Hello, and thank you for listening to The History of World War II podcast, Episode

202, The Battle of Shanghai, Part 2.

Last time, the battle over Shanghai, two Shanghai Shakes thinking the beginning of Chinese

freedom from Japan had begun in August of 1937, and Chang's best soldiers of the 87th

and 88th divisions had managed to contain the Japanese invaders within the city center.

But having been stymied, General Iwanai Matsui, commander of the Shanghai Expeditionary

Force, decided to broaden his attack by landing three other divisions to the northwest of

the current fighting.

Without the conflict against Japanese aggression in general, this battle was also widening.

What the two sides had stumbled into had caused would evolve into the largest battle to take

place in an urban setting to date.

The pictures and films to be captured in Stalingrad five years later, with that city's destruction,

would look little different than what was about to transpire in Shanghai, China's largest

and most cosmopolitan city.

And if the people of Asia needed an example of what was to come, they were surely given

it earlier in July of that same year.

After the Japanese cabinet decided to beef up its forces in Manchukuo, Korea, and Beijing,

those soldiers sent to that last city were told their primary job was to teach China a

lesson.

So in and around the Beijing Tianjin area, Japanese units launched several surprise attacks

as we have seen.

One unit of Chinese soldiers, hold up in their barracks, were almost wiped out to a man.

...