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

by Rana Mitter

Chiang and Mao were the “twin stars” of China: their capital cities, Chongqing and Yan’an, symbolized the hopes of millions that China would triumph. But the years of war had worn away at Chongqing, whereas the power of Yan’an had grown. Policy was central to the rise of Yan’an—but as in Nanjing and Chongqing, so was terror. No longer just first among equals, Mao saw his status continue to rise as “Mao Zedong Thought” became synonymous with ideological correctness in the base area. The study of Mao’s thought became the basis on which party membership was decided. Of twenty-two important texts that would-be party members had to master (in a list issued in April 1942), eighteen were by Mao.

At the end of the Forum, on May 23, Mao came back to stress that this had been the beginning, not the end of the changes. “Intellectuals who want to serve the masses,” he said, “must go through a process in which they and the masses come to know each other well.” Mao added an ominous coda: “This process may, and certainly will, involve much pain and friction.”36 Mao’s words marked a severe change of mood in Yan’an. Not only was it much harder for people to enter the region, but it also became very difficult to leave.37 The city was cut off from the outside world not only by enemy blockade, but also by a new hardness of the party line. An earlier atmosphere of openness and collective enterprise gave way to a much more all-or-nothing environment. Ideas of pluralism and “new democracy” were replaced by a turn toward party control.

When the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966, many outside observers found the phenomenon of the Red Guards, who persecuted and tortured their class enemies, inexplicable. But a quarter century earlier the Rectification Movement had provided a clear blueprint. It marked the moment when Mao’s China came into being.

Neither the Nationalists nor the Communists believed that a modern state was the same thing as a liberal state. In fact, the reverse was true. Drawing inspiration from Lenin, both parties recognized and accepted the use of terror as part of the mechanism of control. The disaster of war, and the growing social crisis within China,

began to chip away at the technocratic and tolerant side of both regimes and solidify the power of those elements who favored violence and coercion.

Yet Chiang also realized that power in the Pacific was shifting. In one conversation he observed that “we’re not afraid that America will be the dominant power in East Asia; we’re afraid that it won’t be.”8 If there was to be a hegemonic power, he thought, then better the US than Japan, the USSR, or Britain.

Japan’s war economy was under great pressure, with iron ore, steel, coal, and oil all in short supply, and the country had to adjust its strategy to prioritize defense of the home islands and the conquered areas of Southeast Asia rich in oil. Japan would defend Burma and much of its Southeast Asian empire, but would try to make sure that the USSR remained neutral. The conference also stressed the need to avoid escalating the conflict in China.34

In the end Stilwell prevailed. He sent representatives to lobby Roosevelt, who did not take a clear stand, but also did not say no to a campaign in

embarrassing and distracted attention just when the Allied commanders were preoccupied with their top priority: the secret preparations for D-Day just four months away. Stilwell was able to launch his campaign because nobody had the incentive to stop him. Chiang Kai-shek was still concerned that a major Japanese assault was imminent. But his words did little to convince his Western Allies. On March 27 Chiang suggested that transferring Y Force (some 90,000 men in total) and the American fighter planes to India for the Burma campaign would leave central China vulnerable. Roosevelt replied on April 3 that further aid to China would be “unjustified” unless Chiang agreed to send the troops. Under further pressure from Stilwell (and Marshall), Chiang was forced to acquiesce.

Yet the Allies could not know that the Japanese had their own plans: its leaders had made the extraordinary decision to launch a major assault into the Chinese mainland at the same time as a major campaign in Burma. In the autumn of 1943 the Imperial General Headquarters had looked at the increasingly perilous position in Asia. As the Americans advanced in the Pacific, it became clear that the initial Japanese gains of early 1942 were vulnerable. By the spring of 1944 Allied assaults had forced Tokyo to regroup its forces to protect at least some of its empire in the Central Pacific.

Another major campaign was to knock China out of the war for good: Operation Ichigô [“Number One”].

The key military aims were to destroy the American air bases in central China, and to open up a route between central China and French Indochina using the railway network. Though Prime Minister Tôjô endorsed only the destruction of the air bases, the plan was officially approved and put into action on January 24.11

A mighty assault by the Imperial Japanese Army thrust into Henan. Half a million men and 200 bombers were mobilized, with supplies of fuel for eight months and ammunition for two years.

During this campaign, the unexpected phenomenon was that the people of the mountains in western Henan attacked our troops, taking guns, bullets, and explosives, and even high-powered mortars and radio equipment . . . They surrounded our troops and killed our officers. We heard this pretty often. The heads of the villages and baojia (village mutual-responsibility groups) just ran away. At the same time, they took away our stored grain, leaving their houses and fields empty, which meant that our officers and soldiers had no food for many days.

The reason for the failure of the campaign in the First War Zone, they declared, was that “Jiang Dingwen and his deputy Tang Enbo paid no attention to political and military matters,” and had instead diverted their time to enriching themselves, thereby encouraging their subordinates to act in the same way. Jiang and Tang’s troops had had various advantages, for instance, Czech weapons that might actually have been superior to some of those used by the enemy, yet they were

never properly used. They had taken a cut from the ordinary soldiers’ salaries, the accusation went, and had padded the official rolls with nonexistent soldiers to claim their salaries, so the divisions were actually undermanned.

Tang and Jiang had behaved inexcusably. But in some ways Tang’s abandonment of his men had echoes of Stilwell’s “walkout” in Burma in 1942. Stilwell was not remotely corrupt, and he could show deep concern for his men. But he was also capricious and capable of driving his men beyond reasonable limits (as he would do soon with the American troops sent to relieve Myitkyina), and letting his personal vendettas overrule his military judgment.

His report shows the breakdown in trust between the state and its population. The locals did not obey the Nationalist army orders to destroy local highways to prevent the Japanese advancing. Sometimes they even went back at night and mended roads which the army had torn up by day.

Chiang did allow a general whom he trusted, Fang Xianjue, to take part in the defense of Hengyang, supported by Chennault’s air force, and the Japanese were at first driven back from the city. But soon the Chinese supplies ran out. Chiang did not resupply the defenders, and Chennault went directly to Stilwell, begging him to send a tiny amount of support, some 1,000 tons, to the Chinese front-line troops. Stilwell vetoed the plea with three words: “Let them stew.”

General George Marshall told Roosevelt that the time had come to entrust the remaining military resources of China to an “individual capable of directing that effort in a fruitful way against the Japanese.” In Marshall’s view, only Stilwell fitted the bill. Roosevelt requested that the American be appointed as commander for all forces in China. Chiang had no option but to agree.

He became convinced that Sun Fo (also known as Sun Ke) was being groomed by the Americans as a possible head of the Nationalist Party. As the son of Sun Yat-sen, Sun had an excellent pedigree for this task. His untouchable status also gave him license to advocate liberal policies that had gotten other prominent figures into trouble with Dai Li’s secret police.

Stilwell’s staff, reported to Gauss that the consequences of a Nationalist collapse in central China would be severe for the Chinese war effort. The loss of the rice-growing provinces of Jiangxi and Hunan, a new refugee flow, the need to support large armies on ever poorer land in western China, and the influx of Japanese puppet currency would worsen the already soaring inflation in Nationalist China. The collapse of the National Government, he concluded, “might become only a matter of time.”36 This assumption would lead Service to draw daring conclusions about the alternative to the Nationalists as future leaders of China.

More contentiously, he suggested that they ran the “most cohesive, disciplined, and aggressively anti-Japanese regime in China” (with the implication that more active fighting was being done by the CCP than by the Nationalists), and that they might form the “foundation for a rapprochement between a new China and the Soviet Union.” The Communists had indicated they would be willing to receive American visitors, and the US should seize the opportunity before the Communists changed their minds, as Chiang’s blockade of Yan’an made compromise harder.

But from Chiang’s point of view, his fear of his own allies was perfectly rational. He was seeking to resist a major Japanese incursion with reduced troops at the same time that he had been pressured to support a campaign in Burma of which he did not approve. Simultaneously, his rule was also being undermined by American attempts to find other bases of power.

From the discomfort of the caves to the terror of Rectification, the politics of the Communist base lay behind a veil of secrecy, in sharp contrast to the fierce light that shone on the decay in Chongqing. Service observed that he was at pains not to be taken in by the “spell of the Chinese Communists.” Nonetheless, the first impressions of the Observation Group were immensely positive, with a universal sense that they had “come into a different country and are meeting a different people.” The differences between Yan’an and the Nationalist areas were obvious at every level. “Bodyguards, gendarmes and the clap-trap of Chungking officialdom are . . . completely lacking,” Service wrote. “Mao and the other

leaders are universally spoken of with respect . . . but these men are approachable and subservience toward them is completely lacking.” Also impressive were the simplicity of life and clothing, and the lack of beggars and desperate poverty. Service also noticed the similarity in clothes and manners, at least ostensibly, between men and women. He even remarked on the absence of the “spooning couples seen in parks or quiet streets in Chungking,” echoing the activist who had commented that “Yan’an was really not a sexy town.”

Service attempted to get some measure of the Communist leaders and their system. He described them as having a “lack of striking individuality” but

giving an overall impression of youth and vigor, as well as pragmatism. “The test of everything,” he suggested, “was whether it works—in China.” He did observe that there was a certain “uniformity” in their way of thought.49 But in general, the assessments of Service praised Mao’s achievements and contrasted them unfavorably with Chiang’s. The views of Service differed strongly from Vladimirov’s, who wrote that anti-Nationalist propaganda and the Rectification movements had led to an “oppressive, suffocating atmosphere in the party”: people “abandoned any initiative” in their haste to “redeem themselves from their nonexistent sins.”

But despite their close observation, Service’s group were not comparing like with like: their long years and inside knowledge of the Nationalist areas were being contrasted with a short and selective visit to Yan’an. After years of close-up experience of Chongqing, with its “reek of corruption,” and knowledge of horrors such

attempting to hold the line at Hengyang, at the same time that some of their best troops were following Stilwell on his quixotic journey into Burma. Gauss, who was much less starry-eyed about the CCP than Stilwell and Service were, passed on Service’s enthusiastic accounts faithfully to Washington, but added a rider in which he cautioned against taking the CCP’s assessment of its own contributions too literally. “Recent Chinese Communist claims of military achievements against Japan seem to have been exaggerated,” Gauss cautioned. He acknowledged that the Communists had “unquestionably” set up valuable sites of resistance in north China, and also contained “some” Japanese troops in north and central China: They appear to have avoided meeting the Japanese in frontal clashes, confining themselves in the main to occasional attacks against small elements of the enemy. In reviewing the battles of the past seven years in China, it would seem safe to say that Communist participation has been on a relatively minor scale. The Communist[s] have fought no battles comparable in scope and intensity to those of the Shanghai, Hsuchow [Xuzhou], Hankow [Wuhan], and

Changsha campaigns; and their claims to the contrary notwithstanding, they appear to have contained but a minor proportion of the Japanese military forces operating in China.54 A minor proportion, that is, in comparison to the Nationalists. Gauss was no admirer of Chiang, but he could see that the CCP was not the magic key that could transform the worsening war situation in China. In Yan’an, Vladimirov, who could see the CCP close up, agreed. “The Eighth Route Army and New Fourth Army have actually folded up military operations since 1941,” he stated flatly in his report to Moscow.

The tide had turned in Burma, though far less of the credit was due to Stilwell than the American press made out.

The Ledo Road from Assam had been connected to the Burma Road at Lashio, allowing supplies to move overland again from India to China. In the month of July 1945 some 5,900 tons of supplies were moved along the road. But by this stage the amounts of freight carried on the Hump flights dwarfed what the road could carry.63 Had the war lasted longer, of course, the road might have played a more significant role. The Ledo Road was renamed the Stilwell Road by Chiang Kai-shek, ostensibly as a tribute to the American’s determination in having it built, but perhaps with the implication that such a folly should bear the name of its author.

The delivery of Roosevelt’s note was a watershed. For this short moment of satisfaction, Stilwell would pay a very heavy price. US-China relations for the next quarter century would pay an even heavier one. Arguably they are still paying some of that price today.

The bad blood between Chiang Kai-shek and Joseph Stilwell was the most colorful and ultimately the most public face of Sino-American discord during the wartime alliance. But it was only part of a series of misunderstandings that dogged the war in China, from turf wars over intelligence to arguments over financial assistance and troop commitments. The personal clash between Stilwell and Chiang was important, but it should not distract attention from the wider strategic decision that Marshall and the other Allied leaders had made at the start of the war: China was not going to be a major theater of war in the Allied effort.31 This was perfectly understandable, but it could hardly be expected that the Chinese should consider themselves expendable. By creating a fiction that Chiang had to fight to show his value to the alliance, the Allies allowed the relationship between the US and China to erode. Rather than trying repeatedly to take Burma, a target of dubious value, it would have been perfectly reasonable to let Chiang use his limited resources to defend China, even if, in publicity

terms, it appeared that China was not playing an active role in the wider war effort. It would also have been better, had Winston Churchill been willing, to use Chiang more as a credible envoy to other non-European peoples, a genuine symbol of nationalist nonwhite resistance who could have challenged Japanese pan-Asianism and communism alike. Instead, Chiang’s regime was made complicit in thankless and overly ambitious goals, giving the impression that China’s own aims and priorities always had to give way to those of the Western Allies and the USSR. The seeds were sown for mistrust between the US and China that would continue after the eventual Communist victory in 1949. Even today, the state of US-China relations shows that those wounds are a long way from being healed.

Then, unexpectedly, relations between Chongqing and Washington got a boost. As it turned out, the new warmth would have its own dangers. But for a short period, it looked as if the recall of Stilwell and the reelection of Roosevelt might just have lanced the boil that had aggravated the US-China partnership.

Yet while Ichigô failed to help the Japanese gain outright victory, it also crippled the Nationalists. The great breadbasket and recruitment provinces of Henan and Hunan were lost, and the campaign cost the Nationalists a further 750,000 casualties.

Chiang was worried about the intentions of the CCP, and with good reason. The waning of his power had been matched by a steady growth in Mao’s. With party membership of over a million people, and some 900,000 regular troops supplemented by a similar number of militia troops, the Communists would clearly be a major force in the postwar order.

Neither Hurley’s nor Service’s analysis was wholly wrong. It was true, as Hurley had it, that if the CCP did not merge its forces with the Nationalists, then it would use those forces to launch an attack on them. It was also true, as Service had it, that Chiang was desperate for the Communists not to be seen as an independent power base, even if it would aid the anti-Japanese cause. But both American viewpoints, widely differing though they were, understandably assumed that the best policy was the one that helped defeat Japan as fast as possible. This was, of course, by far the best outcome for the war-weary Allies as a whole. The price for China, however, might well be the swift outbreak of civil war. At the heart of the problem was a stubborn fact that the Americans could not or would not see. Neither Chinese side was sincere about a coalition government for its own sake. Both Chiang and Mao saw it as a temporary arrangement while their parties prepared to vie for absolute power.

The Japanese proposed that they would not stand in the way of the Communist New Fourth Army or the 700,000-odd troops still under the control of the Nanjing regime, instead concentrating their fire on the Nationalists. It is hard to know how far these talks would have gone. As with Chiang, talking to the Japanese did not equate to surrendering to them, and the CCP should be given the benefit of the doubt as genuine anti-imperialists. Yet the Communists were, like the Nationalists and Wang’s regime, keen to make the most of a changing and unpredictable situation.

Much of the conversation at Yalta was about the fate of postwar Europe, with the division of the Continent into zones under Western and Soviet influence. But Asia was also a major topic of discussion. The Combined Chiefs of Staff were convinced that victory would not come until mid-1947, and told Roosevelt and Churchill so, increasing the pressure on them to make sure that Stalin would participate in the war in Asia. However, Stalin’s participation came with conditions. He demanded control of the Kurile Islands, an archipelago stretching from the north coast of Japan to Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, and the southern part of Sakhalin Island, just off Russia’s coast.

In return, Stalin would pledge to enter the war against Japan no more than ninety days after the end of the war in Europe. The deal was made in a series of secret agreements that supplemented the official record of the conference.

Mao’s confidence was fueled, in part, by a conviction that the entry of the Soviet Union into the war would tilt the balance of power toward the CCP. But the Communist leader underestimated the protean pragmatism of Joseph Stalin. During the Yalta discussions, Roosevelt had ceded to Stalin a restoration of the rights in East Asia that Russia had lost after the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War. But Roosevelt secured an assurance that the USSR would not actively support the Communists against the Nationalists. Roosevelt told Chiang about this condition, but Stalin did not tell Mao.32 The Communist leader was unaware of Stalin’s betrayal.

Not that Chiang was happy to trust Stalin’s good faith, and as it turned out, with good reason. On April 30 Adolf Hitler killed himself in his bunker under the ruins of Berlin. On May 8, 1945, the war in Europe ended. Now, at last, Asia would be at the center of the conflict, and the USSR would be part of that effort. In early July Chiang sent T. V. Soong, along with his Russian-speaking son Ching-kuo, to Moscow to negotiate terms with Stalin. Stalin agreed to recognize only Chiang as the ruler of China, but made extensive demands in return, including China’s recognition of Outer Mongolia’s independence and the granting of a privileged status for the USSR in Manchuria. The question of what China would cede to the Soviets was still unresolved when Stalin left for the Allied conference at Potsdam in the middle of the month.

The Ichigô campaign had been just as destructive to Chinese society as it had to its military, creating yet more deprivation and destruction in China’s most fertile areas. The efforts in the early war years to create a more integrated system of welfare provision had always become weaker the further one traveled from Chongqing, but by the last year of the war, they seemed a hollow mockery in the face of massive need. To tackle the problem, China engaged with a remarkable new organization: the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA). Roosevelt had realized that in the areas liberated from the Axis powers, there would be immense misery, and a formally coordinated effort was needed to make provision to feed starving people and enable countries to rebuild their societies. Although some forty-four countries signed UNRRA’s founding document at the White House on November 9, 1943, it was always heavily bankrolled by the US and run primarily by American administrators.

However, the Nationalists had good reason to fear that the relief effort might be seen purely as largesse from the US. The blame for the failures of Nationalist provision (most notably the Henan famine) had fallen almost exclusively on the shoulders of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime, and corruption and incompetence had played a serious part in causing the disaster. Yet this explanation did not acknowledge that the wider constraints of the war had forced the government to make a series of deeply unappetizing choices. If food relief was now portrayed purely as a piece of American generosity that had no connection with sacrifices made by the ruling party, then Chiang’s government might well lose all of its legitimacy, be blamed for what went wrong, and be given no credit for any successes.

The Nationalists had to make at least some effort to compete. Yet stark reality blocked these good intentions. The basic reason for lack of progress was simple: there was no money. By 1945 the Nationalist government was undeniably riddled with corruption. But the total financial commitment of the Allies to the reconstruction of China was tiny, compared to the actual costs involved.

And what seemed deeply ironic was that a triumphant Mao Zedong might now reap the fruits of Chiang Kai-shek’s victory.

The Japanese were also condemned for their invasion of China. At the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (the “Tokyo Trial”) in 1948, the Nanjing Massacre was just one of the events of the China War used to indict the defendants. Seven defendants were sentenced to death, including General Matsui Iwane and former foreign minister Hirota Kôki, both closely associated with the escalation of the war with China.10