Battle of Shanghai

The Battle of Shanghai (traditional Chinese: 淞滬會戰; simplified Chinese: 淞沪会战; pinyin: Sōng hù huìzhàn) was a major battle fought between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China in the Chinese city of Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It lasted from August 13 to November 26, 1937, and was arguably the single largest and longest battle of the entire war, with it even regarded by some historians as the first battle of World War II. It resulted in the Japanese capture of Shanghai and heavy destruction to the city.

It was the first of the twenty-two major engagements fought between the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Republic of China (ROC) and the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) of the Empire of Japan at the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese eventually prevailed after over three months of extensive fighting on land, in the air and at sea. Both sides accused each other of using chemical weapons during the battle, with Japanese forces confirmed to have deployed poison gas at least thirteen times. Historian Peter Harmsen stated 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". It was the single largest urban battle prior to the Battle of Stalingrad, which occurred almost 5 years later.

Since the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 followed by the Japanese attack on Shanghai in 1932, there had been ongoing armed conflicts between China and Japan without an official declaration of war. These conflicts finally escalated in July 1937, when the Marco Polo Bridge Incident triggered a full-scale war between the two countries. Shanghai was China's largest and most cosmopolitan city, with it being the world's fifth largest city at the time. Shanghai was known as the "Pearl of the Orient" and "Paris of the East", with it being China's main commercial hub and largest port. By deliberately initiating a major conflict in Shanghai, it's believed that the Chinese leadership aimed to achieve several objectives: to divert the main Japanese focus to the Yangtze delta, thereby stalling the perceived north-to-south advance of the Japanese army, to give much needed time for the Chinese government to move vital industries to the interior, while at the same time attempting to bring sympathetic Western powers to China's side, though there is no consensus on whether this strategy was successful. During the fierce three-month battle, the forces of China and Japan fought in downtown Shanghai, in the outlying towns, and on the beaches of the Yangtze River and Hangzhou Bay, where the Japanese had made amphibious landings.

Chinese forces were equipped primarily with small-caliber weapons against much greater Japanese air, naval, and armor power. In the end, Shanghai fell, and China lost a significant portion of its best troops, the elite Chinese forces trained and equipped by the Germans, while failing to elicit any international intervention. However, the resistance of Chinese forces over three months of battle shocked the Japanese, who believed they could take Shanghai within days and China within months.

The battle can be divided into three stages, and eventually involved around one million troops. The first stage lasted from August 13 to August 22, 1937, during which the NRA besieged the Japanese Naval Landing Force stationed in Shanghai in bloody urban fighting in an attempt to dislodge them. The second stage lasted from August 23 to October 26, 1937, during which the Japanese launched reinforcing amphibious landings on the Jiangsu coast and the two armies fought a house-to-house battle in the creek country north of Shanghai, with the Japanese attempting to gain control of the city and the surrounding regions. The last stage, ranging from October 27 to the end of November 1937, involved the retreat of the Chinese army in the face of Japanese flanking maneuvers, and the ensuing combat on the road to China's capital at the time, Nanjing. In addition to the urban combat, trench warfare was also fought in the outskirts of the city.

On August 9, Naval Sub-Lieutenant Isao Ōyama (大山勇夫), head of the Western Detachment of the Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces stationed in Shanghai and his driver, First-Class Seaman Saito Yozo, along with a guard from the Chinese Peace Preservation Corps were found dead around the gate to Hongqiao Airport on Monument Road. Several accounts allege Ōyama and his driver were stopped by the Peace Preservation Corps Guard before Ōyama opened fire and killed them. The Sub-Lieutenant and his driver were then subsequently killed in returning fire from other guards at airport.

However, Ōyama was unarmed at the time of the shooting, having left his sidearm at the headquarters. Historian Peter Harmsen purported the so-called shootout to in fact be a staged scene to coverup the killing of the two Japanese naval personnel by Chinese soldiers masquerading as Peace Preservation Corps.

It is still unknown whether Ōyama attempted to enter the military airport under higher orders. The incident heightened the tensions between the Chinese and Japanese forces in Shanghai. On August 10, 1937, the Japanese Consul General demanded that the Chinese withdraw the Peace Preservation Corps and dismantle their defense works around the city. He also made it clear that the Imperial Japanese Army regarded the shooting of a Japanese officer as humiliating, and that any further incident would escalate the situation. In response to the incident, the Japanese began sending in reinforcements to Shanghai. Facing the increasing Japanese military presence in Shanghai, Chinese troops were also being deployed to the Shanghai area beginning on August 11.