Currently reading "Shanghai 1937, Stalingrad on the Yangtze"(Peter Harmsen). Illuminating ... without precedent: "... Taking place in a matter of months, from August to November, the Japanese military's victory in Shanghai had paved the way for the invasion of the capital Nanjing. The Battle of Shanghai was also the first instance of urban warfare, five years before Stalingrad, ensnaring a million Japanese and Chinese soldiers who thundered through a dense cosmopolitan city, leaving a trail of blood and rubble. Meanwhile, a largely untouched foreign community, cocooned in the safety of the concessions, watched the city collapse. Edgar Snow in 1941 contextualized it perfectly, "It was as though Verdun had happened on the Seine, in full view of a Right Bank Paris that was neutral; as though a Gettysburg was fought in Harlem, while the rest of Manhattan remained a non-belligerent observer."