page_title: Battle of Nanking
section_title: Final battle for Nanking
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Nanking / Final battle for Nanking
caption_attribution_description: English: Chiba corps, who crosses the river in front of the Nanking castle wall, is going to enter the castle from the Gate of China.(December 13, 1937) 日本語: 秦淮河を渡る／南京城壁下を流れる秦淮河を渡って中華門より入城せんとする千葉部隊（1937年12月13日）
context_page_description: The Battle of Nanking was fought in early December 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War between the Chinese National Revolutionary Army and the Imperial Japanese Army for control of Nanking, the capital of the Republic of China.
  Following the outbreak of war between Japan and China in July 1937, the Japanese government at first attempted to contain the fighting and sought a negotiated settlement to the war. However, after victory in the Battle of Shanghai expansionists prevailed within the Japanese military and on December 1 a campaign to capture Nanking was officially authorized. The task of occupying Nanking was given to General Iwane Matsui, the commander of Japan's Central China Area Army, who believed that the capture of Nanking would force China to surrender and thus end the war. Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek ultimately decided to defend the city and appointed Tang Shengzhi to command the Nanking Garrison Force, a hastily assembled army of local conscripts and the remnants of the Chinese units who had fought in Shanghai.
  Japanese soldiers marched from Shanghai to Nanking at a breakneck pace, rapidly defeating pockets of Chinese resistance.
context_section_description: At 1:00 pm on December 10, General Matsui ordered all units to launch a full-scale attack on Nanking. That day the SEA assaulted China's super-elite Training Brigade on the peaks of Zijinshan, which dominate Nanking's northeast horizon. Clambering up the ridges of the mountain, the men of the SEA had to painstakingly wrest control of each Chinese encampment one by one in bloody infantry charges. Advancing along the south side of Zijinshan was no easier as General Matsui had forbidden his men from using artillery there due to his deep conviction that no damage should come to its two famous historical sites, Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum and Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum.
  Also on Nanking's eastern side but further south, other units of the SEA faced the difficult task of fording the large moat standing between them and three of the city gates, Zhongshan Gate, Guanghua Gate, and Tongji Gate, though the speed of Japan's earlier advance played in their favor as key Chinese units slated to be deployed here were not yet in position. That evening, Japanese engineers and artillerymen closing in on Guanghua Gate managed to blow a hole in the wall. A Japanese battalion launched a daring attack through the gap and planted a Japanese flag on a portion of the gate, but was immediately pinned down by a series of determined Chinese counterattacks. The Chinese brought up reinforcements, including tanks, and they poured down grenades and even flaming, gasoline-soaked lumber onto the Japanese battalion, which was only saved from annihilation by timely bursts of concentrated artillery fire from the rest of their division. The battalion succeeded in holding its position for the rest of the battle despite losing eighty of its eighty-eight men.
  At the same time Japan's 10th Army was storming Yuhuatai, a rugged plateau situated directly in front of Zhonghua Gate on Nanking's southern side. The 10th Army's progress was slow and casualties were heavy as Yuhuatai was built like a fortress of interlocking pillboxes and trenches manned by three Chinese divisions, including the German-trained 88th Division, though the Chinese were also apt to counterattack and some Japanese units were forced to spend more time defending than attacking. Close to every single man that the 88th Division had deployed on Yuhuatai was killed in action, including three of its four regimental commanders and both of its brigade commanders, but in the process the Japanese were made to suffer 2,240 casualties including 566 dead. Yuhuatai was finally overrun at noon on December 12.
  Behind Yuhuatai the 88th Division had stationed its barely trained new recruits atop Nanking's Zhonghua Gate. The Japanese had already tried the previous night to infiltrate a "suicide squadron" bearing explosive picric acid up to this gate to blow a hole in it, but it got lost in the morning fog and failed to reach the wall. At noon on December 12 a team of just six Japanese soldiers made it across the moat in a small boat and succeeded in scaling the wall at Zhonghua Gate on a shaky bamboo ladder and raising the Japanese flag there. Five of them were killed by gunfire but the last man grabbed a Chinese machine gun and held the position singlehandedly. Soon after another Japanese team set a fire in front of the gate to create a smokescreen. By 5:00 pm more and more Japanese troops were crossing the moat and swarming Zhonghua Gate by fording makeshift bridges so rickety their engineers had to hold them aloft with their own bodies, and with the help of some well aimed Japanese artillery fire from atop Yuhuatai parts of the wall finally crumbled. Meanwhile, just west of Zhonghua Gate, other soldiers also of Japan's 10th Army had punched a hole through Chinese lines in the wetlands south of Shuixi Gate and were launching a violent drive on that gate with the support of a fleet of tanks.
  At the height of the battle Tang Shengzhi complained to Chiang that, "Our casualties are naturally heavy and we are fighting against metal with merely flesh and blood", but what the Chinese lacked in equipment they made up for in the s
caption: Japanese soldiers crossing the moat close to Zhonghua Gate
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