Spy Wars: I am the Captain of the Military Police

12th Division, Kurume Division.

The Second Division reinforced Shanghai at the same time, and their casualties were similar.

Before the civil war, the division had only 1.6 men left.

The number of casualties in this battle was approximately 3000.

The battles between the 9th Division in the east of the city and the 16th Division in the north were extremely fierce, especially the repeated struggle for the outer positions of the Wulongshan Fort, which resulted in heavy losses.

101st Division, Tokyo Division.

The unfortunate soldiers of the Songhu Campaign almost became cannon fodder for Matsui Iwane at Wenzaobang. An entire division suffered losses exceeding two-thirds.

Including the wounded, the number is less than 10,000.

A total of 6,000 people participated in the battle, with approximately 1500 casualties.

As a special division, its combat strength is slightly inferior, and it mainly undertakes auxiliary offensive and guard missions.

However, due to a lack of experience, the casualty rate was not low in the complex urban environment, especially when faced with sniper fire and surprise attacks.

14th Division, Utsunomiya Division.

The casualties were approximately 2000. The main losses occurred in the battles of Tangshan and Chunhua Town.

They successfully intercepted and severely damaged the 18th and 114th Divisions of the Central China Expeditionary Army, which were attempting to break out.

However, the enemy's desperate "Banzai Charge" was extremely impactful, putting severe pressure on the blocking positions, resulting in frequent hand-to-hand combat and considerable casualties.

The division's decisive intervention and tenacious resistance played a crucial role in ending the civil war ahead of schedule, but it also suffered the most frantic, desperate blow from the remnants of the Central China Expeditionary Army.

Marine Corps and naval gun support personnel suffered relatively few casualties, totaling approximately several hundred.

The main losses came from sporadic artillery counterattacks from the shore and a few small-scale assaults.

Due to its unique characteristics, the Navy suffered the fewest casualties in this civil war on land, but the fire support it provided was crucial.

Total losses of the "rebels":

The total number of troops involved in the war was approximately 6 to 8.

Total casualties are estimated to be between 1.8 and 2, of which approximately 8000 are killed or seriously wounded.

Although the total casualties were far less than those of the Central China Expeditionary Army, the losses were mostly elite infantry and junior officers of the Kwantung Army system. The loss of these key personnel weakened the combat effectiveness of the troops in a real way and was difficult to make up for in the short term.

At the same time, this infighting within the Japanese army dealt a heavy blow to Nanjing, a city already on the verge of collapse.

In the fierce fighting between the two sides, especially indiscriminate shelling, bombing and intense street fighting, Nanjing civilians who failed to evacuate in time or whose hiding places were affected by the war suffered annihilation.

According to incomplete estimates, more than two thousand civilians died directly from stray bullets, artillery fire, and bombing during the civil war.

Behind this number are countless families who sought survival in the ruins, only to be ultimately swallowed up by the invaders' infighting.

In addition, looting of property intensified, and military discipline completely collapsed during the civil war.

In particular, the attacking troops, under the pretext of "sweeping away the remaining enemy forces," conducted a large-scale and systematic looting during their house-to-house search.

Gold, silver, valuables, antiques, paintings, grain, livestock—everything of value was looted.

The 4th Division even took the trade of "spoils of war" to new heights.

The loss of civilian property is incalculable.

The Chinese army's defense of Nanjing had already damaged the city, and the looting and destruction carried out by the Japanese army after entering the city only made matters worse.

During this civil war, the navy's naval guns bombarded targets within the city, the army's heavy artillery retaliated, and the air force dropped bombs.

After the battle, almost no intact buildings could be found in Nanjing.

The ancient capital, with a history spanning millennia, has been reduced to utter ruins, its urban functions completely paralyzed, resembling a ghost town.

However... one thing did not happen: the Central China Expeditionary Army, which stormed into Nanjing, only had time to loot and did not yet carry out a large-scale massacre before its attention was completely drawn to the "rebel army" at the city's gates.

This gave the refugees in Nanjing and the captured Chinese soldiers a chance to catch their breath.

This absurd and bloody infighting resulted in the Imperial Japanese Army suffering over 100,000 additional casualties outside Nanjing.

This is equivalent to the annihilation of several elite divisions in infighting.

A large number of experienced officers and sergeants were killed, heavy equipment was severely damaged, and the morale of the troops suffered a fatal blow.

However, what was more devastating than the loss of manpower was the utter political and strategic failure.

It thoroughly exposed and exacerbated the deep-seated factional conflicts within the Japanese Army, namely the Imperial Way Faction and the Control Faction, the Kwantung Army and the Central Government, and the Army and the Navy.

This internal damage was far more fatal than the losses on the battlefield, severely eroding the Japanese army's organizational efficiency, cohesion, and strategic coordination capabilities.

This land outside Nanjing is not only soaked in the blood of the Chinese people, but now it is also deeply etched with the shameful mark of the invaders killing each other.

However, due to its ugly nature of infighting, the casualty statistics of this internal conflict are destined to become a muddled account that is deliberately obscured, falsified, selectively forgotten, or even destroyed by various forces.

To maintain the myth of the "Imperial Army's" invincibility and internal stability, the Kyoto General Headquarters strictly ordered the downplaying of the incident, attributing the losses to "accidents" and "consumptions" during the "suppression of the remaining enemy forces."

To highlight their victory without revealing the extent of their internal strife, the victorious "rebel" Kwantung Army and the North China Area Army alliance tended to exaggerate enemy losses, minimize their own casualties, and blame many losses on "harassment by Chinese guerrillas."

The remnants of the Central China Expeditionary Army, which suffered a crushing defeat and disintegrated, often systematically concealed and downplayed their actual casualties in order to shirk responsibility for the defeat and seek a glimmer of hope. Many units that disappeared as a whole were directly listed as "missing" or "transferred".

. . . . . . . . . . .

On the afternoon of January 30, 1938, the sky was overcast and the biting wind swept across a desolate field outside Chunhua Town, on the southern outskirts of Nanjing.

Located at the junction of hills and plains, the area offers a relatively open view and is far from major transportation routes, making it appear particularly desolate and quiet.

This is the location where Matsui and others discussed and decided to accept the surrender of the Central China Expeditionary Army.

The choice of this location for the surrender ceremony was deliberately symbolic.

It was neither a bustling metropolis nor a strategic pass, but an unnamed, ordinary place easily forgotten by history, as if hinting at the humiliating nature of this surrender and the victor's urgent desire to cover it up as soon as possible.

On a field of rice stubble left after the harvest, the engineers worked through the night to build a very simple square wooden platform, about one meter high and no more than twenty square meters in area, using rough planks and logs.

The stage was empty except for a long table covered with faded green tarpaulin and two chairs.

The wooden platform was surrounded by freshly turned soil that was still damp. There were no decorations except for a few military flags representing the "victorious side" fluttering in the cold wind, which added to the somber and desolate atmosphere.

This place is about to become the collective execution ground, the spiritual execution ground, for the once invincible Central China Expeditionary Army.