Reading time:

1–2 minutes

Between December 1937 and January 1938 on of the great crimes of Japan’s war against China occurred at the Chinese capital of Nanjing. Determined to break Chiang Kai Shek’s nationalist forces, the Japanese murdered tens of thousands of captured soldiers and proceeded to slaughter the civilian population. The Japanese army went of the rampage, killing children and raping the city’s female population. In 1985 a permanent memorial hall to the horrors inflicted on the city and on China by Japan was unveiled in the city and this podcast hears from Keith Lowe’s Prisoners of History as the historian explores the memorial hall and explores its significance the the questions that arise from contested historical memory.


  • I will be running a livestream Q&A for students on Wednesday November 20th. You can access it here, subscribe to the channel to get your reminder.


Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each week


If you enjoy the Explaining History podcast and its many years of content and would like to help the show continue, please consider supporting

Get the weekly analysis

One piece every week connecting current events to their historical roots — free, every Tuesday.

Subscribe free →

Paid tier also available — deeper dives, full archive, essay guides.

If this was useful, there’s more where it came from.

Every week I publish one piece connecting a current event to its historical roots — free, every Tuesday. Paid subscribers get two additional deeper dives and full archive access.

Subscribe to Explaining History →

Leave a Reply

Discover more from Explaining History Podcast

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading