Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945

by Rana Mitter

In September 1939 the Japanese Imperial Army, its operations now unified under the China Expeditionary Command, had sent 100,000 troops to take the central Chinese city of Changsha, which had already suffered grievously after the retreat from Wuhan in October 1938, when Chiang had ordered that Changsha be burned. If the Japanese could capture the city, then they would hold Hunan, one of the great breadbasket provinces of central China. From there, the way to Sichuan in the west would lie open, and they could hope to defeat Chiang’s regime in Chongqing once and for all. But the Japanese assault on Changsha failed. The Cantonese general Xue Yue defended the city brilliantly, using a combination of formal field warfare along with guerrilla tactics to lure the Japanese into ambushes and prevent them from resupplying themselves. Changsha remained in Chinese hands.2 The Nationalist military now seized the initiative with a series of offensives across the whole country, bringing together eighty divisions of troops. In a series of coordinated attacks, the army was to strike out and recapture huge swathes of territory,