Japanese Atrocities in Nanjing: The Nanjing Massacre and Post-Massacre Social Conditions Recorded in German Diplomatic Documents

This book presents a collection of annotated English translations of German diplomatic documents—including telegrams, dispatches and reports—sent to the Foreign Office in Berlin and the German Ambassador in Hankou, China, by German diplomatic officials in Nanjing, and detailing Japanese atrocities and the conditions in and around Nanjing during the early months of 1938. The author visited the German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv) and the German Foreign Ministry Archives (Auswärtiges Amt Archiv) in Berlin, where these documents are currently archived, in 2008, 2016, and 2017 to locate and retrieve them. These diplomatic documents are of significant value in that they provide both detailed information and wide coverage, from different locations and on various topics. Further, the information offered is unique in a number of ways. First, the events were recorded from the perspective of Germans, citizens of a country that was a close ally of Japan, and second,these documents are not included in any other source. As such, these archival primary sources represent an invaluable addition to the research literature on the Nanjing Massacre and will undoubtedly benefit researchers and scholars for generations to come.