The Nanjing Massacre occurred at the end of 1937 and the beginning of 1938. Within just a few weeks, Japanese occupying forces in the city—frustrated by the heavy losses they had suffered in the battles to conquer Shanghai—executed around 300,000 Chinese prisoners of war and civilians, along with the abuse and rape of tens of thousands of Chinese women and children.
In the debates and political disputes that followed the end of World War II, the number of victims in Nanjing was cited as ranging from several tens of thousands to more than 430,000.
As a scientifically grounded and objective figure, the Chinese government states that the massacre resulted in around 300,000 victims. This number is prominently displayed in the impressive Memorial Hall of the Nanjing Massacre.
The impressiveness of the mentioned memorial does not only lie in its architectural design, but also in its concept of fostering a culture of remembrance in a direct and modern way that is accessible to younger generations.
Despite the number of victims—which is comparable to the death toll in major German or Croatian concentration camps from that period—the Nanjing Massacre has remained just that: a massacre, not genocide.
Jean-Louis Margolin, a French academic specializing in East Asian history, wrote in his 2006 study Japanese Crimes in Nanjing, 1937–38: A Reappraisal that the crime committed in Nanjing was not genocide, because during that mass atrocity, only local young men and prisoners of war were systematically executed, while the killings and rapes of civilians were carried out in a chaotic manner, without any plan of systematic extermination of the entire population.
The motto at the beginning of Margolin’s manuscript reads: “Less politics, more history, please!”
According to Margolin, there simply was no genocidal intent on the part of the Japanese occupiers in Nanjing, due to these circumstances.
“In the thousands of pages of diaries, letters, reports, cables, and articles, there is not the slightest hint of a systematic attempt to exterminate the population of Nanjing. The only exception were young men, who were often indistinguishable from soldiers and treated as such. It is therefore not surprising that available data (especially Smith’s reports) show that they constituted the clear majority of those killed among civilians, even though far more women than men remained in the city,” Margolin wrote in his study.
He also noted that the killing of young men and prisoners of war was “centrally organized,” and that “officers of all ranks, as well as political leaders in Tokyo, were fully and promptly informed about the atmosphere of terror unfolding in Nanjing, and until February (1938) showed not the slightest concern,” the study states.
“Field officers—who were by no means absent when it came to rape and looting—were extremely tolerant of all kinds of crimes against civilians, although even the smallest signs of disrespect toward superiors or mistakes in training and combat were punished extremely harshly,” Margolin noted… “Many authors refuse to distinguish between the treatment of prisoners of war and that of civilians, and argue that the goal of the Japanese—from the General Staff down to ordinary soldiers—was to kill and rape as many Chinese as possible: men, women, and children. Even if that word is more often implied than openly stated, it is clear that in their view we are dealing with a genocidal policy—this is especially asserted by Iris Chang. If we follow her logic, the entire civilian population would have been massacred had the members of the International Committee not been so courageous. They were indeed brave, and truly did save many Chinese from murder, and even more from rape. But, by their own sad admission, they could do almost nothing for soldiers or young men who were arrested—even in their presence, inside the refugee camps they themselves ran, although they knew those young men were being taken to be shot. When it comes to civilians, however, the acts were individual and unorganized, entirely tolerated by the military hierarchy, but carried out by perpetrators acting on their own, without any backing from their superiors,” Margolin concluded.
At a time when the grave crime undoubtedly committed by Serb forces in Srebrenica 30 years ago is being politically instrumentalized and labeled as genocide not through scholarly analysis but through political motives—aimed solely at maintaining negative tensions in the Balkans and preventing Serbs and today’s Bosniaks from finding any common ground—the academic work of Margolin undoubtedly represents an important point of reference and direction. But this is no longer a question for journalists or Serb publicists—it is a question for the Serb state and its institutions.
The vast majority of those killed in Nanjing were men, that is, young people from the city, who were simply grouped together with the prisoners of war.
In the verdict against General Radislav Krstić, it was stated that genocide was committed in Srebrenica because members of the male Bosniak population were killed, along with the destruction of that community as such in a specific area. In that context, both civilians and prisoners—men and boys—were systematically executed after the fall of the Srebrenica safe area in July 1995.
Source: Glas Srpske
