Leseprobe

178 public opinion. The Chinese government thus no longer saw itself in a position to yield to even a small Japanese provocation. Thus an interim armistice could not hold, the more so as the Japanese gov- ernment was sending reinforcements to China at that very moment. 6 The Japanese invaders initially advanced in a broad front and occupied the most important cities of Northern and Central China, including the financial centre Shanghai and the capital Nanjing. Guangzhou, the most important metropolitan area in Southern China, fell in October of 1938. As Japanese momentum waned, the country was divided into two parts. The coastal regions were under the con- trol of the Japanese and the western half of the country, which is more difficult to access, became “Free China” with Chongqing as its capital under the rule of Chiang Kai-shek and the National Party. Industries and also educational institutions were relocated to this zone in an astonishing, if unplanned and stepwise exodus, and untold masses of refugees made their way there (the numbers vary from three to 95 million). 7 The Communist base areas in the Northwest and North were not subject to Chiang’s direct control, but their troops were formally incorporated into the Nationalist armed forces. Daily life during the war was characterised by the sorrowful experiences of the Chinese civilian population. Among these were the brutal advance of Japanese troops, the massacres, above all the almost unsurpassably cruel mass murder and rape during the capture of Nanjing from 13 December 1937 until February 1938; the terror bombing including dropping biological weapons (with plague-infected fleas) between 1940 and 1942, and even the use of poison gas at the end of 1941 (which however was quickly prohibited upon the protest of the USA), the human experiments of the infamous Unit 731 in Northern Manchuria, the forced prostitution, ill-treatment of prisoners of war and so on. But the actions of the Nationalist Army also had devastating effects. When Chiang Kai-shek had the dikes of the Yellow River pierced while defending Kaifeng in the summer of 1938, the resulting flood catastrophe claimed the lives of a half-million people and made 3 to 5 million more homeless. A combination of drought and mismanagement by the National Government led to famine in the province of Henan in 1942 and 1943, claiming another 3 million victims. Cities were often set on fire before the advancing Japanese; officials did not always evacuate the population in time. 8 Map of the East Asian theatre of war, excerpt from ABCA map no. 72