On December 13, 1937, the Kuomintang 100,000 troops were defeated in the defense of Nanjing, and tens of thousands of Japanese troops attacked the city of Nanjing from the Zhonghua Gate, thus opening the prelude to the Nanjing Massacre.
On December 13, the first day after the end of the Defense Of Nanjing, the Japanese army began a massacre of humanity, and thousands of soldiers and civilians fell under the butcher's knife of the Japanese army on the streets of Nanjing, and the capital of the former Nationalist government became a hell on earth.
The Nanjing Massacre caused more than 300,000 Nanjing soldiers and civilians to be martyred, of which more than 60,000 were prisoners of war, and in view of this set of unbearable data, the author is puzzled, since so many prisoners of war were slaughtered, why were there still many officers and men of the Nationalist army who surrendered to the Japanese army at that time?
In view of this problem, apart from the reasons for the loss of resistance of the Nationalist army caused by chiang kai-shek's government's order to retreat, what other unknown reasons are there?
More than 70 years after the Nanjing Massacre, in 2013, a hundred-year-old veteran who experienced the defense of Nanjing used his own personal experience to tell the world why.
The centenarian veteran, Cai Jiyou, told the world about the unforgettable history of blood and tears in an interview with reporters in 2013.
Born in 1913, Cai Jiyou was only 24 years old when he participated in the defense of Nanjing, he was subordinate to the 66th Army of the National Revolutionary Army, and in 1937 he first participated in the "Battle of Songhu" with the troops, and later retreated to Nanjing with the large troops.
When the hundred-year-old veteran was interviewed by the Guangzhou Daily reporter in 2013, he still recalled the fierce battle with a clear mind: "As soon as the troops arrived in Nanjing, they received the order to defend the city of Nanjing, and our regiment drew a battalion of troops from the outer line to the city to support. The Japanese devils were very cunning, they did not rush directly to the city gate, but detoured through the area of the nearby wall relatively low to climb the wall into the city, the battalion commander saw the situation and rushed to allocate a group of people to suppress the Japanese soldiers who climbed over the wall into the city, fortunately, the number of people who came in was not large, and the gap was blocked in time. However, the Firepower of the Japanese Army was fierce, the casualties of the soldiers were very large, and the situation was very passive. ”
It can be seen from this that the Nationalist troops and the Japanese army launched a fierce defensive war in the defense of Nanjing during the war, and the author believes that the reason why this battle can be recorded in the annals of history is because the Nationalist army lost the city of Nanjing, prompting the Japanese army to create the Nanjing Massacre.
However, today we cannot one-sidedly evaluate the Nanjing Defense War, because the Nanjing Defense War was fought extremely fiercely in history, and many officers and men of the Nationalist Army sacrificed their lives for the country in this battle to defend their families and defend the country, and they are all heroes of the Chinese nation.
However, with Chiang Kai-shek's order, the senior generals of the Kuomintang army led by Tang Shengzhi left hundreds of thousands of troops who were still desperately resisting to flee for their lives, eventually causing the defenders to lose their fighting spirit, flee one after another, and give up the city of Nanjing to the invading Japanese army.
According to Cai Jiyou, a hundred-year-old veteran, he recalled: "On December 12, many officers and soldiers who were fighting fiercely with the Japanese army received the order to retreat, the army was suddenly confused, there was a terrible rout, the scene was extremely tragic, many soldiers were trampled to death by the crowd, most of them fled to Shimonoseki, ready to cross the river, and later I learned that the entire Shimonoseki became a slaughterhouse for the Japanese army, and thousands of officers and soldiers died there." More than 100 people of our company broke through from the city gate, and very few people finally rushed out of the city gate, so I fled to the outskirts of Nanjing and hid, where I did not eat or drink for several days, and then many traitors with small white flags shouted the slogan of surrendering their weapons and surrendering. ”
Through this recollection of Cai Jiyou, a hundred-year-old veteran, he told the world the reasons why many soldiers of the Nationalist army surrendered, and it turned out that they believed the lies made up by the Japanese army in the face of hunger and cold, and then they took the initiative to surrender.
Later, Cai Jiyou, like other officers and soldiers who surrendered, was massacred by the Japanese army on a large scale, but Cai Jiyou did not die, survived in the pile of dead people, and finally escaped from the magic cave.
Through the recollection of Cai Jiyou, a hundred-year-old veteran, the author believes that at the time of the Nanjing Massacre, there were still many main reasons for the surrender of the Nationalist army to the Japanese army in the following aspects:
First, a large number of Nationalist soldiers distributed on the outskirts of Nanjing did not know that the Japanese army had carried out a large-scale massacre of prisoners of war in the city of Nanjing.
Second, after several days of food and water, he listened to the lies of the traitors and believed that the Japanese army would give preferential treatment to the prisoners, so he surrendered in a desperate situation.
Third, the defeat in the defense of Nanjing caused thousands of officers and men of the Nationalist army to lose their fighting spirit and seek their own livelihood.
Through the above three reasons, it is not difficult to understand why many officers and men of the Nationalist army voluntarily surrendered to the Japanese army during the Nanjing Massacre. Unfortunately, they did not get a way to survive, but fell into the "magic cave" of the Japanese army, and finally fell into the massacre of the Japanese army to exterminate humanity.
In short, in view of the experience of the hundred-year-old veteran Cai Jiyou, the author believes that the reason for the failure of the Nanjing Defense War is not how fierce the Japanese aircraft cannons are, but in the spirit, a confidence in the war to the end, if the 100,000 soldiers of the Nationalist Army fought a bloody battle with the Japanese army to the end, then it may change the tragic history of the Nanjing Massacre.
Reference: "Centenarian Veterans Remember the Defense of Nanjing"