battle for Changsa,1939

one thing we must remeber, China or the KMT is figthing a two front war.one against the japanese,the other against chinese communist. the CCP role in anti japanese struggle amount to should I said, treacherous and machiavellian.according to russian archieves, mao welcome the japanese invasion,after 1937 aerial bombing of provincial capital Changqing,which result tremendous casualties, mao actually believe KMT will so demoralized and collapse.secretly offer deal with the japanese forces, that he wil cede the entire coastal area to japan, or de facto annexation,while the CPP control the inland area .there are no response from tokyo.why should they? they are winning.

There are many many hard fought battles between Chinese forces (vast majorities are KMT forces, legitimate government at the time) and Japanese invaders. Considering the Chinese forces are mostly a peasant army, it's quite remarkable that they were able to slow/stop the Japs and turned quite a few battles into meat grinders

I have a few e-books on the war in Chinese. Anyone interested in reading them can PM me. I'll email them to you

delft said:

I'm pretty ignorant about Chinese history, but what happened to the KMT armed forces that were so effective near Changsa and whose "contribution ...against the japanese invasion were far far greater than Chinese communist willing to acknowledge" that they were so ineffective after 1945? After 1945 they had years of experience, supply with weapons and equipment by the US was much easier and lots of it was available so what happened?

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vesicles is correct. when the civil war resumed after the japanese were defeated, the ccp was alot stronger than they were before the war. also, the japanese are a foreign invader thus the kmt troops fighting them had higher morale than when they were fighting their own countrymen. many kmt commanders and troops defected to the ccp 1945-1949 because the kmt was hugely unpopular with the people. in fact the kmt relied heavily on impressment (抓壮丁) or kidnapping civilian men and forcing them to fight, whereas people joined the pla willingly because they thought they were building a new china.

basically, mao outfought chiang because he had more personal charisma, was a better strategist, had better followers, and most of all because his message had more political appeal among the chinese people.

hardware said:

one thing we must remeber, China or the KMT is figthing a two front war.one against the japanese,the other against chinese communist. the CCP role in anti japanese struggle amount to should I said, treacherous and machiavellian.according to russian archieves, mao welcome the japanese invasion,after 1937 aerial bombing of provincial capital Changqing,which result tremendous casualties, mao actually believe KMT will so demoralized and collapse.secretly offer deal with the japanese forces, that he wil cede the entire coastal area to japan, or de facto annexation,while the CPP control the inland area .there are no response from tokyo.why should they? they are winning.

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i don't know how much truth there is in this "secret deal" but politically it makes sense for mao. whatever the case the ccp definitely have the japanese to thank for invading before chiang's pursuing troops wiped them out at yan'an. the whole reason the japanese invaded at that time is because they saw china was about to be united under the kmt, and they knew that they wouldn't be able to defeat china if that were allowed to happen. the kmt were a much trickier enemy than the japanese because they are also chinese. it mao could eliminate the kmt and have the chinese be united, the japanese would face no chance in the long run.

also mao's whole strategy was to "surround the cities from the country" because the peasants, not the elites, were his primary support base. the east coast of china was where the major urban centers were, and where the rich people lived. if this deal actually went ahead and the ccp helped the japanese eliminate the kmt, i doubt the japanese would not be able to hold on to whatever territory ceded for very long.

after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Imperial Army won a string of victories against the Allied powers in the Pacific and Southeast Asia. the morale was low among the Allied powers then. out of a sudden, news came out from China that the Japanese has failed in an attempt to capture the city of Changsha, and this is the Japanese third failed attempts to capture Changsha in 2.5 years. the American and British papers celebrated the Changsha victory like it was their own victories. the world’s war correspondents and military analysts made their way to the unknown Changsha city, wanting to see at first hand the city and its brave defenders and its resilient people and to interview General Xue Yue and his Commanders. the Chinese "War God" Xue Yue became internationally famous overnight. the 3rd battle of Changsha was the best fought out of the three victories of Changsha. the Chinese Army suffered low causalities in the 3rd battle compared to the 2nd battle. the 3rd battle of Changsha was the Allied powers' only major victory in later 1941 / early 1942.

Xue Yue lost the 4th battle of Changsha because Chiang Kai Shek and Joseph Stilwell apparently did not relieve the city with adequate military supplies. after the Japanese "Operation Number One" campaign, Xue Yue defied Chiang’s orders and deployed his Army to go East instead of West to Xiangxi. Xue Yue made a good move of sending the Army behind Japanese railway lines and caused trouble to the Japanese railway lines. Xue Yue was truly one of the best and most capable Kuomintang Generals in China's Republican Era.

pissybits said:

vesicles is correct. when the civil war resumed after the japanese were defeated, the ccp was alot stronger than they were before the war. also, the japanese are a foreign invader thus the kmt troops fighting them had higher morale than when they were fighting their own countrymen. many kmt commanders and troops defected to the ccp 1945-1949 because the kmt was hugely unpopular with the people. in fact the kmt relied heavily on impressment (抓壮丁) or kidnapping civilian men and forcing them to fight, whereas people joined the pla willingly because they thought they were building a new china.

basically, mao outfought chiang because he had more personal charisma, was a better strategist, had better followers, and most of all because his message had more political appeal among the chinese people.

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one often ignored key factor contributing to the Communists' conquest of China is that the Communist agents had infiltrated the government and military organizations of the Kuomintang at the highest levels. the CCP agents gave bad advices to the KMT military generals and civil officials and skillfully maneuvered to manipulate the government’s civil policies and military plans to often disastrous effects. the intelligence service of the CCP played a crucial role in defeating the KMT then.

the Generals Guo Rugui and Liu Fei ( Communist agents ) were in the Kuomintang Military Command Center in Nanking. they kept the CCP well-informed of the KMT’s military plans against the Communists. Chiang Kai Shek apparently trusted Guo Rugui and allowed the latter to make major military decisions. Guo Rugui was the brainchild behind the CCP’s victorious Huaihai Campaign. Guo Rugui and Liu Fei created friction and mistrust between the KMT generals. the CCP agents could be heavily involved in many of the Kuomintang military command’s inept decisions then. the KMT Generals Bai Chongxi, Hu Zongnan, Fu Zuoyi, Huang Baitao… all had Communist agents among their close trusted subordinates. Zhou Enlai famously said that Chiang Kai Shek’s military orders would reach him first before reaching to the KMT Conmmanders on the battlefields.

what about the Kuomintang’s intelligence and espionage against the Communists ? after the death of intelligence director Dai Li in 1945, the KMT intelligence network totally collapsed. Chiang Kai Shek broke up the Dai Li intelligence bureau into several agencies with reduced powers. the agencies were totally ineffective against the CCP from 1945-1949.

the people were sick and tired of the endless wars in China then. they simply wanted the war to end as soon as possible and peace to return to their lives. it did not really matter to the people whether the Kuomintang or Communists won then as long as one side won. they also gave up hope in the so-called incompetent and corrupt KMT government. people are naturally inclined toward the winner. this is why many KMT Commanders and Troops defected to the CCP, especially from 1948 onwards and the people gradually gave their support to the CCP.

vesicles said:

Their ineffectiveness came from atop. Although they had highly experienced troops and talented generals, their leadership was incompetent. One good example was the the battle of Liao-Shen, the first major battle in the Chinese civil war. The KMT was winning the battle hands down and the CCP was just about to go into the forest and start their guerrilla warfare again. At that critical point, Jiang, the leader of KMT, decided to call back the commander of the KMT armies in the northeast because of he didn't like/ trust the guy. This commander was trained in the US, instead of Jiang's own Huangpu military academy. Thus, Jiang didn't consider this general, Sun Liren, his own. Although general Sun was perhaps one of the most capable generals in KMT, he was relieved of his duty. The new commander to the Northeast decided to take apart Sun's army because he wanted his own people to man the key posts. Once the highly cohesive and highly lethal "The New first army" was taken apart and moved to various places, its fighting capability was completely destroyed and the CCP defeated them easily. And once Manchuria was in the hands of the CCP, the entire country was like a watershed.

The competence of KMT during WWII was very obvious to see. All you have to do is to simply google battle of Changsha and battle of Wuhan. Look at the casualty list as well as the length of the battles. You will see how effective the KMT was against the Japanese. The Japanese got to central China in the Fall of 1937, but the KMT managed to fight them to a stalemate and hold the Japanese in the area for the next 7 years and inflicted close to 200,000 casualties to the Japanese.

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I read wikipedia last evening about the War in the North East and there was a lot I will not try to understand. But it said that in 1946 the KMT armies had a three fold numerical superiority over the CCP armies. Those armies had experienced and competent staffs, otherwise they couldn't have stood up to the Japanese. The CCP had fought a guerrilla war against the Japanese but was then able to use very large units against the KMT armies. That cannot all be explained by Zhou Enlai getting the orders for KMT armies earlier than the commanders they were sent to. Those CCP staffs must have been very competent in handling multiple large units. Most of the soldiers had only just be armed and trained and were not experienced.
Btw "The New first army" was just one of the armies in the North East. The wikipedia article about Sun Liren doesn't mention a role in this theater and wikipedia says the battle of Liao-Shen was one of the last of the battles in the area, in 1948.

delft said:

I read wikipedia last evening about the War in the North East and there was a lot I will not try to understand. But it said that in 1946 the KMT armies had a three fold numerical superiority over the CCP armies. Those armies had experienced and competent staffs, otherwise they couldn't have stood up to the Japanese. The CCP had fought a guerrilla war against the Japanese but was then able to use very large units against the KMT armies. That cannot all be explained by Zhou Enlai getting the orders for KMT armies earlier than the commanders they were sent to. Those CCP staffs must have been very competent in handling multiple large units. Most of the soldiers had only just be armed and trained and were not experienced.
Btw "The New first army" was just one of the armies in the North East. The wikipedia article about Sun Liren doesn't mention a role in this theater and wikipedia says the battle of Liao-Shen was one of the last of the battles in the area, in 1948.

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USA General George Marshall saved the Communists in Manchuria. the part about Sun Liren is the Manchuria Sipingjie and Changchun battles in May 1946. Sun Liren's American trained divisions had captured Sipingjie and Changchun from the CCP them. the Kuomintang government Defense Minster Bai Chongxi was convinced that Lin Biao's 100K troops were in very bad shape and advocated the KMT forces to cross the Sungari river and attack Harbin, the capital of CCP Manchuria. George Marshall negotiated a ceasefire between the KMT and CCP at this moment thus saving the CCP. Lin Biao wrote in his memoir that his troops would retreat into the jungles if the KMT pursed them then. the KMT never had a better opportunity to annihilate Lin Biao's forces and capture Harbin. check the map. Harbin is the intersection point of the Chinese Eastern Railway. if the KMT captures Harbin then. they could stop the Soviet aid coming from the major Soviet supply center Vladivostok and also the North Korean troops and supplies that were coming to the CCP from sea to Vladivostok and to Harbin. if the KMT captures Harbin, they would be cutting off a large source of CCP's military and economic aid from the Russians and North Koreans.

Bai Chongxi said that the failure to push forward from Changchun and capture Harbin then was the Kuomintang's biggest military mistake in the civil war.

there are many reasons why the KMT Armies were so inefficient against the CCP Armies. this is the view of USA General Albert Wedemeyer on the two armies' fighting capabilities: something like this. the Communists fought like men possessed during the civil war. the KMT armies' morale were very low. they had lost the will to fight and resist the Communists. if the KMT really wanted to resist the CCP then, it doesn't matter if they had no guns nor bullets, they could have armed themselves with broomsticks and successfully defended South of the Yangtze from the Communists.

other factor was the soviet aid, according to the archieves,Liu Shio Chi (who later died in purge during the cultural revolution) admit the soviet aid play important factor in Communist victory,for example more than 300 plus capture japanese tank .two factory producing helmet not to mention million of ton of ex-japanese small arm and artillery pieces capture by the soviet armies were illegally hand over the CCP.before that more than half of Mao's red armies were armed with nothing more than some sword and spear, since arms were hard to come by.

Ultimately the CCP made better use of its resources and organization compared to the KMT, the latter of which is far more important than any initial levels of material and personnel, because it also provides the basis of seizing the initiative from an opponent.