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

by Rana Mitter

The first years of the European war were a bewildering period of diplomatic cross-dressing. The Nationalist government had earlier enjoyed a brief dalliance with Nazi Germany. Hitler’s regime did in fact continue to supply Chiang’s government with munitions in the early months of its war with Japan.5 The Anti-Comintern Pact signed in 1936 had, in theory, bound together Germany, Italy, and Japan as the Axis, but they were always too mistrustful of one another to create a genuine alliance. Chiang found it useful to hint to the Western powers that he might be forced into a partnership with Germany, a particularly alarming prospect for the USSR, which had enemies both to the west and the east. But the contradictions in German policy toward East Asia finally became too great, and in April 1938 Germany bowed to Japanese demands and ceased to support China.