Japanese troops reaching the destroyed North Station in downtown
Shanghai
General Zhang, China’s 9th Army Group commander, was a
realist. He knew his troops were outgunned and outranged in every key category
of military capability. Zhang’s most promising margin of victory depended on
how effectively he could exploit the Nationalist Chinese Army’s numerical
superiority to drive Shanghai’s Japanese garrison into the sea before the IJA
could land in force. By 9 August, Zhang had assembled 4 infantry divisions, a
separate infantry brigade, 2 artillery regiments with 400 to 500 guns, 2 heavy
mortar battalions, 2 anti-tank gun batteries, and 1 light tank battalion with
30 to 40 light tanks—a force of roughly 50,000 for the mission.
Zhang’s scheme of maneuver was not complex. Like many
generals in Chinese history, he made virtue of necessity. He decided to exploit
China’s one true advantage over the Japanese: numbers of soldiers. Zhang
reasoned that if he could achieve surprise, he could concentrate overwhelming numbers
of Chinese troops against the Japanese defenders, eventually driving the
retreating Japanese into the Huangpu River. His plan called for an assault by
20,000 troops or two divisions. One division would strike at the IJA
headquarters near Zhabei, the poor industrial section of Shanghai. The other
division would attack the IJA headquarters located inside a textile mill. Once
these objectives were taken, Zhang planned to deploy additional Chinese forces
along the coast to defeat Japanese attempts to land reinforcements.
Unfortunately for Zhang, his initial attack did not go as
planned. During the morning of 13 August, Chinese troops in the Shanghai Peace
Preservation Corps opened fire on members of the Japanese garrison, alerting
the Japanese to impending action. Realizing that the element of surprise was
lost, Chiang directed Zhang to begin his deliberate assault on the Japanese
targets as soon as possible. For Zhang, that meant the next day. Zhang knew
that a successful Chinese attack depended heavily on surprise, but he followed
orders.
When the two Chinese divisions attacked their objectives on
14 August, they made a shocking discovery. Not only had the Japanese forces
been alerted, but also the two Japanese headquarters were protected by concrete
defensive barriers that were impervious to even the largest Chinese artillery
(150-millimeter howitzers). Additionally, Japanese armored cars and machine
guns were placed along the streets and corridors where Chinese attacks were
expected to pass, and Japanese naval gunfire pulverized Chinese troops in the
areas surrounding the Japanese strongpoints.
Undeterred by the failure of the first attacks, the Chinese
generals sent their men into action, shoulder to shoulder, with fixed bayonets.
Predictably, losses were catastrophic. Chinese flesh and bone performed poorly
against Japanese steel, concrete, and machine guns. Even more disappointing,
the Chinese tanks of British, French, and Italian manufacture lacked the
armored protection to withstand fire from Japanese heavy weapons and provided
practically no offensive capability at all. Fire from Japanese heavy machine
guns penetrated the light armor and killed or wounded the Chinese tank crews.
Frustrated and desperate to destroy the Japanese strongholds
in the city, Zhang decided to throw in two of Nationalist China’s
German-trained divisions, the 87th and the 88th, in an operation he named Iron
Fist. On 17 August, these elite infantry divisions attacked the Japanese
strongholds using the German infiltration tactics they had practiced under the
supervision of German officers on contract to train Chiang’s army.
Despite the demoralizing wall of fire that greeted them, the
heroic Chinese soldiers fought their way to the forward edge of the Japanese
defenses. It made no difference. The attacking Chinese troops simply lacked the
firepower and explosives to penetrate the defensive works, and their artillery
and machine gun support was insufficient. Once more, the Japanese sailors of the
SNLF held their ground thanks to the concrete defensive works and the fleet’s
accurate, devastating naval gunfire.
In the interim, Nationalist Chinese air and naval forces
struck the Japanese ships in Shanghai harbor. On 14 August, forty Chinese
aircraft flew a total of two hundred sorties, attacking Japanese ships as well
as troops in the city. Once again, the attacks were ineffective. Chinese river
patrol craft launched a successful torpedo attack against the battleship Izumo,
scoring two hits, but did not do serious damage to it. Bombs meant for the
Japanese fleet fell instead on a British warship and on Shanghai’s
international zone, accidentally injuring or killing three thousand civilians
inside an area now brimming with more than a million people seeking refuge from
the fighting. Japanese forces ashore sustained no losses at all.
In the first forty-eight hours of the fight for Shanghai,
Japanese airpower fought the weather, not the Chinese. When the weather cleared
on 16 August, the 3rd Air Fleet launched air strikes from Taipei, Cheju-do
Island, Shengsi Islands, and its two carriers, Hosho and Ryujo, hit Chinese
troop concentrations and airfields from Shanghai to Nanjing. After decrypting
the Nationalist Chinese military’s encoded messages on 19 August, the Japanese
established air superiority over Shanghai. By the time Matsui’s SEF of 80,000
men arrived on 23 August, Admiral Hasegawa’s actions had retained Japan’s
foothold ashore, securing Japan’s margin of victory. The scales were tipping in
favor of the IJA.
THE IJA ARRIVES
General Matsui’s first contingent comprised two divisions,
the 3rd and 11th Infantry Divisions. To augment the capabilities of these two
divisions, Matsui was given additional machine gun, tank, and mortar
battalions, a heavy field artillery regiment, and a siege artillery battalion,
adding about 100 tanks and 300 to 400 artillery systems of different calibers
to the SEF for a total of 80,000 troops. Separate radio platoons were attached
to major regiments and divisions, giving the SEF a significant communication
advantage over the Chinese forces, which were equipped with comparatively few
radios. The lack of communication capabilities became a chronic weakness.
Chinese defensive operations could not keep up with the frequent attacks
launched by the Japanese let alone effectively monitor the actions of their own
forces.
A few days later, an IJA fighter squadron from the
Provisional Air Group operating in north China was added to reinforce Japanese
airpower ashore. By 10 September, China’s small air force was largely out of
action, and Japanese forces enjoyed air supremacy for the rest of the campaign.
Matsui’s task, however, was by no means easy. Geography
still favored the Chinese defender. The maze of waterways and buildings inside
Shanghai, together with the swamps, rivers, and lakes on the city’s outskirts,
severely restricted the movement of ground forces on both sides. If skillfully
used, these waterways would favor the Chinese defender. On the north side of
Shanghai is the great Yangtze River, five to ten miles wide and sixty-five to
eighty feet deep. In the center of the peninsula is Suzhou Creek, an eastward
flowing stream that makes a sharp northward turn into the Huangpu (formerly
called the Whampoa) River, eventually converging with the Yangtze. The source
of the Suzhou Creek is an area of swamps, and farther west is Taihu Lake, a
body of water larger than the modern city of Shanghai itself (869 square
miles). To the south of Shanghai is Hangzhou Bay, an elongated thirty-six-mile-wide
inlet that gradually narrows as it reaches the Qiantang River and the city of
Hangzhou.
Aside from his age, Matsui was hardly the typical army
four-star general. He was remarkably fit with an exceptionally sharp mind and
no shortage of personal physical courage. More important, Matsui would do early
in the campaign what seemed impossible given the serious interservice rivalry
that afflicted relations between the IJA and the IJN. He would make peace with
the Japanese admirals.
In a discussion on 21 August aboard Admiral Hasegawa’s
flagship, Matsui listened carefully to the recommendations of his own staff, as
well as to those of the Japanese naval officers already engaged in the battle
for Shanghai. Rear Admiral Nagumo Chuichi urged Matsui to conduct two landings,
which would force the Chinese defenders to fight in two directions
simultaneously. (Nagumo would later command the IJN’s 1st Air Fleet at Pearl
Harbor and Midway.)
Ultimately, Matsui overruled the IJA staff officers who
urged him to make a single landing in one location in favor of Nagumo’s plan
for two. Matsui decided to conduct the landings in two echelons at two
different locations roughly ten miles apart. The northernmost landing would
place the 11th Infantry Division in the vicinity of Chuanshakou, while the 3rd
Infantry Division landed farther south near Wusong. The Japanese conducted
amphibious landings along a forty-kilometer front, from Liuhe northeast of the
Shanghai metropolitan area to the Shanghai docks on the Yangtze.
Matsui instructed his commanders to execute a double
envelopment using the 3rd Infantry Division to capture the city of Wusong while
the 11th Infantry Division pushed inward to the southwest and capture Luodian.
The capture of that city—a transportation center connecting Baoshan, downtown
Shanghai, and several other towns with highways—would facilitate the
encirclement Matsui wanted by cutting off Chinese forces inside an area of
about approximately fifty square miles. The encirclement was part of Matsui’s larger
strategic goal of forcing the Chinese 15th Army Group to withdraw eight miles
from the coast. If successful, the withdrawal would expose the left flank of
the Chinese 9th Army Group, which was still fighting in metropolitan Shanghai,
to Japanese assault and, potentially, encirclement.
To support General Matsui’s plan, Admiral Hasegawa directed
the entire 3rd Air Fleet to thoroughly reconnoiter the area and then provide
the attacking Japanese divisions with close air support. When the IJA
formations began landing in waves on the Chinese coast, the entire might of the
Japanese fleet would assemble to systematically pulverize Chinese troops and
defense works.
In view of Chinese weaknesses in airpower, artillery, and
tanks, the Chinese had little choice but to compensate with numbers. By the
time the Japanese landings started, Chiang had moved the Nationalist Chinese
15th Army Group, a force of 150,000–200,000 men under the command of General
Luo Zhuoying, into hastily prepared defensive positions along the coast. Luo’s
mission was to stop the Japanese landings. To do so, he had 17 infantry
divisions, a separate infantry brigade, and a separate artillery regiment with
600 to 800 artillery systems. Chinese infantry divisions were generally 10,000
strong, or half the size of the 22,000-man Japanese square divisions.
The landings began on 23 August with the Japanese SEF coming
ashore near the coastal towns of Liuhe, Wusong, and Chuanshakou. Resistance
near or on the beaches was sporadic, but IJA 3rd and 11th Infantry Divisions
encountered tough opposition from Chinese forces as they advanced inland to
capture towns and villages. Neighborhoods and buildings that the IJA seized
during the day with the aid of Japanese naval gunfire were lost to ruthless
Chinese counterattacks at night. Even with the systematic bombardment of
Chinese defensive positions and assembly areas, the fighting was harder than
Matsui had anticipated, and he went ashore to find out why.
Japan’s Shanghai Expeditionary Force Lands in China, 22 August–23
September 1937
Upon arriving at the front, Matsui discovered that his general
staff had directed the two attacking divisions to leave behind their tanks and
artillery. Japanese general staff officers assumed the soft sand and ground on
the coast plus the network of canals and streams surrounding Shanghai would not
support the effective employment of tanks and artillery. Japanese infantry
attacks bogged down due to the absence of Japanese firepower and mobility.
Matsui was deeply angered by his staff’s omission, and
because of the lack of mobile armored firepower, five days would pass before
the 11th Infantry Division would capture Luodian and the 3rd Infantry Division
would capture Wusong. However, far more important for the larger Japanese
campaign was the fact that without the tanks and artillery, the SEF opportunity
to envelop the Chinese 15th Army Group was irretrievably lost.
The town of Baoshan finally fell on 4 September. For its
Chinese defenders, the battle was a fight to the death. The few Chinese units
that survived that battle escaped to establish new defensive positions in and
around Luodian, barely sixteen miles from the center of Shanghai. Taking
Luodian would now require a deliberate assault, something Matsui had hoped to
avoid.
To defend Luodian, Chiang concentrated 300,000 troops,
including the survivors of Baoshan, to stop 100,000 Japanese soldiers supported
by tanks, artillery, aircraft, and naval gunfire. The Chinese were too poorly
equipped and trained to halt the IJA for long, but as the battle progressed,
the Chinese found innovative ways to slow or derail the Japanese advance.
Under cover of darkness, Chinese soldiers mined the roads
leading into their defensive positions around Luodian and launched raids to
isolate and cut off Japanese outposts. To reduce their losses from the massive
Japanese artillery and air strikes, the Chinese kept the forward lines lightly
manned, a tactic the Germans had employed against the British and French armies
in the last two years of World War I. Then, when the Japanese infantry closed
in, the Chinese would appear to spring up from nowhere and attack them at close
range. These tactics worked well for the Chinese, who used them repeatedly.
When one defensive line was wiped out and taken by the
Japanese, the Chinese would fall back to another, over and over, until few Chinese
soldiers were left alive. These diehard tactics had a profound effect. On 18
September, the Japanese attack was halted, and a thousand Japanese soldiers
were killed or wounded. It is no accident that in Chinese history, the battle
for Luodian is referred to as the “grinding mill of flesh and blood.”
For the Japanese to regain momentum, Matsui concluded that
more drastic measures were needed. He recalled Japanese air forces from bombing
runs on Chinese airfields and supply columns and ordered them to focus on
Chinese forces holding up the Japanese attacks. On 10 September, Matsui
launched a massive air assault with aircraft from the IJN 3rd Fleet and 2nd
Combined Air Unit to support the IJA’s infantry divisions. With the relentless
and massive application of airpower, the SEF was finally able to dislodge the
determined Chinese from their last defensive positions in Luodian before the
end of September.
By this point, the IJA had dramatically improved its
coordinated use of aircraft, artillery, tanks, and infantry in daylight
attacks. The result was not quite a blitzkrieg, but it was close enough in the
fighting with the infantry-centric Chinese. For the Chinese, the experience was
sheer terror.
Imperial Japanese Army attacks were planned and executed with
precision; they began at first light with massive air attacks supported by
observers in aircraft who identified and targeted Chinese positions for the
artillery and naval gunfire. When smoke appeared on the battlefield, IJA
infantry began advancing with tanks in the lead while fighters flew forward to
search for and attack Chinese reinforcements racing to the sector under attack.
This was a pattern that the IJA would repeat with great effectiveness.
Nevertheless, Japanese losses at this point in the fight for
Shanghai were much higher than Tokyo anticipated; 8,000 casualties, or nearly
30 percent of Japanese losses during the entire battle for the city. Even with
the reinforcement of 40,000 troops from the IJA’s 13th and 9th Divisions, the
battle for Shanghai was beginning to resemble a bloody stalemate on the World
War I model. The lack of mobile armored firepower inside the Japanese forces
meant that Matsui’s troops could not move and concentrate quickly enough to
envelop and trap the Nationalist Chinese forces as he had originally intended.
Determined to regain the initiative from the Japanese no
matter the cost, Chiang now committed all of his military commanders to the
battle for Shanghai, directing them to fight literally to the last Chinese soldier.
On 21 September, he reorganized his forces into area defense formations. Chiang
assigned specific areas to Chinese armies and army groups with defined
boundaries that established command responsibility for what contemporary
American military leaders call “defend to retain” missions. The river defense
forces, Nanjing’s capital garrison forces, and the Nationalist Chinese 23rd
Army Group (as a separate command) were directed to establish an area defense
south of Hangzhou Bay, far from Nanjing. Seventy Nationalist Chinese infantry
divisions would eventually be involved in the operation, but only the forces
designated “Right Wing Forces,” “Central Forces,” and “Left Wing Forces” would
be directly engaged in the battle of Shanghai.
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s 21 September Plan for the Defense of
Shanghai and Its Surroundings
Chiang’s arrangement was problematic. His reorganization
inserted an extra layer of command and control that slowed decisionmaking,
restricted the flow of information, and reportedly caused some unnecessary
confusion. Moreover, instead of utilizing all nine Chinese army groups to
attack and overwhelm the IJA, he initially committed only two (and later, a
third) army groups to directly engage the IJA at any one time.
Chiang later said the new defensive scheme was necessary to
accommodate the growing number of Chinese troops committed to defend Shanghai
and its surroundings. While this may have been true, there was another reason.
The IJA’s war of ruthless extermination against its enemy cultivated extreme
hatred in the Chinese, evoking a particularly visceral response from the
Chinese soldier. Chiang wanted to put this hatred of the invader to good use.
Nationalist Chinese soldiers now killed Japanese prisoners
of war as readily as the Japanese killed Chinese prisoners of war. Major
General Wei Li-huang, the commander of the 67th Division, Chinese 15th Army
Group, noted, “It’s impossible to have a prisoner delivered to headquarters
although we pay from 50 to 100 yuan upon delivery, and there are severe
punishments for not doing so. The soldiers say that the prisoners die along the
way.” Chiang could defend Shanghai and its surroundings to the last Chinese
soldier because the “war of armies” was becoming a war between two peoples.
