This is an update of an earlier review, completed following a second reading of Rana Mitter's Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-45



The literature on WWII and its preceding conflicts has largely focused on Hitler’s rise and on increased militarism in Japan, all culminating in the invasion of France in 1940 and the arrival of the second “war to end all wars.” The Sino-Japanese conflicts that preceded the full-scale Second Sino-Japanese War, and the history of that war, have received far l

This is an update of an earlier review, completed following a second reading of Rana Mitter's Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-45



The literature on WWII and its preceding conflicts has largely focused on Hitler’s rise and on increased militarism in Japan, all culminating in the invasion of France in 1940 and the arrival of the second “war to end all wars.” The Sino-Japanese conflicts that preceded the full-scale Second Sino-Japanese War, and the history of that war, have received far less attention. Rana Mitter’s Forgotten Ally redresses that imbalance and gives us a new view of figures like Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zhedong. For the West this is a revisionist history, but perhaps Western history needs revising.



The First Sino-Japanese War began in 1894 with Japan’s invasion of Korea, then a Chinese vassal state. This was a major test for China’s 250-year old Qing Dynasty headed by Empress Dowager Cixi, and it revealed China's military and industrial backwardness, especially compared with the astounding modernization of Japan since the Meiji Restoration began in 1868. The result was an 1895 treaty that ceded to Japan territorial and other rights in Korea, and that set the foundation for Japan's later colonial conquests to gather natural resources and to bring Pan-Asianism (a unified Asia under Japan's domination) to the region: Japan's Pan-Asianism would, it was said, spread Japanese culture (and control) to Asia and serve the defeated nations by bringing them to enlightenment—sometimes you just have to destroy a nation to save it! Ultimately Japan hoped to conquer China and then turn its attention to the USSR.



The fragility of the Qings promoted rebellions in China's already fractured warlord-driven society. In 1911 the Emperor Pu-yi, Cixi's chosen successor in 1908, abdicated, and in 1912 the Republic of China was created under Sun Yat-sen's Nationalist Party (NP), called the Kuomintang (KMT). Sun would soon flee to (ironically) Japan in the political turmoil over NP leadership, and a contest for dominance in the NP would begin between two contending groups: General Chiang Kai-shek’s right-wing faction and Wang Jingwei’s left-wing faction. Chiang was strongly anti-communist and uncompromising in his vision of a united China with warlords contained and a central political and military power. Wang Jingwei was more of a compromiser who had a less clear vision; we will see that he became a Japanese puppet-figure.



A third group was the nascent and still inchoate Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Though Chiang detested communism, as leader of the KMT he agreed to form a United Front with the feeble and disorganized CCP as a bulwark against Wang Jingwei and the Japanese threat. However, the fragile United Front ended with the Shanghai Massacre in 1927, when Chiang’s army arrived in Shanghai and murdered thousands of communists. This prompted the CCP to relocate to a remote interior region to regroup and organize.



[Speculation: One wonders whether the Shanghai Massacre was the event that would ultimately bring China to communism—during its long self-imposed exile the CCP found a leader, Mao Zhedong, who would inspire it with his revolutionary fervor, organize it socially, economically, and militarily, and control it through coercive methods of “reform.” Mao would keep his powder dry and lie in wait to take revenge on Chiang. Had Chiang not so alienated the CCP and isolated them at an early stage, he might have destroyed the CCP simply by letting it die on the vine.]



After the Shanghai Massacre the NP formally split into two parts. Chiang led the right-wing and established a government in Nanjing ("Nanking"). Wang Jingwei, appalled by the Shanghai massacre and more sympathetic to Japan's ideal of Pan-Asianism, formed a left wing government in Wuhan ("Hangcow"). Chiang continued to harass the communists even in their remote area, and in 1934 they began their much-vaunted Long March to the city of Yun'an in the even more remote province of Shaanxi. They arrived sixteen months later with only 7,000 of the original 80,000 who started on the march. It was during the Long March that Mao rose to the leadership he commanded until his death, and it was the long and peaceful stay in Yun’an that allowed him to hone the tactics for controlling the Party.



In 1931 the Japanese Army staged the Mukden Incident, a bombing at a railroad station) on the China-Manchuria border, and a pretext for invading Manchuria in northeast China; the Tokyo government was unaware of the plan but once underway it accepted the result—ownership of Manchuria in China’s north, an area that gave it access to natural resources and which placed eastern China in a pinscher between and its new state of Manchukuo—formed in 1932 under the puppet governor Pu-yi, China’s last emperor.



With Japan now directly bordering central China on two sides, Japan and China entered an era of chronic border disputes and increasing tension. The 1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident near Beijing—an extended exchange of gunfire with no apparent origin—was the spark for the Second Sino-Japanese War. Chiang Kai-shek declared this minor skirmish as the last straw and countered the Japanese with force. This was the first outbreak of what would become an eight-year war between the well-resourced forces of a unified and militarized Japan and the poorly organized and weak forces of a disunified China. It was the first stage of World War II, well before the German invasion of Poland in 1939 and of France in 1940.



Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang was a coalition of warlords and diverse Republican political interests waving the banner of Sun Yat-sen’s republican principles. Those of us who are of a certain age recall the intense controversy about Chiang in the U. S. Liberals (primarily Democrats) charged him and his cronies with massive corruption and incompetence: looting his nation through onerous taxes and misdirection of revenues, misdirecting foreign assistance (primarily Lend-Lease resources) to his personal use, fighting a defensive war against the Japanese while using his forces to fight internal opponents, and failing to bring the Japanese to bay. U. S. Conservatives (yes, Republicans) supported him because of his strong anti-communism and because he was holding the Japanese down in China, a major achievement in light of the gross imbalance of military assets between China and Japan.



But Mitter’s assessment of Chiang presents him as a visionary seeking to bring China into the modern political world (and just ruthless enough to do it), and as a competent military leader whose single-minded focus on creating a nation and defeating the Japanese was the glue that held China together against the Japanese onslaught. Because the Japanese offensive power was so great, Chiang was necessarily on the defensive and often on the move. He moved his government westward from Nanjing to Chongqing ("Chunking") just before the Japanese arrived in force to decimate Nanjing.



When the Japanese army arrived in Nanjing it was a city filled with defenseless civilians crowded into a small International Safety Zone in the hope that the Japanese would respect its neutrality. The Japanese would have none of that—their army began an episode of mass rape, pillage, and murder that took 200,000 lives (according to the post-war International Military Tribunal) or 300,000 lives (according to Chinese records). Japanese brutality in China is well documented, but if one needs a taste of it, Mitter's section on the Rape of Nanking is sufficient. It was not an isolated event.



As the Japanese pursued him from Nanjing, Chiang understood that that he couldn't stop their advance and that that his new position in Chongqing government was not secure. He decided to move again, this time farther west to the megametropolis of Wuhan (Wang Jingwei’s old capital) . There was a reasonable chance that the Japanese would reach Chongqing too soon and capture Chiang before he could relocate to Wuhan, so Chiang made an horrific decision: he breached the dikes holding back the Yellow River, flooding a large part of central China (particularly Henan Province). The effect was to slow the Japanese enough to allow the move to Wuhan, but at the cost of an estimated 500,000 Chinese deaths from famine and disease associated with the destruction of a large and very fertile region. From a modern Western standpoint, this was a morally reprehensible decision that, if made in the U.S., would cause breast-beating for centuries. But from a Chinese standpoint it was both business as usual and an effective way of preserving China from Japanese rule.



[Speculation: Chiang was clearly the best leader China could muster against the Japanese: the Wang Jimwei faction of the Nationalist Party was both weak and inclined toward conciliation with Japan; the CCP was far too weak militarily for an effective military contest and preferred to keep its powder dry and let the Nationalist take the brunt of Japanese aggression. Had the Chiang government fallen it is likely that a leadership vacuum would result and all of China would become a Japanese vassal. Records show that the Japanese military—that is, the Japanese government—had intentions to invade the USSR, so Chiang's defeat would put Japan on the USSR's eastern border. Had this happened Germany's 1941 invasion of the USSR would put Stalin in a fight on two fronts—a fight he barely survived on one front. Would the USSR—the European bulwark against Germany—have survived this? If not, the Axis led by Germany and Japan would control Europe and most of Asia (perhaps all of it if India were also taken).



In that case Germany's full military strength could be devoted to its western front. This might have changed the outcome of the 1944 D-Day invasion of France, or entirely prevented the invasion. The British might now be speaking German, and we in America could have faced an insurmountable global hostile force. Given that China’s war with Japan cost an estimated twenty million lives, and that Mao’s leadership of China cost at least as many deaths, the death toll in Henang Province seems in scale for a major action that might rescue the globe from an existential crisis.]



The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) now portrays itself as victorious against Japan, but in reality it was of very little consequence throughout the war. Located in a remote area that the Japanese could readily ignore, its energies were devoted to building the strength to fight Chiang. There was only one significant engagement between the CCP and the Japanese army during the war—the Battle of the Hundred Regiments in August-October of 1941, when over 40,000 CCP troops continually attacked Japanese infrastructure (bridges, rail and roads) for an extended period.



All “top-down” histories of the war highlight the overweening egos of the major actors and the intense hostility and jealousy between them. This history is no different. Chiang’s contempt for the British in general, and Churchill in particular, was born of British colonial history in China; the contempt was mutual. When FDR insisted that Chiang accept Lt. Gen. "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell as his Chief-of Staff it began an episode in which Chiang soon came to the conclusion that Stilwell was rash, careless with Chinese troops, excessively risk-taking, overconfident, and bent on using Chinese troops to fight an Anglo-American war to preserve Britain’s colonies, particularly Burma and India. Stilwell openly derided Chiang as a weak and incompetent military leader whose defensive actions showed cowardice and whose corruption was his primary motive for leadership. Stilwell broadcast this view to FDR and Congress, and to the American press.



Mitter points to evidence exonerating Chiang: Stilwell insisted on using Chinese troops to open the Burma road so goods could be transported to China, but Chiang opposed this on the grounds that this diverted his troops to a British theater. This seems reasonable since both Britain and America were also at odds about whose interests were central to their alliance. But over Chiang’s objections Stilwell diverted Chinese forces and resources (much of it Lend-Lease) to Burma to reopen the Burma Road to bring matériel into China. Chiang had said that Stilwell would be overmatched, and he was—Stilwell’s forces were surrounded in Burma and when Chiang ordered a retreat to British India Stilwell and his army made a brutal overland trek to safety.



Stilwell was incensed by Chiang’s order to retreat—apparently he had the Japanese just where he wanted them! His vitriolic ad hominem attacks on Chiang were blasted to FDR and to all who would listen. The American press went viral and Chiang’s image in America was formed largely from Stilwell’s perspective. FDR, losing confidence in Chiang, appointed Stilwell to be Commander-in-Chief of the China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater, making him supreme commander of Chinese forces. Stilwell chortled with delight, penning limericks about his political defeat of “The Peanut,” as he called Chiang. But, still obsessed with Burma Stilwell used his new power to attempt another reopening of the Burma Road. Once again he took Chinese troops to Burma, and once again he was besieged. This time he fought his way out with 80 percent casualties and almost complete decimation of the elite Merrill's Marauders Ranger unit. The Burma Road was reopened, but by that time air transport over the Hump was the main transportation route and the Road provided little value-added.



After this costly debacle Chiang demanded that Stilwell be recalled. FDR pointed out that the Lend-Lease resources that the US had given Chiang would cease. Chiang replied that it made little difference because most of it had been used by Stilwell to finance his failed ventures in Burma. Stilwell was recalled and as he left he penned and distributed poisonous words about "The Peanut."



In China Stilwell has a reputation as an arrogant American without combat experience—he was a military planner, logistician and West Point professor known as an excellent trainer of troops—who failed to see that Chiang had been battling the Japanese on a shoestring for six years and was still in contention. He is also a symbol of the lack of real U. S. support for China's war, and for U. S. inability to understand the importance of China to the Chinese, as well as Chinese objectives and methods. In the U.S. Stilwell has the reputation of a successful general stymied by a corrupt and weak Chiang, a view buttressed by Barbara Tuchman's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1971 book Stilwell and the American Experience in China—a book based largely on Stilwell’s papers!



Stalin and Chiang had far more in common than did FDR and Chiang—both would sacrifice their citizens to the cause of national survival on a scale far beyond the U.S, both would see the US as niggardly with its resources (though Stalin was the clear winner), both saw the Allies as leaving them to take the hits while focusing only on the European western front.



That Chiang could resist the Japanese for so long with only lukewarm support from the USSR (which Stalin wanted to prevent the Japanese from casting their military eye on Russia) and little more than rhetorical support from the U. K and U. S., is indicative of success as a wartime leader, not the failure with which he has been painted. Chiang might have been the right leader at the right time during China’s most serious existential crisis.



Mitter’s is a story well worth reading. Completed 65 years after the end of WWII and forty years after Tuchman’s book, it is based on a far more complete record than earlier histories; this lends verisimilitude to the story—a ring of truth (or of balance) that is enhanced by Mitter's non-Anglo perspective. Mitter’s take on the 1937-45 Sino-Japanese War is written with the same attention to both historical detail and to “boots on the ground” background as Max Hasting’s histories of the war in Europe. It is a fascinating tale, and remarkably well told.



Five stars!

