China's Overlooked Role in World War II, China a vital, but often forgotten, member of the Allies battling Japan—two years before the War II

[beijingwalker]

China's Overlooked Role in World War II​

China was a vital, but often forgotten, member of the Allies battling Japan—two years before the official start of World War II.

May. 18 2022

More than two years before German tanks blitzed Poland and four years before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, what some historians consider the start of World War II occurred in China in 1937. The country's eight-year war with Japan sowed the seeds for the attack on Pearl Harbor but ultimately contributed to the Allied victory in the Pacific—at an incredibly high price for the Chinese.

China-Japan Relations Before World War II

For decades after the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894-1895, China and Japan remained uneasy neighbors. With China engulfed in a civil war between Chiang Kai-shek's ruling Chinese Nationalist Party and Mao Zedong’s communist forces, the Imperial Japanese Army invaded the resource-rich region of Manchuria in northeast China in 1931 and installed a puppet government

An imperialistic Japan further encroached into northern China in the ensuing years as the nationalist government continued to view Mao’s communist fighters as a greater threat. Only after communist generals held Chiang captive for two weeks in December 1936 did he reluctantly agreed to an uneasy alliance with the communist forces against Japan.

As tensions with China rose, on July 7, 1937, Japanese soldiers conducted nighttime training exercises 10 miles southwest of Beijing near a stone bridge named for the 13th-century Venetian merchant Marco Polo. After Japanese Private Shimura Kikujiro failed to return to base after becoming lost in the dark following an unscheduled bathroom break, Chinese guards refused the Japanese entry to the adjacent town of Wanping to search for their missing comrade. The standoff turned violent, and what became known as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident proved the spark that ignited the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Within weeks, the technologically superior Japanese forces seized Beijing. They captured the commercial hub of Shanghai in November 1937, but the fierce battle it required made it clear that China intended to mount a resolute defense.

The Imperial Japanese Army responded to the Chinese resistance with increasingly brutal atrocities, the most notorious of which occurred after it entered the Chinese nationalist capital of Nanjing (or Nanking) in December 1937. Over a six-week span, the Japanese military massacred between 200,000 and 300,000 soldiers and civilians and sexually assaulted tens of thousands of women.

As Japan pressed south and west in 1938, a Chinese defeat seemed inevitable. “They have no allies, they have no arms and they have retreated to the interior of China,” says Rana Mitter, author of Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937-1945. “Both the Chinese nationalists and the communists are on the run.”

The war, however, increasingly turned into a stalemate as Japanese forces made little progress beyond the port cities and urban areas south of Beijing. The communists in north-central China waged a guerilla war against the Japanese in Manchuria and north China, and the fragile truce with the nationalists held.

Foreign aid began to flow to China as Japan stalled. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin saw a victorious Japan as such a threat to the USSR that he supplied arms to the Chinese nationalists, despite their battles with the communists. In 1940 and 1941, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt extended credits to China to purchase military supplies and included the country in the Lend-Lease program. In August 1941, the United States further hampered Japan’s ability to fight in China by halting its trade of aircraft, oil and scrap metal, an embargo that was among the reasons why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

Had China surrendered in 1938 as expected, World War II’s entire trajectory would have changed, according to Mitter. “The escalation that Japan had to go through in the following years because of Chinese resistance would never have happened. That means no Pearl Harbor because without the escalation of Japanese attacks on China you don’t get the desperate hunger for resources that leads ultimately to the oil embargo and President Roosevelt’s decisions in 1940 and 1941. And if you don’t have Pearl Harbor, you don’t have an Asian war that can then be joined with the European war.”

After the United States and the United Kingdom joined the fight against Japanafter Pearl Harbor, the flow of equipment, money and military advisors to China increased along with its global stature. Roosevelt considered China one of the world’s “four policemen” along with the Americans, British and Soviets and one of the cornerstones of a new world order that would emerge following the war.

While American bombers used Chinese air bases to strike Japanese targets, the Chinese continued to shoulder the burden of the ground war as Allied attention initially stayed focused on Europe. Now faced with a wider war, the Japanese army remained bogged down in China with between 500,000 and 600,000 troops, according to Mitter, and 38 of 51 infantry divisions stationed in the country.

Japan gained ground and seized air bases during its “Ichi-Go” offensive in 1944, but China repelled two Japanese offensives in the summer of 1945. After the Soviet Union entered the war and overwhelmed Japanese positions in Manchuria and the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered.

The war left an incredible scale of devastation. According to Mitter, historians have calculated that the war forced 100 million Chinese, approximately one-sixth of the country’s population, to become refugees in their own country, and only the Soviet Union surpassed China’s World War II death toll.

“Reliable figures take it up to 12 or 14 million and in some cases as high as 20 million,” Mitter says. That count includes hundreds of thousands of deaths due to drowning, disease and starvation after the Chinese nationalist army breached massive holes in dikes holding back the Yellow River to stymie the Japanese advance in 1938. Millions others died after Chiang’s decision to seize peasant grain to feed the army exacerbated a famine in Henan Province in 1942 and 1943.

The Japanese surrender, however, did not mean the end of war in an exhausted China. The country’s civil war reignited and led to Mao’s communist revolution that toppled Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist government in 1949. As China and the United States went from friends to foes, public memory of China’s role as a member of the Allies faded on both sides of the Pacific.

“After 1949, when Mao and the communists won power in the mainland, the one thing that became pretty unacceptable, certainly at the central level, was anything positive to say about the Chiang Kai-shek regime,” Mitter says. “During the high Cold War, both the West and China had strong motivations not to revisit the story, and therefore for more than a quarter century it essentially lay in the shadows of historiography.”

China's Overlooked Role in World War II | HISTORY

China was a vital, but often forgotten, member of the Allies battling Japan—two years before the official start of World War II.

www.history.com

 

[beijingwalker]

Maximum inroads Japan made in china during its heydays in WWII

 

[DF41]

And for the Sino Japan war, Japan was so confident that Japan will need only 3 months to smash and conquer whole of China. Especially considering the arms Japan got and the almost no arms China got.

That was enforced by the rape of China from the Imperial powers that of course not allow China to manufacture weapons, major or minor.


Did the Japanese win in CHina?
Could the Japs win in China?
I thought they were stuck in a quagmire and sucked deeper and deeper in China and being killed and injured by the millions in the Sino Japanese war despite the Chinese having pathetically little arms.
I think the German Army stuck and surrounded in Stalingrad got more arms and supplies send to them than what was send in all entirety to the Chinese in China during the Sino Japanese war.
Japan got sucked into quicksand in China despite overwhelming military advantage and 4 to 5 times as many Japanese died at the hands of Chinese than they did in the islands of Pacific at the arms of the USA Marines and Army and Navy.
That the Japanese soldiers were very well trained can be seen in their earlier victories against British and USA.
The Japanese could fight very very well.
As to how Japs could fight, do recall 36,000 Japanese invaded Malaya , forced and fought their way down and utterly defeated 86,000++ British troops capturing Singapore. So do not think Japs could not fight.
About 130,000 Indian, Australian and British troops became prisoners of war when Singapore was surrended to General Yamashita. The 130,000 Brits and Allied forces with artillery and tanks and planes and guns and lots of ammo surrended to 36,000 Japs who rode down on fucking bicycles fighting with guns and hardly any arty .
Neither could the Americans hold off the Japanese at the beginning because the Japanese fought extremely well against USA as seen in Corregidor.
The defensive arsenal on Corregidor was formidable with 45 coastal guns and mortars organized into 23 batteries, some seventy-two anti-aircraft weapons assigned to thirteen batteries and a minefield of approximately 35 groups of controlled mines.
The two 12-inch (305 mm) guns of Batteries Smith and Hearn, with a horizontal range of 29,000 yd (27,000 m) and all-around traverse were the longest range of all the island's artillery.
Caballo Island, with Fort Hughes—just south of Corregidor—was the next largest in area. At about 160 acres (65 ha), the island rose abruptly from the bay to a height of 380 ft (120 m) on its western side. Commander Francis J. Bridget was in charge of its beach defenses with a total of 800 men, of whom 93 were Marines and 443 belonged to the Navy, by the end of April 1942. Coastal artillery numbered some 13 assorted pieces, with its anti-aircraft defenses tied in with those of Corregidor.
Fort Drum—which lay about 4 mi (6.4 km) south of Fort Hughes—was the most unusual of the harbor defenses. Military engineers had cut away the entire top of El Fraile Island down to the water-line and used the island as a foundation to build a reinforced concrete "battleship", 350 ft (110 m) long and 144 ft (44 m) wide, with exterior walls of concrete and steel 25–36 ft (7.6–11.0 m) thick. The top deck of this concrete battleship was 40 ft (12 m) above the low-water mark and had 20 ft (6.1 m) thick walls. Equipped with four 14-inch (356 mm) guns in armored turrets facing seaward, a secondary battery of four casemated 6-inch (152 mm) gunsguns, and two antiaircraft guns, the fort with its 200-man garrison was considered impregnable to attack.
And the 13,000++ USA and Filipino soldiers left on Corregidor with all those hardware and lots of military goodies were ran over and surrendered to 2,400++ Japs in three landings made by the Japs on the island.
And that Gen McArthur ran away from his troops in Corregidor for which he was awarded MOH for his glorious act of running away.
As for China at the time of the Sino Japanese war, China was defenseless.
China had little industry in China being raped and pillaged by Western powers all set to divide and dismembered her and selling opium to China prior to the Sino Japanese war from July 7, 1937, to September 2, 1945
And for that purpose, the Western Powers were not going to let China have the means to produce armaments which could be used to stop the West from enjoying what they could from China.
Second Sino-Japanese War - Wikipedia
Japanese had a very strong military and armaments , from the steel USA happily sold to her for that purpose, together with the oil . Going on until almost before Japan decided to attack Pearl harbour because the Japanese were very unhappy USA not selling to Japan as much steel and oil as they want to beat and loot China in the way the Japanese want to.
China ports were all taken by Japanese so nothing could get through and for that matter, USA was not going to do that as USA had this great friendship going on with Japan.
Until Japan attacked Pearl Harbour that USA decided perhaps USA needed to supply arms to China except USA main focus was to supply arms to Europe as China was a bastard child. China did not even get 1% of the armaments supplied to UK, Russia and other Allied forces in other theatres of war.
The much ballyhooed military lift over the Hump was a fucking joke as that primarily was to try to get fuel and bombs over to bases for USA planes to bomb Japan and not arms for China. And at that, the fuel required to fly over the hump, and to fly back meant only a pittance could be brought over.
Chinese had to take on 80% of the Japanese Armed strength in China itself and 20% of the Japanese in the Pacific fighting the Americans
From Jamie Wong answer to How powerful is the Chinese military?
As a matter of fact, a lot of PLA soldiers didn’t even have a rifle. For major battles, each soldier got 1 rifle, 100~200 bullets, and 2~3 grenades. As for the guerrillas who was fighting in the Japanese occupied ares, half of them didn’t even have a rifle or pistol. Each battle, 5 rounds were the standard equipment. Others had to use blades and spears.
[

↑ This picture shows the common situation of PLA guerrillas.
]

]↑ And this was already a major division, but in the tough area.[
]

↑ This is how the 8th route army looked like. It was the major division of PLA. Still no armored vehicle.[
]

This was how Chinese went into battle in 1941
Those Chinese lucky enough to have rifles would have five rounds for each rifle. The rest using swords and spears against Japanese machine guns, tanks and artillery.
Yet they fought and killed Japanese invaders.
Even though the Chinese had no experience with fighting, and Japanese very well armed and with enormous experience in war and killing, Chinese took them on. (so those that always harp and crow that Chinese got no experience, please remember this and take note)
And Chinese killed over 1.5 million Japanese soldiers. Chinese did it by strapping explosives to their bodies to rush at tanks and machine guns and Japanese concentration of troops in suicidal charges.
Except the chinese being chinese, never ever will call their charges as banzai charges.
This not only killed Japanese, this terrified them as to how Chinese with so few arms could take on the Japanese. This was when the Japanese copied the Chinese in Japanese Pacific war against USA.
Why should the Japanese use Banzai attacks on Chinese in China? Japanese got machine guns and artillery and tanks and planes to kill the Chinese without having to go Banzaiiing!
Japanese learned Kamikazi and Banzai attacks from Chinese.
From the Chinese who had little arms and no other choices to their killing of Japanese in China.
Chinese paid with 14 ++ million of their Chinese soldiers dying . And another 14++ million Chinese civilians slaughtered and murdered by the Japanese soldiers in attempts to terrorised and intimidate China into surrendering.
For the Americans it was very different in their later fight with Japanese.
USA did not have to strap explosives to their bodies like the Chinese soldiers to rush the Japanese.
USA had battleships with 16″ guns and planes and bombs and Ma Deuces and artillery , tanks flame throwers and unlimited ammo and kitchen sink to help them take on the remaining 20% of the Japanese on islands like Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Guam, Okinawa maybe taking out 200,000 Japanese troops in the entire Pacific islands campaigns.[
E]

Now we look at how the Chinese fought when they had adequate arms.
Battle of Yenangyaung - Wikipedia
And in Burma, at the battle of Yenangyaung, almost 7,000 British soldiers, and 500 prisoners and civilians were encircled by an equal number of Japanese soldiers from the IJA 33rd Division at Yenangyaung and its oil field. The 33rd Division had cut the Magwe road between Slim's two divisions, who were now about 50 miles (80 km) apart.
General Sun instead led his 113th Regiment with only 1,121 men, of which only 800 were combat personnel, in the rescue mission.
British veteran expresses thanks to descendants of China Expeditionary Force
And those 800 chinese saved the Brits. And those 800 Chinks pulled the chestnuts of the 7,000 valiant brits out of the fucking fire and slaughtered the IJA 33rd Division.
In China, Chinese with kungfu and spears and swords and hardly any guns hold the Japs and fought the Japs killing 1.77 million of the Japs and wounding 1.9 million Japs with suicidal charges strapping explosives to take out Jap tanks and machine guns and artillery.
But Chinese when given adequate arms could fight far better than the Japs.
Imagine now if Chinese had been given sufficient arms in China to fight the fucking Japanese there in China!
There might not even be a fucking TORA TORA TORA at Pearl Harbour. And no Japanese in Pacific at all for USA Army and Marines to fight as Japs will all be in China and being killed by Chinese in China.

 

[mili]

Without China, Germany+jp first jointly take Ussr, then Germany take rest of Eu, then England.
Finally, they nuke usa.

 

[beijingwalker]

Many stupid ignorants here claimed that Japan occupied whole China like Germany did to France in WW11, but the truth is Japan, even during its heydays, only struggled to hold on a very small part of Chinese lands in the coastal regions, and even in those regions, Japan only loosely control the cities, but not the countryside. Both Chinese Nationalists and communists still had millions of troops fighting Japan in all fronts, it was a stalemate for the most part of the war, neither can not deliver a decisive blow to each other, but Chinese side was getting momentum, successfully stalled Japan's advance and in many fronts, started to wage counter attacks, given more time, China can definitely beat Japan all by herself.

Almost all oil supply to support the Japanese war machine came from US in early stage of WW2, without US support, Japan can't keep its war in China for a couple of months. In early stage of Sino Japanese war, US was an accomplice of Japan.

Sino-Japanese war started in 1937, US joined the war in 1941. Both Japan and US had Chinese blood in their hands.