Incidents related to burning corpses and raising ashes

On July 19, 1864, inside and outside Tianjing (today’s Nanjing), dark clouds rolled over the city, flames shot into the sky, and the billowing smoke was filled with a strong smell of burnt human flesh.

At noon, following Zeng Guoquan's order, a loud "bang" exploded in the sky. The city wall at Taipingmen was blown down by more than 20 feet, and the entire Tianjing city was shaken. Tens of thousands of Hunan troops with blood-red eyes and violent beasts shouted together like a tide, waving their swords and sweeping towards the collapsed city wall like a tornado. Taiping troops guarding the city came from all over to block the gap. They threw bombs like raindrops from the city wall. The more than 400 Hunan Army death squads who rushed to the front screamed and were all burned to death. But thousands of Hunan troops stepped on the corpses of their companions regardless, and swarmed in while swirling into a ball. The Taiping Army could no longer withstand the roaring flood of enemies. By the evening of the battle, all nine gates were destroyed and Tianjing fell. The Hunan army "killed people on sight and burned houses on sight." The remaining Taiping troops engaged in fierce hand-to-hand combat, and many people burned themselves to death with their families shouting, "Leave no scraps of rag for the demons to enjoy!"

Everyone is crazy! Without exception, they only want to hunt for the most important person - Hong Xiuquan, the King of Heaven.

However, the Hunan Army turned the entire Tianjing City upside down, and there was no sign of Hong Xiuquan. On July 30, Xiong Dengwu, the commander-in-chief of the Hunan Army, received a tip from a palace maid named Huang from the Taiping Army. Only then did he learn that Hong Xiuquan had been dead for more than ten days. Under her guidance, Zeng Guoquan sent people to dig out Hong Xiuquan's body from the main hall of Tianwang Mansion.

Until his death, Hong Xiu maintained his inherent sense of mystery. Before dying, he ordered people to wrap himself tightly in more than a dozen layers of thick cloth after death. The Hunan army dug up the grave, tore off all the thick cloth covering Hong Xiuquan's body, and carried it to the Yuhuatai in the south of the city for Zeng Guofan to inspect in person.

Zeng Guofan and Hong Xiuquan, two opponents who have been fighting hard for 11 years, have only heard of each other but have never met. They did not expect to meet in such a strange way today. Zeng Guofan described this old rival in his diary: "The beard is slightly white and can be counted, the head is bald and hairless, there is still flesh on the left arm and left shoulder, and the whole body is wrapped in a yellow satin embroidered dragon robe."

God’s will is always difficult to ask. Just after the examination of Hong Xiuquan's body was completed, the city of Nanjing, which was originally clear and clear, suddenly experienced strong winds and heavy rain, which lasted for about half an hour.

On August 1, Zeng Guofan categorically issued the most severe punishment: "Kill the corpse and burn it with fire!" Hong Xiuquan's body was dragged out again and chopped into pieces with knives and axes. Even so, he did not give up. Zeng Guofan ordered people to mix the meat paste with gunpowder, load it into cannonballs, and then launch them one after another - even if he died, Hong Xiuquan would be wiped out in ashes and his ghost would never return.

However, if "burning corpses and raising ashes" is just a meaningless revenge for Hong Xiuquan after his death, then his obsessive, mysterious and absurd performance before his death shows that there are many people far away in Hunan. Before the army's artillery blew down the Tianjing city wall, Hong Xiuquan's ideals and beliefs had been shattered, and his spiritual world had collapsed. In 1945, the Anti-Japanese War was victorious and the Kuomintang returned its capital to Nanjing.

Hearing that Wang Jingwei was buried on Meihua Mountain, Chiang Kai-shek was furious and ordered He Yingqin to level the grave immediately.

So, He Yingqin sent out an engineering battalion to blow up Wang's tomb.

The bombing of the tomb was carried out in secret. In the first three days, traffic to the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum was blocked. Engineer blasting is divided into two steps, the first step is to blast the outer layer of concrete, and the second step is to blast the inner cellar.

In the middle of the night on January 21, 1946, a loud "bang" was heard, and the tomb exploded into several pieces. When the coffin was opened, Ma Junchao, the mayor of Nanjing at the time, personally inspected it, and other unrelated personnel stayed away. After the coffin was opened, it was found that Wang's body had been embalmed after being placed in the coffin and the body was well preserved. Except for a three-inch note "The soul returns" written by Chen Bijun in Wang's pocket, there was nothing else.

Subsequently, the coffin was loaded onto a large truck and transported to Qingliang Mountain for burning and ashes. The engineering battalion leveled the cemetery that night, built a small pavilion on the cemetery, built corridors on both sides, and then planted flowers, plants and trees, making the place a scenic spot that contrasts with the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum. When visitors come here, no one would think that Wang Jingwei, a traitor who betrayed the Japanese, was once buried here.

Before his death, Wang Jingwei wrote a desperate poem "Self-mockery". The poem says: My heart will be destroyed and everything will be over. There will be no regrets anywhere in the world. Even if there are ancestors who have tasted the heat and cold, there will be no descendants to continue the Spring and Autumn Period.

This poem expresses Wang Jingwei’s helpless and desolate mood when he was dying. A generation of traitors ended up like this. In the early summer of 1944, the Soviet Red Army approached the German army's home base, and the Allied forces also successfully landed in Normandy. The complete defeat of Nazi Germany was irreversible. Secret organizations emerged inside that attempted to overthrow Hitler, establish a new government, and negotiate peace with the United States and Britain. They formulated an action plan codenamed "Project Valkyrie." Colonel Stauffenberg became the central figure in this organization. At the end of January 1944, 22-year-old German Army Lieutenant Ewald von Kleist, who was injured while fighting on the Eastern Front, suddenly received a telegram asking him to return to the army immediately. When he returned to the army, Kleist was surprised to find that the telegram was sent by Stauffenberg. Bringing a time bomb to meet Hitler Stauffenberg gave Kleist an interview: The German army was about to switch to new military uniforms, and a batch of samples had been produced. The military factory decided to find a time to invite officers and soldiers to try them on for Hitler to review.

The insiders of the arsenal had reached a secret agreement with Stauffenberg, and the assassination operation was carried out during Hitler's military parade, and one of the people who tried on the military uniform was Kleist. According to the idea, Kleist would tie the bomb to his abdomen, detonate it when Hitler came up to take a closer look, and die with him. However, all the new military uniforms were destroyed during Allied bombing, and Hitler issued an order to cancel the military parade. Therefore, the secret organization can only wait for the next opportunity. In June 1944, Stauffenberg was promoted to chief of staff of General Fromm, commander of the German Reserve Army. This position put Stauffenberg in regular contact with Hitler. Determined to start planning and preparation, he repeatedly practiced installing and controlling the British time bomb with his remaining three fingers. On July 11, 1944, Stauffenberg brought a bomb and stayed with Hitler and Goering for half an hour, but he did not flip the bomb switch because Himmler was not present. They had decided that it would be best to kill the three Nazi devils (Hitler, Himmler, and G?ring) at the same time. The second chance came on July 15, when neither Himmler nor G?ring was present. Stauffenberg left the room and called his companions to inform his companions that, although Hitler was alone, he had decided to activate the bomb device. But when he returned to the conference room, Hitler had left. On July 19, Stauffenberg suddenly received a notice asking him to go to the "Wolf's Lair", the bunker where Hitler was hiding, at 13:00 the next day to report on the progress of the formation of the new "People's Infantry Division". This time, Stauffenberg decided to blow up Hitler regardless of whether the other two men were present. On the morning of July 20, the sun was shining brightly and the weather was very hot. Stauffenberg flew to the "Wolf's Lair" with his adjutant, Lieutenant Halfden. He put three items in his briefcase: two bombs, a timed detonation device and a shirt. At 11 o'clock, Stauffenberg arrived at the "Wolf's Lair" on time. An adjutant in charge of the reception found that his purse was very heavy. Stauffenberg said calmly: "We have a lot to talk about." The base of the table saved Hitler's life. After 12 o'clock, Stauffenberg walked into Keitel, the Minister of Supreme Commander 's office. Keitel told him that because Mussolini would arrive at 14:30, the meeting originally scheduled for 13:00 was moved forward to 12:30. Time is running out. Stauffenberg, who was blind in his left eye and had only three fingers on his left hand, hurriedly hid in the toilet and began assembling a bomb. The midsummer heat and excessive nervousness made Stauffenberg's movements slow. Under the constant urging of Adjutant Keitel, he had to reduce the original two bombs to one, and the timer was set to 12 minutes. Stauffenberg changed out of his soaked shirt and hurried to the venue. He had thought the meeting would be held in a basement - the walls of the basement were made of reinforced concrete and there were no windows, and the power of the bomb would be very concentrated. But he was led into a wooden house with three windows. The power of bombs will be greatly reduced here. The meeting has begun. Hitler was sitting in the middle of one side of the table, with his back to the door, listening to the report of General Hausinger, the Army's deputy chief of staff and chief of operations, while fiddling with his magnifying glass. There were about 20 officers standing around the table. Stauffenberg stood next to the table and placed his leather bag under the table, about two meters away from Hitler's legs. It was now 12:37, and in 5 minutes, the bomb in the bag would explode. Stauffenberg asked to leave to make an emergency call to his superiors and slipped out. An officer next to him leaned over the table to see the map more clearly. He found that Stauffenberg's bulging leather bag was in the way, so he picked it up with one hand and placed it on the outside of the thick base of the table. aside. So there was this thick base between the bomb and Hitler. Perhaps it was this seemingly inadvertent move that saved Hitler's life and changed subsequent history. At 12:42, the bomb exploded on time. After a loud bang, 4 of the 24 attendees died on the spot. But the target of the assassination, Hitler, escaped with his life. He only burned his thighs, singed his hair, and damaged his eardrums. After the loud bang, Stauffenberg saw thick smoke and flames coming from the building. He had no doubt that everyone in the house had been killed or seriously injured. Although the alarm was immediately raised, Stauffenberg successfully passed four SS checkpoints, arrived at a nearby airport, and flew to Berlin. After Stauffenberg arrived in Berlin, he immediately ordered the launch of the "Valkyrie Plan" in an attempt to seize power. However, a few hours later, they got the news: Hitler was not dead! Kleist hurriedly reported to Stauffenberg: "We are in trouble now, you have to think of a way." He was "burned to ashes" by the SS "At 18:00, Hitler gave a speech: "A group of ambitious and irrational officers tried to usurp leadership... but God allowed me to continue serving the people." The furious Hitler immediately launched a bloody revenge, and he arrested about 7,000 people. "the men and women involved" and executed approximately 5,000 of them, most of whom were not directly involved in the assassination. Both Stauffenberg and Kleist's fathers were shot, but they were relatively lucky. Many people were tortured by the "Gestapo" (German secret police) and then hung with metal wires from the piano or hooked to death with iron hooks. . Part of the process was also filmed for Hitler to "enjoy". Stauffenberg was eventually captured, and he and four other companions were sentenced to death and immediately shot. At the last moment, he desperately tried to excuse his companions, shouting: "Long live our sacred German Empire!" Gunshots rang out, and Stauffenberg fell to the ground. He was only 36 years old.

Stauffenberg's body was buried near the execution site, but SS leader Himmler ordered the body to be exhumed and burned, and the ashes to be scattered into the sewage.