Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 292 - The Defense of the Great Wall

Episode Date: January 1, 2024

Chinese soldiers defended the Great Wall of China armed with swords, axes, and martial arts....in the 1930s SUPPORT THE SHOW: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: https://www.historynet.com/last-battle-great-wall/ https://grantpiperwriting.medium.com/the-forgotten-story-of-japans-attack-on-the-great-wall-of-china-5b7f75e326b8 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-imperial-japan-seized-great-wall-china-91386 https://www.republicanchina.org/war.shtml

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, but I guess you probably already knew that. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at www.patreon.com slash lionsledbydonkeys. Just $5 per month gets you every regular episode early, access to our community discord, a digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, as well as its audiobook read by me, and over five years of bonus content. By supporting the show, you support us and allow us to keep our show as it has always been ad-free. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy the show.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Lions Up by Donkeys podcast on a fancy new year's day edition i'm joe as always and with me trapped in this celebratory dungeon of content is tom i am so cold it's freezing at the at the time of recording uh i am sitting in the studio with my coat on because it's just like so cold down here. I am not warm, but I'm the type of person that I will be cold and will not put anything. I'm wearing t-shirt shorts and not even a pair of socks. As I've described on the show, I go through my apartment dogs out all the time. I mean, as evidence evidence when i was in amsterdam and you were like no i'm fine i don't need to bring a coat and then the fucking last

rain look i should have seen that coming we were in holland i was punished for my hubris yes exactly you were now this is a very special new year's Day edition of the podcast, which means I will not be talking about New Year's Day at all. Look, you guys got one over Christmas. I can't get it twice in six years. Correctly. Tom, what do you know about the Great Wall of China? It's very big people. There's great things happening in China.

God damn it. great things happening in china god damn it uh what are they like you know it's very big and very long and uh the mongols tried to uh it stopped the mongols or something yeah like all things uh built to be the best they possibly can be it's very thin but very long um it's like you fuck off um now there's also like the that fun thing uh you probably can still find on the internet that's the only human made object you can see from space which is not true you can't see it from space i believe it was a chinese astronaut that's really disappointed that he couldn't see it from space yeah i mean like imagine hearing that all your life and then you get there and it's like oh shit you can't actually see it yeah you can't see the great wall of china but you can see like the dome in las vegas i don't know like something really disappointing like that like ah man i was expecting to see this

brilliant piece of human historical work and instead i just see I don't know like the AT&T Center fuck yeah this is a great setup for a yo mama joke my mother's a saint she is she is god bless Joe's mother she may have figured out how to listen to a podcast by now so I have to temper what I say hello Joe's mother

I sent her the poster for our upcoming live show later this month uh just to show her she has no idea what what i do for a living um and i think i've told before like rather than trying to explain what an internet pot history podcast is i just said i was i worked in radio uh and yeah and i sent both her and my uncle uh a picture like our poster from live show which everybody has seen at this point and uh my mom thought it was a concert uh and my uncle believed i was cage fighting which is just incredible i'd i would love to be that ripped also uh it's once again time for tom's update corner from future tom take it away future tom thank you future tom so if i was to ask you when do you think the last time the

the last major battle to be fought using the great wall as a fixture of an invasion. When do you think that would be? Like the Mongols, someone else, something in the 1600s or something? Yeah, I'm thinking like Qin Dynasty, stuff like that. What if I told you it was 1933?

It's not because my initial reaction is like, is this going to be world war ii but we're in the interwar period it's kind of world war ii uh we talked about this before i mean it's not really it's like the creeping start of the uh the sino-japanese war uh which is part of world war ii but is oftentimes kind of put in its own category, which is very, very stupid. But it is when the Empire of Japan invaded then, kind of then, the Republic of China. And if you've been a listener of the show for a while now, you probably know that hearing that date, 1933,

and you're saying, Joe, you stupid asshole, the second Sino-Japanese war hadn't started yet which is technically true it wouldn't begin in true in true you know horrific form that we know that that war turns into until 1937 but yeah I mean like we're

not big fans of technicalities on this show yeah only audio which I ignore from both you and Nate. Yeah, it's just me fixing various technical problems, both in hardware, software, audio, et cetera, every day. See, fellow podcasters, if you're listening to this, or people who have ever thought about starting a podcast, they have a studio and they constantly run into issues i do not have a studio i never have any yeah you you you are running the ak-47 setup it's like basic as shit but is built to withstand

everything and it just works you could rub dirt into that microphone and bury it underground for 40 years and it'll still work i occasionally encode my swing arm in mud just to see if it'll still work for like a gun youtuber page you know um i mean like look much like an ak-47 your microphone has survived several wars so look that may be true it's like um that guy we were talking about on a previous episode who was like uh running around with a sword uh in battle you're just going to be running around clubbing people with the microphone it's fucking bulletproof at this point the heart like the most reliable thing this entire rig that has never changed is this microphone i've had different laptops everybody knows the story of how i nuked my last one um different keyboards different mouse mice mouses so i can make everybody upset um different

everything different apartments different setups whatever microphone since day one baby since day one aside from the time you tried to find the usb cable in your event that that was the single falter point of that microphone joe was joe was texting me of like his trials and tribulations of trying to find a usb uh a to b but it's like the fat old USB connections. And it was like, this is like, you know, trying to find the golden apple in the Garden of Eden. Everybody was looking at me like, of course we don't still stock this. Have you thought about

getting a new mic? I'm like, listen here, motherfucker. Absolutely not. Hey, listen, as Nate has said on this show before, when he shipped you that mic, it came in a Pelican case that was probably worth five or six times more than the actual microphone. Easily more. So, like we said, the Sino-Japanese War, the second Sino-Japanese War, wouldn't begin in all of its horrific, depressing awfulness until 1937. It's kind of not true. Japan wasn't just like sitting

there. They had been clawing away, doing empire of Japan things towards China and the rest of Asia for a very long time at that point. Japan had taken over all of Korea back when there was only one of them officially in 1910, but had been dominating it for quite some time. This put them right on the Chinese border for a very long time at this point, and the thirst of, you know, eliminationist Japanese expansionism

still fueled military aggression. For a full background on the Japanese racial ideology at play in the time, go listen to our nan king series or rather don't it's not you know it's not the the the cheeriest couple of episodes we've ever made yeah they're uh they were slowly clawing their way towards creating the uh backstory for an incredible movie starring denzel washington what movie is that? The Manchurian Candidate. Oh, fuck you. How have you

of all people not get that joke? Like, I'm kind of an idiot. Hey, that makes two of us. Also, I don't watch that many movies. Like, I think I've said before, most of the time, I'm either watching the same movies

or series over and over again and i'm not a big denzel fan yeah you're not you're not a big denzel fan look i'm i'm indifferent to to have something in common with the british chocolate of world war one i am indifferent i mean like you are you more of a forest whittaker guy then i fucking love forest whittaker uh ghost dog is one of my favorite movies of all time it's like a we could we could create a gradation triangle of denzel washington forest whittaker and wesley snipes of how much tax fraud are you doing wes Wesley Snipes is fucking hilarious simply because the stories about him on the set of Blade Trinity. Yeah, he just wouldn't come out to work and they had to like splice him in in the worst cut job possible.

When Ryan Reynolds and the I believe it's Jessica Beal or something. I don't remember. We're talking. Was it Jessica Alba? It was a jessica are talking and they had to put blade in there somehow because he's in the scene so they just cut him in going hmm and it's very obviously not on set it's incredible it makes the movie better by being worse oh triple h is in that movie yeah he plays a vampire yeah i totally forgot

yeah um blade first blade movie greatest opening scene in an action movie history you know it has a lot to do with vampires nothing we're going to talk about though i would watch a film about this with triple h in it somehow triple Triple H is playing the wall. They just get him to blast Diana Ball for like two years and he just becomes so wide that he plays the wall. You're just describing his career. He has become the institution, people.

He is the man. The real drivers of this episode is the Japanese Kwantung Army, an unfortunate frequent guest of this podcast. Oh, not these guys again. The army was formed in 1895 in Qing China, and they had granted the Kwantung leased territory, a valuable concession territory in the Liangdong Peninsula to the Empire of Japan in the Treaty of Shimioseki. This was after the first Sino-Japanese War.

After the Russo-Japanese War, again, we did a series about that, their protection detail eventually encompassed the South Manchurian Railway. The railway was the property of Japan, but would cut through territory that was legally China, though Japan very clearly wanted to make that particular arrangement temporary. I hate when my railway crosses through territory that is technically legally China. See, I cannot build a railway that crosses through China. I am, however, going to build a railway that crosses directly through Belgium because I don't recognize Belgium's right to exist. I am, however, going to build a railway that crosses directly through Belgium because I don't recognize Belgium's right to exist.

I thought you were going to say you were going to build it going through Tibet. The Kwantung garrison grew and grew and would eventually involve an infantry division, a siege gun battalion, six independent garrison battalions, and around 15,000 men.

The area they were to protect was called the South Manchuria Railway Zone, which extended over 60 miles off of either side of the railway track, making that effectively Japanese territory under the governance of, in reality, the Kwantung Army. This is effectively how the American Border Patrol works.

Like, every airport or anything that could be considered an international thing in the U.S. has this weird bubble around it that means that the Border Patrol can technically have jurisdiction there. And when you look at a map, it is the vast majority of the country. Yeah. And much like the imperial japanese army you don't want the border patrol hanging around yeah border patrol atf fbi all three-letter agencies that we love da looking at you guys motherfucker yeah the kwantung army was a hotbed of the most insane imperial fascist of the entire Japanese military at the time, which says a lot. Yeah, that's like, yeah, you're in with a bad bunch.

And if you're still the worst out of all of them, it's saying a lot. And also the Japanese military was pretty much the government at the time with extra steps, with the emperor balanced at the tippy top as a figurehead for the most part. And that isn't to say that this is like the Bakufu era, where the emperor had no say. He absolutely did. And we talked about that during our Nanking series. Hirohito, not an innocent guy. Now, all of this was wracked with political factionism. Assassinations were commonplace, and there was more than one coup attempt by one sect of the military against another, specifically against the Army and Navy. Good God, did they hate one another. We often joke on this show about the rivalries in the US military, because obviously me and Nate and Francis were all in the Army. Francis was in the Reserve, so we shit on him a little bit. and Francis were all in the army.

Francis was in the reserve, so we shit on him a little bit. Shox was in the Coast Guard, so we shit on him a little bit. But that's as far as the American military rivalry goes. The Japanese Imperial Army all hated themselves in different factions, but they all, as a group, hated the Imperial Navy. And there was constant assassinations between the two of them. Yeah, like it also because imperial japan was essentially a military dictator dictatorship so you had essentially different factions vying for

control of you know the government apparatus as a whole yes and the kwantung army's faction of choice is known as the imperial way faction this was an ideology that was mostly promoted by junior officers, like the ones that largely commanded the Kwantung Army. That favored an absolute military dictatorship with, you know, again, the emperor just kind of balanced at the top, and a constant unending military expansion for the sake of glory and economic development. ending military expansion for the sake of glory and economic development. It called as well for a return of pre-Western influence over the Japanese governance and culture. The idea was birthed out of the economic downturn that Japan had suffered even before World War I, but specifically after World War I, known as the Showa Financial Crisis that popped

up during Emperor Hirohito's first year in power, hence why it gets his imperial name of Showa. And also, as well, like, the cultural impetus for this is, like, going back to obviously the Meiji Restoration, like, when you look at, say, like, stuff

like castles in Japan, quite a lot of them were built after the Meiji Restoration because they destroyed all the like temples and castles like prior to that like at the end of the Shogun era and over the course of the interfering like Edo

period and like essentially like what you had was like this recreation of the Japanese cultural myth like in not to bring well to bring it to like my area of expertise like tattooing the what you know is japanese tattooing is only really about 250 years old like um and it was this like entire national project of like okay we are going to like bring back the foundational myths of like japanese culture uh to a place of like cultural dominance in society and it allowed like insane

people in the army and the government to essentially be like yeah no this is what japan is yeah and actually more on this in a future series um And for a little bit that someone may, listeners may almost certainly have heard about is the concept of Bushido, which is not some kind of ancient samurai thing. It was thrust into what we know as Bushido as being like an educational platform by Sato Araki, one of the founders of the Imperial Way faction and future Minister of Education

of Japan. Also potential relation to the guy who created Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. God, I hope not. That'd be weird. Nobody look up Shinzo Abe's grandfather. No, you probably should. Wait, it doesn't matter now because he's fucking dead cue the air horde get fucked wait wait wait occasionally someone gets the device the imperial way was made up of junior officers for the most part not entirely and this fed directly into a Japanese military ideology, which was, surprise, surprise, loved by the Imperial Way faction.

This was known as Gekujo, which is when someone of a lower position overthrows someone of a higher position using military or political might and seizing their power. and seizing their power, right? This is combined with the growing belief within the faction, the Kwantung Army, that it didn't actually matter if they needed government orders to act, as long as their plans that they developed within themselves furthered the glory of the emperor, they could do whatever they wanted. And in turn, they would be able to force the control faction,

which was their main rival. they're often called moderates but they were only moderates in comparison to the imperial way faction and they believe that by doing this it forced them from power due to their martial gains this is supported by their deep belief in imperial mysticism

in spiritualism that gave them a green light for their actions from a literal higher power, the actual spirit of Japan. Yeah, the... As we are seeing right now, the rise of fascism also is usually accompanied by a rise in weird esotericism and superstition.

Yeah, you can see why this would rapidly turn into something that nobody could really control. And despite being under the command of the Imperial General Headquarters, the army, the Kuantan Army, acted against orders and completely on their own within the military fiefdom of the Manchurian railway all the time. There was a time in 1928 when China was in civil war that the Kuantan Army assassinated a Manchurian de facto independent ruler via improvised explosive device as he traveled on his train so they could put a more pro-Japanese person in power in his place. Though like the Kuantan Army itself, this was done by an even smaller faction within the Kwantung Army,

without the larger army commanders even knowing about it. Even so, they were still surprised by the bomb, and it became a bit of a thing within the Japanese government to find out who did this so it wouldn't happen again. Though the army protected its own, and the emperor fired the prime minister for failing to rein in the Kuantan army while simultaneously accepting what the army had done because by not it would run counter of Japan's actual geopolitical goals.

You could see how the army would see this as direct support of their independent actions from the emperor because it was factions within factions people a few years later the army fueled what would become known as the waposhan incident a small farm dispute that got whipped up into a full-on racist fervor by the japanese authorities and by that i mean the Kuantan Army. After the incident, the army had the Chosun Ebel newspaper publish a fabricated

report claiming that hundreds of Koreans had been murdered by Chinese people. When in reality, nobody had been killed at all, and the entire thing boiled down to an argument over the placement of a ditch. And then someone called the cops. That was it.

Is this China or is this like rural Ireland? Yeah, this could be like Iowa. Someone yelling about, you know, you can't actually plant trees there. That's my property line. Fuck you. No, it's not. I'm calling the sheriff.

And that was it. That's all that happened. The Kwantung Army are the original Karens. And that was it. That's all that happened. The Kwantung Army or the original Karens? Yeah, kind of. This led to a psychotic anti-Chinese rally, protests and riots

organized by the Kwantung Army, which really did end up in the deaths of hundreds of Chinese people. Arguments between the Chinese and Japanese over farming rights continued for years, right up to the Mukden incident in 1931, which we have talked about previously. By 1931, China was trying to reassert its control over Manchuria, which had pretty much become a

de facto independent and puppet state of the Japanese. China, even in their warlord era, state of the japanese china even in their warlord era civil war morass stage that they were in at this point agreed that they all needed to come together to counter japanese influence in manchuria because while we hate each other the japanese are a lot fucking worse hence the the greater unifying theory of fuck that guy yeah i wasn't really a big fan of this stage of the Marvel movies. Needs more CGI. Yeah. Obviously, Japan wasn't the biggest fan of this, and officers within the Kuantan Army began to think that

cooking up a war between China and Japan so Japan could finally just take Manchuria for themselves was in the Emperor's best interests. This plan was cooked up by a colonel named itagaki and a lieutenant colonel named ishiwara as well as another colonel named dohihara so they wanted to kick off war so they did what they always did planted a bomb on their own railroad everyone's getting the device people it blew up and caused virtually no damage, but the Kwantung Army then launched an invasion,

claiming that the security of the Manchurian Railroad demanded it. The warlord charged with defending Manchuria stood no chance against the Kwantung Army. By February 1932, just a few months later, the takeover was complete. It was so rapid and successful that despite acting completely without orders from anybody within the Japanese government, the Japanese government couldn't say anything. They were completely powerless to stop the army because they were hamstrung by their own ideology. They had become too successful to argue with, and it made the emperor look great since they were doing it all

in his name. They were winning military victories, conquering huge swaths of land. And any member of the government that disagreed with the concept of an army just kind of doing whatever they wanted couldn't say anything about it. Afterwards, Japan set up a puppet government, Manchuria, which they then called Manchukuo, and eventually turned into the Empire of Manchukuo, putting the last Chinese emperor named Puyi on the throne. Now, Puyi is a pitiful but interesting character. Puyi had been crowned emperor of China when he was just two years old. He was deposed, restored, and deposed again, and then was put on the throne by the Japanese,

meaning he was the emperor three different times. After World War II and a stint in a Chinese re-education camp for ten years, he became an appointed member of the Chinese Communist Party, meaning he had the normal political arc of someone who plays Hearts of Iron. While all of this was going on,

China wasn't doing so hot. There was a civil war between the Nationalists and the communists, as well as a mini civil war between the various nationalists and communist warlords against one another. Chiang Kai-shek, who kind of controlled the government at the time as much as anybody did, knew that China could not face a full war with Japan, at least not yet. He thought he needed to unify China first in a campaign he described as first internal pacification, then external resistance. This was one of the reasons why the Chinese military melted away during the invasion of Manchuria. It was just practical. Of course, after such an easy conquest, that only emboldened the Kuantan army, who now knew they could do whatever they wanted as long as they succeeded. The government wouldn't get mad at them and would just run and try to keep up with them, congratulating them the whole way they were doing it. Effectively, the commanders

of the army had learned that they were more powerful than the pseudo-civilian government in Tokyo. In fact, Emperor Hirohito publicly lauded them for their independent conquest. On January 8th, 1932, Hirohito issued an imperial decree commending the feats of the Kwantung Army in the following. Quote, You, Kwantung Army, displayed the awe of the imperial military, both domestic and overseas. I strongly commend and praise you for your loyalty and staunchness. and praise you for your loyalty and staunchness. I hope that generals and soldiers alike will become more preserving and self-possessed

for the sake of solidifying the basis of peace in East Asia, as well as requiting the favor of imperial trust from me. So, of course, predictably, it was not long before the Kuantan Army aspired to further conquests and turned its sights towards the southwest to the Chinese province of Hebei and Ruha. Now, Ruha bordered the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo,

and before long, Japan began to insist it was actually ancestral Manchukuo land, as if they were the president of Azerbaijan, and it needed to be returned to them immediately. And by them, I don't mean Manchukuo, I mean Japan. Armenia is the ancestral land of Manchukuo. That's fucking right, baby. Now, Hebei was south of that,

with the Great Wall of China acting as a rough border between the two. Behind the wall were major centers of Chinese life, economy, and government, like Beijing, or Peking at the time, and Tiejiang. Japan tried to take the easy way out, bribing a notoriously corrupt warlord into pretty much just switching sides and therefore giving them ruhe. But it turned out that this is even beyond the pale for a corrupt warlord in rural China in the 1930s. Japan, it turned out, had a garrison nearby in Shanheguan, in the eastern end of the Great Wall, where the wall meets the ocean.

It was only made up of around 200 men, but they had been allowed to sit around there because of an agreement that Japan had since the Boxer Rebellion 30 years before. Another series we'll get to at some point, I'm sure. January, the garrison commander there had his men set off some hand grenades and rip a few bursts of machine gun fire into the air, and then blamed on the local Chinese garrison and claimed that they were under attack. The Japanese commanders dubbed the Chinese soldiers

nearby terrorists and demanded they leave the area as they were a threat to the Japanese soldiers. Now, obviously the Chinese fucking refused. They're like, bro, we just watched you do that to yourself. Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself.

And then the Japanese launched an attack on them in the morning. The Japanese brought a division of infantry tanks, four armored trains and close air support. Oh, yeah. And the fucking Navy in to support them against the Chinese Northwestern Army's 626th Regiment, a force made up of mostly peasants who had been drafted by local warlords and had little to no training and small arms that were older than pretty much anybody fighting. We're talking about rifles before World War I and, you know, Maxim machine guns, all of which were in really bad shape, facing down the full combined arms might of the Imperial

Japanese military. Yeah, you're probably better off just like throwing the bullets at them just run just run it's yeah the defenses in the area had not even been reinforced they were standing behind ramparts and watchtowers that had hardly been touched or modified as a part of the Great Wall of China since the best anybody can tell, like the 1600s, and it couldn't have even been before that. Still though, facing these odds, the Chinese forces did not shatter like you would have expected them to in such a situation. Behind the centuries-old wall, they poured rifle and machine gun fire down on the Japanese until they ran out of ammo, and then finally withdrew

after withstanding a full day of attacks and losing half of their men. Now, the Japanese were successful, but they ran into a small problem. A small problem that should not have surprised them. The Great Wall of China was so well planned, it still blocked their advance.

Best to ever do it, people. They were surprised by something that literally everyone on Earth had heard about at that point. The Great Wall of China. Yeah, I'd imagine you would have heard of this thousands of year old large wall that runs through China directly in your marching path. Who could have possibly foreseen this i don't know the mongols perhaps yep it was built to follow natural contours of the terrain the wall sealed off most passages through the mountains to the north and by design

that only left a few fortified passes, Gubeiku in the west, Jiangfaoqiao in the center, and Langkao and Jianglangkao in the east. If the Japanese wanted to punch through the wall, they would have to assault each of these strong points head-on because the mountainous terrain made flanking them impossible. Again, because it's the Great Wall of China. How did you not know about this yeah it doesn't get called great for nothing also you have planes just do reconnaissance just fly over just

just look down at it like ah yeah we probably shouldn't attack through here yeah now each of these points went up pretty hazardous mountain passes creating horrific pinch points between one another that had been and they had built interlocking series of reinforced gate houses and pathways that made the entire thing a fucking death trap for anybody who wanted to attack it again because it's the fucking great wall of china and you should have seen this coming one guy who did know all about this was chen Kai-shek, and he ordered a full great wall-wide delaying tactic so defenses could be set up around the urban centers behind it. Now, the first Japanese target would be the Chinese positions at Jiangfang Cao on March 10, 1933.

The Chinese commander, Song Zhiyun, knew full well he could not hope to defeat the Japanese in a conventional war. His forces were badly trained, if trained at all, terribly armed, and they had virtually no support from local villages or supplies. In any case, a lot of his line soldiers had actually been kidnapped from local villages and press ganged into fighting so they didn't exactly have a lot of motivation either. Once again press ganging people into fighting doesn't work. Hold that thought. He ordered the defenders not to fire a single shot

until the Japanese got within 300 feet of them. And once the Japanese were so close, they wouldn't be able to bring their massive fire support to bear. They would have to fight them straight up. And once the Japanese got there, he fired like effectively one volley from rifles and then ordered a full charge directly into Japanese lines. Now, this actually worked into a Japanese strength. The Japanese loved hand-to-hand combat. They trained extensively

in bayonet drills, and they actually comically carried a huge bayonet for the rifles that when fitted to the end of an Arisaka rifle of the era was actually taller than the man that normally carried it. They loved hand-to-hand combat, but they were shocked

to see tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers rushing out at them, not armed with rifles, but fucking swords. Oh, hell yeah. This shit rules. I love when people like don't bring a knife to a gunfight, but it is cool if you do. Right. It is cool if you do. Right.

Chinese and Japanese soldiers stabbed and slashed at one another in front of the Great Wall and the ramparts as the wall changed hands multiple times over the next two days. When the Japanese took one position, the Chinese would pull back to the next gatehouse, locking it behind them, getting the high ground over the Japanese once again, and then raining gunfire down on them as they advanced towards the next gate. And in places where they didn't have ammo, they just pulled up big bricks from the Great Wall and dropped them on the Japanese soldiers' fucking heads. We're going back to medieval tactics. Because again, this is why the gatehouses were built in that way. Who would win? The entire Imperial Japanese Army are a big rock and then when the japanese

got close to the gate once again the gates would fly open and thousands of chinese soldiers would rush back out with swords at the occasional revolver this devolved so cool this this shit is so cool like the gatehouse opens and some like japanese conscript is like oh fuck me not the sword guys again this devolved into a brutal stalemate by the 12th and the chinese decided to go on the counter-attack picking their best swordsmen and martial artists with the strict orders not to use firearms in order to keep the element of surprise. They used old woodcutting trails that the Japanese would never have known about to sneak behind Japanese lines and

surprise them. You just see like Bruce Lee flying out of the tree line. They were so successful at doing this that the Japanese camp did not know they were even under attack until a Chinese swordsman appeared at their tents and planted that shit directly in their chest.

They were slaughtering Japanese soldiers as they were napping. Bruce Lee, like, flying out of the tree line armed with nothing but hull cams. Then they began to set the camp on fire, destroying artillery and blowing up ammo dumps. I also would like to believe they did this with swords. I don't know how, but they did. Now, when it became clear that the raid was working, the main body of Chinese troops launched a counterattack towards the four Japanese positions to support them. Now, this part of the operation didn't work out so great, but by the time the raiders withdrew back into the countryside, vanishing into the trees, the Japanese camp was in shambles. And the Japanese commander, Akira Muto, a guy who would eventually hang for his role in the future rape of Nanking, called off the attack on that section of the wall.

The Chinese had managed to check a full-scale invasion attempt by what was thought to be one of the most powerful nations on earth at the time with an army of swordsmen and martial artists. They got Wing Chun'd into submission. Oh, fuck yeah. Though there were still other spots to be defended. A few weeks later, 35 miles away, the Japanese began their operation against Lao Wen Yu. Though this section of the wall was actually defended by the same unit that had just defeated the Japanese at the other part. The 29th Corps. You're marching up and you just see the same

guys rushing out and you're like, oh fuck! You march up to the wall and they're practicing like Wing Chun and Sandow and whatever. They're like, guys we should keep going. We could find somewhere else to get across. They're just standing there shirtless waiting for us.

It's like that episode of The Simpsons where Homer owes all the money to Fat Tony because of Marge's pretzel business and the Yakuza show up. It's the quiet guy just standing there. You don't want to miss what he's about to do. Yeah. Now the 29th Corps, this unit would go down in Chinese history for their actions. A ragtag group of mostly untrained dudes barely armed with modern weapons, giving the Japanese a middle finger is one hell of a thing to rally around.

Though, unfortunately for the 29th, not every unit defending the wall could be the 29th, right? Now, Lang Kao eventually fell after days of fighting. As soon as the Japanese would take one area, the Chinese would again charge out the next gatehouse and try to take it back. By the time this position finally fell for good, it had changed four times, and the pathways through the wall were so clogged with corpses that the next charge would have to kick them down the fucking walls to make room for them. The overarching theme of the past couple episodes

is defensive corpse infrastructure. Now, unfortunately for the Chinese, this did show one of the weaknesses that a centuries-old wall would have. And that is the Great Wall in this sector had zero ability for defense in depth because it was not really thought of as a defensive concept at the time. Now, so if the Japanese fully secured one position, others could be easily surrounded.

After Lang Kao fell, the Japanese began to encircle the points that had so far thrown them back constantly. Namely, Zhang Feng Kao. And the 29th Corps had been ravaged in the fighting, as you could imagine getting in close quarters fist fights and sword fights will do to a guy. Yeah. And out of the 15,000 men they had started with,

only 5,000 were still able to fight. But they were ready. They were like, all right, let's go. How many times do I have to teach you this lesson, old man? Come back to the wall. So a withdrawal was ordered before the Japanese could close a trap on them. And the same went for Jingling Kao.

And it was ordered to withdraw for the same reason, because other areas had fallen and it was easy to be surrounded. Now, at the Gubei Ko position, the wall defenders were finally reinforced with a decently equipped element of the Central Army. And this time of the Japanese attack, they were not met with swords, submachine guns which as it turns out much more effective but as we all could agree significantly less cool yeah nah submachine gun isn't as cool as you know swords yeah getting sword fighting roundhouse kicked off the top of the fucking great wall of china in 1933 unless unless there's some dude like running around doing gun kata then it's not like you know they drop keanu reeves off and he's just like john wicking or like neo-ing everyone look this could have happened not the john wick part but there were people armed with a sword in one hand a revolver in the other who literally knew kung fu fighting off the japanese imperial army this situation

i mean like this is as close to gun kata as we're actually going to get in reality the real uh you know counterpoint that someone should have deployed to defeat all these guys is you need to get one guy who's done like four classes of brazilian jiu-jitsu he's just gonna be scooting around the top of the great wall of china on his ass trying to pull guard yeah but like he he will do it with the utmost confidence that only guys that have done four classes of brazilian jiu-jitsu have some guy named frank from the suburbs scooting around trying to pull guard as japanese uh uh soldiers just impale him repeatedly with bayonets as he's trying to pull them in.

Like trying to pull a fucking bayonet in and full guard. Did I actually, did I tell you a couple of weeks ago, I went for some drinks after work. So I was getting the last train home and there was this guy who was really drunk and was like... On the tube at that time of night I don't believe you and was like chewing the

ear off his friend that he was with about how Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was like the ultimate form of martial arts and he was like you know everything your man says like no Brazilian Jiu Jitsu can beat it was like cause you know like they got the strength from the wrestling and all this sort of stuff. And I was like,

this went on for like 20 minutes. And the, you can tell the guy who was talking to had just completely checked out because he just stopped talking and wasn't even looking at the dude. And I was like, that is the energy of a guy who's done four classes of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Well, the guy's like,

all right, bro, what if I have a gun? Like that is the energy of a man who has his own customized gi this unit did eventually lose their position and pulled back behind the wall and they resort to launching raids into japanese lines at night again with swords and and martial arts because they're silent, right? Silencers they don't have, but swords, nature silencer.

Are swords nature silencer? They silence people pretty good. I mean, like, yeah, I suppose. Japanese bombers were already circling overhead as well as the cities behind them. Hebei and Ruha had both fallen. The Great Wall defenses did hold long enough for Chiang Kai-shek to build defenses around two other major cities nearby.

Though, somewhat weirdly, one of the units involved in this stage of fighting, one of the best in the National Army, had been trained by Nazis. You want to guess what the division name was called? No, but tell me. The 88th Division. Like, you know,

Nazis not really well known for their creativity. Not really known for winning wars either, or any conflict. I mean, going back to a very old episode that we did years and years ago ching kai shek's i believe son or cousin uh had been training with the wehrmacht when they invaded austria yeah like oh jesus christ this point, the pressure had been put on Japan. After the invasion of China, well, this specific invasion of China, I should say, the international community, as much as it's ever existed, pretty much turned against them. Though this truly began with the annexation and the invasion and annexation of Manchuria, but it only continued here. It was around now, in March of 1933, when the

previous version of the UN, but one somehow more useless, called the League of Nations, condemned Japanese actions, but said they wouldn't do shit to stop it. I assume they penned a letter of deep concern. So facing this kind of spineless, feckless pressure, Japan simply left the League of Nations. Instead, they joined the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. That's right. Which is how they got Hulk hands. Yes, I'm welcoming the Emperor Hirohito.

He's a great addition to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Okay, let's pretend Sean Connery is alive. Sean Connery is alive. I thought he died. I'm pretty sure Sean Connery is still alive. Well, he's dead to me. I mean, he's dead to a lot of people because he beats women. It still defends doing so, yeah.

Sean Connery. Yeah, Sean Connery is still alive. No, no, he's dead. He died two years ago. In your face. R. your face r.i.p bitch uh rest in peace now imagine sean connery is still alive a biopic of him playing emperor hirohito yeah you see there's these men in china we need to deal with they're living in a place called manturia and he's just putting in the sheer lack of effort

that he put in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He's barely getting it. Like Marlon Brando levels of effort and apocalypse now doesn't even get up from a seat. A movie so bad it made him quit acting. Yeah.

If I remember correctly, the whole reason that Marlon Brando that Sean Connery took the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is because he passed on Lord of the Rings, and he was worried about missing something else that would make him literal shiploads of money. So he took League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which former co-host of the show, Nick, would defend Up and Down as a great film, but it was fucking terrible. I mean, it is a fun film. Fun doesn't mean great. Not everything can be a piece of cinematic art like Neil Blomkamp's Chappie.

Oh, God, you just reminded me of Chappie. I saw that in the cinema. I also did. Starring a South African musical duo. I don't know what to call them. Whose music can best be described as two fax machines. Fucking. Like, Dee Antwoord, like...

I think the music slaps but unfortunately like they're super racist and like insanely problematic so I've heard they like kidnapped someone as well I assume that was the problematic part that you were talking about oh no there's so much shit

like Die Antwerp is one of the few bands you could tell me that they did all sorts of awful things but I could already not think any less of them. Yeah, like, it's like child abuse, like, insane racism. I think there's also allegations. Don't trust anybody who has haircuts like those two. I don't trust people that have haircuts like that. And so far, I have not been proven wrong.

I mean, you need to come to East London, it's just like everyone has those haircuts now. Now there was factions within the Japanese government at the time that loudly opposed the ongoing invasion but not because they were against the idea of taking over slices of

China, but mostly because they were anti imperial way and they hope to curb their influence by stopping their military gains. Furthermore, the emperor himself did not want the Kuantan army to keep pushing behind the Great Wall, at least not for now. And China was in no way able to retake the areas that Japan had taken from them with the whole civil war thing going on and all. So Japan, holding all the cards, sat down for negotiations in May of 1933. The Japanese demands were a demilitarized zone extending 100 kilometers south of the Great Wall from Beijing to Taishan with the Great Wall itself under Japanese control. No Chinese military units

were able to be allowed into the DMZ, but the Japanese were allowed to use their own military to enforce the ban on Chinese units within the DMZ, which means there was no DMZ at all. Public order within the DMZ was going to be maintained by something called the Demilitarized Zone Peace Preservation Corps. However, their demands also stipulated that no Chinese soldiers that were part of any so-called anti-Japanese force could take part in it. Now, this anti-Japanese force definition included both the nationalists and communist armies. force definition included both the Nationalists and Communist armies, so that meant it was all staffed by Japanese officers and their own Chinese proxies from Manchuria. The Chinese had no option but to agree to the terms of what would become known as the Tengu truce. And the truce only lasted for a couple years until the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on July 7th, 1937.

But it did make a lot of people really hate the Nationalist Government, and it kind of led to the Chinese Government recognizing the so-called Empire of Manchukuo. So, like, bad for the Nationalist Government all around. But hey,

it did go as a sword-fighting, pistol-wielding soldier fighting on the Great Wall of China well into the 20th century so we do have that and also a great denzel washington movie sure tom sure and that is the defense of the great wall in 1933. Shit rocks. We need to give Bruce Lee whole cans. Unfortunately, we need to bring Bruce Lee back to life first, which will include some kind of necromancy,

which I'm not saying I don't support. The man was taken from us too soon. Yeah, him and his son. I know, no. Yeah, that's true. Brandon Lee is his son, yeah? Yeah, oh yeah. Famously, don't... Yeah, that's true. Yeah, Brandon Lee is his son, yeah. Yeah, oh yeah. Famously, it started like

The Curse of the Lees. Yeah. Jet Lee escaped it because he's not related to them and his name is also spelled differently. Yes, he would escape the curse by having no relations whatsoever to that particular family. Yeah, you know, Bruce Lee,

Brandon Lee, General E. Lee, you know, the curse goes back long ways. You're fired. So, Tom, we do a thing on this show called Questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask us a question from Legion, support the show

on Patreon. You can ask us through Patreon. There are Discord. You can attach it to a sword and plant it firmly in tom's chest and we will answer it on the show today we'll have a you will have a option to uh you will have an opportunity to do that at the live show that is true it's the first live show for that is bring your own swords uh asterix please don't do that it's in london um it's very illegal anything over i think it's like a one or two inch blade is considered a deadly weapon so if you get caught with that you are getting sent to prison yeah yeah and this is parody slash satire will not be held responsible actually do you know what's really funny um i was in a department store recently and it was in the kitchen section because uh that's just what i do i love going looking at

like pots and pans and stuff like that do you know they have just like a piece of cardboard with the picture of a knife on it they don't even have the knives out you have to get this piece of cardboard and go up to the counter and they'll go get you your knife that's fucking incredible that is oh boy um there's a lot to say about that one now today's question is who is your favorite terrible author oh um i will have to think about that because like my brain you asked about authors and immediately i just went like my two like favorite authors and it's like ursula k le Guin and joan didion um but worst authors hmm you go first all right this one i can answer in one of two ways an author i believe who sucks um who had it's the their biggest influence on me beginning to read and actually be entertained by the concept of reading.

Or an author I know to be absolutely awful, also a terrible human being, who just is an absolute mad lad that everybody should be kind of jealous about. So the first one, unfortunately, is J.K. Rowling. Well, that's an obvious one. Her writing is not good. She's a terrible person. But the Harry Potter books came out at a time of my life that I had yet to really start reading as entertainment. And I forget how...

I think my school had the first one, and I started reading it. And it really opened me up to the concept of reading as entertainment. We didn't really have books in my house growing up and that uh obviously changed my life like it made me want to be an author uh which i now am um not to say anything nice about her at all she's a terrible fucking human being um and her writing is garbage uh and i mean i was the right age bracket for her writing which which was, I believe, 11 years old. And the second is sci-fi king L. Ron Hubbard.

That man churned out so much sci-fi pulp. To this day, nobody has beaten him. And his writing is shit. I was about to ask, how much L. Ron Hobart have you read? He didn't actually write... He's not known for his sci-fi pulp, necessarily. He wrote a ton of fucking westerns.

A lot. A lot, a lot, a lot. It's all universally garbage. There's typos in it. I don't think he ever edited them. I think he sat down, he would crank out a book in one or two sittings because that man took so many uppers, it would kill God himself and just shit book after book after book after book.

But he is, of course, known as the sci-fi pulp guy because he created a sci-fi cult. And he did so with the only motivation of making money he even said as much himself so when it comes to i mean i've read i think four or five um uh hubbard books when i was much younger and even back then they're not good i mean they're they're they're but it's pulp pulp can be good or bad but the the main the main goal of pulp is it's not deep, there's no complexity to it, you read it in one or two sittings,

you throw it into a trash can, or you hand it to a friend because you're never going to reread it. And he is the king of that. John Ringo wishes he could be L. Ron Hubbard. We're starting sci-fi author beef on the podcast um my answer and this might sound controversial at first but it's mainly because of the pure peaks and valleys of their writing because like when it's good it's incredible like arguably one of the best to ever do it and when it's bad it's so so bad also very famously

one of the uh an author on the most amount of uppers ever and if you can gather if you can guess where i'm going it's stephen king oh man that's a good call I'm actually surprised I didn't think of Stephen King I've read a lot of King when it's good it's like incredible such incredible world crafting

but when it's bad it's just so bad and if you look at like his stuff even his legendary stuff has passages in it you're like what in the wild blue fuck is this man talking about like it comes to comes to mind yeah also like his like extremely weird relationship with race with homosexuality like it and it's like so hard to pick apart is like is this someone who genuinely has really really problematic homophobic racist views or is it someone who's like taking so much cocaine they can't see the forest from the trees but yeah like

cocaine and alcohol yeah like when his stuff is like good it's incredible and when it's bad it's really bad like absolutely the stand is still in top 10 books i've ever read yeah and like it like i would argue because like my two favorite authors are joan didion and ursula k lwin um turn on the list probably philip k dick just because i enjoyed uh seeing that man's mind disintegrate through text like i like as you get to like the final trilogy it's like this man has gone fully insane um like yeah i'm currently reading like dracula for the first time um i because i spend a lot of time on the train i'm coming to and from work i just read and like yeah like especially when you pick up like some of the lesser known stephen king books like not

you're not talking like you know pet, Doctor Sleep, stuff like that, The Shining. It's like you're kind of rolling the dice on how good it is. And also how much of Stephen King is in the book. I think he's interesting because he's one of the few authors that have actually gotten worse as he's written. Most writers get better. one of the few authors as have actually gotten worse as he's written most writers get better but i think also has a lot to do with you know when you are fantastically wealthy you lose some of the motivation that made you a good author also pretty much all of his early works are fueled by god ungodly amounts of cocaine and alcohol to the point that he doesn't remember parts of them

and i'm not saying that makes you a good author however his deeply fucked up state of mind did help him create some deeply fucked up books which were good yeah like if you it's the new year i'm sure a lot of you have set resolutions for yourselves if you're one of them is to read more. If you haven't read Ursula K. Le Guin, the Earthsea saga, particularly like my favorite, the Left Hand of Darkness, read Stanislav Lem, Strogatsky's.

Little known author you may have heard of named Kasabian. Yes. Read Joe's books. Most importantly, Stanislav Lem is another favourite of mine, Philip K. Dick yeah now that I'm on a

roll, read like Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem and the White Album, I'm currently reading her it's not necessarily a book, it's like a very long essay of her time in El Salvador yeah, like if you ever want to understand the 60s,

read Didion's Sledging Towards Bethlehem and the White Album. It just makes so much sense. Currently, I am obsessed with anything written by Joe Abercrombie. I cannot recommend it enough. It's not science fiction, but I'm enjoying it. So there, we've nicely talked about

terrible authors and then given good recommendations so or also read the stand by stephen king it's really really good um don't if you if you want to have a book that you can also kill someone with it is also an option um and don't read anything by any of the authors i mentioned because it's shit but they are my favorite shit authors. So, Tom, thank you so much for joining me. Listen to Beneath the Skin. It's Tom's podcast.

It's great. Thank you for supporting our show. If you like what we do here, consider supporting us on Patreon. Patrons got first dibs on our live show tickets. Patrons get first dibs on our merch. You also get almost six years of bonus content at this point by the maybe by the time you listen to it it'll be over six years of bonus content you get discord access ebooks audiobooks stickers every episode we make early and um a very very thin slice of Tom's flesh which will be mailed to you I'm

slowly becoming a pre-reformation flesh man from Hellraiser that's right and until next time defend your local wall with swords