Show 63 - Supernova in the East II

What It Covers

Dan Carlin examines the Nanking Massacre of December 1937, exploring Japanese military atrocities during the Second Sino-Japanese War, debates over death tolls ranging from forty-five to 500,000, responsibility questions, and how economic sanctions by Western powers over Chinese aggression created conditions leading to Pacific War.

Key Questions Answered

• •Atrocity Documentation Standards: The Nanking incident remains contested with death toll estimates from forty-five (deniers) to 300,000 (official Chinese position), with mainstream historians settling on 100,000-250,000. Primary source documents including commander diaries and International Safety Zone reports provide contemporaneous evidence that distinguishes this from less-documented wartime atrocities occurring throughout rural China.
• •Economic Dependency Vulnerability: Japan imported 80% of its oil, 74% of scrap iron, 93% of copper, and one-third of total imports from America by 1938. This dependency created strategic vulnerability when Western powers imposed sanctions over Chinese aggression, forcing Japan to choose between abandoning decade-long China policy or seizing Southeast Asian resource colonies from weakened European powers.
• •Top-Down versus Bottom-Up War Crimes: Military atrocities divide into ordered genocides like Nazi Final Solution versus breakdown-of-discipline incidents like Roman sacking of Cremona. Nanking combined both: documented "take no prisoners" orders from division commanders resulted in 30,000 POW executions first day, followed by months of undisciplined rape and murder as troops operated without effective command restraint.
• •Public Opinion Constraints on Policy: October 1940 Gallup polling showed 84% of Americans wanted Britain-France to win, only 2% favored Germany, but 95% opposed entering the war. This created narrow policy space where Roosevelt could provide material aid to allies while promising "your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars" during election campaign.
• •Strategic Bombing Moral Equivalence: Victims of Allied strategic bombing campaigns argue functional equivalence between aerial bombardment killing 300-550 villagers and ground atrocities producing same casualties. One survivor posed: if bayonets achieved identical results as bombs dropped from distance, would moral judgment differ? This challenges victor-written narratives about wartime conduct standards.