Of course, this is also a reflection of the social structure of the so-called patriotic activists, who, according to the gathered intelligence, have an uncertain social identity of these small citizens (students, printers, shop apprentices, mirror makers, jewelers, teahouses, shop assistants, retailers, etc.), who rent low-cost houses and move from one house to another, killing time and waiting for another terrorist mission.

They roam the city where there is a huge disparity between the rich and the poor. Before the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Shanghai was considered "a 48-storey hell under a 24-storey building." ”

But even though the city's elites were in many ways detached from the masses of the people, the social impact of this war of terror was like a shrapnel exploding in their midst.

In fact, they are double victims because they are often the target of kidnappings and assassinations because of their status; They were also passive witnesses to the repeated fighting between the terrorist forces of Chongqing and a puppet regime in Japan, and many were shot and killed.

Japan's overreaction to Chinese patriots has led to the ambiguity of the Americans becoming tougher and demanding the abolition of commercial relations between the United States and Japan. This decision of the President of the United States, in turn, pushed Japan to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Is it possible that assassins like Enzo Xu could have foreseen this obscure causal relationship? It would drag the United States into war with Japan and help China ultimately defeat the aggressor.

This is unlikely, although General Daley, the head of the security of the National Government, himself certainly expects this possibility. The young patriots put down their mahjong tiles, left their hotels in the center of the city, and attacked one high-ranking collaborator after another on the road, inadvertently plunging the United States into a war that ended in their deep involvement in China's civil war, though far from certain which side (or the Kuomintang) would become China's rulers.

It's just that in this fight, the terrorists in Shanghai were the first to drop the dice.

The Battle of Shanghai lasted for three months, and in the first few days after the outbreak of Sino-Japanese war in Shanghai on August 13, 1937, the Chinese showed extraordinary fighting enthusiasm in the face of devastating artillery fire from naval ships anchored in the river, driving the Japanese to the Huangpu River.

Due to the neutrality of the Public Concession, it was impossible for the Japanese to encircle the squadron from the flanks until their expeditionary force opened a second battlefield between Wusong and Liuhe in the north on 1 September. Even then, Chang Kaishen continued to throw his most elite troops into this decisive battle.

By October, China had 71 divisions and almost all artillery units, totaling 500,000 men. The Japanese army had 6 divisions and 6 independent brigades, with a total of only 200,000 men. However, its aircraft gained air supremacy and had an advantage in artillery fire.

Zhabei suffered the worst fire in history. However, the Chinese still held their ground with composure and incredible heroism, as was the case with those who witnessed their sacrifice.

On November 5, the third battlefield was opened. At that time, Yanagawa Heisuke led the Tenth Army (three divisions with a total of 30,000 men) to land at Hangzhou Bay, advance inland to the rear of the squadron's right flank, and on November 9 routed the Shanghai-Nanjing Railway. Most of the bridges there had earlier been destroyed by the Japanese Air Force.

General Matsui's armored column was no longer held back by the rubble in Zhabei, but took advantage of the squadron's retreat to carry out slaughter. About 300,000 Chinese died in the Battle of Shanghai, and hundreds of thousands more died in the fall of Nanjing on December 12.

Shanghai was the first world metropolis to be destroyed in World War II, and its industry suffered losses of $5.6 billion. Large swathes of residential areas have been devastated and hundreds of thousands of people have been left homeless. Nine hundred factories, workshops and workshops were destroyed. Another thousand facilities were destroyed or occupied by the Japanese army. If the losses suffered by the Chinese district are taken into account, the city has lost 70 percent of its industrial potential, and 600,000 people in Shanghai and its adjacent industrial areas have lost their jobs.

War losses are estimated at 1 billion, 2 billion, or even more than 3 billion yuan, and the exact figure is unknown. More than $800 million in foreign investment was also lost. China's economic recovery, which had previously been concentrated in Shanghai and showed good prospects in early 1937, was thus stifled by the war, and the country was set back decades.

The influx of refugees into the French and Public Concessions, which were only 10 square miles, caused the population to skyrocket from 1.5 million to 4 million in a matter of weeks, with an average of 31 per household. Most of the 175 camps have returned to their rural hometowns, but tens of thousands of homeless people still live on the streets, and tens of thousands sleep in the corridors of office buildings, commodity storage, temples, hometown associations, entertainment venues, warehouses, and so on.

With the onset of winter, disease, hunger, cold, and other hardships also came, and by the end of the year, more than 10,000 corpses were received on the streets or in the ruins.

However, it is unbelievable that Shanghai, the "isolated island" surrounded by the Japanese occupation forces and which did not end until the attack on Pearl Harbor four years later, began to enjoy a superficial abnormal economic boom. The cotton mills in the Public Concession were re-operated in the name of the British and American companies, and the profits were doubled or tripled, and seven new factories were established.

The mill's output increased by 10 percent per year. The U.S.-controlled Shanghai Electric Power Company has expanded by 10 percent, and the cost of equipment has reached $2 million. There were 400 small businesses in the Public Concession, most of them from the Japanese-occupied areas, and the maritime and insurance industries also developed because of the imports of raw materials for manufacturing of chemical products, medicinal oils, glassware, light bulbs, flashlights, electric fans, concandies, and cigarettes.

The stimulus from the growing demand for immigrants, including Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Europe, was the main reason for this prosperity. Another type of growing demand comes from trade with the "free China" of the mainland through the communication routes of the Japanese-occupied areas.

At the beginning of 1940, the volume of such trade was estimated at $1.2 billion, and Japanese officers had made a fortune by taking bribes, and they were prone to bribes from Chinese merchants (now joined by Alyosha's Chamber of Commerce and Pusu's Firm).

Export trade also improved, mainly because the 50 German companies in Shanghai took over a large amount of shipping business60 tea, 70 sesame seeds, 75 vegetable oil, 40 pig intestines, 25 egg products, and all the leather goods available in the Shanghai market to support the wartime economy of the Third Reich in terms of food, clothing, and shoes.

Throughout the war, the Kuomintang maintained an exiled Shanghai government. Nevertheless, as soon as they retreated from Shanghai on November 11, the Japanese authorities proposed that a number of celebrities, such as Boss Du and Boss Yu, take over the administration of the city, but these targets either left Shanghai for Hong Kong or expressed dissent for fear of being attacked by nationalists.

Lu Bohong, a Catholic priest who has invested heavily in the Nanshi tram, the power company, and the Zhabei waterworks, agreed to form a "Nanshi Local Autonomy Committee" but refused to be mayor.

Therefore, when the puppet regime in North China merged with the Beiping Provisional Government headed by Wang Kemin in January 1938, South China established the Restoration Government headed by Liang Hongzhi in Nanjing in March 1938.

The puppet regime declared that it would abolish the one-party dictatorship, establish a constitutional government, eliminate and avoid the "reddening" of East Asia, consolidate Sino-Japanese peace and cooperation, bring refugees back to their homes, set up security organizations to eliminate thieves and carry out "village clearance", provide relief to the unemployed, promote industrial and agricultural production with the help of foreign capital and "friendly countries", assist existing industrial and financial institutions in increasing production and development, make the country rich, and combine China's traditional moral values with international scientific knowledge. Radical reform of education, abolish the exorbitant taxes that had previously burdened the population, resolutely support and encourage the full use of talents, free criticism of the government, and strict restrictions on the dictatorship of lower-level officials.

Foreign observers were aware that in June 1938 there was a strong wave of "patriotic fervor" in Shanghai, with the flag of Chinese nationalists flying at all the anniversaries. Many tabloids published editorials advocating force, and regular newspapers wrote articles encouraging young people to join or organize guerrilla groups. On 10 June, the first of seven terrorist attacks on collaborators took place. A cotton broker named You Juru, a member of the Japanese-sponsored Shanghai Citizens' Association, was injured, while his Russian bodyguard was killed.

The next day, a minor official of the Restoration government was assassinated and wounded. On June 18, Ren Bao, the land commissioner of the puppet government, was killed at a ball between Chinese collaborators and Japanese friends. Six days later, a man was killed in a law firm, four of You Juyi's friends were shot in a hotel room, and the next day, Gu Gongyi, a grain merchant who was also a member of the Shanghai Citizens' Association, was killed.

On 29 June, the Assassins, disguised as beggars, assassinated Shang Deming, the head of the Ship Inspection Department of the puppet government.

Public opinion differs on the evaluation of this wave of terrorist activities. There are some indications that this is a dispute between opposing factions of collaborators, all of whom want to gain political favor and financial support from the Japanese. It is speculated that these disguised patriotic events were actually the spoils of war for Japan. Others believe it was a revenge murder by a rice merchant or boatman who was enraged by the heavy taxes imposed by the ship's inspectors.

However, most people believe that this was the activity of a Chinese Kuomintang organization in Shanghai, and that the assassinations were all motivated by patriotic motives, and most believe that the organization was the Blue Coat Society, a society zealously loyal to Chiang Kai-shek dedicated to the eradication of "traitors."

Of course, the Blue Coat Society is only part of a comprehensive system that includes the Renaissance Society, and its "" nature is constantly being questioned. The original Blue Coat Society was founded in 1932. As a peripheral organization of the Lixing Society, it was a right-wing group of graduates of the Whampoa Military Academy who enthusiastically supported the "leader" Chiang Kai-shek.

Prior to 1934, their guerrilla activities in North China (including the dramatic assassination of the collaborator Zhang Jingyao) led the Japanese military to consider the Blue Coat Society to be "the mastermind behind the all-out anti-Japanese activities in North China and Manchukuo." Indeed, they were also considered to be the main organizers of anti-Japanese terrorist activities in central China, so the Japanese had more than one reason to demand the dissolution of the Blue Coat Society in the 1935 Ho-Mei Agreement.

There is a limit to the National Government's compliance with the agreement. As Chen Lifu said afterwards: "Although Chang Kaishen ordered the dissolution (of the Fuxing Society), its dissolution was only superficial. In Shanghai, Wu Xingya, director of the Social Affairs Bureau and chairman of the Shanghai Party Department of the Kuomintang, organized three groups, under the management of former members of the Blue Coat Society, to continue to complete the work of the Fuxing Society.

However, after Wu Xingya's death on August 4, 1936, the three organizations ceased to be active.

Nonetheless, between 1937 and 1938, both official and unofficial organizations attributed anti-Japanese terrorist activities to the notorious Blue Coat Society, believing that its leader was Cai Jinjun, a former police chief, who was disguised as the head of the Shanghai branch of the Inspirational Society, and whose secret headquarters were located in his apartment in Paris at the intersection of Rue de la Ferde and Rue Saposay in the French Concession.

After the end of the Battle of Shanghai in 1937, although they retreated, they left behind a terrible "legacy", terrorist activities and the Blue Coat Society.

At that time, the police in the Public Concession and the French Concession could have easily eradicated this monster, but they allowed it to develop, and even raised tigers, so that this monster would have to find some sacrifices to satisfy its appetite from time to time.

However, the truth of the matter is simple: after the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, the "Blue Coat Society" became the lingua franca of two different types of anti-Japanese activities: the resistance movement of guerrillas in the suburbs and the political terror in the urban areas. To a certain extent, both types of activities were organized by Daley, the head of Chang Kaishen's military secret police.

On August 13, after the outbreak of war, Daley rushed to Shanghai to meet with Boss Du, the leader of the Green Gang, at No. 10 Dumei Road in the French Concession. After this meeting, the Pudong Guerrillas, the Taihu Special Forces, the Zhongyi Rescue, and the Jiangsu-Zhejiang Action Committee were organized one after another. According to information gathered by the Police Department of the Ministry of Industry, Chang Kaishen's military committee decided to organize an "extraordinary period service group" in early September to deal with traitors and spies in Shanghai.

Shanghai already had a security force, but its purpose was mainly to act as a police force for the Chinese municipalities after the Japanese withdrew in July 1932. And in order to engage the Japanese on two fronts, the front and the rear, Chang Kaishen decided to create an urban guerrilla unit. The Military Commission then allocated 500,000 yuan for this organization, which was commanded by Wang Jingjiu, commander of the 87th Division. It is headquartered in Jiangyin, and has been training students engaged in intelligence work in the "officer training class", which is also an introductory training course for the secret service department.

Three days after the outbreak of fighting in Shanghai, 240 students were sent to Longhua Primary School as special forces, and General Wang's "Extraordinary Time Service Group" was accompanied by General Cai Jinjun, director of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau, and Du Yuejian, who immediately tried to turn the new organization to his own use.

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