The Rape of Nanking

A secret history is at long last being revealed, highlighting the atrocities meted out to the Chinese by the Japanese in World War II. Such was the gruesome inventiveness of the torture inflicted on the Chinese when the Japanese overran Nanking in 1937, that even the Nazis were revolted by it. One Nazi representative living in the city, Schindler-like businessman John Rabe, was moved to save a quarter of a million Chinese.

This film draws extensively on Rabe's diaries in an unflinching account of The Rape of Nanking.

While the Nazi death camps were undoubtedly cold, methodical killing machines, the Japanese added an evil twist to the horrors of World War II when they overran Chinese lines in 1937. The order was given to kill all captives. In the ensuing massacre, known as the Rape of Nanking, the Japanese took to their task with glee. Soldiers competed to find crueller and more outlandish ways of torturing their victims to death. Accounts and photographs are truly stomach-turning. They vied with each other to kill the most Chinese in one day. They killed so many men, women and children with machetes that their arms ached.

Much of the Asian experience of World War II has been forgotten about in the West. America has traditionally played down the Rape of Nanking. It has been suggested that this is because the US brokered secret deals with the Japanese in exchange for their research on germ warfare and human biology.

The truth is revealed, however, in this definitive, powerful and disturbing film about Man's inhumanity to Man.

Genre: Documentary

Running Time: 60 minutes (approx)