Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 206 - Nanking Part 2

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

CW: Everything Part 2/3 Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: Iris Chang. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of WWII Timothy Brook. Documents on the Rape of Nanjing David Askew. The International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone: An introduction. Sino-Japanese Studies Vol. 14 Joseph Chapel. Denying Genocide: The Evolution of the Denial of the Holocaust and the Nanking Massacre. Robert P Gray (translation into english. Originally by the Nanjing University Department of History Professors Gao Xingzu, Wu Shimin, Hu Yungong, and Cha Ruizhen) Japanese Imperialism and the Massacre in Nanjing museums.cnd.org/njmassacre/njm-tran/ Herbert Bix. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities

like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the Legion of the Old Crow Up by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me today is Liam. Hello Liam. Hi Joe. is liam hello liam hi joe as much as i wish that noise that has came from me is alcohol it's a mango sparkling uh sparkling water pathetic yeah um because it's like 11 a.m here uh if i start drinking now i will be out of commission before i do anything else the rest of the day. Sounds like a problem for you, not for me. It would be.

And also, shout out to this series official sponsor, LaCroix. Now, Liam, we're on part two of our Rape of Nanking series, and I have to say this is the worst episode of the three. Let's show. So I have the animal facts on standby and i feel like uh we will be using them a lot this episode and if you don't i will because i was editing this script yesterday when i couldn't sleep because i'm jet lagged and uh i made myself sad rereading it yeah i would imagine that you did do that dude yeah it's fun. I think I said before, maybe a couple months ago, a couple years ago.

I don't remember. It's been like we've been doing this podcast for over four years now. So things have been blending together. But I said that I rarely get upset by anything I read. And I mean, that's because I'm just disconnected, but also because I'm in grad school for genocide studies. So my empathy has been slowly eroded away like with a belt sander over the years. And I have to have an addendum to that for this series

because this is the first time in a long time I had to like just like close my laptop and walk away. I haven't had to do that in four years of recording. So, you know, take that as a friendly warning going forward if you're not Liam and you have a choice of listening to this or not. So when we left you last time on port one, the Japanese Imperial Army had captured the Chinese nationalist capital of Nanking and was quickly liquidating some 90,000 POWs they had captured during the fall. Many of these groups of POWs had been split up and executed in small groups so as not to alert other

POWs and cause panic because they were vastly outnumbered by POWs. And they were worried that if these guys realized that they were marching to their deaths, that they might turn around and try to fight. It never really happened. There was some sporadic fighting, but it was very unorganized and quickly snuffed out. And that is until it came to the largest execution of POWs during the entire period known as the Rape of Nanking near the Mufu Mountains. Now, the mountain was north of the city on the south bank of the Yangtze River, and it would be transformed into a mass grave the likes that China had not yet seen, though unfortunately it had become common. On December 16th, the Asahi Shimbun, one of the largest Japanese newspapers in circulation and still exists today, reported that the Japanese

had captured 14,707 soldiers near the artillery forts of Wulong and Mufu Mountain. It said, quote, the Japanese army encountered great difficulties since this was the first time that such a large number of POWs were captured. There were not enough men to handle them all. According to Kuri Hararishi, who was a Japanese army corporal at the time, they had disarmed thousands, stripping them of anything worthwhile, leaving them with just the clothes on their back, though sometimes they were not even afforded that level of dignity. Afterwards, they were thrown into some temporary buildings for some holding because this unit had not received the kill all captives order yet from last episode. The next day on December 17th, the army group in the area were given those orders. However, they couldn't just line them up and shoot them. There was 14,000 people and those numbers would only grow as they

moved forward. Eventually, like I said, it would get up to 90,000 POWs total, though not in this one specific area. They couldn't just line these people up and shoot them. They told the POWs that they would be transferred to a nearby island in the middle of the river for safekeeping. They'd have POW camps there for them. But in order to do that, we have to bind your hands and move you onto boats. I already don't like this. Yeah. There were so many POWs and so few guards that it took an entire day to simply tie their hands.

The Chinese POWs had no idea what was coming and sat there and did not fight as they were restrained. Sometime between 4 and 6 p.m., they are marched in four different columns for over four hours towards the Yangtze River and sat down in lines. This is probably around the time they would start getting suspicious, as it was clear that no preparations had been made to transfer them across the river. They weren't even near the island, which you could see from the shore. What really happened was machine guns had been set up in the area all around them. A Japanese soldier said, quote, suddenly all kinds of guns fired at once. The sound of these firearms mingled with the desperate yelling and screaming of dying men. The killing took over an hour, with soldiers having to stalk through the piles of literally

tens of thousands of corpses to finish off the survivors. Animal fact. I know we're starting early, but animal fact. Made it six minutes. piles of literally tens of thousands of corpses to finish off the survivors. Animal fact. I know we're starting early, but animal fact made it six minutes. That's not a good start. Um, I don't blame you.

Number one, in case anybody is reading animal facts at home, I am using 20 adorable animal facts. Sure. To brighten your day. We're going to get there way more than 20, but you need a backup. I have a backup list. From inspiremore.com.

Now, number one, there are tiny harvest mice who like to sleep inside tulip petals. Yeah, there's a picture. They're quite adorable. I'm going to need another one and stand by after this next sentence. I'm going to need another one in standby after this next sentence. There were so many dead bodies that the Japanese weren't sure how to dispose of them. So Nakajima, one of the commanders, who was actually such a psychopath, he brought his own kerosene oil mixture that he said was better for burning bodies. Oh, my fucking God, dude.

And he ordered these 14,000 and some more POW corpses to be burned. However, they ran out of fuel. So eventually piles of 7,000 to 8,000 half-burned men were kicked into the river. Now, we've talked about the soldiers and the fate of the POWs. What we haven't talked about yet is where things get really,

really bad. And that's the fate of the civilians still with the name King. Jesus. That's not a happy laugh. That's a, that's a laugh of desperation. This is the, the,

the patented nervous laughter. Cause we know it's coming and we, we are uncomfortable. Yeah. Now with the soldiers mostly captured or most likely dead, nothing was left to protect the Chinese civilians from the

psychopathic violence of the Japanese Imperial Army. Almost immediately upon entering the city, soldiers began firing on civilians at will and at random. The bodies were left where they fell to rot in the sun. Soldiers burst into hospitals, throwing babies out of windows and murdering the left where they fell to rot in the sun. Soldiers burst into hospitals, throwing babies out of windows and murdering the wounded where they found them. When people

escaped onto the main roads, they hid in alleyways, so the soldiers tossed hand grenades into them or sprayed them with machine gun fire. There would be no organized escape. There was no way out. The Japanese conducted house-to-house searches, looking for anyone they thought might be a Chinese soldier. Their idea was if you were the right age bracket, you were a threat to them. You could be drafted, form some kind of insurgent group. You killed them already, you dicks. Right. Most of them are dead already. But even even military aged males and that number would go north or south at random

and they did not discriminate they killed virtually everyone they found regardless of age or sex many times the bodies would be left to rot in the houses but other times they were simply thrown into the river animal fact let me let me finish this next sentence yeah all right so many bodies

were dumped into the yangtze River that stretches near the city ran red with blood. And that is not a euphemism. That actually happened. There's pictures of it. Oh my fucking god. Yeah, folks, I'm sorry for my lack of original responses other than fuck and oh my fucking god. But I don't have much more than that. I'm so sorry for the rest of this episode.

It's going to get much worse that's fine you know i've i've never been grateful to have to go to the holocaust museum as a jewish kid but at least you're somewhat prepared for the horrors of genocide i guess right now i do have some good news however oh hooray penguins are ticklish are they really yeah there's actually uh i've seen this this isn't on the list uh i mean the ticklish fact is but there's a video you can watch of like a penguin at a zoo coming up to the handler and they like tickle its chest and it giggles it's the cutest thing i've ever seen what a good boy yeah now any man who even looked old enough to be a soldier was killed on the spot but they also killed the old and the

young if they so much as hesitated to follow any orders that were given to them now if you're wondering how could they listen to these orders they don't speak japanese that's the point sure yeah they couldn't listen uh and the japanese soldiers by and large did not speak chinese yeah at the end of the month of december the city had been transformed into a necropolis. Japanese soldiers on motorcycles patrolled the streets looking for anyone or anything still moving. They demanded shop owners open their doors to them, killing them on the spot and looting everything they wanted. Whatever they didn't steal was burned. The city was at various points largely on fire with no attempt to control

it. And this included people. People were burned alive. Children were boiled. Soldiers attempted to throw babies up in the air and catch them on the end of their bayonets like spits. We're reusing genocide tropes. It's unfortunate that the same thing tends to happen, but

other psychopaths have no imagination. And these are only some examples of the brutality that honestly surpasses human comprehension i studied genocides in grad school and i have rarely read about shit like this sure but that wasn't all of it soldiers forced civilians to dig pits other civilians would be thrown into it and then buried alive by the other groups behind them those civilians would be forced to watch and then repeat the same thing over and over again until there was only that last row left and then they'd be beheaded with swords people ran over feet first with tanks nailed the bamboo boards and tied up then used as bayonet practice other people were buried up to their waist and had hungry dogs set on them.

Groups of 10 civilians were tied together and thrown into a pit before being set on fire. Soldiers drove civilians into the top floor of buildings, threatening to shoot them. Then they would break down the stairs and set the building on fire. When people tried to jump away from the flames, to almost certainly their death when they hit the ground, they joke that it had been turned into skeet shooting. Now, this is in the middle of winter. This is December in China. It gets very cold in this region. Temperatures are below freezing. So they would force civilians to walk into the river and then just force them to stay out there

until they died. The Chinese army, in preparation for the invasion of their city, had dug tons of tank traps. Now, for people unaware of what those are, I probably have explained at some point, but it's effectively a giant trench. If a tank drives into it, it gets stuck. It's a very cost-effective way to disable old tanks. Really doesn't work anymore, but tanks in World War II, especially Japanese tanks of World War II, were one step above tractors. They're very easy to defeat. However, this left an occupied city with tons of trenches dug through it.

And the Japanese occupation troops had a very hard time getting around the city with their trucks, which were also giant piles of shit. So they had to figure out a way to fill these up. They filled them with corpses and then simply drove over them with tanks. They had a surplus of dead bodies to use. Now, this amount of violence is unspeakably insane. It's cartoonishly evil. It's the kind of thing that people had simply never seen or heard of before

outside of history books of the Mongol invasions, uh, where people built like, you know, pyramids of skulls. And even then people aren't sure that actually happened because it seems so far fetched. It seems unreal.

Like it could never happen, but this happened. The levels of violence were at such a level that even other japanese military attaches and journalists were revolted by what they saw in the city and you can be sure that these people have seen some shit yeah i mean 100 and not to mention that they were politically and ideologically considered pure by the government or they wouldn't be allowed to embed with the japanese military and we can we talked about last episode how insane their political beliefs had to be to be considered acceptable. So before these people saw this stuff, they probably believed it.

They probably believed the racial ideology and stuff like that. But then they saw what that looks like. That's one of the things. And I said last episode that we won't talk about denialists. We still won't. But it's one of those things that a lot of what I just said is dismissed as communist Chinese propaganda, which is bullshit. It's because the rape of Nanking was largely not talked about until after the Chinese communist takeover which yeah as as you can imagine they'd other things to handle at that point and they would in the future so it's largely seen as like

communist bullshit which is beyond the pale it's completely without merit um so one of the things that i thought would be useful was to simply use the accounts of japanese journalists who have no reason to lie not that chinese civilians have a reason to lie either these people do not exist in the realm of reality or for a reason especially that one guy in our uh twitter comments oh yeah i mean if you ever want to see how insane these people are literally just type the words nan king into twitter and hit enter there's one guy who's really mad at the koreans yeah He keeps popping up in my mentions. Weird how that tends to happen with the same kind of person.

Like I said before, we've been doing this podcast for four years, give or take. Over that time, we have gotten arguments with the Neo-Confederates, Neo-Nazis, Rhodesians, you fucking name it. The most unhinged people that come after us are Japanese nationalists. And this is before the episodes are even fucking out. I literally just typed the word. So these people are nuts.

So like I said, this is all largely dismisses communist propaganda. So we're going to use a large string of firsthand accounts to tell these people to fuck themselves. Now, one reporter with the Mainichi Shimbun, which is, again, another large Japanese newspaper, was there. He watched Japanese soldiers line up POWs and civilians on top of a wall near the Chunshan Gate and charge them with bayonets. Quote, one by one, the prisoners fell down to the outside of the wall. Blood splattered everywhere. I stood at a loss and did not know what to do. Another military correspondent said, quote, on the wharves, there was a dark silhouette, a mountain made of dead bodies. About 50 to 100

people milled about, dragging the bodies from the mountain of corpses and throwing them into the river. Some of them were still alive. He further noted that the wharf was muddy, which was weird because it hadn't rained. And that's when he realized there was so much blood that it had churned the sand into mud. Jesus. Jesus, fuck.

Yeah. Another journalist witnessed a mass execution by the river. The people in the front row were beheaded via sword. The people in the second row were beheaded via sword, the people in the second row having to then throw their bodies into the river before they themselves were cut down. This killing went on from sunup until sundown, ending in the deaths of 2,000 people. The next day, in order to speed up the process, they used machine guns.

Sasako Motosama, who is a journalist and eyewitness of the Great Kyoto Quake of 1923, sorry, the Great Tokyo Quake of 1923, which killed over 120,000 people. He witnessed this and helped recover and report on it. He said, quote, I have seen bodies piled up in the Great Quake of Tokyo, but nothing can possibly be compared to this. All of this is very bad. I have no other way to explain that yeah that hence my lack of i mean because i like i said i think on part one i can make jokes about anything but like nobody wants to hear a fucking joke right now now there's no jokes to

be made here especially going forward exactly i just want to like in case anyone's wondering why i'm quiet it's like i got i got nothing man and I don't want to dishonor a people who died or be just making ass of myself. So, yeah, I'm the same way. And going forward, I need to point out everything I just talked about is awful. It's going to get worse. And I'm not saying that because it's accidentally our motto or whatever. I'm about to describe what is quite honestly the worst sexual violence i can possibly imagine oh um if that's going to bother you please turn off the podcast skip ahead 20 minutes 30 minutes just listen to part three

this will be the worst thing i've ever talked about, and I don't know how it could possibly be eclipsed. Now, the soldiers targeted men for a reason. On top of the military worry, however unfounded, was that they could form the guerrilla group or whatever. They saw them as a threat. Once they were eliminated, they turned their attention towards the women of Nanking, which started the largest mass rape in human history. Some of this violence is based on human barbarity, racism, the inhumanities of war, but some of it's based on superstition. There was a belief within the Japanese Imperial Army that raping a virgin would grant them greater power in battle, whether it be courage or strength or whatever. And this was to be enhanced by making medallions out of the pubic hair of their victims.

I could not find where this fucking superstition started. It's not based in any kind of religion, especially not based in Shinto, which was the state religion at the time. I have no idea where this came from. So this is just what, like a soldier's rumor that got out of control or? I guess.

Yeah. No one's been able to quite track it down, but it's been noted in letters and stuff. So this isn't some weird myth. Soldiers talked about this. Right. Sure. The Japanese army, at the government level anyway, had officially outlawed rape and sexual violence. The only thing this did was turn the crime of rape into the crime of murder as well,

nor disperse and get rid of any witnesses, though. I should be completely clear here. While it was illegal, it didn't matter. The field command of the Japanese army did not give a one single fuck. So what's the government going to do about it? Right.

Exactly. Right. They didn't care and not to mention most levels of the command were doing it themselves there's no evidence that prince asaka who's in command here did any of this himself but he certainly knew about it right there's no hiding it he's in the city right he knows yeah according to According to Toko Koro Kozo, who was a soldier of the 114th Division Station Nanking, quote, women suffered the most. No matter how young or how old, they could not escape the fate of being raped.

We sent out coal trucks to the city and villages to seize women. Each of them was allocated 15 to 20 soldiers for sexual intercourse and abuse. Now, you remember in the first episode, we talked about that guy named Shiro, who ended up becoming very racist and then massacring POWs in his own letter. Yeah. He also wrote about his own serial rapes. And just to give a mental space about how these people thought and how they could possibly do this. space about how these people thought and how they could possibly do this. Because this is something that always jumps out to me when researching the perpetrators of genocide.

We like to think of these people as psychopathic. We like to think of them as demons, evil, whatever. Right. It makes us feel better about humanity to believe that these people are an outlier. They're an outsider their their brains were broken i i hate to interject with uh why we fight from band of brothers but i always thought that did a specifically good job of sort of erasing the

oh we didn't know or like you know that that sort of excuse we don't understand it sort of excuse and i understand that's just civilians, but... Well, sure, but they're complicit. And the idea that... And the same goes for Japanese civilians, by the way. The idea that the German civilian population didn't know about the Holocaust is

a well and truly discarded historical myth. That's a different conversation for another time, simply because there's a lot to go into it and I feel like it's one we should have. It's not like I have a fucking choice, bud. Is it work great? I love

this. I think like it's one of the reasons why one of my favorite books ever written is called Ordinary Men that talks about the psychology of the perpetrators of the holocaust and that's why these soldiers letters home and their accounts are so important because they were normal at least at some point these people were not blood drinking demons like we want them to be right yeah i don't. It seems to say people are garbage, but people are complex.

Humans are a blank slate. I don't think they're inherently good or bad. I don't think there's a such thing as inherent good or inherent bad, but they're a blank canvas, and they will turn into whatever they need to turn into to get through a situation. Sometimes what they turn into is fucking ugly.

Shiro, who had already executed POWs, wrote this about his own sexual violence. Quote, we took turns raping them. It would be all right if we only rape them. Well, I shouldn't say all right, but we stabbed them and killed them. Dead bodies don't talk. I'll take an animal fact, please. So I don't throw up in my mouth.

All right. Let's see. What do we have here pollinating makes bees sleepy so sometimes they take a a little quick nap on top of a flower hard workers i mean sometimes when you fuck a flower you get tired afterwards uh yeah that's not uh we we could talk about that off air and you're don't, man, if that's what you're into, do what you do, buddy. I mean, if you like flower play, flower play is probably a thing. I shouldn't even joke about that.

No. Someone's going to accuse me of kink shaming them. Hi, Nate. So, unfortunately, pregnant women were not safe from this violence either. They were subjected to the same kind of brutality as everybody else, and then had their bellies cut open fuck they were doing, how they could do something so unspeakably horrible to a fellow human being. It's simple. They did not think Chinese people as human. Yep.

Once they're dehumanized, you can do whatever you want. Quote, perhaps when we were raping her, we looked at her as a woman, but when we killed her, we just thought of her as something like a pig. That's another line from Shiro, who never stood trial for anything i should point out of course it doesn't yeah there was no class divide in the victimization

of the people of nanking peasants students teachers nuns everybody was targeted 17 soldiers raped a nun to death in a seminary um no place was safe at any time according to the dangong daily quote there was not one hour when an innocent woman was not being dragged off somewhere by a japanese soldier women were not the only victims men were also raped and they were forced to commit horrific acts with their own family members many of whom were already dead if they refused they would be murdered if they did it they were also sometimes murdered they'll be murdered. If they did it, they were also sometimes murdered. They'd still be murdered. Yeah, well, at least they're fucking consistent. Many families refused and simply sat down and waited for death rather than harm one another

and hope for life. The city itself was weaponized with traps laid out all over. The Japanese authorities fabricated stories about markets where women and only women could exchange rice or flour for meat. But when they showed up, they only found platoons of soldiers waiting for them. Officers simply did not care about this violence. There was no attempt to keep any kind of order or regulation. They encouraged and took part in it themselves. Because of brutality is the point. Yeah. I mean, they thought chinese people to be subhuman why would you treat someone or something that you thought below you like a person right why would you have that common empathy or compassion or anything tani hasao who was

the commanding general of the sixth division was eventually found guilty of at least 20 rapes while in the city and he's a general officer so everybody was doing this this was not right just the enlisted men no this is institutional right this is on purpose it was systemic yeah he and other officers urged soldiers to not only commit gang rapes or to make sure they killed their victims afterwards so So around December 17th, General Matsui, the old, malarious, slash tuberculosis patients that ended up being relieved of command

because he was so sickly, showed back up at Nanking. He had gathered his strength enough to be able to enter the city and Prince Asako was a little worried.

Now, this could get him in trouble if anything could get an Imperial Prince in trouble. Killing an entire city might do it. One although i'm gonna assume it didn't no unfortunately we'll get to that point the trials are in the next episode now he was worried mitsui who was a general with a certain amount of pull with the imperial family might you know go talking about the fact that we had murdered a hundred thousand people or so so like cattle on him yeah go tell his his nephew

who's the emperor so he had people clear out all the bodies in the general vicinity of the central of nanking so a photo op could be taken of matsui standing in the middle all triumphantly i think he's on a horseback i don't remember jesus fuck but matsui picked up on this immediately the the city smelled like a rotting corpse. There was no civilians anywhere. And this picture would end up being used against him in court. So he could catch fault for all of this. Now, he wasn't technically an overall command.

He was still a very high ranking general of the pole. And I don't want to make this sound like Matsui was innocent. He absolutely was not. He was a full believer in the Japanese version of Manifest Destiny and a massive fucking racist. Now his thing was, which was common with a lot of Nazis, is that he saw the Japanese people as a superior and dominant race,

but not a genocidal one. Oh yeah, that's the impression that I'm fucking getting too. Yeah, he believed that they would rule over this concept of Pan-Asia as like its stewards. He didn't believe in killing everyone, which is still unspeakably fucking evil, but he had standards. But at least he stopped short of literal and outright genocide. Right.

Hypothetically, of course. Now, he knew immediately that unspeakable crimes had occurred within the city of Nanking, and he actually began leaking it. that unspeakable crimes had occurred within the city of Nanking. And he actually began leaking it. And we have firsthand accounts from an American journalist that he ran into said, quote, the Japanese army is the most undisciplined army in the world today. He just dropped it out of nowhere. And it would actually get much worse.

The reason people are like, well, how did people who were not Prince Asaka and did know Matsui, why didn't they tell him everything? That's because if he did, they'd be fucking executed. In case you need to go back to episode one and look at the realities of the Japanese Imperial Army, people are much more comfortable keeping their mouth shut to save themselves. He knew something was going on, but he did not know the scale nor the size, and nor did he have the command authority to stop it and asaka finally got rid of him after a little while sending him back to shanghai while the violence raged on in the city unabated now here's where things get very strange and it's something like out of a i don't even know

soldiers that their commanders knew hadn't killed anyone yet were forced to kill civilians why to blood them an officer officer said, quote, All of you have never killed anybody yet, so today we're going to have killing practice. You must not consider the Chinese as human beings, but only something like a dog or a cat. Be brave. Now, those who wish to volunteer for killing practice,

step forward. Now, these were all green recruits. They had just showed up to Nanking, and to your utter shock, I'm sure fucking nobody volunteered for this. And so they were forced to do so. And they did. Now, this is not unique to just soldiers. New officers were broken in into the violence by force the same way. Hosonin and King, well after the killing had begun, said that when he met his men, quote, they had evil eyes. They were not human eyes. His superiors then walked Chinese prisoners in front of the new officers and demanded that the officers behead them.

Now, Shozo was revolted and he watched his fellow officers do this and he refused to take part. So that eventually went away. Slowly, after killing several people, it became very normal for him. Chozo survived the war and wrote, quote, We made them like this. Good sons, good dads, good elder brothers at home were brought to the front

and taught to kill one another. Human beings turned into murdering demons. Everyone became a demon within three months. Jesus. Now, Nanking had turned into something of a psycho factory, using the violence around them to turn out cold-blooded murderers, many of whom could point out their change,

and noting that they felt no remorse whatsoever. It had been turned into a city that one person described looking like quote, as if the heavens had been raining blood. However, not everything in the city was a hopeless pit of violence and this is the one good thing in this entire series

inside the city were some good people doing their best to save everyone they can and this is where things get a little conflicted for the both of us enter the international committee for the Nanking safety zone the safety zone was much spontaneously within a couple of weeks after the fall of Shanghai when a Presbyterian minister named W. Plummer Mills heard about something similar being created in Shanghai after the fall of the city.

So he suggested a safety zone should be created in Nanking as well. in Nanking as well. Mills got together with around two dozen people, mostly Americans, but also some Germans, Danish, Russians, and Chinese to designate the area of the city a bit west of the city center to become a safety zone. The goal was to safeguard noncombatants, obviously civilians or POWs who had fled there, from being caught in the middle of the war.

Not safeguard a coming occupation like everybody was going to happen. Lots of other Chinese cities had been occupied. Their goal was to save them from the immediate combat of urban warfare. They were to hang out a couple of weeks or a couple of days and then leave once the fighting was over. Virtually nobody was on board with this. The Japanese refused to accept the safety zone and the American embassy told them they were fucking crazy before they abandoned the city themselves. Now to accept the safety zone, and the American embassy told them they were fucking crazy before they abandoned the city themselves. Now, as the city collapsed, hundreds of thousands of people

smashed their way into the safety zone as some 50,000 soldiers turned the city into something only the gods of chaos from Warhammer 40k would recognize. The foreigners struggled to feed everyone that fled to them for care, but sent every penny they could to do so.

They had to intervene directly in multiple occasions, so when Japanese soldiers occasionally got too close, they would be scared off with little more than empty threats. It was from the safety zone that most of the details of the savagery going on in the city was broadcasted to the world, and they became an accidental primary resource to one of the world's worst war crimes in recorded history.

And the most able protector and leader of the safety zone was a Nazi. God damn it. German businessman and head of the Nanking Nazi Party, John Robb. I knew it was going to be a fucking Nazi, too. I was just like, oh, he's like, oh, we're going to be conflicted here. I'm like, Nazi. I'm ready. Hit me with it. It be a fucking Nazi, too. I was just like, oh, he's like, oh, we're going to be conflicted here. I'm like, Nazi. I'm ready. Hit me with it.

It gets weirder, man. Because honestly, I think John Robb could be legitimately single-handedly credited with saving the most human lives in history and not like inventing a vaccine or something like that. We don't get to pick them, I suppose. No, that's that's my response. We don't get to pick them, I suppose. No. That's my response. We don't get to pick them. Now, Rob was elected the... I know it's pronounced like Rob or something like that, but I'm not going to try to pronounce the German R's. I can't do it. Now, he was elected the leader of the Safety Zone Committee. And when Japanese embassy staff urged him to leave as he was a citizen of an allied nation, he refused, saying

his loyalty was to the Chinese people whom he had lived with for 30 years. Yes, he was in China for the rise of the Nazis and joined them anyway. What an interesting dude. Now it gets weirder. He felt personally responsible for his employees, many of whom were Chinese, and knew they would be murdered if he left. And those employees, by the way, they worked for Simons, a corporation without whom the Holocaust would not have been possible.

Yep, yep, yep. You know, we got Oskar Schindler, so I don't know. Why not? We'll take all kinds, I guess. I don't fucking know, dude. And to be perfectly clear, there's no way Rob knew about that.

He was middle management, and he never worked in Germany. Sure. Or really any of allied Europe. Like after he left China, he worked in fucking Afghanistan. What? Wow. Yeah. You don't get to pick them.

That is my response. Now, Rob was not the only member of the safety zones leadership, but he was by far the most influential because he was a Nazi. Germany was investing in both Japan and China. So that meant that both the nationalists and the Japanese, it was in their best interest to work with the Nazis, right? Now, that's obviously evidenced by Rob being there in the first place. That meant to literally every party of this conflict, he was untouchable. So before the fall of the city, when Chinese troops moved into the safety zone, therefore turning it into a militarized area and kind of defeating the purpose,

Rob marched into General Tang's office, who was the guy commanding the defense, and told him to fuck off. He did. When he was told by Japanese officials that they would under no circumstance respect the safety zone, they became victims of Japanese air raids. So Rob played his trump card. Adolf Hitler. Yeah. All right.

That's what? Oh, my God. Now, he wired Adolf Hitler personally for help on November 25th and also the German General Council, to which he wrote, quote, asking cordially for the support of the request of the Fuhrer, which otherwise would make a terrible bloodbath unavoidable. Hail Hitler. I got nothing other than what the fuck. I got what the fuck a lot. No, we do not have Hitler to thank for this.

Hitler did not respond, and neither did the general council, though. There's also evidence that Hitler never even saw the telegram. He wasn't one to answer his own. And Rob was not so influential as he would have had, like the personal ear of Hitler upon request. However,

after he sent those telegrams, the air raid stopped. So somebody fucking did it. And we're not sure who. I really want to believe it was the general counsel. I want to believe it was the general counsel so bad. Yeah, I got a what the fuck for that. And that's what I got.

He added and aided this effort by placing a gigantic swastika in the middle of the ground that could be seen from the sky. Now, this effectively established the safety zone as the thing that the Japanese recognized without saying they actually recognized it. It measured just over two miles, which then quickly became packed with over 50,000 people. But eventually, 250,000 people would be rushed in there. As you can imagine, food and sanitation quickly became a problem. In early December, the mayor of not yet fallen Nanking had given the safety zone 2,000 tons of rice. However, it was stored outside the city, and the safety zone had no trucks, as the Chinese military had already taken them all. This meant Rob and a few others would

rush out in their personal cars, faring as much rice and flour back into the safety zone as possible in the middle of a fucking war. Despite trying their best, one driver was nearly killed. It still wasn't enough. Now, at the foreign ministry building, he ran to Chinese soldiers who had yet to flee and told them to throw off their weapons and run to the safety zone. Other members did the same thing, assuming they would be safe.

However, the Japanese wouldn't let this one fly. This was one step over the line trying to protect POWs. Sure. Despite promising the safety zone members protect POWs. Sure. Despite promising the safety zone members the POWs would be treated fairly, the Japanese marched in, easily found who the soldiers were, brought them out, and

killed 1,300 of them. Now, horrified by this, Rob fired off letter after letter to the Japanese authority. Now, that's largely unimportant, except it did do one accidental thing that rob was not thinking about it established that the entire japanese government knew about what was happening within the city right because he told all of them good for him i've never i've never out and out

rooted for a nazi before yep yeah this is a series that gets everybody yeah you're not even like schindler you're not like rooting for the guy necessarily you're like all right yeah congratulations on doing that like you should have done that i i i am picturing rob basically doing old-timey nascar in a desperate effort to feed people uh nate if you could cut out i rooted for a nazi that would be great no leave it in now it's like interesting because it made an unmistakable connection to the civilian government of Japan. Because while we know today, with hindsight, of course, that the military was in charge of Japan, and then the civilian government would then later sell them out to escape a lot of war crime charges, Rob figured that Japan was like Germany. They were allies, after all.

And he complained to the civilian government the civilian government then told him they would forward his complaint to the military which of course and nothing happened however it established that every layer knew so he made an unbreakable chain of evidence through the entire japanese government a nazi congratulations guy i i you know you did your best it seems now rob is not a dumb man uh and he knew that after doing this for long enough it was clear that the military was fine with this and the civilian government was largely powerless. So he decided to become Nazi Batman. I've, I've never wanted to hear two words together.

Less. Yep. He went out into the city, seeing carnage all over the place. And probably one of the weirdest things I've ever read. He walked up to armed looting Japanese soldiers and yelled at them to stop. And they did. Wow.

I can't believe I can't believe I'm rooting for a Nazi, but here I am. This is the one situation where it's okay. People contain multitudes. That is what I have to say. No, I have to point out here. Rob was completely unarmed.

He's walking around in a suit with a Nazi armband and just like yelling at soldiers to fuck off. And it worked. He chased soldiers away from their victims and at one point literally lifted a soldier off of a woman that he was raping and chucked him into the street. Now, soon, Chinese civilians heard about the strange Nazi driving through the streets and fighting people. And he would run into groups of Chinese civilians. I'd be like, hey, I heard something's going on over there. You should go check it out. So then he would, and he would show up. And he personally stopped literally dozens of murders and rapes. Wow. Hundreds of people moved into his personal home.

Good for you, Nazi Batman. God damn it, dude. And when his house became overcrowded, he helped them build tents in his lawn. And just because there's a local Nazi protecting these people did not mean that the Japanese weren't going to try to do some shit. Gangs of rapists attempted to climb over the fence around his home, so he

instituted a watch system. Civilians would stand watch and blew whistles when soldiers started climbing the walls, which then he would run out of his home and fight them off with a stick. The Japanese would simply not touch them. And this was not the case for other

members of the international committee. Virtually everyone was assaulted other than Rob by Japanese soldiers at one point or another. He would show up, literally wave his swastika armband in the faces of Japanese soldiers, and they would just like, oh, and walk off. Now, this was not independent to just Rob. Rob was just the most proactive. There was another Nazi named Edward Sperling who was walking through the city, I think just trying to go get some food or something. And he was wearing his Nazi armband as obviously a shield. And he walked up into the middle of a gang raid. The soldiers took one look at him, screamed out, Deutsch!

And then ran off like he was going to arrest them, despite nobody having any power whatsoever. If it works and it's stupid, it's not stupid. I got nothing. Now, he was more than just a protector. He was also like a doting father figure. He hosted little birthday celebrations for the children and gave out his own money to families on such occasions, include when they were born. Hundreds of newborns within the safety zone were named after him. Girls were named after his wife, who was also there. Now, this led to a weird thing because

remember, there's non-Nazis in the International Safety Committee who were disgusted by rob's politics because i need to reiterate here he was a nazi believer he wasn't some guy who became a nazi party member because eventually you have to he was like like a nazi like an actual nazi yeah and like i need to point out here again that didn't fade over this period of time. Can you imagine being on the committee and having to golf clap for Nazi Batman? Right. No fucking thanks, man. He's credited, according to the documentary Nanking, he's credited with saving 250,000 people.

Wow. Yeah. And directly hundreds easily now for those around him it was really hard for understand that how he could be such a good person such a selfless person and then revere adolf hitler so much so that he wrote to him yeah and i and i gotta be honest with here i'm fucking lost man um i got nothing for it it's weird history makes fools of us all and unfortunately rob never like lived long enough after the war to quite like tell us why you were a life-saving nazi or like what he thought about the holocaust right i have no doubt he wouldn't be in favor of it by because like by his own ideology these chinese people are also subhuman right much like matt

suey he's like whoa whoa whoa i draw the line at murdering him not like that yeah i mean like klaus von stauffenberg is another good example he was a nazi hardcore nazi i mean he had his own catholic beliefs uh but he drew the line at like the anti-jewish laws he was fine with discrimination but like was like whoa this concentration camp thing has gone too far it's like at this point you're drawing a line arbitrarily my man like these beliefs landed one place like just like japanese racial superiority or any racial superiority belief ends in one thing there's no other place it ends it's genocide yeah i mean like like i said i don't i i can't make sense of this.

People are like, or, you know, what's the line from? Ogres are like onions. Yeah, exactly. They got layers. And sure. Now, Rob was hardly alone in this committee. Robert Wilson was an American surgeon that found himself in the city when all hell broke loose. When the violence began, he was the only surgeon left in the city. There was a few doctors,

I think there's two or three, and a few nurses. He's the only surgeon for hundreds of thousands of people. In the middle of a war where people are being mangled and violated, he worked almost uninterrupted for months, not sleeping,

barely eating. At one point, he said he was conducting hourly amputations. No thanks. As medical supplies ran out and his nurses were killed because they were Chinese. At one point, soldiers raided

his hospital at the University of Nanking stealing anything they could. At one point, they robbed a watch off of a nurse while she was standing there. But when they went for medical supplies, he Spartan kicked them in the chest. Good for him. And when you look at a picture of this guy, he is not intimidating. Imagine getting Kung Fu kicked in the chest by a bespeckled white nerd. You guys remember the Dwarf from 300?

The Japanese knew who he was so they broke into his house robbed it and then someone shit on the floor obviously that's not the worst thing they've done but it's like the most personalized fuck you i think in this entire episode because like they knew who robert wilson was from working at the university like there's not that many white doctors there. We'll find out where that guy is and we'll pay him back. And they just pop a load on the fucking ground. But none of this stopped him. He was assaulted multiple fucking times. He was punched, robbed.

His house was literally shit in. At one point, I think it was set on fire. And he never stopped. He worked around the clock until he nearly collapsed from exhaustion. And these two guys are not alone. There's a lot of other rescuers within Nanking that I didn't have time to name. One of them was a Canadian singer or artist or something. This is very weird.

Just opera singing their way to freedom. As you do. The International Committee for the Safety of Nanking is a collection of the most unalike fucking people you could possibly find. Now, the rape of Nanking went on for months,

but the worst of it was concentrated within the first eight weeks. By spring of 1938, the survivors of the initial horrors became just another part of the greater Japanese occupation of China. The violence tapered off and fell into... Regular horrific violence.

Yeah, it's a different kind of horrific violence. It went from this unhinged, uncontrolled violence to the administration violence of colonialism. Because this is what Japan had their eye on for the future. Greater prosperity sphere or whatever. This was the idea that they had for the future. That does not mean that the story is over, however.

And that is where we are going to pick up next week is the transition from unhinged violence to bureaucratic violence. And because I have to at least end this series with something resembling a happy ending the trials which are not as

happy as we all wished unfortunately no that is part two of the rape of Nanking I'm sorry Liam it's all good man we ended the first episode with the animal fact I feel like yeah I have to end this one

goats have accents but if they move to a new herd they will pick up the local dialect aww I want a goat I feel like this means that at some point there's like at some place in the world

there's like the goat version of like a mass hole like a Massachusetts accent goat shocks as goat yeah goat shocks fucking bad anyway Liam thank you Brady

sorry oh yeah thank you for joining me Liam everybody thanks for strapping in for this one yeah thanks slash I'm sorry if you like what we do here for some

reason you can support the show on Patreon you get bonus episodes early episodes stuff like that at discord access also you help make this wonderful episode possible. You know who didn't make this wonderful episode possible? LaCroix. Now they can't sue me.

Yeah. I can't believe they did this. I can't believe you've done this. Anyway, guys, thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.