32.0°N 118.7°E China Japan Invades China
Briefing
Japan's full-scale invasion in July 1937 opened the Second World War in Asia two years before Europe. That December, the massacre at Nanking killed as many as 300,000 civilians. The war that began here would tie down over half the Japanese army for eight years and cost perhaps fourteen million Chinese lives — a theater the West forgot almost as soon as it ended.
Books Covering This Event (3)
Popular History
The Rape of Nanking Iris Chang · 1997
★ 4.4 Intermediate The forgotten massacre of 1937, when the Japanese army murdered and raped its way through China's capital.
Forgotten Ally Rana Mitter · 2013
★ 4.5 Intermediate China's eight-year war against Japan — fourteen million dead, and a story the West wrote out of the war.
