A Dark Page in History: The Nanjing Massacre and Post-Massacre Social Conditions Recorded in British Diplomatic Dispatches, Admiralty Documents, and U.S. Naval Intelligence Reports

On December 13, 1937, Japanese troops captured China’s former capital, Nanjing. The events that followed became known as the Rape of Nanking, or the Nanjing Massacre, which, with its magnitude and brutality, shocked the civilized world. Mass executions, rampant raping, wholesale looting, and widespread burning went on for weeks.

After the worst of the atrocities was over, three American diplomats were allowed to return to the fallen city on January 6, 1938. Three days later, British Consul H...