The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)

Pvt.Joker

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The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)
was a major invasion of eastern China by Japan preceding and during World War II. It ended with the surrender of Japan in 1945

Invasion of China
Most historians place the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War on the Battle of Lugou Bridge (Marco Polo Bridge Incident) on July 7, 1937. Contemproary Chinese historians, however place the starting point at the Mukden Incident of September 18, 1931. Following the Mukden Incident, the Japanese Guandong Army occupied Manchuria and established the puppet state of Manchukuo in February 1932. Japan pressured China into recognising the independence of Manchukuo. Following the Battle of Lugou Bridge in 1937, the Japanese occupied Shanghai, Nanjing and Northern Shanxi as part of campaigns involving approximately 200,000 Japanese soldiers, and considerably more Chinese soldiers. Chinese historians estimate as many as 300,000 people perished in the Nanjing Massacre, after the fall of Nanjing.
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident not only marked the beginning of an open, undeclared, war between China and Japan, but also hastened the formation of the second Kuomintang-Communist Party of China (CCP). The collaboration took place with salutary effects for the beleaguered CCP. The distrust between the two antagonists was scarcely veiled. The uneasy alliance began breaking down by late 1938, despite Japan's steady territorial gains in northern China, the coastal regions, and the rich Yangtze River Valley in central China. After 1940, conflict between the Nationalists and Communists became more frequent in the areas outside Japanese control. The Communists expanded their influence wherever opportunities were presented, through mass organizations, administrative reforms, land and tax reform measures favoring peasants -- and the Nationalists attempted to neutralize the spread of Communist influence. The Japanese had neither the intention nor the capability of directly administering China. Their goal was to set up friendly puppet governments favorable to Japanese interests. However, the actions of the Japanese army made the governments that were set up very unpopular, and the Japanese refused to negotiate with either the Kuomintang or the Communist Party of China, which could have brought popularity.

Chinese Strategy
Compared to Japan, China was unprepared for war and had little military industrial strength, few mechanized divisions, and virtually no armor support. Up until the mid 1930s China had hoped that the League of Nations would provide countermeasures to Japan's aggression. In addition, the Kuomintang government was mired in an internal war against the Communists. All these disadvantages forced China to adopt a strategy whose first goal was to preserve its army strength, whereas a full frontal assault on the enemy would often prove to be suicidal. Also, pockets of resistance were to be continued in occupied areas to pester the enemy and make their administration over the vast lands of China difficult. These formed the basis of Chinese strategy during the war.

Chinese and Japanese equipment
At the commencement of the Chinese-Japanese War the Japanese Army possessed 17 divisions, each composed of approximately 22,000 men, 5,800 horses, 9,500 rifles and sub machine guns, 600 heavy machine guns of assorted types, 108 artillery pieces, and 24 tanks. Special forces were also available. The Japanese Navy displaced a total of 1,9 million tonnes, ranking third in the world, and possessed 2,700 aircraft at the time. Each Japanese division was equal in combat power of three Chinese regular divisions. The Chinese Forces possessed only 80 Army infantry divisions, 9 separated brigades, 9 cavalry divisions, 2 artillery brigades, 16 regiments and one or two armored divisions. The Chinese Navy displaced a total of 59,000 tonnes and the Chinese Air Force totaled 600 aircraft. In spite of the lopsided military match-up, the Chinese had a size advantage: territory 31 times larger than Japan and a population 5 times that of Japan.
Although Japan possessed significant mobile operational capacity it did not possess capability for maintaining a long sustained war. As a result, Japan adopted a strategy of rapid warfare and conquest. In the first three months the Japanese were successful at making rapid gains in what was dubbed the "China Incident". At this point the Chinese adopted a defensive strategy aimed at weakining Japanese warmaking capabilities. The Chinese goal was to degrade Japanese military strength before resuming an offensive.

Stalemate and foreign aid.
By 1940, the fighting had reached a stalemate. While Japan held most of the eastern coastal areas of China, guerrilla fighting continued in the conquered areas. The Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek struggled on from a provisional capital at Chongqing City; however, realizing that he also faced a threat from communist forces of Mao Zedong, he mostly tried to preserve the strength of his army and avoid heavy battle with the Japanese in the hopes of defeating the Communists once the Japanese left. Moreover, Chiang could not risk an all-out campaign given the poorly-trained, under-equipped, and unorganized state of his armies and opposition to his leadership both within Kuomintang and in China at large. Most military analysts predicted that the Kuomintang could not continue fighting with most of the war factories located in the prosperous areas under or near Japanese control. Other global powers were reluctant to provide any support — unless supporting an ulterior motive — because in their opinion the Chinese would eventually lose the war, and did not wish to antagonize the Japanese who might, in turn, eye their colonial posessions in the region. They expected any support given to Kuomintang might worsen their own relationship with the Japanese, who taunted the Kuomintang with the prospect of conquest within 3 months. Germany and the Soviet Union did provide support to the Chinese before the war escalated to the Asian theatre of World War II. The Soviet Union was exploiting the Kuomintang government to hinder the Japanese from invading Siberia, thus saving itself from a two-front war. Furthermore, the Soviets expected any major conflict between the Japanese and the China to hamper any Kuomintang effort to remove the Communist Party of China (CCP) opposition or, in the best case, hoped to install a Comintern ally surreptitiously after the dwindling of Kuomintang authority. Soviet technicians upgraded and handled some of the Chinese war-supply transport. Military supplies and advisors arrived, including future Soviet war hero Georgy Zhukov, who witnessed the battle of Tai er zhuang. It also supported the Communists, at least until war with Germany forced her into conserving everything for her own forces.
Because of Chiang Kai-shek's anti-communist nationalist policies and hopes of defeating the CCP, Germany provided the largest proportion of Kuomintang arms imports. German military advisors modernized and trained the Kuomintang armies; Kuomintang officers (including Chiang's second son) were educated in and served in the German army prior to World War II. Nevertheless the proposed 30 new divisions equipped with all German arms did not materialize as the Germans sided with the Japanese later in World War II. Other prominent powers, including the United States of America, Britain and France, only officially assisted in war supply contracts up to the attack on Pearl Harbor in late 1941, when a major influx of trained military personnel and supplies significantly boosted the Kuomintang chance of maintaining the fight. Unofficially, public opinion in the United States was becoming favorable to the Kuomintang. At the start of the 1930's, public opinion in the United States had tended to support the Japanese. However, reports of Japanese brutality added to Japanese actions such as the attack on the U.S.S. Panay swung public opinion sharply against Japan. By the start of 1941, the United States had begun to sponsor the American Volunteer Group otherwise known as the Flying Tigers to boost Chinese air defenses. In addition, the United States began an oil and steel embargo which made it impossible for Japan to continue operations in China without another source of oil from Southeast Asia. This set the stage for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

The Pacific War.
Within a few days of the attack on Pearl Harbor, both the United States and China officially declared war against Japan. Chiang Kai-shek then received great quantities of supplies from the United States, as the Chinese conflict was merged into the Asian theatre of World War II. Chiang was appointed Allied Commander-in-Chief in the China theater in 1942. General Joseph Stilwell served for a time as Chiang's chief of staff, while commanding US forces in the China Burma India Theater. However, relations between Stilwell and Chiang soon broke down, due largely to the corruption and inefficiency of the Chinese government. Despite massive amounts of American lend-lease aid (over US$5 billion from 1941 through 1945), the Nationalist Chinese Army frequently avoided major engagements with the Japanese and was seen as preferring to stockpile material for a later struggle with the communists. Stilwell criticised the Chinese government's conduct of the war in the American media, and to President Franklin Roosevelt. The Allies thus lost confidence in the Chinese ability to conduct offensive operations, and instead concentrated their efforts against the Japanese in the Pacific Ocean Areas and South West Pacific Area.
The United States saw the Chinese theater as a means to tie up a large number of Japanese troops, as well as being a possible location for American airbases. In 1944, as the Japanese position in the Pacific was deteriorating fast, they launched Operation Ichigo to attack the airbases which had begun to operate. This brought the Hubei, Henan, and Guangxi provinces under Japanese administration. Nevertheless the Japanese prospect of transferring their troops to fight the Americans was in vain and they only committed the Guandong Army from Manchuria in their "Sho plan", which later facilitated the Soviet advancement after the Soviet war declaration on August 8, 1945.

Aftermath.
As of mid 1945, all sides expected the war to continue for at least another year. However it was suddenly ended by the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan capitulated to the allies on August 14, 1945. The Japanese troops in China formally surrendered on September 9, 1945 and by the provisions of the Cairo Conference of 1943 the lands of Manchuria, Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands reverted to China. However, the Ryukyu islands were maintained as Japanese territory.
In 1945 China emerged from the war nominally a great military power but actually a nation economically prostrate and on the verge of all-out civil war. The economy deteriorated, sapped by the military demands of foreign war and internal strife, by spiraling inflation, and by Nationalist profiteering, speculation, and hoarding. Starvation came in the wake of the war, and millions were rendered homeless by floods and the unsettled conditions in many parts of the country. The situation was further complicated by an Allied agreement at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 that brought Soviet troops into Manchuria to hasten the termination of war against Japan. Although the Chinese had not been present at Yalta, they had been consulted; they had agreed to have the Soviets enter the war in the belief that the Soviet Union would deal only with the Nationalist government. After the war, the Soviet Union, as part of the Yalta agreement's allowing a Soviet sphere of influence in Manchuria, dismantled and removed more than half the industrial equipment left there by the Japanese. The Soviet presence in northeast China enabled the Communists to move in long enough to arm themselves with the equipment surrendered by the withdrawing Japanese army. The problems of rehabilitating the formerly Japanese-occupied areas and of reconstructing the nation from the ravages of a protracted war were staggering, to say the least.
The war left the Nationalists severely weakened and their policies left them unpopular. Meanwhile the war strengthened the Communists, both in popularity and as a viable fighting force. At Yan'an and elsewhere in the "liberated areas," Mao was able to adapt Marxism-Leninism to Chinese conditions. He taught party cadres to lead the masses by living and working with them, eating their food, and thinking their thoughts. When this failed, however, more repressive forms of coercion, indoctrination and ostracization were also employed. The Red Army fostered an image of conducting guerrilla warfare in defense of the people. In addition, the CCP was effectively split into "Red" (cadres working in the "liberated" areas) and "White" (cadres working underground in enemy-occupied territory) spheres, a split that would later sow future factionalism within the CCP. Communist troops adapted to changing wartime conditions and became a seasoned fighting force. Mao also began preparing for the establishment of a new China, well away from the front at his base in Yan'an. In 1940 he outlined the program of the Chinese Communists for an eventual seizure of power and began his final push for consolidation of CCP power under his authority. His teachings became the central tenets of the CCP doctrine that came to be formalized as Mao Zedong Thought. With skillful organizational and propaganda work, the Communists increased party membership from 100,000 in 1937 to 1.2 million by 1945. Soon, all out war broke out between the KMT and CPC, a war that would leave the Nationalists banished to Taiwan and the Communists victorious on the mainland.

"Only the dead no the end of war" Plato.
 
Pvt. Joker........I enjoyed this post and if I may I would like to ask why left out Russia's involvement in this war. Russia threw over a million men in to China to drive the Japanese from Manchuria and in few weeks had completely smashed the Japanese forces and had already invaded some of the near by Japanese Islands which they still hold, mind you the Japanese had taken them from the Russians some time before. This war war hardly ever gets a mention in the west yet when you look just how the Russians tore the Japanese apart it is surely worthy of a mention
 
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