both the ccp and kmt didn't do as much as the local guerrillas and militia/warlords guys did.
the official armies were not that effective.
What?? Please go back and read my previous post (#23). The offical Chinese army did the majority of the fighting in the WWII. In China, the Japanese could not advance much after 1939 all because of highly effective campaigns fought by the Nationalists. Japan at the time had poured huge amount of troops in China because they couldn't advance as planned. In 3 battles of Changsha, the Japanese had close to a million troops in the theater. In the China/Burma/India theater, Chinese Nationalist armies were able to completely push the Japanese out of Southwest China, Burma and India in 1944/45. Please bear in mind that the Japanese troops stationed in Burma and India were some of the most elite in the Japanese army and totaled close to 200,000. Now can a few ill-equipped, ill-trained and ill-organized local militia do anything to this massive mechanized forces equipped with large artillery forces, armorred divisions, one of the most powerful air forces at the time? Nationlasts were able to halt the advances of the Japanese by suffering huge casualties. Especially in the early stage of the war when the Chinese was not experienced with the new way of fighting. They were still fighting trench battles and faced the brunt of the massive Japanese firepower head-on. Often an entire army perrished just to halt the enemy for a few more days. As the fighting went on, they began to learn from their mistakes and the fighting became very effective. The strategy at the time was to use space to win time. They sent forces to East China to slow down the Japanese advance enough for the troops in Central China to regroup and organize effective defenses. The end result was more and more effective defense aganist the Japanese attacks. So early on in North China, the Japanese was able to advance with a few trouble. by the time they got to East China, they were facing highly effective defenses mounted by the Nationalists. Their advances slowed to a crawl. In the Battle of Taierzhuang, the Japanese was defeated by the Nationalists in a major campaign and suffered nearly 20,000 casualties. The defeat was so important that it led to a major change within the Japanese govn't.
And evetually the table was turned. In the middle to late stage of the war, Japanese suffered huge casualties and lost entire divisions at a time, such as battle of changsha and china/Burma/India. It was the official army of China that did all the fighting. Do you think some local militia can do something close to this? If you want to know what local militia can do to an occupation force, just look at Iraqi fighters nowadays. Yes, they can put some IEDs here and there, but can they change the situation strategically? the answer is obiviously NO. The US troops are obiviously frustrated by these fighters, but the overal situaion in the country is still considered stable. That's as much as what the local militia in China cound do in the WWII. They might be able to blow up a few fortresses here and there, but they couldn't do a thing to the overall strategic situation. The same can also be said of the French resistance during German occupation in the WWII. Yes, they were fighting, but they could not do a thing to the Germans until the Allied forces landed on Normandy. You need formal military to fight in major engagements to alter the situation.
Most of the myth we hear about how brave the CCP army was, like fighting hand-to-hand combats with the Japanese using big knives, attacking enemy position in a hail of enemy fire, blowing themselves up with the enemies, were actually stories of Nationalist soldiers fighting the Japanese. In the WWII, Nationalist soldiers were very brave. Even the Japanese soldiers wrote in their diary about how unhuman-like these Chinese soldiers were on the battlefield. They wrote that it was not uncommon at all to see generals in the Nationalist armies lead an attack in the front carrying nothing but a big knife and a bunch of grenades.
Although there were definitely conflits within the Nationalist army, the scale of the conflit was blown way out of proportion by the CCP in their campaign to win support of the people. One good example, Battle of Taierzhuang. At the time, Jiang jieshi asked all warlords to send their troops to fight the Japanese. The lord of Yunnan, Long Yun, sent two of his most elite armies to the front. Long Yun at the time ruled Yun Nan alone and was effectively independent from the central govn't. When the fighting went bad and over half of his troops was gone, his commanding general telegraphed him and was worried about losing the most elite troops. And Long Yun told the general to do whatever he could to fight the Japanese until the last man. He said in his letter that although he and Jiang did not get along, they had to put this difference aside in the face of a foreign invasion. And eventually his entire army was destroyed.
The Nationalists sacrificed greatly during the WWII. My own conservative estimate is that the Nationalists suffered over half a million casualties in WWII. The actual figure could be much higher than this figure. Because of some political reasons, their sacrifice has not been appreciated and recognized. I think it is time that we give them the credit they deserve. the first thing we can do is to actually learn what they did. It is not hard to find out what the Nationalists have done in the war. All we have to do is first to ignore the propaganda and sit down and read some serious history books. We don't even need to dig around to find out the truth. Everything is laid out on the surface. All we need to do is to simply look to that direction.
Its pleasing that somebodys prepared to set the record straight.
