. Both Col. Gao and Capt. Liu died in non-aerial combat incidents by the following month as they were preparing to receive improved fighter aircraft design in the Polikarpov I-16s.
Evacuation of Nanjing
In the face of Japanese terror bombing and the ongoing advance of the Imperial Japanese Army, the large majority of Nanjing's citizens fled the city. By early December Nanjing's population had dropped from its former total of more than one million to less than 500,000, a figure which included Chinese refugees from rural villages burned down by their own government's scorched earth policies. Most of those still in the city were very poor and had nowhere else to go. Foreign residents of Nanjing were also repeatedly asked to leave the city which was becoming more and more chaotic under the strain of bombings, fires, looting by criminals, and electrical outages, but those few foreigners brave enough to stay behind strived to find a way to help the Chinese civilians who had been unable to leave. In late-November a group of them led by German citizen John Rabe established the Nanking Safety Zone in the center of the city, a self-proclaimed demilitarized zone where civilian refugees could congregate in order to hopefully escape the fighting. The safety zone was recognized by the Chinese government, and on December 8 Tang Shengzhi demanded that all civilians evacuate there.
Among those Chinese who did manage to escape Nanjing were Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Soong Mei-ling, who had flown out of Nanjing on a private plane just before the crack of dawn on December 7. The mayor of Nanjing and most of the municipal government left the same day, entrusting management of the city to the Nanjing Garrison Force.
Japanese advance on Nanjing (November 11 – December 4)
By the start of December, Japan's Central China Area Army had swollen in strength to over 160,000 men, though only about 70,000 of these would ultimately participate in the fighting. The plan of attack against Nanjing was a pincer movement which the Japanese called "encirclement and annihilation". The two prongs of the Central China Area Army's pincer were the Shanghai Expeditionary Army (SEA) advancing on Nanjing from its eastern side and the 10th Army advancing from its southern side. To the north and west of Nanjing lay the Yangtze River, but the Japanese planned to plug this possible escape route as well both by dispatching a squadron of ships up the river and by deploying two special detachments to circle around behind the city. The Kunisaki Detachment was to cross the Yangtze in the south with the ultimate aim of occupying Pukou on the river bank west of Nanjing while the Yamada Detachment was to be sent on the far north route with the ultimate aim of taking Mufushan just north of Nanjing.
Fighting retreat of the Chinese Army, breaching the Wufu line
As of 11 November, all elements of the Chinese army in the Lower Yangtze Theatre were falling back after the Battle of Shanghai. Unlike previous instances during the Shanghai campaign where Chinese retreats were conducted with discipline, the Chinese retreat from Shanghai was poorly coordinated and disorganized, in part due to the sheer size of the operation and lack of prior planning. The orders to retreat had been passed top-down in a haphazard manner, and the Chinese army frequently bogged down under its own weight or became congested at bottlenecks like bridges. Making matters worse were Japanese aircraft constantly harassing the Chinese columns, adding to the growing casualties and mayhem. Despite their losses, the Chinese army managed to escape destruction by the Japanese forces, who were attempting to encircle them in the last few days of the combat in Shanghai.
On 12 November, the Japanese forces deployed in Shanghai were ordered to pursue the retreating Chinese forces. With most Chinese troops melting away into the retreat, many cities and towns were quickly captured by the Japanese, including Jiading, Taicang, and Jiashan. Japanese troops from the freshly deployed Tenth Army, consisting of the 6th, 18th, 114th divisions and the Kunisaki Detachment, were eager for combat. However, many of the other Japanese units were exhausted from the fighting in Shanghai, and were slower to follow through with their orders.
Despite the Chinese retreat, the Japanese encountered strong resistance at the Wufu defensive line between Fushan and Lake Tai, which had been nicknamed a "new Hindenburg line" in Chinese propaganda. At Changshu, Japanese forces had to fight slowly through an interlocking system of concrete pillboxes manned by Chinese soldiers fighting to the death, all whilst Chinese artillery bombarded them with accurate fire. The Japanese 9th Division was faced with a similar challenge in Suzhou: contrary to propaganda accounts of the city falling without a fight, Japanese soldiers had to fight through a series of pillboxes in front of the city before painstakingly eliminating pockets of resistance in street fighting. These operations were concluded by 19 November, with some 1,000 Chinese soldiers killed in Suzhou and another 100 artillery pieces captured, according to Japanese records.
By late November, the Japanese army was advancing rapidly around Lake Tai en route to Nanjing. The Chinese, in order to counter these advances, deployed some five divisions of the Sichuanese 23rd Group Army from warlord Liu Xiang's forces to the southern end of the lake near Guangde, and two more divisions (the 103rd and 112th) to the river fortress Jiangyin near the lake's northern end, which had been the site of a naval battle in August.
Battles of Lake Tai and Guangde
On November 25, the Japanese 18th Division attacked the town of Sian near Guangde. The Chinese defenders, underequipped and inexperienced troops from the 145th Division, were overwhelmed by Japanese airpower and tanks and hastily fell back. A counterattack on Sian from the 146th Division was repelled by Japanese armor.
On the southwestern edge of Lake Tai, the Sichuanese 144th Division from the 23rd Group Army had dug into a position where the local terrain formed a narrow funnel in the local road. When faced with the advance of the Japanese 114th Division, the Chinese ambushed the Japanese with hidden mountain guns, inflicting heavy casualties on the Japanese. However, fearing the loss of their artillery from retaliatory enemy attacks, the Chinese officers withdrew their artillery in the heat of battle. As a result, the Chinese infantry were slowly pushed back, and finally broke into a retreat towards Guangde when Japanese troops flanked their positions on the lake's shores via stolen civilian motor boats.
The last days of November saw the five Sichuanese divisions fight fiercely in the vicinity of Guangde, but their defense was hindered by divided leadership and a lack of radio communications. The Japanese overwhelmed the Chinese defenders with artillery, and finally forced the 23rd Group Army back on November 30. Sichuanese division commander Rao Guohua, unable to bear the defeat, shot himself the day after the retreat. The 23rd Group Army suffered heavy casualties in this battle, with at least 4,454 killed, wounded, or missing.
Battle of Jiangyin
On November 29, the Japanese 13th Division attacked the walled town of Jiangyin near the Yangtze River after a two-day artillery bombardment. They were confronted by some 10,000 troops from the Chinese 112th and 103rd Divisions, which were composed of a mix of Manchurian veteran exiles and recruits from Southwestern China, respectively. Despite encountering ambushes and difficult terrain in the form of 33 hills around the city, the Japanese were able to advance under the cover of land and naval artillery from their ships on the Yangtze. Chinese coastal batteries mounted on Jiangyin's walls retaliated against the Japanese ships, causing damage to several Japanese vessels. To even the odds, Chinese raiders organized suicide missions to infiltrate Japanese lines at night and destroy enemy tanks with explosives. The hills around Jiangyin were the site of vicious fighting, with Mount Ding changing hands several times, resulting in Chinese company commander Xia Min'an being killed in action.
The Japanese eventually managed to overcome the Chinese defenses through a combination of artillery, aircraft and tanks. The Chinese began a withdrawal on December 1, but poor communication resulted in the 112th Division leaving too soon, resulting in a chaotic retreat for the 103rd Division. Both divisions had suffered heavy losses in the fighting, and only a portion of their original strength (estimated to be between 1,000 and 2,000 men for the 103rd Division) made it back to Nanjing.
During the rest of their advance, the Japanese overcame resistance from the already battered Chinese forces who were being pursued by the Japanese from Shanghai in a "running battle". Here the Japanese were aided by their complete air supremacy, abundance of tanks, the improvised and hastily constructed nature of the Chinese defenses, and also by the Chinese strategy of concentrating their defending forces on small patches of relatively high ground which made them easy to outflank and surround. Tillman Durdin reported in one case where Japanese troops surrounded some 300 Chinese soldiers from the 83rd Corps on a cone-shaped peak: "The Japanese set a ring of fire around the peak. The fire, feeding on trees and grass, gradually crept nearer and nearer to the top, forcing the Chinese upward until, huddled together, they were mercilessly machine-gunned to death."
Japanese atrocities on the way to Nanjing
General Matsui, along with the Army General Staff, had originally envisaged making a slow and steady march on Nanjing, but his subordinates disobeyed orders and instead raced each other to the city. The capture of Guangde had occurred three days before the army was even supposed to start its planned advance, and the SEA had captured Danyang on December 2, more than five days ahead of schedule.
On average, the Japanese units were advancing on Nanjing at the breakneck pace of up to forty kilometers (25 miles) per day. In order to achieve such speeds, the Japanese soldiers carried little with them except weaponry and ammunition. Because they were marching well ahead of most of their supply lines, Japanese troops usually looted from Chinese civilians along the way, which was almost always accompanied by extreme violence. As a Japanese journalist in the 10th Army recorded, "The reason that the [10th Army] is advancing to Nanjing quite rapidly is due to the tacit consent among the officers and men that they could loot and rape as they wish."
The Japanese advance on Nanjing was marked by a trail of arson, rape and murder. The 170 miles between Shanghai and Nanjing were left "a nightmarish zone of death and destruction." Japanese planes strafed unarmed farmers and refugees "for fun". Civilians were subjected to extreme violence and brutality in a foreshadowing of the Nanjing Massacre. For example, the Nanqiantou hamlet was set on fire, with many of its inhabitants locked within the burning houses. Two women, one of them pregnant, were raped repeatedly. Afterwards, the soldiers "cut open the belly of the pregnant woman and gouged out the fetus." A crying two-year-old boy was wrestled from his mother's arms and thrown into the flames, while the hysterically sobbing mother and remaining villagers were bayoneted, disemboweled, and thrown into a nearby creek. Many Chinese civilians committed suicide, such as two girls who deliberately drowned themselves near Pinghu.
Many cities and towns were subject to destruction and looting by the advancing Japanese, including but not limited to Suzhou, Taicang and Jiading. When massacring villages, Japanese forces usually executed the men immediately, while the women and children were raped and tortured first before being murdered. One atrocity of note was the killing contest between two Japanese officers, where both men held a competition to see who could behead 100 Chinese captives the first. The atrocity was conducted twice with the second round raising the goal to 150 captives, and was reported on by Japanese newspapers.
In a continuation of their practices from Shanghai, the Japanese troops executed all Chinese soldiers they captured on their way to Nanjing. Prisoners of war were shot, beheaded, bayonetted and burned to death. In addition, since thousands of Chinese soldiers had dispersed into the countryside, the Japanese implemented "mopping-up operations" in the countryside to deny the Chinese shelter, where all buildings without any immediate value to the Japanese army were burned down, and their inhabitants slaughtered.
Battle for Nanjing's outer line of defense (December 5–9)
Battles of Chunhua and the Two Peaks
On December 5, Chiang Kai-shek paid a visit to a defensive encampment near Jurong to boost the morale of his men but was forced to leave when the Imperial Japanese Army began their attack on the battlefield. On that day the rapidly moving forward contingents of the SEA occupied Jurong and then arrived near Chunhua(zhen), a town 15 miles southeast of Nanjing and a key point of the capital's outer line of defense which would put Japanese artillery in range of the city. Chunhua was defended by China's 51st Division of the 74th Corps, veterans of the fighting from Shanghai. Despite facing difficulties in using the fortifications around the town due to a lack of keys, the 51st Division had managed to establish a three-line defense with pillboxes, hidden machine gun nests, two rows of barbed wire and an anti-tank ditch.
Battle had already begun on 4 December, when 500 soldiers from the Japanese 9th division attacked Chinese forward positions in Shuhu, a small town several miles away from Chunhua. The Chinese company in Shuhu held out for two days, and at one point deployed a tank platoon against the Japanese infantry, losing 3 armored vehicles in exchange for 40 Japanese casualties. By 6 December, the defenders abandoned their positions, and some 30 survivors fought their way out of Shuhu.
The Japanese pushed to Chunhua, but were faced with heavy resistance by the 51st Division, who inflicted heavy casualties on the Japanese in preplanned kill zones with machine guns and artillery attacks. Nevertheless, Japanese artillery strikes enabled their infantry to capture the first defensive line, while a well-timed attack by six Japanese bombers enabled a deeper breakthrough. The Japanese left flank managed to penetrate behind Chunhua on December 7, but the final breakthrough came on December 8 when an entire regiment of the 9th Division that had lagged behind entered the fray. The Chinese defenders, who had endured incessant shelling for days and suffered more than 1,500 casualties, finally cracked under the renewed Japanese assault and withdrew. In the five-day battle at Chunhua Town, the 51st division suffered more than 2000 casualties including 2 regiment commanders and 4 battalion commanders.
The SEA also took the fortress at Zhenjiang and the spa town of Tangshuizhen the same day. Meanwhile, on the south side of the same defense line, armored vehicles of Japan's 10th Army charged the Chinese positions at Jiangjunshan (General's Peak) and Niushoushan (Ox Head Peak) defended by China's 58th Division of the 74th Corps. The Chinese defenders had dug in on the high ground, and possessed mountain guns powerful enough to destroy Japanese armor. Multiple Japanese tanks were destroyed, and in some cases, valiant Chinese soldiers armed with hammers jumped onto the vehicles and banged repeatedly on their roofs shouting "Get out of there!" Gradually, through its coordinated use of armor, artillery and infantry, the Japanese managed to slowly dislodge the Chinese defenders. On December 9, after darkness fell on the battlefield, the 58th Division was finally overwhelmed and withdrew, having suffered, according to its own records, 800 casualties. By this point, the 58th division had suffered more than 1,700 casualties including 2 regimental adjutants and 5 battalion commanders.
Defensive stand of the 2nd Army and the Battle for Old Tiger's Cave
On December 6, the Japanese 16th Division attacked Chinese positions 14 miles east of Nanjing. The Chinese defenders were composed of fresh troops from the 2nd Army, and had dug in onto a ridgeline to meet the Japanese assault. Japanese aircraft and artillery shelled the Chinese defenses relentlessly, inflicting extensive damage and confusion. The Chinese defenders were also hampered by their own inexperience, with some soldiers forgetting to ignite the fuses of their hand grenades before throwing them. Only a cadre of experienced officers and NCO's prevented a total collapse, and enabled the 2nd Army to hold an organized defense for three days until December 9, when they were forced back to Qixia. The fighting had resulted in 3,919 killed and 1,099 wounded for the two divisions of the 2nd Army, an almost four-to-one death-injury ratio. Additionally, the special service company of the 2nd Army suffered 47 killed and 13 wounded.