Nanking
from The Dave Bowman Show
There are some stories that historians approach with a little more hesitation, not because the facts are unclear, but because they are so painfully clear. The Second Battle of Nanking and the massacre that followed sit in that uncomfortable space where human behavior sinks so low that even the Hitchhikers Guide would probably close itself and ask for a long vacation. Yet history does not give us that option. The events that unfolded in and around Nanking in December of 1937 were the result of choices made on battlefields, in political offices, and in the minds of men who believed that their cause lifted them above ordinary restraint. Those choices produced one of the worst episodes of violence in modern history. The story remains difficult, but difficulty is not an excuse for silence.
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