At the same time that the Japanese people began to forget about Japanese militarism, Japan had forcibly amended its constitution in previous years, and openly defended the emperor for his war crimes in the "Records of Emperor Showa". Among those who launched the war among the Japanese army that invaded China, who in the end held the right to start a war? The Imperial Family? Domination? Imperial Taoists? Or an Anglo-American capitalist? When the invading Japanese army slaughtered and robbed everywhere in China, who gave the order? And for what purpose was such an order issued? On the occasion of the National Day of Public Sacrifice, this article analyzes a series of personnel appointments in the Japanese military before and after the Nanjing Massacre.
According to the Meiji Constitution, the commander-in-chief of the Japanese Navy and Army was the Emperor himself. The authority to move all troops was vested in the Emperor himself. Legally speaking, this is the case, but sometimes this is not the case, such as Emperor Hirohito's father, Emperor Taisho, who to a large extent did not have real power. However, Hirohito did what his father, Taisho, and even his grandfather, the Meiji emperors, did not do, that is, he really had military power. Because he has many "uncles", such as the following three:
His uncle was ---- the supreme chief of the Japanese Army Staff Headquarters and the chief of staff
Fushimiya Hiroyuki (uncle) ---- the head of the Naval Command, equivalent to the Naval Staff Headquarters, the chief of naval orders that formulated and implemented naval orders
Prince (uncle) of Higashihisa ---- commander of the Japanese Army Air Force
Hirohito's uncles controlled the position of the supreme commander of the three branches of the army, sea, land and air. It is the first time in the modern history of the Japanese emperor. Therefore, Emperor Hirohito not only had the supreme power in law, but also held the military power in his hands in the process of actual operation.
(The Japanese Army is divided into military and political, military orders, and military law.) The General Staff Headquarters actually holds the military orders, is the most powerful department of the Japanese army, and all the transfer of Japanese troops overseas actually requires the general staff headquarters to formulate orders and then issue orders. ）
After the outbreak of the July 7 Incident, because there was already an all-out war with China, Hirohito, in order to fully control the army, so he asked for the establishment of an imperial base camp, that is, to set up a command center for the entire army to fight within the imperial palace, and the deployment orders for each division and regiment level must be signed by Hirohito himself, and after signing, in order to ensure that the orders can be effectively implemented, Hirohito also made a series of transfers to the personnel arrangements of the army.
There was actually another reason why Hirohito had to do this, that is, he realized that the struggle between the Imperial Daoist faction and the unification faction actually existed in the General Staff Headquarters. For example, the position of chief of staff held by Miyazaihito, but many important decisions were made by the deputy chief of staff, Jun Tada, and the first director of the First Department of the General Staff Headquarters, Ishihara Guan'er. So in early September 1937, after Hirohito's base camp was established, he made a very important personnel transfer by replacing Ishihara Guan'er with a close associate Shimomura.
Because is ishihara Guan'er, who has a high prestige in the Japanese military circles, he is the general director of the entire 918 Incident and has a very strategic vision. He was also one of the rarest generals in the Japanese Army who attached great importance to weapons, and he predicted nuclear weapons very early. He argues that the explosion of atoms produced by nuclear fission can determine the outcome of a war in an instant, which can be said to be very predictable, but it is his own country that is said.
He also attached great importance to the use of tanks and air forces in warfare. When he inspected The First World War in Europe, he found that japan's military strength was far from that of Britain, the Soviet Union and other countries. If this protracted war with China continues, it will not be conducive to the development of weapons. Because war consumes a lot of resources, if resources are consumed in war, weapons will not be able to upgrade because they do not have resources. In the future, once it goes to war with the great powers of Europe and the United States, Japan will certainly be at a disadvantage. For this reason, Ishihara was firmly opposed to an all-out war with China. However, this man was arrogant, and even Hirohito personally sent his attendants to issue orders, but he actually suppressed him, so Hirohito made a move 5 days after the establishment of the imperial base camp.
This transfer was the "demotion" of Ishihara Guan'er, the first director of the General Staff Headquarters, to the headquarters of the Kwantung Army as Hideki Tojo's deputy. In fact, the relationship between the two has always been bad, and Ishihara Wan'er especially disdained to be with people like Hideki Tojo, and gave him a nickname called "Superior Soldier Hideki Tojo". In his eyes, Tojo was a rice bucket at all, without any military talent.
In addition to ishihara's transfer, Hirohito also made one of the most important personnel transfers before the Nanjing Massacre: Matsui Ishigen, the supreme commander of the Shanghai Dispatch Army, was transferred and replaced by Prince Hatohiko of Asaka Palace. What's going on here?
In fact, among the factions of the Japanese army, Matsui Ishigen belonged to the Imperial Dao faction. In the eyes of the Imperial Daoist faction, the Soviet Union is the biggest threat, and opening up the Manchu-Mongolian communication line is the most important thing to accomplish, so the biggest proposition of the Huangdao faction's soldiers is to go north. At the same time, China should not expand the war, of course, its purpose is not to be friendly with China, but to gradually invade China in a way of encroachment. Then, based on China, european and American colonists were driven out of Asia, eventually making Asia a Japanese colony. Matsui is undoubtedly a proponent of this theory.
But there is also a faction within the Japanese army that is the unification faction. Their views were very different from those of the Imperial Taoists, who were soldiers studying in European countries. According to their experience in the First World War, war is not only a military confrontation, but must be waged together in the economic, political, diplomatic, propaganda, and social mobilization aspects of the overall war in order to win the war. Therefore, the military of the unification faction believed that if Japan wanted to drive european and American colonists out of Asia, it would have to fight a general war.
This kind of overall war must include economic warfare, but to fight an economic war, Japan faces the biggest shortcomings, that is, oil and rubber, and these two resources are firmly controlled by the British and American colonists in Southeast Asia, and these colonies are mainly in Southeast Asia. Therefore, the military of the unification faction believed that if Japan wanted to colonize Asia, it must occupy Southeast Asia, and if it wanted to occupy Southeast Asia, it must first occupy the ports in China's coastal areas. From this point of view, the outbreak of war between Japan and China is something that will happen sooner or later.
The struggle between the two factions of soldiers reached its peak in the 1936 226 Mutiny, when the Imperial Daoist faction staged a coup d'état but was suppressed by the Emperor-backed unification faction. The result is clear that the emperor is pro-dominator. Then, of course, Japan must fight with China, and it must win. Because only by winning the war can we occupy the ports along the Coast of China. After the 226 Mutiny, a large number of Imperial Daoist soldiers were "purged", and those who survived were either forced to retire (which can also be understood as being dismissed) or transferred to the reserve, and Matsui was one of these people who was transferred to the reserve. For these people, their careers can be regarded as ending early, and their depressed mood can be imagined.
Until the outbreak of the July 7 Incident in 1937 and the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in an all-round way, Matsui and others began to make "wall grass" to move closer to the unification faction, publicizing their strategic ideas through various channels, that is, to fight in Shanghai. Because by laying shanghai, it will open the sea gateway of China, and at the same time, it can directly attack Nanjing. Such strategic ideas were also quoted by other "purged" Imperial Daoist soldiers, thus joining the propaganda together. Eventually these people were reactivated by Hirohito.
At the beginning of the Battle of Songhu on August 13, only two days later, on August 15, Matsui Ishigen was personally summoned by Emperor Hirohito at the Imperial Palace and ordered him to command five divisions to go to Shanghai to fight the Chinese army. At that time, both the emperor himself and the high-ranking people in the army knew very well that Japan could not afford to consume the Battle of Songhu, so the purpose of the emperor sending Matsui to Shanghai was to end the war as soon as possible, force the Nationalist government to negotiate and surrender, and then maximize the vested interests, and Matsui himself also wanted to take this opportunity to regain military power and then slowly promote its strategic concept of advancing north. However, at the time of the Battle of Songhu, Emperor Hirohito was very dissatisfied with Matsui Ishigen's slow progress in the war. Because the Japanese fought very hard, and their orders could not be effectively transmitted to the front.
So at this time, another person came to Matsui's head, and this person was Hirohito's uncle, Prince Hatohiko of Asaka Palace. This man came to China on December 2, and was personally appointed by Emperor Hirohito, who sent him as commander of the dispatch army, mainly responsible for the attack on Nanjing. In other words, Matsui Ishigen has actually been stripped of command from this day on.
On December 5, Asakamiya Hatohiko personally came to Nanjing, and the divisions and regiments made a direct report to him: There were a large number of Chinese troops in Nanjing that had collapsed from Shanghai, the number of which could be as high as hundreds of thousands, and they were all Chinese soldiers. At this time, the various logistics and heavy troops of the Japanese army did not rush to Nanjing. So the Chaoxiang Palace Headquarters issued an order: kill the Chinese soldiers in the city of Nanjing (the person who drafted the order was the staff officer of the Asaka Palace, but the order was issued by the Asaka Palace Headquarters, so it is impossible for Asaka Palace to be unaware). It was this order that directly led to the six-week massacre in the city of Nanjing. In particular, the Sixteenth Division, which killed the most people, was actually appointed by the Tokyo base camp as the nanjing left-behind unit. Hatohiko Asakamiya himself moved into nanjing on December 25. Before the 25th, the original 4 divisions were transferred.
It was from this day that the Japanese troops of the Sixteenth Division were given an aluminothermic agent (a kind of combustion aid), and the houses in Nanjing were burned street by street from the suburbs. He also systematically and systematically robbed many banks, rich merchants' mansions, and government agencies in Nanjing. After these places were robbed, they began to rob ordinary people, and in order to prevent anyone from resisting, all the places they passed were slaughtered. The most ferocious division in the entire Nanjing Massacre, as many as 150,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians were slaughtered by the 16th Division. This massacre lasted from December 25 to February 10, 1938, when Asakamiya Hatohiko was transferred away.
In addition to these two personnel transfers, Hirohito sent Sadaichi Suzuki to the 16th Division of the remaining units in Nanjing on January 1, 1938. This man was arguably one of Hirohito's few cronies, and Sadaichi Suzuki differed from the others in that he was very gifted in economics, and he understood very well the regularity of finance and banking in the operation of the country's economy, and he was later appointed as the head of the Planning Department to coordinate the overall war of the local front line in various industries in Japan. History can also see where Sadaichi Suzuki appeared, so what is Hirohito's focus and attention. He was Hirohito's real eyeliner, and was sent to the Sixteenth Army, and it is conceivable that the purpose was first, to implement the various orders of Emperor Hirohito, and second, to carry out various robberies in Nanjing in a systematic, organized, and planned manner. So he transported a large amount of looted legal tender and all kinds of materials that the Nationalist government had not been able to transport to Shanghai, and turned them into hard currency of the Japanese military for the international procurement of strategic materials such as oil and steel.
In addition to the above three personnel transfers, Hirohito also sent many of the junior officers he had met during his inspections in Europe to various divisions and regiments of the Japanese army as staff officers. In doing so, Hirohito was able to directly command the divisions. In fact, before the Battle of Songhu began, Ishihara Guan'er and others of the General Staff Headquarters repeatedly opposed the expansion of the war and even drew a dividing line of war. The original order of the General Staff Headquarters was to hit Suzhou to Jiaxing, and it could not fight anymore. However, because of Hirohito's pressure, the Japanese did not stop the attack. (Although ishihara, Tada, as the deputy chief of staff, resisted much of Hirohito's interference.) According to Japanese regulations, it was the General Staff Headquarters that gave the Emperor a combat proposal, and the Emperor approved the battle pieces above the level of the emperor, and this order could only be carried out, that is, the emperor could not directly issue an order, which was a violation of procedure.
Under these circumstances, the General Staff Headquarters had to draw up a second dividing line from Changzhou to Huzhou, and did not allow the Japanese army to continue to attack, because it would be Nanjing if it continued to fight. In accordance with this order, the Japanese stopped the attack on November 24 when they reached the second dividing line. As a result, Hirohito immediately ordered Shimomura, who had just been replaced by a short time ago, to send an important telegram directly to the Japanese troops on the front line across the general staff headquarters to let them continue to attack, and the intriguing telegram was not to the commanders of the divisions, but to the staff officers who had just been sent by Hirohito to the divisions.
So on the 27th, when these staff officers on the front received the telegram, they understood that although the telegram was sent by Shimomura, the decision could only be made by Hirohito. Therefore, these staff officers immediately crossed the orders issued by the commanders at all levels of the division and regiment and attacked Nanjing directly. On the evening of November 27, in the face of the actions of the divisions and regiments that had become facts, Tada Jun finally had to compromise, he knew that he could not resist Hirohito behind Shimomura, and agreed to issue the order, but he put forward two conditions, the first condition was signed on November 27, but the effective date was December 1, that is, four days later (this is the conventional implication in the Japanese Army that the person who issued the order was forced to do so, and he wanted to put this historical record on the record) Second, he demanded that the emperor must use the emperor's edict. The national seal was stamped with the national seal to issue this order. According to the normal process, it usually takes a week to stamp the national seal, but to Tada's great surprise, on the morning of November 28, the national seal was stamped, and the whole process was completed, and he was forced to sign and agree.
In February 1938, Prince Asakamiya was recalled to Tokyo by Emperor Hirohito because he had donated a large amount of various materials (including gold, precious folk books, and various collectibles) stolen from Nanjing to Hirohito, so he was promoted to a knighthood and was rewarded with a porcelain vase with chrysanthemums, from which he was promoted to general. From the whole details, it can be seen that Emperor Hirohito was not only aware of the entire Nanjing Massacre, but even behind the scenes. After the war, I asked Hirohito if he knew what the Japanese army was doing on the front line. In fact, it is more important to ask Hirohito, will you not know?
But at the time of the post-war trial, the Japanese imperial family escaped without even appearing in court to call witnesses. In the end, only some Class A war criminals were sentenced to death. In fact, through these columns of facts, we can see that these people are only the front desk, and who the forces behind them are, we should be more clear.