Posts from This Journal by “Sino-Japanese War” Tag. Memorial Museum of the War of the Chinese People against Japan Japanese-Chinese War 1937-1945
China's armed struggle against the Japanese invaders began in nineteen thirty-seven and lasted for nine long years. During this time, the air force of the Kuomintang, the internationally recognized government of China, managed to change its material several times, at times losing almost all of its aircraft in battles and then being revived due to supplies from abroad. During one of these periods, from approximately 1938 to 1940, Chinese aviation was represented exclusively by Soviet aircraft, including I-152 and I-16 fighters, and Soviet volunteer pilots flew them together with the Chinese. This article talks about the contribution of the I-16 aircraft to the defense of Chinese airspace.
Brief description of events
In the thirties of the 20th century, the Republic of China was in a very difficult situation. The state apparatus is mired in corruption; The civil war either subsided or flared up again between the officially recognized ruling party Kuomintang, the Communist Party of China and separatists in the provinces. Against this background, the eastern neighbor, Japan, became more active, rapidly gaining strength and dreaming of building a “Great East Asian Sphere of Mutual Prosperity” under its own auspices, of course. In 1931, as a result of the actions of the Japanese armed forces, Manchuria was torn away from China, on whose territory the puppet state of Manchukuo was later formed. A continuation followed six years later.
On July 7, 1937, the “Second Sino-Japanese War” began with the conflict at Lugouqiao Bridge. China, essentially, was not ready for this war. The Kuomintang troops retreated, losing strength in bloody battles. The governors-general of the Chinese provinces left the best army units to defend their territory (in case relations with the central government deteriorated), sending practically unarmed territorial troops to the front. There was not enough artillery. The state of the Chinese air force was even more deplorable.
The West's reaction to events in China was rather sluggish. The League of Nations limited itself to only formally condemning Japan's actions, and even then very late (the resolution was released only on November 24, 1937).
Japanese ace Takeo Kato near his Ki.10. China, 1938.
Air force composition of the parties
With the outbreak of the war, Japanese industry sharply increased aircraft production in order to provide army and navy aviation with new equipment. In 1937, Japanese factories produced 1511 aircraft, and in 1938 already 3201, more than twice as many. First of all, the rearmament affected the Imperial Fleet Aviation, in which the outdated Nakajima A2M1 and A4M1 biplanes were replaced by the new Mitsubishi A5M monoplane fighter designed by Jiro Horikoshi. The main fighter of the army aviation was still the Kawasaki Ki.10 biplane, so the army air force during this period was used mainly to cover Japanese troops in Northern China and provide air defense to Manchuria. However, already in March 1938, a new fighter, the Nakajima Ki.27, appeared in the skies of China, which soon began to arrive in ever-increasing quantities to Imperial Army Aviation units.
| Japanese army fighters | |
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Ki.10 Takeo Kato, autumn 1937 |
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Ki.27 captured by the Chinese and repainted in Kuomintang Air Force colors |
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Nakajima Ki-43 25th Sentai. Nanjing, 1943. |
The Republic of China could do little to counter the might of the Japanese military machine. In China itself there was practically no developed aviation industry; factories were engaged in assembling foreign aircraft from kits. Aviation at the beginning of the war included about six hundred aircraft, including three hundred and five fighters. Fighter aircraft were represented by the American Curtiss (the Hawk-II and Hawk-III biplanes were in service), the Boeing-281 (better known as the P-26), as well as the Italian Fiat CR.32. The best fighter from this “hodgepodge” was considered the Curtiss Hawk III, a biplane with retractable landing gear, which, while superior to the Japanese A2M, A4M and Ki.10 biplanes, could not compete on equal terms with the new A5M and Ki.27 monoplanes.
*According to other sources: 16 delivered; 24 ordered, 9 of them delivered.
Initially, the Chinese managed to beat up the enemy fighter units, but with the appearance of the A5M in the skies over Shanghai, the Japanese seized air supremacy. The number of combat-ready fighters began to fall catastrophically, and the question arose about purchasing new combat vehicles abroad. Attempts to conclude trade agreements with Western powers encountered strong political opposition from Japan. The Europeans, even in the east, faithful to their “policy of appeasement,” did not want to quarrel with the growing empire.
In August 1937, a batch of twenty-four French Devoitin D.510C fighters was ordered; they took part in combat operations from the summer of 1938. At the beginning of December 1937, thirty-six British Gladiators Mk.I were delivered to Hong Kong, but under pressure from Japan, the British authorities refused to provide technical assistance for the assembly of the aircraft, as a result of which their introduction into service was very delayed. In any case, all this was like a drop in the ocean.
There was nowhere to wait for help. Therefore, the head of the Chinese government, the leader of the Kuomintang, Chiang Kai-shek, had no choice but to turn to the Soviet Union for help. The USSR government was interested in keeping the Japanese as far as possible from the borders of their country, so the negotiations proceeded quickly and without delay. On August 21, 1937, a non-aggression pact was concluded between the USSR and China. In September, a Chinese military delegation arrived in Moscow and was shown samples of Soviet weapons at the Shchelkovo airfield, including one UTI-4 training aircraft. Already in October 1937, before the signing of the official agreement, the Soviet Union began to transfer weapons to China, including aircraft. Simultaneously with the dispatch of aircraft, at the request of Chiang Kai-shek, the Soviet Union began sending volunteer pilots. In 1937, one I-16 squadron (thirty-one aircraft and one hundred and one flight and technical personnel) was sent to help. By the end of November, however, only twenty-three aircraft had arrived.
The first deliveries of equipment on credit (that is, official) began on March 1, 1938. By June 10, the first contract had delivered, among other things, 94 I-16s (type 5 and type 10), as well as 8 UTI-4s. In the very first battles, the insufficient firepower of the two wing-mounted ShKAS machine guns on the I-16 type 5 was revealed, so in the spring of 1938, along with the I-16 type 10, additional machine guns began to arrive in China to rearm the I-16 type 5. From July 5, 1938 to On September 1, 1939, another 20 I-16 type 10 (with two sets of spare parts) and 10 cannon I-16 type 17 (with one set of spare parts) were transferred. Deliveries of “donkeys” continued further, perhaps until 1941. It is known that in addition to the listed types of “donkeys”, I-16 type 18, and, probably, type 6 were transferred to China.
Help is coming
The selection of pilots to participate in the Sino-Japanese War was carried out very carefully. Volunteers were gathered in Moscow in October 1937, where they were familiarized with the characteristics of the Japanese Ki.10 fighter. By October 21, 1937, 447 people, including ground personnel, had been trained for deployment to China. Dressed in civilian clothes, they went by train to Alma-Ata, where I-16 fighters were waiting for them at the airfield.
Upon arrival in Alma-Ata, it turned out that the entire group flew only I-15s, and at the local airfield more than thirty already assembled, but not yet flown I-16s were waiting for them. As a result, G.N. Zakharov had to fly over the entire batch of I-16s for two to three weeks while waiting for a new group of pilots. It was sent only at the end of November. The personnel of the I-15 fighter squadron (99 people, including 39 pilots) led by Captain A.S. Blagoveshchensky was sent to China in three groups in November, December 1937 and January 1938.
The first batches of I-15 and I-16, by analogy with bombers, were transported along the “southern route” Almaty-Lanzhou (Gansu Province). The air route, about 2,400 km long, consisted of a chain of bases with airfields: Alma-Ata - Gulja - Shikho - Urumqi - Guchei - Hami - Shinshinxia - Anxi - Suzhou - Lianzhou - Lanzhou. The main bases were in Almaty, Hami and Lanzhou. Each route base was headed by a Soviet commander, who was responsible for the required number of specialists, as well as a minimum of technical equipment for servicing the aircraft being transported.
Poorly suited for high-speed bombers, the small, unequipped high-mountain sites of the “southern route” were simply dangerous for fighters, especially for I-16s with their high landing speed. In addition, the cars were overweight. As G. Zakharov wrote, “In addition to being fully loaded with fuel and ammunition, we had to carry with us everything that we might need in emergency conditions - hooks, cables, tents, tools, even some spare parts. In short, every fighter has turned into a truck.".
Winter weather also contributed. During the overnight stay of G. Zakharov’s group in Guchen, the site and the planes were so covered with snow overnight that the next morning they had to rack their brains about how to take off. There was nothing to clear the runway - the place was wild and sparsely populated. “I then released two fighters to taxi, and for two and a half to three hours they, steering track after track, rolled into a rut. Taking off from a rut is risky - it’s not like walking on a ski track with a backpack on your back. A meter to the side during the take-off run - and there will be an accident... But there was no other way out..." One of the I-16 groups spent about a month in Guchen and celebrated the New Year of 1938 there in an adobe hut. When the snow storm subsided, according to technician V.D. Zemlyansky, “it turned out that the fighters were only guessing under the snowdrifts”. To clear the airfield, a small local population was mobilized - Chinese, Uighurs, Dungans. They pierced taxiways and runways in the snow debris. At the same time, a group of F.P. Polynin’s bombers at another airfield took shelter from a sandstorm for two weeks.
In his memoirs, navigator P.T. Sobin described in detail how from September 1937 to June 1938, he and pilots A.A. Skvortsov or A. Shorokhov on the SB repeatedly led groups of 10 - 12 fighters. To ferry G.V. Zakharov of the very first group of I-16 fighters, N.N. Ishchenko from TB-3, who was already familiar with the flight route, was appointed navigator to A. Shorokhov. The ferrying of I-16 and I-15 usually took place according to the following scenario: the leader took off first, collecting the fighters taking off one by one in a circle. They walked along the route in links or pairs, while the leader’s crew carefully watched the followers to see if anyone was lagging behind. On approaching the airfield, the leader disbanded the formation, the fighters stood in a circle and landed in turn. Intermediate airfields were mainly located at the limit of the fighters' flight range, so the group was assembled very quickly after takeoff, and usually landed on the move, otherwise there might not be enough fuel. The leader was the last to land. Then his commander debriefed the flight and gave instructions to the pilots for the next stage of the route. According to Sobin, during the entire flight he had only one case of the plane being lost on the route. Due to an engine malfunction, the I-16 made an emergency landing in the Mulei area (70 km east of Gucheng). The pilot suffered a head injury during landing; the emergency aircraft was left on site until the repair team arrived.
Quite often, at intermediate airfields, planes were “hooded” when landing. The pilots, as a rule, escaped with minor bruises, but the aircraft ended up with bent propellers, damaged engine cowlings and tail units. These aircraft were quickly restored. The most serious incident occurred during the ferrying of the first group. On October 28, when landing at an airfield in Suzhou, located in the middle mountains, the commander of a group of ten I-16s, V.M. Kurdyumov, did not take into account the lower air density and increased landing speed: the plane rolled off the runway, overturned and burned, the pilot died.
On October 31, 1937, brigade commander P.I. Pumpur began to command the southern route. Having learned about flight accidents in Kurdyumov’s group, he canceled the already scheduled departure dates for the second group of I-16s, which included mainly Far Eastern fighters: fighters from the 9th and 32nd separate squadrons. Pumpur began intensively training pilots in flights at extreme altitudes with landings in hard-to-reach places in the hills, in limited areas. The pilot Korestelev, who showed daring and landed on a tiny site in the mountains, was suspended from flying and was almost sent back to his unit, but his friends defended him. In addition, the group stood out for its preparation. This group on 9 I-16s took off from Alma-Ata in early December 1937, they were led by brigade commander P.I. Pumpur himself. The group flew to Lanzhou without any special incidents, there the I-16 was handed over to the Chinese, then they returned to Alma-Ata by transporter for a new batch of vehicles. As volunteer D.A. Kudymov recalled, after the second successful “flight” Pumpur was going to leave this group as ferrymen, but then, taking pity, he still let him go “to war.”
Unjustified losses and delays due to weather conditions during the ferrying led to the fact that the “air bridge” was soon reduced; disassembled fighters began to be delivered by truck to Hami (Xinjiang province). To do this, thousands of Soviet builders had to be sent to this area; under the most difficult conditions, they built a highway through the mountains and deserts between the main points of the route in the shortest possible time. The first cargoes went along the “road of life” in April 1938, at the end of the month the automobile convoy reached Hami.
The highway along which goods were supplied to the Chinese had a length of 2925 km. Her route: Sary-Ozek (Soviet territory) - Urumqi - Hami - Anxi - Suzhou - Lanzhou - Lanzhou. The leadership was handled by the headquarters in Alma-Ata. Transportation of aircraft fuselages was carried out on ZiS-6 trucks; planes, tails, propellers and spare parts were transported on ZiS-5. Caravans carrying aircraft usually numbered 50 vehicles, and their movement was limited to daylight hours. Parts of the fighters were transported to Hami, which was 1,590 km and required about eleven days of travel. In Hami, the fighters were assembled by Soviet specialists, after which the planes were flown by air to Lanzhou. The total travel time was 18-20 days.
In battles
Pilots from the Soviet Union entered combat immediately after arriving. On November 21, 1937, the first duel between Soviet and Japanese pilots took place in the skies over Nanjing. Reflecting a raid on the city, 7 I-16s of Kurdyumov’s group intercepted 20 Japanese aircraft and scored three victories (two A5Ms and one bomber) without losses. The next day, November 22, Prokofiev’s group opened its combat account, 6 I-16s in a battle with six A5Ms won one victory without losses.
When Soviet pilots appeared in the air, the Japanese began to suffer heavy losses, and their air superiority was jeopardized. However, after some time they “got the hang of it,” and our pilots, who mostly had no combat experience, began to act less effectively. The absence of a commander in Kurdyumov’s group also had an effect: the deputy squadron commander Sizov, in a difficult situation, did not want to take full responsibility and categorically refused command. As a result, air battles were sluggish and unorganized. The pilots, having no combat experience, acted as they pleased. The pilots were also burdened by the fact that they always had to fight a numerically superior enemy. As a rule, one Soviet fighter was opposed by five to seven Japanese ones.
Due to the impossibility of properly covering airfields from sudden attacks by Japanese aircraft, Blagoveshchensky organized a kind of analogue of the Soviet VNOS (air surveillance, warning and communications) service, in full accordance with “Chinese realities.” From morning to evening, the pilots were with parachutes near their planes, next to the technicians and mechanics servicing the aircraft. The commander's plane usually stood next to the command post, while the other planes were located nearby in a checkerboard pattern. Immediately upon receiving a signal about the appearance of the enemy, a blue flag fluttered on the tower, indicating an alarm. Blagoveshchensky usually took off first, followed by the others. The group in battle was controlled only by swinging its wings. The signals were previously clearly identified on the ground.
A. S. Blagoveshchensky also took the initiative in organizing the interaction between the “high-speed” I-16 and the “maneuverable” I-15. At the suggestion of one of the pilots, he centralized the firing of machine guns, ordering the installation of a push-button trigger on the handle, to make it easier, he removed the batteries on all aircraft and installed armored backs on the I-15, which saved the lives of many pilots.
As a result of the measures taken, the ratio of losses again changed in favor of the Soviet volunteers.
As mentioned above, in the initial period of the war (1937 - 1939), Soviet and Chinese fighters were mainly opposed by the Mitsubishi A5M aircraft with a fixed landing gear. Its advantage over the I-16 was high horizontal maneuverability, its disadvantages were low speed, poor vertical maneuverability and weak armament. However, the experience of Japanese pilots partially compensated for these shortcomings, so the A5M can be considered a quite worthy adversary. The army Nakajima Ki.27 also fought in China at this time. , in many ways similar to the A5M, but with better characteristics. They do not appear in the memoirs of Soviet fighter pilots; it is possible that they simply did not distinguish them from A5M (or simply did not encounter them). The pilots of the Red Army Air Force were subsequently to become acquainted with them during the battles at Khalkhin Gol. The crews of the SB had a completely different attitude towards the Ki-27: with the advent of these fighters in the area of combat operations of Soviet bombers, the losses of the latter increased, since the I-97 (the name of the Nakajima fighter according to the Soviet classification), unlike the I-96 (A5M) ) and I-95 (Ki-10), could easily catch up with Soviet high-speed bombers. Air battles in the skies over China were notable for the fact that both sides actively used ramming. The most famous, of course, is the Anton Gubenko ram, produced on May 31, 1938, and which became the first Soviet ram. Gubenko on the I-16 destroyed the A5M fighter, and he himself landed safely at his airfield. However, this ram was not the first. At least two more rams are known, carried out by Chinese pilots on the I-15 (February 18 and April 29, 1938). However, in both cases the planes were lost; one pilot escaped by parachute, the other died. Even earlier, on December 22, 1937, Japanese pilot N. Obbayashi rammed an I-16. Both pilots were killed.
A5M4 fighters of the 12th air group in flight over China, 1939
In China, for the first time, Soviet pilots fought night battles on the I-16 (in Spain, this turned out to be impossible for Polikarpov’s monoplanes due to the lack of suitable runways, so the “night pilots” there flew on the I-15). So, one night, squadron commander A.I. Lysunkin, together with E. Orlov, took off to intercept Japanese bombers heading towards Henyang. At 23.00, following an alarm signal, the pilots left for the airfield. Details of the battle are mentioned in the memoirs of military doctor S. Belolipetsky:
“The airfield, well known during the day, had a different, almost unrecognizable appearance in the ghostly light of the moon. Near the ruins of the commandant's premises stood several trucks with powerful jupiters installed on the platforms of their bodies. Lysunkin and Orlov, already in full gear, with hanging parachutes, tablets and rocket launchers in their hands, negotiated through an interpreter with the head of the airfield, General Yan: “Take off by moonlight. Jupiters are not needed. As soon as the enemy is bombed, the anti-aircraft guns stop firing, and the searchlights indicate the direction of the enemy's flight. Landing request - white rocket." A minute later, Regimental Commissar Ivan Ivanovich Sulin and I watched as, in the silvery haze of moonlight, two blunt-nosed “swallows”, rapidly picking up speed, rushed past us one after another, soared up and sank in the night sky. Judging by the receding noise of the engines, the fighters headed southwest, towards the city. Suddenly, a luminous chain of red tracer dots fell from the sky to the ground, and machine gun fire could be heard. A second sound was heard behind her, but in a different direction. Then the third. Subsequently, we learned: Lysunkin and Orlov, on instructions from the Chinese command, “extinguished” in this way in different areas of Hengyang the lights that continued to glow in conditions of complete darkness. Perhaps the fire was burned out of indiscipline, or perhaps out of malicious intent... The translator took Ivan Ivanovich and me to an air-raid shelter for which a large railway pipe was adapted next to the airfield. Soon the muffled noise of engines penetrated the wary silence of the night. The first explosion exploded. The hundreds of explosions that followed at imperceptibly short intervals merged into a roar of monstrous power. The earth shook, stones of the road embankment fell down. Close explosions hit my ears, blowing hot air over my face. This was the first time I was so close to the “epicenter” of a bomb strike. The hellish cannonade ended at once: the last two or three bombs fell alone, and it suddenly became strangely quiet. Sulin and I hastily climbed the embankment in the hope of seeing our brave fighters meet the air enemy moving south. There, following the enemy planes, pale blue stripes of searchlight rays stretched out. The airfield was covered in smoke and dust. It was in vain that we strained our eyes and ears. Only once did Ivan Ivanovich suddenly exclaim: “Look, doctor, something flared up over there!” But the roar of the bomber engines stopped, the searchlights went out, and the time for which our fighters had enough fuel was coming to an end. General Yang announced: “The second wave is approaching, and the third has arrived.” But Lysunkin and Orlov were still not there. Finally, the rumble of a single engine was heard in the sky, and a white rocket flew down. One of our people returned and asked permission to land. Where is the second one? Why is he not there, what’s wrong with him? By asking each other these alarming questions, we were afraid that the returning pilot would not have time to land and would fall under Japanese bombs. But then the plane taxied on the ground.
A5M4 fighter aboard the aircraft carrier Soryu, 1939
Some more time passed in agonizing anticipation, and the pilot still continued to maneuver, apparently looking for gaps between fresh craters. The pilot most likely had no idea about the danger that threatened him. Unable to resist, Sulin sent an aircraft technician to the airfield to pick up the returnee. Finally the engine fell silent, and immediately in the ensuing silence the distant noise of another group of Mitsubishi was clearly visible. Enemy bombers were already humming menacingly over the airfield when out of breath aircraft technicians and the arriving Evgeny Orlov ran up to our shelter. We barely had time to squeeze into the crowded bomb shelter when the bombs thundered. - Where is Lysunkin? - Don't know. The last time I saw him was when we attacked the Japanese. They responded with heavy fire. I thought Alexander had already returned... It turns out that something wrong happened to him. Now everyone understood that Lysunkin would not be able to return safely: he had long ago run out of gas.”
Unfortunately, A. Lysunkin died. During the battle, his plane was damaged and made an emergency landing. In the moonlight, the pilot mistook the surface of the lake for land; As a result of a strong impact during landing, Lysunkin received a fatal injury, hitting his head on the aiming tube. There are no reports of downed planes in this battle, but the next night, during a raid on the city, several Japanese pilots, remembering the attack by the “donkeys,” mistook their planes for Soviet ones and opened fire on them. As a result of the intensified shelling, as well as due to the actions of Chinese anti-aircraft gunners, the Japanese lost eleven bombers. According to some reports, S.P. Suprun also flew flights at night on a donkey. As S. Ya Fedorov writes, “S. P. Suprun, as a deputy adviser on fighter aviation, was in Chongqing, where two fighter squadrons under his command were based. The Japanese often violated the airspace of the temporary capital of Kuomintang China, carrying out massive reconnaissance flights mainly at night and at dusk. Suprun flew the I-16 fighter designed by P. N. Polikarpov. It was a very good car for that time, maneuverable, with great visibility. S.P. Suprun fought selflessly; there was not a single combat mission to intercept Japanese aircraft and cover the city in which he did not participate. For military services in China, S.P. Suprun was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.” In April 1938, the Japanese government demanded that the USSR recall Soviet volunteers from China. This demand was categorically rejected. Soviet pilots continued to fight in China. The conflict started by the Japanese in July 1938 on Lake Khasan, designed to force the USSR to stop providing assistance to China, also did not achieve its goal. It is known, however, that all the pilots had already returned to their homeland by the beginning of 1940. This was caused by the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe, as well as by the cooling of relations between the USSR and China (at this time, incidents began in China with attacks by Kuomintang party troops on communist troops). True, there remained a number of our advisers and instructors in the troops who did not take part in the hostilities. January 10, 1940 can probably be considered the day of the last victory of Soviet volunteers in China. It was won by K. Kokkinaki, commander of the I-16 group. This is how he himself recalled this battle:
“The Japanese bombers were flying in two groups of 27 aircraft each, under strong fighter cover. Some of our guys engaged Japanese fighters in battle, while others attacked the bombers. We must pay tribute to the enemy’s combat training and tenacity. The Japanese planes flew in tight formation, wing to wing, skillfully supporting each other with fire. If one car, engulfed in flames, fell to the ground, its place was taken by the one coming from behind, maintaining combat formation. We had to fight with covering fighters. There were significantly more of them. In this battle I shot down the seventh Japanese plane. Coming out of the attack, I saw that two Japanese were attacking the I-16. I hurried to the rescue of my comrade and came under attack myself. The machine-gun fire severely damaged my car, and it went into a steep spiral towards the ground. The experience of a test pilot helped me here. “I managed to get the car into horizontal flight and get to my airfield.”
During the war, about seven hundred pilots and technicians visited China, and about two hundred Soviet volunteer pilots died. Fourteen pilots received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for fighting in China, and more than four hundred were awarded orders and medals.
Chinese units on I-16
The first Chinese unit to master the “donkey” was IV tattoo, who on September 21, 1937, having handed over his Hokies III, left for Lanzhou to receive I-16 type 5 and I-15bis. Began to retrain on I-16 21st Changtai, the rest of the Chantai IV Tattoo (22nd and 23rd) received biplanes.
Commander IV tattoo Kao Chi-Han (in another transcription - Zhao Jihan)
On November 21, the pilots of the 21st Changtai IV Tattoo flew to Nanjing on donkeys. In total, 15 aircraft took part in the flight, seven of them were piloted by Soviet pilots, eight by the Chinese. The leader of the group was Colonel Kao Chi-Han, commander of the IV Tattoo, who already had five victories to his credit. After takeoff, the fighters were caught in a snowstorm, as a result, only eight I-16s landed at the intermediate airfield in Ankyang - Soviet pilots and Kao, the rest of the Chinese were lost. While refueling, the planes were hit by ten G3M2 bombs. Kao Chi-Han was killed by a bomb while trying to take off. His plane was the first I-16 lost in combat during the Sino-Japanese War. The commander of the IV tattoo was Lee Kuei-Tan.
Changtai pilots, having flown to Nanjing, carried out combat missions until December 3, 1937. On December 13, Nanjing fell. During the retreat, the Chinese left several damaged “donkeys” at the airfields, which were subsequently studied by the Japanese. After the retreat of the 21st Chantai, together with other parts of the IV Tattoo, flew flights from Hankou. The first major battle took place on February 18, 1938. On this day, twelve G3M2 bombers, covered by twenty-six A5M fighters, raided Hankow. Twenty-nine I-16 IV Tattoos and a number of I-15s took off to intercept. According to Chinese data, twelve Japanese were shot down (Japanese data confirms the loss of only four fighters), while five I-16s and four I-15s were lost, all the pilots from the “donkeys” (including the tattoo commander Li Guidan) were killed. In September 1938, due to a shortage of materiel, the IV Tattoo was sent to Lanzhou and re-equipped with the I-15bis.
A Chinese pilot took a photo in front of his I-16 type 17. 24th Changtai, June 1941.
Given IV tattoo 24th Chantai received the first I-16 type 10 in Lanzhou on March 29, 1939. The unit was to provide air defense for Chongqing, where the government of the country was located at that moment. The pilots of the 24th Changtai had the dubious pleasure of being the first to meet Japanese Zero fighters in battle (see below for more details). After this, the 24th Changtai was transferred to Chendu. and then in February 1941 in Hami, where the unit received I-16 III fighters (as the I-16 type 18 was designated in the Chinese Air Force). Units of IV Tattoo received 35 I-16 and 20 I-153 fighters. In June 1940, the group received three times fewer monoplanes than biplanes. On September 1, 1941, the 24th Chantai became part of the new “fighter group”. At the end of March 1942, the pilots of IV Tattoo handed over the last Soviet-designed fighters and headed to Kunming for retraining on the Republic P-43A Lancer aircraft.
26 chantai V tattoo was re-equipped with I-16 at Lanzhou in January 1938. At the end of July 1938, the unit took part in the defense of Hankow. The pilots fought a series of fierce battles with Japanese aircraft. For example, on August 3, up to seventy Japanese aircraft took part in the battle. The commander of the 26th Changtai, Wang Hanxun, shot down one plane. The plane of flight commander Liu Linzi (tail number “5922”) was shot down, the pilot jumped out with a parachute. The pilot of the I-16 fighter with tail number “5920” Ha Huyen made an emergency landing. The I-16 with tail number “5821” was lost, the pilot died. On October 1, the 26th Changtai was given a V tattoo. In September 1939, the unit received seven new I-16 Type 10s. In November, the squadron took part in fierce air battles over Chengdu. In 1940, nine new I-16 type 18 arrived in Lanzhou, but by the end of the year all of them were lost for one reason or another or turned out to be ineffective. The squadrons were re-equipped with I-153 aircraft, but already at the beginning of March 1941, the 26th Changtai received the I-16 III, which was left in Lanzhou to cover the route for transporting aircraft from the USSR. On September 1, 1941, the unit became part of a new fighter group and by May 1942 was re-equipped with the I-153. Another unit of V Tattoo that received I-16 fighters was formed in July 1941 4th Airlift Command Group. The group was led by the commander of the 29th Chantai, Wang Yanhua, and the unit was armed with seven I-16 III fighters. The pilots continued to carry out air defense missions for Lanzhou. By the end of 1942, the group had become a de facto autonomous unit, reporting not to the central command, but to the leadership of the Xinjiang province, where clashes began between the Chinese and the local Uyghur population. Clashes continued until the communists came to power in the province in 1943. In September 1943, V Tattoo received American P-66 fighters and surviving I-16s from other groups. At the end of 1943, a Chinese-American air wing was formed on the basis of Tattoo, which received P-40N fighters. It is quite possible that not all I-16s and P-66s were replaced by new fighters.
Future ace Liu Chi-Shen against the background of his I-16 type 5. 21 Changtai, Hankou airfield, March 1938
In January 1940 in Chengdu III tattoo received I-16 and I-152 fighters, most likely left behind by Soviet volunteers recalled to the USSR. I-16 aircraft entered service with the 7th and 32nd Chantai. There were significantly fewer Donkeys than I-152. At the beginning of 1941, I-153 “Chaika” fighters also appeared in the III Tattoo. The group suffered heavy losses in daily air battles with Zeros over Chendu. At the end of April and beginning of May, the group received several more I-16 III fighters. At the beginning of August, at least five I-16s from the “spring” batch took part in the battles. On August 11, twenty-nine Chinese fighters, including nine I-16s, took off to intercept seven new G4M1 bombers and 16 Zero escorts. Five “donkeys” became victims of the Japanese: three were shot down by “Zero” pilots, two by G4M1 air gunners. As far as is known, on August 11, 1941, Chinese I-16 fighters last took part in a battle with Japanese aircraft. It is quite possible that the I-16s remained in service with III Tattoo in mid-September, when the group was re-equipped with P-66 Vanguard aircraft.
The last group to receive I-16 was XI tattoo, formed in Chengdu on December 16, 1940, consisting of the 41st, 42nd, 43rd and 44th Chantai. For the newly formed tattoo, four I-153s, five Curtiss Hawk-75s, twenty I-152s and fifteen I-16s were allocated. The 43rd and 44th Chantai were armed only with I-16 and I-152, while the 42nd were armed with Soviet aircraft and “old fighters of all types.” Presumably, Soviet fighters from XI Tattoo carried out their last air battle on August 11, 1941. In September 1942, the group was mainly rearmed with American P-66 Vanguard fighters. However, the 41st Chantai continued to fly Polikarpov monoplanes and even win victories on them. On June 6, 1943, unit commander Chen Zhaoji shot down a Japanese army fighter Ki.43 Hayabusa over the Burma Road. Apparently, this unit was the last Chinese unit to fight on the I-16.
In general, Soviet pilots speak well of the qualities of their Chinese colleagues. However, most of the Chinese clearly lacked the skill to fight Japanese aircraft. The number of accidents was very high; many Soviet aircraft were lost in non-combat conditions. The battles, in the absence of Soviet volunteers, were not in favor of the Chinese; It often happened that not a single plane returned to base after departure. The command was also not up to par. For example, on July 31, 1940, the deputy commander of the 24th Changtai led a group of seven I-16s on a night interception, despite the fact that the fighters did not have the appropriate equipment. As a result, only three “donkeys” were able to gain altitude, including the leader, and in the battle with the Japanese they were all shot down and the pilots died.
The appearance of a new fleet fighter in 1940 was a real nightmare for the Chinese. Mitsubishi A6M Zero with retractable landing gear and cannon armament. Only experienced pilots could fight it on donkeys, even on the new I-16 type 18 with the M-62 engine, and there weren’t many of them in the Kuomintang Air Force (especially after the Soviet volunteers returned home). Therefore, the very first battle with them, which took place on September 13, 1940, turned out to be catastrophically unsuccessful for the Chinese. On this day, the Japanese launched a raid on Chongqing with twenty-seven G3M bombers. The attack aircraft were covered by thirteen Zeros. The Chinese raised air defense fighter units of Chongqing to intercept: nine I-16 IV Tatu (including six “donkeys” of the 24th Changtai), 19 I-152 from the 22nd and 23rd Changtai of the same IV air group and six I-152 from 28th Changtai III Group. In the air battle, the commander of the 24th Changtai, Yang Men Chin, was killed, and his deputy and another pilot were injured to varying degrees. In total, nine Chinese pilots were killed, six people were injured, including the commander of IV Tattoo; 13 Chinese aircraft were shot down and 11 damaged. The Japanese did not lose a single aircraft. An interesting fact is that the first Zero flights to Chongqing were made on August 19-20, 1940, but the Chinese simply did not send forces to intercept them (judging by the results of the battle on September 13, this was completely justified).
The battles with the “Zero” mostly ended in the same pitiable way: the Japanese suffered virtually no losses. Therefore, the Chinese government officially issued an order to cease hostilities in the air. Most of the fighting until the end of 1940 occurred when Chinese aircraft were intercepted by the Japanese. Naturally, Chinese victories under such circumstances became an episodic occurrence. The situation was somewhat alleviated by the Flying Tigers group, consisting of American military pilots (in fact, it was a full-fledged part of the USAAF, camouflaged as a group of mercenaries). The Americans who flew the P-40 achieved certain results. It is known, however, that on May 22, 1941, Kao Yu-Ching, a pilot of the 24th Chantai IV Tattoo, won a victory in an I-16 type 18, shooting down a G3M bomber over Lanzhou and damaging another one. It is very possible that this was the only victory of Chinese fighters in the entire 1941. For this reason, it is worth telling about this battle in more detail. At 10.20 IV the tattoo was ordered to disperse. Liu Chi-Shen, commander of the 24th Chantai (part of the group, as mentioned above), led a group of seven I-16 Type 18 to Wu Wei. The group was led by the SB-2M-103 bomber from the IX Tattoo. One of the I-16s was unable to retract the landing gear and landed at the Xi Ku Chen airfield in Lanzhou. At 11.02, the remaining six fighters encountered bad weather near Wu Wei and were redirected to Chan Chuan Chun airfield north of Lanzhou. Shortly after 12.10, when everyone had landed, 25 G3M bombers flew over the airfield. Kao-Yu-Chin, who had not yet turned off the engine, took off to intercept. The pilot assumed that the Japanese would soon deploy to attack their airfield. Soon he actually saw a group of nine bombers flying at an altitude of 5000 m. Kao attacked the formation from the left, then went in front. He opened fire from a distance of 400 m, and after the attack he dived. The two leading G3Ms began to smoke. Kao made three more passes, attacking from the side, thereby disrupting the Japanese's targeted bombing. During the air battle, Chinese ground personnel were able to prepare the remaining “donkeys” for takeoff. All five remaining fighters were able to escape destruction, although one of them was still damaged by shrapnel. Kao-Yu-Chin left the battle after he shot his propeller in one of the bursts (the reason for this was a synchronizer defect). In total, he used 600 rounds of ammunition during the battle. One of the Japanese bombers crashed on the way back, killing the entire crew. Beginning in March 1942, Chinese air units began to fly American fighters; the surviving Soviet I-16 and I-153 began to be transferred to flight schools, where they served until 1943-1944. The Chinese UTI-4 served a little longer, which was widely used for training flight personnel and began to be written off by 1945, when they were replaced by American counterparts.
I-16 made in China
Before Soviet military assistance began, China was home to several small fighter aircraft factories. In Nanchang, for example, there was a plant for the production of Fiat fighter jets. There are also known attempts to assemble Curtiss Hawk III biplanes from spare parts. Soon after the start of deliveries of Soviet aircraft, the Chinese government decided to host the production of Soviet aircraft. On July 9, 1938, Chinese Ambassador to the USSR Yang Tse discussed this issue with the Soviet government. On August 11, 1939, a protocol was signed between the USSR and China on the construction of an aircraft assembly plant in the Urumqi region. The protocol provided for the assembly at the plant of up to 300 I-16s per year from Soviet parts, parts and assemblies. The first stage of the plant was completed on September 1, 1940. In Soviet documents, the plant received the name “Aircraft Plant No. 600”. However, the Chinese never received the I-16s produced in Urumqi (apparently, type 5 and UTI-4 were produced there). In April 1941, the plant had 143 mothballed I-16s, which had been stored there for 6-8 months. It was then that the decision was made to return these aircraft to the Union. The return began after the start of the war. The vehicles were assembled, tested, camouflaged, followed by acceptance by military pilots and transportation to Alma-Ata. By September 1, 111 aircraft had been transported, one I-16 was lost in the mountains. The remaining 30 I-16s and 2 UTI-4s left for Alma-Ata before the end of the year. During 1941-42, Plant No. 600 was engaged in the manufacture of individual units for the I-16, but no new aircraft were built here.
Soviet volunteers pose in front of the I-16. Note the enlarged wing fairings, which are not typical for Soviet I-16 models. It is possible that this is "Chan-28-I".
There is also evidence that the Chinese have mastered the unlicensed production of “donkeys” on the basis of the Italian-Chinese enterprise SINAW in Nanchang. On December 9, 1937, production there was curtailed by order of Mussolini. The machine park of the SINAW plant was evacuated by river routes to Chongqing in the first half of 1939. The machines were installed in a cave 80 m long and 50 m wide. The arrangement of the new plant took a year, and the enterprise was named “2nd Air Force Aviation Production Workshops.” Work on preparing the release of copies of I-16 fighters began even before the arrival of the machines from the SINAW plant. The Chinese I-16 received the designation "Chan-28 Chia": chan - the ancient Chinese feudal code of honor; “28” - the year since the founding of the Republic of China, 1939 from the birth of Christ; "chia" - "first". In another way, the designation can be written as “Chan-28-I”. The drawings, as in Spain, were taken from parts of “live” I-16 fighters. There were not enough machines, and the humidity in the caves reached 100%. Based on real conditions, we completely changed the technology for gluing the monocoque fuselage skin. Product quality control methods remained primitive and time-consuming. The metal spars, landing gear and wheels were Soviet-made and were supposed to be removed from faulty aircraft. Engines - M-25 from faulty I-152 and I-16, Wright-Cyclone SR-1820 F-53 engines with a take-off power of 780 hp were also used. With. (they were on Chinese Hawk-III biplanes). Two-blade propellers were supplied from the Soviet Union in spare parts kits for I-16 fighters; in addition, Hamilton Standard propellers could be removed from Hawk-II fighters. Armament: two Browning heavy machine guns. Assembly of the first Chan-28-I fighter began in December 1938, and the first aircraft was completed only in July 1939. The aircraft received serial number P 8001. The fighter underwent comprehensive ground checks before it took off from the ground for the first time. Flight tests were completed successfully. As far as is known, only two single-seat Chan-28-I fighters were built. With the appearance of Zero fighters in the skies of China, the already not very high performance of Chinese pilots on the I-16 dropped almost to zero. It made no sense to make a obviously outdated fighter into mass production.
| I-16 type 5 | I-16 type 10 | Japanese Fleet Air Arm | Japanese Army Aviation | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nakajima A4M | Mitsubishi A5M | Mitsubishi A6M2 | Kawasaki Ki.10-II | Nakajima Ki.27 | Nakajima Ki.43-IIb | |||
| Country of origin | USSR | USSR | Japan | Japan | Japan | Japan | Japan | Japan |
| Start year of release | 1936 | 1938 | 1935 | 1937 | 1940 | 1935 (1937**) | 1937 | 1941 (1943**) |
| Year of appearance on theater | 1937 | 1938 | 1937 | 1937 | 1940 | 1937 | 1938 | 1943 |
| Wingspan, m | 9.00 | 9.00 | 10.00/n. d.* | 11.00 | 12.00 | 10.02/n. d.* | 11.31 | 10.84 |
| Length, m | 5.99 | 6.07 | 6.64 | 7.57 | 9.06 | 7.55 | 7.53 | 8.92 |
| Height, m | 3.25 | 3.25 | 3.07 | 3.27 | 3.05 | 3.00 | 3.25 | 3.27 |
| Wing area, m2 | 14.54 | 14.54 | 22.89 | 17.80 | 22.44 | 23.00 | 18.56 | 21.40 |
| Engine | M-25A | M-25V | Nakajima Hikari | Nakajima Kotobuki-4 | Nakajima NK1F Sakae-12 | Kawasaki Ha-9-IIb | "Army Type 97" | Nakajima Ha-115 |
| Power, hp | 730 | 750 | 730 | 785 | 950 | 850 | 710 | 1150 |
| Aircraft weight, kg. | ||||||||
| - empty | 1119 | 1327 | 1276 | 1216 | 1680 | 1360 | 1110 | 1910 |
| - takeoff | 1508 | 1716 | 1760 | 1671 | 2410 (2796) | 1740 | 1790 | 2590 (2925) |
| Speed, km/h | ||||||||
| - near the ground | 390 | 398 | n. d. | n. d. | n. d. | n. d. | n. d. | n. d. |
| - at the top | 445 | 448 | 350 | 430 | 525 | 400 | 470 | 530 |
| Rate of climb, m/min | 850882 | n. d. | 588 | 800 | n. d. | 920 | 880 | |
| Practical ceiling, m | 9100 | 8470 | 7740 | 9800 | 10000 | 11150 | 10000 | 11200 |
| Range, km | 540 | 525 | 845 | 1200 | 3050 | 1100 | 627 | 720 |
| Turn time, s | 14-15 | 16-18 | n. d. | n. d. | n. d. | n. d. | 8 | n. d. |
| Armament | 2 7.62 mm ShKAS machine guns | 4 7.62 mm ShKAS machine guns | 2 7.7 mm Type 89 machine guns | 2 7.7 mm Type 89 machine guns | 2 20 mm Type 99 cannons, 2 7.7 mm Type 97 machine guns2 7.7 mm synchronized machine guns "type 89" | 2 7.7 mm synchronized machine guns "type 89" | 2 12.7 mm machine guns "type 1" | |
| Pilot's name | Country | Number of victories on I-16 (personal+group*) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blagoveshchensky A. S. | USSR7+20** | ||
| Gubenko A. A. | USSR | 7 | |
| Kokkinaki K. | USSR | 7 | |
| Suprun S.P. | USSR | 6+0 | |
| Kravchenko G. P. | USSR | 6 | |
| Kudymov D. A. | USSR | 4 | |
| Liu Chi Shen | China | 3+1 (10+2) | |
| Fedorov I. E. | USSR | 2** | |
| Kao Yu-Chin | China | 1+0 (1+1) | |
| Chen Zhaoji | China | at least 1+0 | commander of the 41st chantai |
| Gritsevets S. I. | USSR | 1||
| Konev G. N. | USSR | 1 | |
| Teng Min-Te | China | 0+1 (2) |
* the total number of victories in the theater of operations is given in parentheses
** aircraft type is not established reliably
Sources of information
A Brief History of the Japanese Aviation Industry
Curtiss Hawks in the Chinese Air Force // Hakan's aviation page
Demin A. Soviet aviation technology in China on the eve and during the Great Patriotic War. // “Wings of the Motherland”, No. 2, 2006.
Kristjan Runarsson. Fiat CR.32bis/ter/quater fighters in foreign colors. //www.brushfirewars.com (currently not operational)
Fiat CR.32)
S. Ya. Fedorov. Unforgotten pages of history. //sb.: In the sky of China. 1937–1940. - M.: Nauka, 1986.
Sino-Japanese Air War 1937-45 // Hakan's aviation page.
Mukhin M. Yu. Soviet aircraft plant in Xinjiang. 1930-1940s. // “New and Contemporary History”, No. 5, 2004. (electronic version)
“The fighting donkey of Stalin’s falcons”, part 2 // “War in the Air”, No. 42 (electronic version)
I fought samurai. From Khalkhin Gol to Port Arthur. - M.: Yauza, 2005.
“Japanese naval aviation aces” // “War in the Air”, No. 15 (electronic version)
"Japanese aces 1937-1945. Army Aviation." // “War in the Air”, No. 4 (electronic version)
The history of Japanese aggression in China is briefly outlined on stone barrels near the walls of the Wanping Fortress at the Marco Polo Bridge
The Sino-Japanese War (July 7, 1937 – September 9, 1945) was a war between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan that began before World War II and continued until its end.
Despite the fact that both states had been engaged in periodic hostilities since 1931, a full-scale war broke out in 1937 and ended with the surrender of Japan in 1945. The war was a consequence of Japan's decades-long imperialist course for political and military dominance in China in order to seize huge raw materials. reserves and other resources. At the same time, growing Chinese nationalism and increasingly widespread ideas of self-determination (both Chinese and other peoples of the former Qing Empire) made a military clash inevitable. Until 1937, the sides clashed in sporadic fighting, so-called "incidents", as both sides, for many reasons, refrained from starting an all-out war. In 1931, the invasion of Manchuria (also known as the Mukden Incident) occurred. The last such incident was the Lugouqiao incident, the Japanese shelling of the Marco Polo Bridge on July 7, 1937, which marked the official start of a full-scale war between the two countries.
From 1937 to 1941, China fought with the help of the United States and the USSR, who were interested in dragging Japan into the “swamp” of the war in China. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Second Sino-Japanese War became part of World War II.
Name options
In the Russian historiographical tradition, the most common name is “The Japanese-Chinese War of 1937-1945.” In sources in the West, the name “Second Sino-Japanese War” is more often used. At the same time, some Chinese historians use the name “Eight Years' War of Resistance against Japan” (or simply “War of Resistance against Japan”), which is widely used in China.
Background to the conflict
The roots of the conflict lie in the industrial revolution that began in Japan in the second half of the 19th century. The development of the capitalist economy quickly exhausted the resources of the Japanese economy itself; there was an urgent need for new markets and raw material appendages. The first military actions took place already at the end of the 19th century, when during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, China, which was part of the Manchu Qing Empire, was defeated by Japan and forced to give up Taiwan and recognize the independence (renounce the protectorate) of Korea under the Treaty of Shimonoseki.
The Qing Empire was on the verge of collapse due to internal revolutionary uprisings and the expansion of foreign imperialism, while Japan became a great power thanks to effective modernization measures. The Republic of China was proclaimed in 1912 as a result of the Xinhai Revolution, which destroyed the Qing Empire. However, the nascent republic was even weaker than before - this dates back to the period of militaristic wars. The prospects for uniting the nation and repelling the imperialist threat looked very remote. Some military leaders even teamed up with various foreign forces in attempts at mutual destruction. For example, the ruler of Manchuria, Zhang Zuolin, adhered to military and economic cooperation with the Japanese. Thus, Japan was the main foreign threat to China during the early republic.
In 1915, Japan published the Twenty-One Demands, promoting its political and commercial interests in China. After World War I, Japan acquired the German sphere of influence in Shandong. China, under the government in Beijing, was in a state of fragmentation and could not resist foreign invasions until the Northern Expedition of 1926-1928, organized by the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party), which competed with the government based in Guangzhou. The Northern Expedition passed through China, suppressing competing forces, until it was stopped in Shandong by the forces of the Beijing regime, which was supported by the Japanese, who tried to prevent the Kuomintang army from uniting China under its rule. These events culminated in the Jinan Incident in 1928, in which the Kuomintang army and the Japanese were involved in a brief military conflict. That same year, the ruler of Manchuria, Zhang Zuolin, was assassinated due to weakening cooperation with the Japanese. Following these events, the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek achieved its final goal - the unification of China. This happened in 1928.
Numerous conflicts between China and Japan continued to exist due to the rise of Chinese nationalism and because one of the ultimate goals of Sun Yat-sen's political philosophy (the Three Principles of the People) was to rid China of foreign imperialism. However, the Northern Expedition united China only nominally - civil wars between former military leaders and rival Kuomintang factions fractured this unity. In addition, the Chinese communists rebelled against the central government, demanding a purge of its composition. As a result, the Chinese central government was distracted by civil wars and followed a policy of prioritizing internal pacification over resistance to external enemies. This situation resulted in little resistance to ongoing Japanese aggression. In 1931, immediately after the Mukden Incident, Japan invaded Manchuria. After five months of struggle, in 1932, a pro-Japanese puppet regime was established in Manchuria - the state of Manchukuo. It was recognized by the last emperor of China, Pu Yi, who, with the support of the Japanese, was placed at its head. Unable to challenge Japan directly, China asked the League of Nations for help. The League conducted an investigation, after which it condemned Japan for the invasion of Manchuria and forced Japan to withdraw from the League of Nations. From the second half of the 1920s and throughout the 1930s, peacekeeping was the basis of the policy of the world community, and no state was willing to voluntarily take a more active position than diplomatic protests. The Japanese side saw Manchuria as a source of primary raw materials and a buffer state, separating the lands it had seized from the Soviet Union.
The Mukden Incident was followed by ongoing conflicts. In 1932, Chinese and Japanese soldiers fought a short war called the January 28 Incident. This war led to the demilitarization of Shanghai, in which the Chinese were prohibited from stationing their armed forces. In Manchukuo, there was a long campaign to combat the anti-Japanese volunteer armies, which arose out of popular disappointment in the policy of non-resistance to the Japanese. In 1933, the Japanese attacked the Great Wall of China, leading to an armistice that gave the Japanese control of Rehe Province and created a demilitarized zone between the Great Wall and the Beijing-Tianjin area. The Japanese goal was to create another buffer zone, this time between Manchukuo and the Chinese Nationalist government, whose capital was Nanjing.
On top of this, Japan continued to use internal conflicts between Chinese political factions to weaken them mutually. This confronted the Nanjing government with a fact: for several years after the Northern Expedition, the political power of the Nationalist government extended only to the areas around the Yangtze River Delta, while other regions of China were essentially held in the hands of regional authorities. Thus, Japan often paid off or created special ties with these regional powers to undermine the central Nationalist government's efforts to unify China. To accomplish this, Japan sought out various Chinese traitors to interact with and assist these people heading some Japanese-friendly autonomous governments. This policy was called the "specialization" of North China and was also known as the "North China Autonomy Movement". Specialization affected the northern provinces of Chahar, Suiyuan, Hebei, Shanxi and Shandong.
Under pressure from Japan, China signed the Japanese Conditions for Normalization in North China in 1935, which banned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from party activities in Hebei and effectively ended Chinese control of North China. That same year, an agreement was reached between the Chinese authorities in the Mongolian province of Chahar and the Japanese to demilitarize the eastern part of the province and remove its governor, which expelled the CCP from Chahar. Thus, by the end of 1935, the Chinese central government had effectively abandoned Northern China. Accordingly, Japanese-backed authorities were established on its territory (Mengjiang and the Anti-Communist Autonomous Government of Eastern Ji).
Causes of the war
Each of the states involved in the war had its own motives, goals and reasons for participating in it. To understand the objective causes of the conflict, it is important to consider all participants separately.
Empire of Japan: Imperialist Japan went to war in an attempt to destroy the Chinese central government of the Kuomintang and install puppet regimes following Japanese interests. However, Japan's failure to bring the war in China to its desired end, coupled with increasingly unfavorable Western trade restrictions in response to ongoing actions in China, resulted in Japan's greater need for natural resources that were available in British-controlled Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. , the Netherlands and the USA respectively. The Japanese strategy of acquiring these inaccessible resources led to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the opening of the Pacific Theater of World War II.
Republic of China (under Kuomintang): Before full-scale hostilities began, Nationalist China focused on modernizing its military and building a viable defense industry to increase its combat power as a counterweight to Japan. Since China was united under the rule of the Kuomintang only formally, it was in a constant state of struggle with the communists and various militaristic associations. However, since war with Japan became inevitable, there was nowhere to retreat, even despite China's complete unpreparedness to fight a vastly superior enemy. In general, China pursued the following goals: to resist Japanese aggression, to unite China under the central government, to free the country from foreign imperialism, to achieve victory over communism and to be reborn as a strong state. Essentially, this war looked like a war for the revival of the nation. In modern Taiwanese military historical studies, there is a tendency to overestimate the role of the NRA in this war, although in general the level of combat effectiveness of the National Revolutionary Army was quite low.
China (under Chinese Communist Party): The Chinese Communists feared a large-scale war against the Japanese, leading guerrilla movements and political activities in the occupied territories to expand their controlled lands. The Communist Party avoided direct combat against the Japanese, while competing with the Nationalists for influence with the goal of remaining the main political force in the country after the conflict was resolved.
Soviet Union: The USSR, due to the aggravation of the situation in the West, was interested in peace with Japan in the east in order to avoid being drawn into a war on two fronts in the event of a possible conflict. In this regard, China seemed to be a good buffer zone between the spheres of interest of the USSR and Japan. It was beneficial for the USSR to support any central government in China so that it would organize a response to Japanese intervention as effectively as possible, diverting Japanese aggression from Soviet territory.
UK: During the 1920s and 1930s, the British position towards Japan was peaceful. Thus, both states were part of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Many in the British community in China supported Japan's actions to weaken the Nationalist Chinese government. This was due to the Chinese Nationalists canceling most foreign concessions and restoring the right to set their own taxes and tariffs, without British influence. All this had a negative impact on British economic interests. With the outbreak of World War II, Great Britain fought Germany in Europe, hoping at the same time that the situation on the Sino-Japanese front would be in a stalemate. This would buy time for the return of the Pacific colonies in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Burma and Singapore. Most of the British armed forces were occupied with the war in Europe and could devote only very little attention to the war in the Pacific theater.
USA: The USA followed a policy of isolationism until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but helped China with volunteers and diplomatic measures, but at the same time supplied Japan with resources, equipment, machine tools and oil until July 25, 1941 until 1940. The United States also imposed a steel trade embargo (July 1940) against Japan, demanding the withdrawal of its troops from China. With the US being drawn into World War II, particularly the war against Japan, China became a natural ally for the United States. There was American assistance to this country in its fight against Japan.
Vichy France: The main supply routes for American military aid ran through the Chinese province of Yunnan and Tonkin, the northern region of French Indochina, so Japan wanted to block the Sino-Indochinese border. In 1940, after France's defeat in the European War and the establishment of the Vichy puppet regime, Japan invaded French Indochina. In March 1941, the Japanese finally ousted the French from Indochina, proclaiming their own colonies there.
Free France: In December 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Free French leader Charles de Gaulle declared war on Japan. The French acted on the basis of all-Allied interests, as well as in order to keep the Asian colonies of France under their control.
In general, all allies of Nationalist China had their own goals and objectives, often very different from the Chinese. This must be taken into account when considering the reasons for certain actions of different states.
Strengths of the parties
Empire of Japan
The Japanese army, allocated for combat operations in China, had 12 divisions, numbering 240-300 thousand soldiers and officers, 700 aircraft, about 450 tanks and armored vehicles, more than 1.5 thousand artillery pieces. The operational reserve consisted of units of the Kwantung Army and 7 divisions stationed in the metropolis. In addition, there were about 150 thousand Manchu and Mongol soldiers serving under Japanese officers. Significant naval forces were allocated to support the actions of the ground forces from the sea. The Japanese troops were well trained and equipped.
Republic of China
By the beginning of the conflict in China there were 1,900,000 soldiers and officers, 500 aircraft (according to other sources, in the summer of 1937 the Chinese Air Force had about 600 combat aircraft, of which 305 were fighters, but no more than half were combat-ready), 70 tanks, 1,000 artillery guns At the same time, only 300 thousand were directly subordinate to the commander-in-chief of the NRA, Chiang Kai-shek, and in total there were approximately 1 million people under the control of the Nanjing government, while the rest of the troops represented the forces of local militarists. Additionally, the fight against the Japanese was nominally supported by the Communists, who had a guerrilla army of approximately 150,000 men in northwestern China. The Kuomintang formed the 8th Army from 45 thousand of these partisans under the command of Zhu De. Chinese aviation consisted of outdated aircraft with inexperienced Chinese or hired foreign crews. There were no trained reserves. Chinese industry was not prepared to fight a major war.
In general, the Chinese armed forces were superior in numbers to the Japanese, but were significantly inferior in technical equipment, training, morale, and most importantly, in their organization.
Plans of the parties
Empire of Japan
The Japanese Empire aimed to retain Chinese territory by creating various structures in the rear that made it possible to control the occupied lands as effectively as possible. The army had to act with the support of the fleet. Naval landings were actively used to quickly capture populated areas without the need for a frontal attack on distant approaches. In general, the army enjoyed advantages in weapons, organization and mobility, superiority in the air and at sea.
Republic of China
China had a poorly armed and poorly organized army. Thus, many military units and even formations had absolutely no operational mobility, being tied to their places of deployment. In this regard, China's defensive strategy was based on tough defense, local offensive counter-operations, and the deployment of guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. The nature of military operations was also influenced by the political disunity of the country. The communists and nationalists, while nominally presenting a united front in the fight against the Japanese, poorly coordinated their actions and often found themselves embroiled in internecine strife. Having a very small air force with poorly trained crews and outdated equipment, China resorted to assistance from the USSR (at an early stage) and the United States, which was expressed in the supply of aircraft equipment and materials, sending volunteer specialists to participate in military operations and training Chinese pilots.
In general, both nationalists and communists planned to provide only passive resistance to Japanese aggression (especially after the entry of the United States and Great Britain into the war against Japan), hoping for the defeat of the Japanese by allied forces and making efforts to create and strengthen the basis for a future war for power among themselves (creation of combat-ready troops and underground, strengthening control over unoccupied areas of the country, propaganda, etc.).
Start of the war
Most historians date the start of the Sino-Japanese War to the incident on the Lugouqiao Bridge (otherwise known as the Marco Polo Bridge), which occurred on July 7, 1937, but some Chinese historians set the starting point of the war at September 18, 1931, when the Mukden Incident occurred, during which the Kwantung The army, under the pretext of protecting the railway connecting Port Arthur with Mukden from possible sabotage actions of the Chinese during “night exercises,” captured the Mukden arsenal and nearby towns. Chinese forces were forced to retreat, and continued aggression left all of Manchuria in Japanese hands by February 1932. After this, until the official start of the Sino-Japanese War, there were constant seizures of territories in Northern China by the Japanese, and battles of various scales with the Chinese army. On the other hand, the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek carried out a number of operations to combat separatist militarists and communists.
On July 7, 1937, Japanese troops clashed with Chinese troops at the Lugouqiao Bridge near Beijing. A Japanese soldier disappeared during a “night exercise.” The Japanese issued an ultimatum demanding that the Chinese hand over the soldier or open the gates of the fortified city of Wanping to search for him. The refusal of the Chinese authorities led to a shootout between the Japanese company and the Chinese infantry regiment. It came to the use of not only small arms, but also artillery. This served as a pretext for a full-scale invasion of China. In Japanese historiography, this war is traditionally called the “Chinese incident”, since initially the Japanese did not plan large-scale hostilities with China.
After a series of unsuccessful negotiations between the Chinese and Japanese sides on a peaceful resolution of the conflict, on July 26, 1937, Japan switched to full-scale military operations north of the Yellow River with the forces of 3 divisions and 2 brigades (about 40 thousand people with 120 guns, 150 tanks and armored vehicles, 6 armored trains and support for up to 150 aircraft). Japanese troops quickly captured Beijing (Beiping) (28 July) and Tianjin (30 July). Over the next few months, the Japanese advanced south and west against little resistance, capturing Chahar Province and part of Suiyuan Province, reaching the upper bend of the Yellow River at Baoding. But by September, due to the increased combat effectiveness of the Chinese army, the growth of the partisan movement and supply problems, the offensive slowed down, and in order to expand the scale of the offensive, by September the Japanese were forced to transfer up to 300 thousand soldiers and officers to Northern China.
On August 8 - November 8, the Second Battle of Shanghai unfolded, during which numerous Japanese landings as part of Matsui's 3rd Expeditionary Force, with intensive support from the sea and air, managed to capture the city of Shanghai, despite strong resistance from the Chinese; A pro-Japanese puppet government was formed in Shanghai. At this time, the Japanese 5th Itagaki Division was ambushed and defeated in the north of Shanxi by the 115th Division (under the command of Nie Rongzhen) from the 8th Army. The Japanese lost 3 thousand people and their main weapons. The Battle of Pingxinguan had great propaganda significance in China and became the largest battle between the communist army and the Japanese during the entire course of the war.
In November - December 1937, the Japanese army launched an attack on Nanjing along the Yangtze River, without encountering strong resistance. On December 12, 1937, Japanese aircraft carried out an unprovoked raid on British and American ships stationed near Nanjing. As a result, the gunboat Panay was sunk. However, the conflict was avoided through diplomatic measures. On December 13, Nanjing fell and the government evacuated to the city of Hankou. The Japanese army carried out a bloody massacre of civilians in the city for 5 days, as a result of which 200 thousand people died. As a result of the battles for Nanjing, the Chinese army lost all tanks, artillery, aviation and navy. On December 14, 1937, the creation of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China, controlled by the Japanese, was proclaimed in Beijing.
In January - April 1938, the Japanese offensive in the north resumed. In January the conquest of Shandong was completed. Japanese troops faced a strong guerrilla movement and were unable to effectively control the captured territory. In March - April 1938, the Battle of Taierzhuang unfolded, during which a 200,000-strong group of regular troops and partisans under the overall command of General Li Zongren cut off and surrounded a 60,000-strong group of Japanese, who ultimately managed to break out of the ring, losing 20,000 people killed and a large amount of military equipment. On March 28, 1938, in the occupied territory of central China, the Japanese proclaimed the creation of the so-called “Reformed Government of the Republic of China” in Nanjing.
In May - June 1938, the Japanese regrouped, concentrating more than 200 thousand soldiers and officers and about 400 tanks against 400 thousand poorly armed Chinese, practically devoid of military equipment, and continued the offensive, as a result of which Xuzhou (May 20) and Kaifeng (6 June). In these battles, the Japanese used chemical and bacteriological weapons.
In May 1938, the New 4th Army was created under the command of Ye Ting, formed from communists and stationed mainly in the Japanese rear south of the middle reaches of the Yangtze.
In June - July 1938, the Chinese stopped the Japanese strategic offensive on Hankou through Zhengzhou by destroying the dams that prevented the Yellow River from overflowing and flooding the surrounding area. At the same time, many Japanese soldiers died, a large number of tanks, trucks and guns ended up under water or stuck in the mud. But many Chinese civilians also died.
Changing the direction of attack to a more southern one, the Japanese captured Hankow (October 25) during long, grueling battles. Chiang Kai-shek decided to leave the Wuhan Tricity and moved his capital to Chongqing.
On October 22, 1938, a Japanese naval landing force, delivered on 12 transport ships under the cover of 1 cruiser, 1 destroyer, 2 gunboats and 3 minesweepers, landed on both sides of the Humen Strait and stormed the Chinese forts guarding the passage to Canton. On the same day, Chinese units of the 12th Army left the city without a fight. Japanese troops of the 21st Army entered the city, seizing warehouses with weapons, ammunition, equipment and food.
In general, during the first period of the war, the Japanese army, despite partial successes, was unable to achieve the main strategic goal - the destruction of the Chinese army. At the same time, the stretched front, the isolation of troops from supply bases, and the growing Chinese partisan movement worsened the position of the Japanese.
Japan, due to the emerging acute shortage of resources, decided to change the strategy of active struggle to a strategy of attrition. Japan is limited to only local operations at the front and is moving on to intensifying political struggle. This was caused by excessive tension and problems of control over the hostile population of the occupied territories. With most of the ports captured by the Japanese army, China was left with only three routes to obtain aid from the Allies - the narrow gauge road to Kunming from Haiphong in French Indochina; the winding Burma Road, which ran to Kunming through British Burma and, finally, the Xinjiang Highway, which ran from the Soviet-Chinese border through Xinjiang and Gansu Province.
On November 1, 1938, Chiang Kai-shek appealed to the Chinese people to continue the war of resistance against Japan to a victorious end. The Chinese Communist Party approved the speech during a meeting of Chongqing youth organizations. In the same month, Japanese troops managed to take the cities of Fuxin and Fuzhou with the help of amphibious assaults.
Japan makes peace proposals to the Kuomintang government on some terms favorable to Japan. This strengthens the internal party contradictions of the Chinese nationalists. As a consequence of this, there followed the betrayal of Chinese Vice-Premier Wang Jingwei, who fled to Shanghai captured by the Japanese.
In February 1939, during the Hainan landing operation, the Japanese army, under the cover of ships of the Japanese 2nd Fleet, captured the cities of Junzhou and Haikou, losing two transport ships and a barge with troops.
From March 13 to April 3, 1939, the Nanchang Operation unfolded, during which Japanese troops consisting of the 101st and 106th Infantry Divisions, with the support of a Marine landing and the massive use of aviation and gunboats, managed to occupy the city of Nanchang and a number of other cities. At the end of April, the Chinese launched a successful counter-offensive on Nanchang and liberated the city of Hoan. However, then Japanese troops launched a local attack in the direction of the city of Ichang. Japanese troops entered Nanchang again on August 29.
In June 1939, the Chinese cities of Shantou (June 21) and Fuzhou (June 27) were taken by amphibious assault.
In September 1939, Chinese troops managed to stop the Japanese offensive 18 km north of the city of Changsha. On October 10, they launched a counteroffensive against units of the 11th Army in the direction of Nanchang, which they managed to occupy on October 10. During the operation, the Japanese lost up to 25 thousand people and more than 20 landing craft.
From November 14 to 25, the Japanese launched a landing of a 12,000-strong military group in the Pan Khoi area. During the Pankhoi landing operation and the subsequent offensive, the Japanese managed to capture the cities of Pankhoi, Qinzhou, Dantong and, finally, on November 24, after fierce fighting, Nanying. However, the advance on Lanzhou was stopped by a counterattack by General Bai Chongxi's 24th Army, and Japanese aircraft began bombing the city. On December 8, Chinese troops, with the assistance of the Zhongjin air group of Soviet Major S. Suprun, stopped the Japanese offensive from the Nanying area at the Kunlunguang line, after which (December 16, 1939) with the forces of the 86th and 10th armies, the Chinese began an offensive with the aim of encircling the Wuhan group of Japanese troops. The operation was supported from the flanks by the 21st and 50th armies. On the first day of the operation, the Japanese defense was broken through, but the further course of events led to a halt in the offensive, a retreat to their original positions and a transition to defensive actions. The Wuhan operation failed due to shortcomings in the Chinese army's command and control system.
In March 1940, Japan formed a puppet government in Nanjing in order to obtain political and military support in the fight against partisans in the rear. It was headed by former Vice-Premier of China Wang Jingwei, who defected to the Japanese.
In June-July, the successes of Japanese diplomacy in negotiations with Great Britain and France led to the cessation of military supplies to China through Burma and Indochina. On June 20, an Anglo-Japanese agreement was concluded on joint actions against violators of the order and security of Japanese military forces in China, according to which, in particular, Chinese silver worth $40 million, stored in the English and French missions in Tianjin, was transferred to Japan.
On August 20, 1940, a joint large-scale (up to 400 thousand people participated) offensive of the Chinese 4th, 8th Army (formed from communists) and partisan detachments of the Communist Party of China began against Japanese troops in the provinces of Shanxi, Chahar, Hubei and Henan, known as “ Battle of a Hundred Regiments. In Jiangsu province, there were a number of clashes between communist army units and the Kuomintang partisan detachments of Governor H. Deqin, as a result of which the latter were defeated. The result of the Chinese offensive was the liberation of a territory with a population of more than 5 million people and 73 large settlements. The personnel losses on both sides were approximately equal (about 20 thousand people on each side).
On October 18, 1940, Winston Churchill decided to reopen the Burma Road. This was done with the approval of the United States, which intended to carry out military supplies to China under Lend-Lease.
During 1940, Japanese troops limited themselves to only one offensive operation in the lower Hanshui River basin and successfully carried it out, capturing the city of Yichang.
In January 1941, in Anhui province, Kuomintang military formations attacked units of the 4th Army of the Communist Party. Its commander Ye Ting, who arrived at the headquarters of the Kuomintang troops for negotiations, was arrested by deception. This was caused by Ye Ting's disregard of Chiang Kai-shek's orders to attack the Japanese, which resulted in the latter being court-martialed. Relations between communists and nationalists deteriorated. Meanwhile, the 50,000-strong Japanese army carried out an unsuccessful offensive in the provinces of Hubei and Henan in order to connect the Central and Northern fronts.
By March 1941, two large operational groups of the Kuomintang government were concentrated against areas controlled by the Communist Party of China (hereinafter referred to as the CCP): in the northwest, the 34th Army Group of General Hu Zongnan (16 infantry and 3 cavalry divisions) and in the provinces Anhui and Jiangsu - General Liu Pingxiang's 21st Army Group and General Tang Enbo's 31st Army Group (15 infantry and 2 cavalry divisions). On March 2, the CCP put forward a new "Twelve Demands" to the Chinese government to reach an agreement between the Communists and the Nationalists.
On April 13, the Soviet-Japanese Treaty of Neutrality was signed, guaranteeing the USSR that Japan would not enter the war in the Soviet Far East if Germany nevertheless started a war with the Soviet Union.
A series of offensives undertaken by the Japanese army during 1941 (the Yichang Operation, the Fujian Landing Operation, the offensive in Shanxi Province, the Yichang Operation and the Second Changshai Operation) and the air offensive on Chongqing, the capital of Kuomintang China, did not produce any particular results and did not lead to a change in the balance of forces. in China.
On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the colonies of the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands in Southeast Asia, which changed the balance of opposing forces in the Asia-Pacific region. Already on December 8, the Japanese began bombing British Hong Kong and advancing with the 38th Infantry Division. On December 9, the government of Chiang Kai-shek declared war on the “Axis countries”: Germany and Italy, and on December 10 - on Japan (the war had gone on without a formal declaration until that time).
On December 24, the Japanese launched the third counter-offensive of the war on Changsha, and on December 25, units of the 38th Infantry Division of the Imperial Japanese Army took Hong Kong, forcing the remnants of the British garrison (12 thousand people) to surrender, while the losses of Japanese troops during the battles for The island consisted of 3 thousand people. The Third Changshai Operation was unsuccessful and ended on January 15, 1942 with the withdrawal of Japanese units of the 11th Army to their original positions.
On December 26, an agreement on a military alliance was concluded between China, Great Britain and the United States. A coalition command was also created to coordinate the military actions of the allies, who opposed the Japanese as a united front. So, in March 1942, Chinese troops in the 5th and 6th armies under the overall command of the American General Stilwell (Chief of the General Staff of the Chinese Army Chiang Kai-shek) arrived from China to British Burma along the Burma Road to fight the Japanese invasion.
In May-June, the Japanese carried out the Zhejiang-Jiangxi offensive operation, taking several cities, the Lishui air force base and the Zhejiang-Hunan railway. Several Chinese units were surrounded (units of the 88th and 9th armies).
Throughout the period 1941-1943, the Japanese also carried out punitive operations against communist forces. This was caused by the need to combat the ever-increasing partisan movement. Thus, within a year (from the summer of 1941 to the summer of 1942), as a result of the punitive operations of the Japanese troops, the territory of the partisan regions of the CPC was halved. During this time, units of the 8th Army and the New 4th Army of the CPC lost up to 150 thousand soldiers in battles with the Japanese.
In July-December 1942, local battles took place, as well as several local offensives by both Chinese and Japanese troops, which did not particularly affect the overall course of military operations.
Due to the capture of Burma by the Japanese, supplies of goods to China were reduced even further, and an acute shortage of weapons and ammunition began to be felt in parts of the Chinese army. In response, the British begin to build the Ledo Road from the Indian city of Assam to the Burma Road, bypassing Japanese-occupied territory.
In 1943, China, which found itself in practical isolation, was very weakened. Japan, on the other hand, used the tactics of small local operations, the so-called “rice offensives,” aimed at exhausting the Chinese army, seizing provisions in the newly occupied territories and depriving their already starving enemy. During this period, the Chinese air group of Brigadier General Claire Chennault, formed from the Flying Tigers volunteer group, which had been operating in China since 1941, was active.
On January 9, 1943, the Nanjing puppet government in China declared war on Great Britain and the United States.
The beginning of the year was characterized by local battles between the Japanese and Chinese armies. In March, the Japanese unsuccessfully tried to encircle the Chinese group in the Huaiyin-Yangchenghu area in Jiangsu Province (Huaiyin-Yancheng Operation).
In May - June, the Japanese 11th Army went on the offensive from a bridgehead on the Yichang River in the direction of the Chinese capital, Chongqing, but was counterattacked by Chinese units and retreated to their original positions (Chongqing Operation).
At the end of 1943, the Chinese army successfully repelled one of the Japanese “rice offensives” in Hunan Province, winning the Battle of Changde (November 23 - December 10).
In 1944-1945, a de facto truce was established between the Japanese and Chinese communists. The Japanese completely stopped punitive raids against the communists. This was beneficial to both sides - the Communists were able to consolidate control over Northwestern China, and the Japanese freed up forces for the war in the south.
The beginning of 1944 was characterized by offensive operations of a local nature.
On April 14, 1944, units of the 12th Japanese Army of the Northern Front went on the offensive against the Chinese troops of the 1st Military Region (VR) in the direction of the city. Zhengzhou, Queshan, breaking through Chinese defenses with armored vehicles. This marked the beginning of the Beijing-Hankous operation; a day later, units of the 11th Army of the Central Front moved towards them from the Xinyang area, going on the offensive against the 5th Chinese VR with the aim of encircling the Chinese group in the valley of the river. Huaihe. 148 thousand Japanese soldiers and officers were involved in this operation in the main directions. The offensive was successfully completed by May 9. Units of both armies united in the area of the city of Queshan. During the operation, the Japanese captured the strategically important city of Zhengzhou (April 19), as well as Luoyang (May 25). Most of the territory of Henan Province and the entire railway line from Beijing to Hankou were in the hands of the Japanese.
A further development of active offensive combat operations of the Japanese army was the Hunan-Guilin operation of the 23rd Army against the Chinese troops of the 4th VR in the direction of Liuzhou.
In May - September 1944, the Japanese continued to conduct offensive operations in a southern direction. Japanese activity led to the fall of Changsha and Henyang. The Chinese fought stubbornly for Henyang and counterattacked the enemy in a number of places, while Changsha was left without a fight.
At the same time, the Chinese launched an offensive in Yunnan Province with Group Y forces. The troops advanced in two columns, crossing the Salween River. The southern column encircled the Japanese at Longlin, but was driven back after a series of Japanese counterattacks. The northern column advanced more successfully, capturing the city of Tengchong with the support of the American 14th Air Force.
On October 4, the city of Fuzhou was captured by a Japanese landing force from the sea. In the same place, the evacuation of troops of the 4th VR of China from the cities of Guilin, Liuzhou and Nanying begins; on November 10, the 31st Army of this VR was forced to capitulate to the 11th Army of Japan in the city of Guilin.
On December 20, Japanese troops advancing from the north, from the Guangzhou area and from Indochina, united in the city of Nanlu, establishing a through railway connection across all of China from Korea to Indochina.
At the end of the year, American aircraft transferred two Chinese divisions from Burma to China.
The year 1944 was also characterized by successful operations of the American submarine fleet off the Chinese coast.
On January 10, 1945, parts of the group of troops of General Wei Lihuang liberated the city of Wanting and crossed the Chinese-Burmese border, entering the territory of Burma, and on January 11, the troops of the 6th Front of the Japanese went on the offensive against the Chinese 9th BP in the direction of the cities of Ganzhou and Yizhang , Shaoguan.
In January - February, the Japanese army resumed its offensive in Southeast China, occupying vast territories in the coastal provinces - between Wuhan and the border of French Indochina. Three more air bases of the American 14th Air Force Chennault were captured.
In March 1945, the Japanese launched another offensive to seize crops in Central China. The forces of the 39th Infantry Division of the 11th Army struck in the direction of the city of Gucheng (Henan-Hubei operation). In March - April, the Japanese also managed to take two American air bases in China - Laohotou and Laohekou.
On April 5, the USSR unilaterally denounced the neutrality pact with Japan in connection with the commitments of the Soviet leadership, given at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, to enter the war against Japan three months after the victory over Germany, which at that time was already close.
Realizing that his forces were too stretched, General Yasuji Okamura, in an effort to strengthen the Kwantung Army stationed in Manchuria, which was threatened by the entry of the USSR into the war, began to transfer troops to the north.
As a result of the Chinese counteroffensive, by May 30, the corridor leading to Indochina was cut. By July 1, the 100,000-strong Japanese group was surrounded in Canton, and about 100,000 more returned to Northern China under the attacks of the American 10th and 14th Air Armies. On July 27, they abandoned one of the previously captured American air bases in Guilin.
In May, Chinese troops of the 3rd VR attacked Fuzhou and managed to liberate the city from the Japanese. Active Japanese operations both here and in other areas were generally curtailed, and the army went on the defensive.
In June and July, the Japanese and Chinese nationalists carried out a series of punitive operations against the communist Special Region and parts of the CCP.
On August 8, 1945, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR officially joined the Potsdam Declaration of the USA, Great Britain and China and declared war on Japan. By this time, Japan was already drained of blood and its ability to continue the war was minimal.
Soviet troops, taking advantage of the quantitative and qualitative superiority of troops, launched a decisive offensive in Northeast China and quickly crushed the Japanese defenses. (See: Soviet-Japanese War).
At the same time, a struggle developed between the Chinese Nationalists and Communists for political influence. On August 10, the commander-in-chief of the CPC troops, Zhu De, gave the order for the communist troops to go on the offensive against the Japanese along the entire front, and on August 11, Chiang Kai-shek gave a similar order for all Chinese troops to go on the offensive, but it was specifically stipulated that the communists should not take part in this. -I and 8th armies. Despite this, the communists went on the offensive. Both communists and nationalists were now primarily concerned with establishing their power in the country after the victory over Japan, which was rapidly losing to its allies. At the same time, the USSR secretly supported primarily the communists, and the USA - the nationalists.
The entry of the USSR into the war and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki accelerated the final defeat and defeat of Japan.
On August 14, when it became clear that the Kwantung Army had suffered a crushing defeat, the Japanese Emperor announced Japan's surrender.
On August 14-15, a ceasefire was declared. But despite this decision, individual Japanese units continued desperate resistance throughout the entire theater of military operations until September 7-8, 1945.
On September 2, 1945, in Tokyo Bay, on board the American battleship Missouri, representatives of the United States, Great Britain, the USSR, France and Japan signed the act of surrender of the Japanese armed forces. On September 9, 1945, He Yingqin, representing both the government of the Republic of China and the Allied Command in Southeast Asia, accepted the surrender from the commander of Japanese forces in China, General Okamura Yasuji. Thus ended the Second World War in Asia.
Blitzkrieg in Soviet style.
Use of chemical weapons
The army of the Empire of Japan used chemical weapons against Chinese troops, which, with their massive use and the almost complete absence of chemical protection and chemical reconnaissance of the Chinese troops, led to large losses in their ranks.
Foreign aid to China
Military, diplomatic and economic assistance to the USSR
In the 1930s, the USSR systematically pursued a course of political support for China as a victim of Japanese aggression. Thanks to close contacts with the Communist Party of China and the difficult situation in which Chiang Kai-shek was placed by the rapid military actions of Japanese troops, the USSR became an active diplomatic force in rallying the forces of the Kuomintang government and the Communist Party of China.
In August 1937, a non-aggression pact was signed between China and the USSR, and the Nanjing government turned to the latter with a request for material assistance. On March 1, 1938, a Soviet-Chinese agreement was signed, according to which the USSR provided China with a loan of $50 million for the purchase of Soviet goods, as well as for their delivery to Chinese territory, and the loan and interest on it were to be repaid by supplies of Chinese goods. On June 13, 1939, a bilateral agreement was concluded on a new Soviet loan to China in the amount of $150 million for a period of 10 years.
China's almost complete loss of opportunities for permanent relations with the outside world has given the province of Xinjiang paramount importance as one of the country's most important land connections with the USSR and Europe. Therefore, in 1937, the Chinese government turned to the USSR with a request for assistance in creating the Sary-Ozek - Urumqi - Lanzhou highway to deliver weapons, aircraft, ammunition, etc. to China from the USSR. The Soviet government agreed and the road was built.
From 1937 to 1941, the USSR regularly supplied weapons, ammunition, etc. to China by sea and through the Xinjiang province. The first batches of weapons and military equipment went by sea (from November 1937 to February 1938) from Odessa, since this route was more convenient - one ship carried 10 thousand tons of cargo, and one car only 1 ton (in addition, for each the truck required another 15 camels to transport fuel). But after the Japanese established a naval blockade of the Chinese coast, it was the land route that became the priority. To ensure transportation of fuel, in 1938 an agreement was concluded between the authorities of the USSR, China and the province of Xinjiang on the construction of an oil refinery in Tushangzi, which began operation in 1939 (after Soviet geologists were convinced of the presence of oil in the area).
On June 16, 1939, the Soviet-Chinese trade agreement was signed, concerning the trading activities of both states. In 1937-1940, over 300 Soviet military advisers worked in China. In total, over 5 thousand Soviet citizens worked there during these years, including A. Vlasov and V.I. Chuikov, who left memoirs published later under the title “Mission in China.” Among them were volunteer pilots, teachers and instructors, aircraft and tank assembly workers, aviation specialists, road and bridge specialists, transport workers, doctors and, finally, military advisers.
By the beginning of 1939, thanks to the efforts of military specialists from the USSR, losses in the Chinese army dropped sharply. If in the first year of the war the Chinese losses in killed and wounded were 800 thousand people (5:1 to the Japanese losses), then in the second year they were equal to the Japanese (300 thousand).
On September 1, 1940, the first stage of a new aircraft assembly plant built by Soviet specialists was launched in Urumqi.
In total, during the period 1937-1941, the USSR supplied China with: 1285 aircraft (of which 777 fighters, 408 bombers, 100 training aircraft), 1600 guns of various calibers, 82 T-26 light tanks, heavy and light machine guns - 14 thousand, cars and tractors - 1850..
In 1942 - 1943, due to the deterioration of relations, Soviet enterprises in Xinjiang (oil refinery and aircraft assembly plants (No. 600)) were dismantled, and their equipment was taken to the USSR.
Combat actions of Soviet pilots
The Chinese Air Force had about 100 aircraft. Japan had a tenfold superiority in aviation. One of the largest Japanese air bases was located in Taiwan, near Taipei.
By the beginning of 1938, a batch of new SB bombers arrived from the USSR to China as part of Operation Zet. The chief military adviser for the Air Force, brigade commander P.V. Rychagov and air attache P.F. Zhigarev (future commander-in-chief of the USSR Air Force) developed a bold operation. 12 SB bombers under the command of Colonel F.P. Polynin were to take part in it. The raid took place on February 23, 1938. The target was successfully hit, and all bombers returned to base.
Fragment of the monument to Soviet volunteer pilots in Wuhan
End of cooperation
The German attack on the Soviet Union and the deployment of allied military operations in the Pacific theater led to a deterioration in Soviet-Chinese relations, since the Chinese leadership did not believe in the victory of the USSR over Germany and, on the other hand, reoriented its policy towards rapprochement with the West. In 1942-1943, economic ties between both states weakened sharply.
In March 1942, the USSR was forced to begin recalling its military advisers due to anti-Soviet sentiment in the Chinese provinces.
In May 1943, the Soviet government was forced, after declaring a strong protest in connection with the excesses of the Xinjiang Kuomintang authorities, to close all trade organizations and recall its trade representatives and specialists.
Military, diplomatic and economic assistance from the United States and its allies
Since December 1937, a series of events (the attack on the American gunboat Penei, the Nanjing massacre, etc.) turned public opinion in the USA, France and Great Britain against Japan and aroused certain fears regarding Japanese expansion. This prompted the governments of these countries to begin providing the Kuomintang with loans for military needs. In addition, Australia did not allow one of the Japanese companies to purchase an iron ore mine on its territory, and in 1938 it banned the export of iron ore to Japan. Japan responded by invading Indochina in 1940, cutting off the Sino-Vietnamese Railway, through which China imported weapons, fuel, and 10,000 tons of materials from Western allies every month.
In mid-1941, the US government funded the creation of the American Volunteer Group, led by Claire Lee Chennault, to replace Soviet aircraft and volunteers who had left China. The successful combat operations of this group caused a wide public outcry against the backdrop of the difficult situation on other fronts, and the combat experience acquired by the pilots was used in all theaters of military operations. In 1943, on the basis of this group, the 14th US Air Force was created, which also fought in Chinese skies until the end of the war.
To put pressure on the Japanese army in China, the US, UK and the Netherlands established an embargo on oil and steel trade with Japan. The loss of oil imports made it impossible for Japan to continue the war in China. This pushed Japan to forcefully resolve the supply issue, which was marked by the attack of the Imperial Japanese Navy on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
Military, diplomatic and economic assistance to Germany
In the pre-war period, Germany and China cooperated closely in the economic and military spheres. Germany helped China modernize its industry and army in exchange for supplies of Chinese raw materials. More than half of German exports of military equipment and materials during the German rearmament period in the 1930s went to China. The 30 new Chinese divisions that were planned to be equipped and trained with German help were never created due to Adolf Hitler's refusal to further support China. By 1938 these plans had not been implemented. This decision was largely due to the reorientation of German policy towards concluding an alliance with Japan. German policy especially shifted towards cooperation with Japan after the signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact.
Foreign aid to Japan
In 1937-1939, the United States sold Japan military materials and raw materials in the amount of $511 million.
The fighting in the Khalkhin Gol area coincided with negotiations between Japanese Foreign Minister Hachiro Arita and the British Ambassador in Tokyo Robert Craigie. In July 1939, an agreement was concluded between England and Japan, according to which Great Britain recognized the Japanese seizures in China (thus providing diplomatic support for aggression against the Mongolian People's Republic and its ally, the USSR). At the same time, the US government extended the previously canceled trade agreement with Japan for six months, and then completely restored it. As part of the agreement, Japan purchased trucks for the Kwantung Army, machine tools for aircraft factories for $3 million, strategic materials (until 10/16/1940 - steel and iron scrap, until 07/26/1941 - gasoline and petroleum products), etc. A new embargo was imposed only on July 26 1941.
Results
The main reason for Japan's defeat in World War II was the victories of the American and British armed forces at sea and in the air, and the defeat of the largest Japanese land army, the Kwantung Army, by Soviet troops in August-September 1945, which allowed the liberation of Chinese territory.
Despite their numerical superiority over the Japanese, the effectiveness and combat effectiveness of the Chinese troops was very low, largely due to the more backward weapons of the Chinese army, which suffered 8.4 times more casualties than the Japanese.
The actions of the armed forces of the Western Allies, as well as the armed forces of the USSR, saved China from complete defeat.
Japanese troops in China formally surrendered on September 9, 1945. The Sino-Japanese War, and with it the Second World War in Asia, ended with the complete surrender of Japan to the Allies.
Territorial changes
According to the decisions of the Cairo Conference (1943), the territories of Manchuria and the Pescadores Islands were transferred to China. The Ryukyu Islands were recognized as Japanese territory.
Losses of the parties
Chinese sources cite a figure of 35 million - the total number of losses in killed and wounded (armed forces and civilians).
According to Rudolf Rummel, the total losses amounted to more than 19 million people, including more than 12 million civilians.
The situation in the Japanese-occupied territories
Terror tactics were used against the local population.
War crimes
Nanjing massacre of 1937.
Inhumane experiments on prisoners of war and civilians during the creation of bacteriological weapons (Unit 731).
Cruel treatment and execution of prisoners of war.
Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)
Plan
Introduction
.Causes of the war, forces and plans of the parties 2.First period of the war (July 1937-October 1938) .Second period of the war (November 1938-December 1941) .Third period of the war (December 1941-August 1945) .Fourth period of the war (August 1945-September 1945) Conclusion References Introduction
This is a war between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan that began before and continued through World War II. Although both states had engaged in periodic hostilities since 1931, full-scale war broke out in 1937 and ended with the surrender of Japan in 1945. The war was a consequence of Japan's decades-long imperialist policy of political and military dominance in China in order to seize huge raw material reserves and other resources. At the same time, growing Chinese nationalism and increasingly widespread ideas of self-determination (both Chinese and other peoples of the former Qing Empire) made a military clash inevitable. Until 1937, the sides clashed in sporadic fighting, so-called "incidents", as both sides, for many reasons, refrained from starting an all-out war. In 1931, the invasion of Manchuria (also known as the Mukden Incident) occurred. The last such incident was the Lugouqiao incident, the Japanese shelling of the Marco Polo Bridge on July 7, 1937, which marked the official start of a full-scale war between the two countries. From 1937 to 1941, China fought with the help of the United States and the USSR, who were interested in dragging Japan into the “swamp” of the war in China. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Second Sino-Japanese War became part of World War II. 1. Causes of the war, forces and plans of the parties
Each of the states involved in the war had its own motives, goals and reasons for participating in it. To understand the objective causes of the conflict, it is important to consider all participants separately. Empire of Japan: Imperialist Japan went to war in an attempt to destroy the Chinese central government of the Kuomintang and install puppet regimes following Japanese interests. However, Japan's failure to bring the war in China to its desired end, coupled with increasingly unfavorable Western trade restrictions in response to ongoing actions in China, resulted in Japan's greater need for natural resources that were available in British-controlled Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. , the Netherlands and the USA respectively. The Japanese strategy of acquiring these forbidden resources led to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the opening of the Pacific Theater of World War II. Republic of China (under Kuomintang): Before full-scale hostilities began, Nationalist China focused on modernizing its military and building a viable defense industry to increase its combat power as a counterweight to Japan. Since China was united under the rule of the Kuomintang only formally, it was in a state of constant struggle with the communists and various militaristic associations. However, since war with Japan became inevitable, there was nowhere to retreat, even despite China's complete unpreparedness to fight a vastly superior opponent. In general, China pursued the following goals: to resist Japanese aggression, to unite China under the central government, to free the country from foreign imperialism, to achieve victory over communism and to be reborn as a strong state. Essentially, this war looked like a war for the revival of the nation. In modern Taiwanese military historical studies, there is a tendency to overestimate the role of the NRA in this war. Although in general the level of combat effectiveness of the National Revolutionary Army was quite low. China (under Chinese Communist Party): The Chinese Communists feared a large-scale war against the Japanese, leading guerrilla movements and political activity in the occupied territories to expand their controlled lands. The Communist Party avoided direct combat against the Japanese, while competing with the Nationalists for influence with the goal of remaining the main political force in the country after the conflict was resolved. Soviet Union: The USSR, due to the aggravation of the situation in the West, was interested in peace with Japan in the east in order to avoid being drawn into a war on two fronts in the event of a possible conflict. In this regard, China seemed to be a good buffer zone between the spheres of interest of the USSR and Japan. It was beneficial for the USSR to support any central government in China so that it would organize a response to Japanese intervention as effectively as possible, diverting Japanese aggression from Soviet territory. UK: During the 1920s and 1930s, the British position towards Japan was peaceful. Thus, both states were part of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Many in the British community in China supported Japan's actions to weaken the Nationalist Chinese government. This was due to the Chinese Nationalists canceling most foreign concessions and restoring the right to set their own taxes and tariffs, without British influence. All this had a negative impact on British economic interests. With the outbreak of World War II, Great Britain fought Germany in Europe, hoping at the same time that the situation on the Sino-Japanese front would be in a stalemate. This would buy time for the return of the Pacific colonies in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Burma and Singapore. Most of the British armed forces were occupied with the war in Europe and could devote only very little attention to the war in the Pacific theater. USA: The USA maintained a policy of isolationism until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but helped China with volunteers and diplomatic measures. The United States also imposed an embargo on oil and steel trade against Japan, demanding the withdrawal of its troops from China. With the US being drawn into World War II, particularly the war against Japan, China became a natural ally for the United States. There was American assistance to this country in its fight against Japan. In general, all allies of Nationalist China had their own goals and objectives, often very different from the Chinese. This must be taken into account when considering the reasons for certain actions of different states. The Japanese army, allocated for combat operations in China, had 12 divisions, numbering 240-300 thousand soldiers and officers, 700 aircraft, about 450 tanks and armored vehicles, more than 1.5 thousand artillery pieces. The operational reserve consisted of units of the Kwantung Army and 7 divisions stationed in the metropolis. In addition, there were about 150 thousand Manchu and Mongol soldiers serving under Japanese officers. Significant naval forces were allocated to support the actions of the ground forces from the sea. The Japanese troops were well trained and equipped. By the beginning of the conflict, China had 1,900 thousand soldiers and officers, 500 aircraft (according to other sources, in the summer of 1937, the Chinese Air Force had about 600 combat aircraft, of which 305 were fighters, but no more than half were combat-ready), 70 tanks, 1,000 artillery pieces . At the same time, only 300 thousand were directly subordinate to the commander-in-chief of the NRA, Chiang Kai-shek, and in total there were approximately 1 million people under the control of the Nanjing government, while the rest of the troops represented the forces of local militarists. Additionally, the fight against the Japanese was nominally supported by the Communists, who had a guerrilla army of approximately 150,000 men in northwestern China. The Kuomintang formed the 8th Army from 45 thousand of these partisans under the command of Zhu De. Chinese aviation consisted of outdated aircraft with inexperienced Chinese or hired foreign crews. There were no trained reserves. Chinese industry was not prepared to fight a major war. In general, the Chinese armed forces were superior in numbers to the Japanese, but were significantly inferior in technical equipment, training, morale, and most importantly, in their organization. The Japanese Empire aimed to retain Chinese territory by creating various structures in the rear that made it possible to control the occupied lands as effectively as possible. The army had to act with the support of the fleet. Naval landings were actively used to quickly capture populated areas without the need for a frontal attack on distant approaches. In general, the army enjoyed advantages in weapons, organization and mobility, superiority in the air and at sea. China had a poorly armed and poorly organized army. Thus, many troops had absolutely no operational mobility, being tied to their places of deployment. In this regard, China's defensive strategy was based on tough defense, local offensive counter-operations, and the deployment of guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. The nature of military operations was influenced by the political disunity of the country. The communists and nationalists, while nominally presenting a united front in the fight against the Japanese, poorly coordinated their actions and often found themselves embroiled in internecine strife. Having a very small air force with poorly trained crews and outdated equipment, China resorted to assistance from the USSR (at an early stage) and the United States, which was expressed in the supply of aircraft equipment and materials, sending volunteer specialists to participate in military operations and training Chinese pilots. In general, both nationalists and communists planned to provide only passive resistance to Japanese aggression (especially after the US and Great Britain entered the war against Japan), hoping for the defeat of the Japanese by the allies and making efforts to create and strengthen the basis for a future war for power among themselves (creation of combat-ready troops and underground, strengthening control over unoccupied areas of the country, propaganda, etc.). Most historians date the start of the Sino-Japanese War to the Lugouqiao Bridge (aka Marco Polo Bridge) incident on July 7, 1937, but some Chinese historians place the starting point of the war at September 18, 1931, when the Mukden Incident occurred, during which The Kwantung Army, under the pretext of protecting the railway connecting Port Arthur with Mukden from possible sabotage actions of the Chinese during “night exercises,” captured the Mukden arsenal and nearby towns. Chinese forces were forced to retreat, and continued aggression left all of Manchuria in Japanese hands by February 1932. After this, until the official start of the Sino-Japanese War, there were constant Japanese seizures of territories in Northern China and battles of varying scale with the Chinese army. On the other hand, the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek carried out a number of operations to combat separatist militarists and communists. On July 1937, Japanese troops clashed with Chinese troops at the Lugouqiao Bridge near Beijing. A Japanese soldier disappeared during a “night exercise.” The Japanese issued an ultimatum demanding that the Chinese hand over the soldier or open the gates of the fortified city of Wanping to search for him. The refusal of the Chinese authorities led to a shootout between the Japanese company and the Chinese infantry regiment. It came to the use of not only small arms, but also artillery. This served as a pretext for a full-scale invasion of China. In Japanese historiography, this war is traditionally called the “Chinese incident”, because Initially, the Japanese did not plan large-scale military operations with China, preparing for a big war with the USSR. After a series of unsuccessful negotiations between the Chinese and Japanese sides on a peaceful resolution of the conflict, on July 26, 1937, Japan switched to full-scale military operations north of the Yellow River with the forces of 3 divisions and 2 brigades (about 40 thousand people with 120 guns, 150 tanks and armored vehicles, 6 armored trains and support for up to 150 aircraft). Japanese troops quickly captured Beijing (Beiping) (28 July) and Tianjin (30 July). Over the next few months, the Japanese advanced south and west against little resistance, capturing Chahar Province and part of Suiyuan Province, reaching the upper bend of the Yellow River at Baoding. But by September, due to the increased combat effectiveness of the Chinese army, the growth of the partisan movement and supply problems, the offensive slowed down, and in order to expand the scale of the offensive, by September the Japanese were forced to transfer up to 300 thousand soldiers and officers to Northern China. August-November 8, the Second Battle of Shanghai unfolded, during which numerous Japanese landings as part of Matsui's 3rd Expeditionary Force, with intensive support from the sea and air, managed to capture the city of Shanghai, despite strong resistance from the Chinese; A pro-Japanese puppet government was formed in Shanghai. At this time, the Japanese 5th Itagaki Division was ambushed and defeated in the north of Shanxi by the 115th Division (under the command of Nie Rongzhen) from the 8th Army. The Japanese lost 3 thousand people and their main weapons. The Battle of Pingxinguan had great propaganda significance in China and became the largest battle between the communist army and the Japanese during the entire course of the war. In November-December 1937, the Japanese army launched an attack on Nanjing along the Yangtze River without encountering strong resistance. On December 12, 1937, Japanese aircraft carried out an unprovoked raid on British and American ships stationed near Nanjing. As a result, the gunboat Panay was sunk. However, the conflict was avoided through diplomatic measures. On December 13, Nanjing fell and the government evacuated to the city of Hankou. The Japanese army carried out a bloody massacre of civilians in the city for 5 days, as a result of which 200 thousand people died. As a result of the battles for Nanjing, the Chinese army lost all tanks, artillery, aviation and navy. On December 14, 1937, the creation of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China, controlled by the Japanese, was proclaimed in Beijing. In January-April 1938, the Japanese offensive in the north resumed. In January the conquest of Shandong was completed. Japanese troops faced a strong guerrilla movement and were unable to effectively control the captured territory. In March-April 1938, the Battle of Taierzhuang unfolded, during which a 200,000-strong group of regular troops and partisans under the overall command of General Li Zongren cut off and surrounded a 60,000-strong group of Japanese, who ultimately managed to break out of the ring, losing 20,000 people killed and a large amount of military equipment. On March 28, 1938, in the occupied territory of central China, the Japanese proclaimed in Nanjing the creation of the so-called. "Reformed Government of the Republic of China" In May-June 1938, the Japanese regrouped, concentrating more than 200 thousand soldiers and officers and about 400 tanks against 400 thousand poorly armed Chinese, practically devoid of military equipment, and continued the offensive, as a result of which Xuzhou (May 20) and Kaifeng (June 6) were taken ). In these battles, the Japanese used chemical and bacteriological weapons. In May 1938, the New 4th Army was created under the command of Ye Ting, formed from communists and stationed mainly in the Japanese rear south of the middle reaches of the Yangtze. In June-July 1938, the Chinese stopped the Japanese strategic offensive on Hankou through Zhengzhou by destroying the dams that prevented the Yellow River from overflowing and flooding the surrounding area. At the same time, many Japanese soldiers died, a large number of tanks, trucks and guns ended up under water or stuck in the mud. Changing the direction of attack to a more southern one, the Japanese captured Hankow (October 25) during long, grueling battles. Chiang Kai-shek decided to leave the Wuhan Tricity and moved his capital to Chongqing. October 1938, a Japanese naval landing force, delivered on 12 transport ships under the cover of 1 cruiser, 1 destroyer, 2 gunboats and 3 minesweepers, landed on both sides of the Humen Strait and stormed the Chinese forts guarding the passage to Canton. On the same day, Chinese units of the 12th Army left the city without a fight. Japanese troops of the 21st Army entered the city, seizing warehouses with weapons, ammunition, equipment and food. In general, during the first period of the war, the Japanese army, despite partial successes, was unable to achieve the main strategic goal - the destruction of the Chinese army. At the same time, the stretch of the front, the isolation of troops from supply bases and the growing Chinese partisan movement worsened the position of the Japanese. Japan decided to change the strategy of active struggle to a strategy of attrition. Japan is limited to only local operations at the front and is moving on to intensifying political struggle. This was caused by excessive tension and problems of control over the hostile population of the occupied territories. With most of the ports captured by the Japanese army, China was left with only three routes to obtain aid from the Allies - the narrow gauge road to Kunming from Haiphong in French Indochina; the winding Burma Road, which ran to Kunming through British Burma and, finally, the Xinjiang Highway, which ran from the Soviet-Chinese border through Xinjiang and Gansu Province. November 1938 Chiang Kai-shek appealed to the Chinese people to continue the war of resistance against Japan to a victorious end. The Chinese Communist Party approved the speech during a meeting of Chongqing youth organizations. In the same month, Japanese troops managed to take the cities of Fuxin and Fuzhou with the help of amphibious assaults. Japan makes peace proposals to the Kuomintang government on some terms favorable to Japan. This strengthens the internal party contradictions of the Chinese nationalists. As a consequence of this, there followed the betrayal of Chinese Vice-Premier Wang Jingwei, who fled to Shanghai captured by the Japanese. In February 1939, during the Hainan landing operation, the Japanese army, under the cover of ships of the Japanese 2nd Fleet, captured the cities of Junzhou and Haikou, losing two transport ships and a barge with troops. From March 13 to April 3, 1939, the Nanchang Operation unfolded, during which Japanese troops consisting of the 101st and 106th Infantry Divisions, with the support of a Marine landing and the massive use of aviation and gunboats, managed to occupy the city of Nanchang and a number of other cities. At the end of April, the Chinese launched a successful counterattack on Nanchang and liberated the city of Hoan. However, then Japanese troops launched a local attack in the direction of the city of Ichang. Japanese troops entered Nanchang again on August 29. In June 1939, the Chinese cities of Shantou (June 21) and Fuzhou (June 27) were taken by amphibious assault. In September 1939, Chinese troops managed to stop the Japanese offensive 18 km north of the city of Changsha. On October 10, they launched a successful counteroffensive against units of the 11th Army in the direction of Nanchang, which they managed to occupy on October 10. During the operation, the Japanese lost up to 25 thousand people and more than 20 landing craft. From November 14 to 25, the Japanese launched a landing of a 12,000-strong military group in the Pan Khoi area. During the Pankhoi landing operation and the subsequent offensive, the Japanese managed to capture the cities of Pankhoi, Qinzhou, Dantong and, finally, on November 24, after fierce fighting, Nanying. However, the advance on Lanzhou was stopped by a counterattack by General Bai Chongxi's 24th Army, and Japanese aircraft began bombing the city. On December 8, Chinese troops, with the assistance of the Zhongjin air group of Soviet Major S. Suprun, stopped the Japanese offensive from the Nanying area at the Kunlunguang line, after which (December 16, 1939) with the forces of the 86th and 10th armies, the Chinese began an offensive with the aim of encircling the Wuhan group of Japanese troops. The operation was supported from the flanks by the 21st and 50th armies. On the first day of the operation, the Japanese defense was broken through, but the further course of events led to a halt in the offensive, a retreat to their original positions and a transition to defensive actions. The Wuhan operation failed due to shortcomings in the Chinese army's command and control system. In March 1940, Japan formed a puppet government in Nanjing in order to obtain political and military support in the fight against partisans in the rear. It was headed by former Vice-Premier of China Wang Jingwei, who defected to the Japanese. In June-July, the successes of Japanese diplomacy in negotiations with Great Britain and France led to the cessation of military supplies to China through Burma and Indochina. On June 20, an Anglo-Japanese agreement was concluded on joint actions against violators of the order and security of Japanese military forces in China, according to which, in particular, Chinese silver worth $40 million, stored in the English and French missions in Tianjin, was transferred to Japan. In August 1940, a joint large-scale (up to 400 thousand people participated) offensive of the Chinese 4th, 8th Army (formed from communists) and partisan detachments of the Communist Party of China began against Japanese troops in the provinces of Shanxi, Chahar, Hubei and Henan, known as the “Battle of one hundred regiments." In Jiangsu province, there were a number of clashes between communist army units and the Kuomintang partisan detachments of Governor H. Deqin, as a result of which the latter were defeated. The result of the Chinese offensive was the liberation of a territory with a population of more than 5 million people and 73 large settlements. The personnel losses on both sides were approximately equal (about 20 thousand people on each side). On October 1940, Winston Churchill decided to reopen the Burma Road. This was done with the approval of the United States, which intended to carry out military supplies to China under Lend-Lease. During 1940, Japanese troops limited themselves to only one offensive operation in the lower Hanshui River basin and successfully carried it out, capturing the city of Yichang. In January 1941, in Anhui province, Kuomintang military formations attacked units of the 4th Army of the Communist Party. Its commander Ye Ting, who arrived at the headquarters of the Kuomintang troops for negotiations, was arrested by deception. This was caused by Ye Ting's disregard of Chiang Kai-shek's orders to attack the Japanese, which resulted in the latter being court-martialed. Relations between communists and nationalists deteriorated. Meanwhile, the 50,000-strong Japanese army carried out an unsuccessful offensive in the provinces of Hubei and Henan in order to connect the Central and Northern fronts. By March 1941, two large operational groups of the Kuomintang government were concentrated against areas controlled by the Communist Party of China (hereinafter referred to as the CCP): in the northwest, the 34th Army Group of General Hu Zongnan (16 infantry and 3 cavalry divisions) and in the provinces Anhui and Jiangsu - General Liu Pingxiang's 21st Army Group and General Tang Enbo's 31st Army Group (15 infantry and 2 cavalry divisions). On March 2, the CCP put forward a new "Twelve Demands" to the Chinese government to reach an agreement between the Communists and the Nationalists. In April, the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Treaty was signed, guaranteeing the USSR not to enter Japan into the war in the Soviet Far East if Germany did start a war with Russia. A series of offensives undertaken by the Japanese army during 1941 (the Yichang Operation, the Fujian Landing Operation, the offensive in Shanxi Province, the Yichang Operation and the Second Changshai Operation) and the air offensive on Chongqing, the capital of Kuomintang China, did not produce any particular results and did not lead to a change in the balance of forces. in China. china japanese war ally On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands, which changed the balance of opposing forces in the Asia-Pacific region. Already on December 8, the Japanese began bombing British Hong Kong and advancing with the 38th Infantry Division. On December 10, Chiang Kai-shek's government declared war on Germany and Italy, and on December 10 on Japan (the war had gone on without a formal declaration until that time). December, the Japanese launched their third counter-offensive of the war on Changsha, and on the 25th, units of the 38th Infantry Division took Hong Kong, forcing the remnants of the British garrison to surrender (12 thousand people). The Japanese lost 3 thousand people during the battles for the island. The Third Changshai Operation was not successful and ended on January 15, 1942 with the withdrawal of Japanese units of the 11th Army to their original positions. December, an agreement on a military alliance was concluded between China, Great Britain and the United States. A coalition command was also created to coordinate the military actions of the allies, who opposed the Japanese as a united front. So, in March 1942, Chinese troops in the 5th and 6th armies under the overall command of the American General Stilwell (Chief of the General Staff of the Chinese Army Chiang Kai-shek) arrived from China to British Burma along the Burma Road to fight the Japanese invasion. In May-June, the Japanese carried out the Zhejiang-Jiangxi offensive operation, taking several cities, the Lishui air force base and the Zhejiang-Hunan railway. Several Chinese units were surrounded (units of the 88th and 9th armies). Throughout the entire period 1941-1943. The Japanese also carried out punitive operations against communist forces. This was caused by the need to combat the ever-increasing partisan movement. Thus, within a year (from the summer of 1941 to the summer of 1942), as a result of the punitive operations of the Japanese troops, the territory of the partisan regions of the CPC was halved. During this time, units of the 8th Army and the New 4th Army of the CPC lost up to 150 thousand soldiers in battles with the Japanese. In July-December 1942, local battles took place, as well as several local offensives by both Chinese and Japanese troops, which did not particularly affect the overall course of military operations. In 1943, China, which found itself in practical isolation, was very weakened. Japan, on the other hand, used the tactics of small local operations, the so-called “rice offensives,” aimed at exhausting the Chinese army, seizing provisions in the newly occupied territories and depriving their already starving enemy. During this period, the Chinese air group of Brigadier General Claire Chennault, formed from the Flying Tigers volunteer group, which had been operating in China since 1941, was active. On January 1943, the Nanjing puppet government in China declared war on Great Britain and the United States. The beginning of the year was characterized by local battles between the Japanese and Chinese armies. In March, the Japanese unsuccessfully tried to encircle the Chinese group in the Huaiyin-Yancheng region in Jiangsu province (Huayin-Yangcheng operation). March Chiang Kai-shek issued a decree on the mobilization of women aged 18 to 45 years into the army. In May-June, the Japanese 11th Army went on the offensive from a bridgehead on the Yichang River in the direction of the Chinese capital, Chongqing, but was counterattacked by Chinese units and retreated to their original positions (Chongqing Operation). At the end of 1943, the Chinese army successfully repelled one of the Japanese “rice offensives” in Hunan Province, winning the Battle of Changde (November 23-December 10). In 1944-1945, a de facto truce was established between the Japanese and Chinese communists. The Japanese completely stopped punitive raids against the communists. This was beneficial to both sides - the Communists were able to consolidate control over Northwestern China, and the Japanese freed up forces for the war in the south. The beginning of 1944 was characterized by offensive operations of a local nature. April 1944, units of the 12th Japanese Army of the Northern Front went on the offensive against the Chinese troops of the 1st Military Region (VR) in the direction of the city. Zhengzhou, Queshan, breaking through Chinese defenses with armored vehicles. This marked the beginning of the Beijing-Hankous operation; a day later, units of the 11th Army of the Central Front moved towards them from the Xinyang area, going on the offensive against the 5th Chinese VR with the aim of encircling the Chinese group in the valley of the river. Huaihe. 148 thousand Japanese soldiers and officers were involved in this operation in the main directions. The offensive was successfully completed by May 9. Units of both armies united in the area of the city of Queshan. During the operation, the Japanese captured the strategically important city of Zhengzhou (April 19), as well as Luoyang (May 25). Most of the territory of Henan Province and the entire railway line from Beijing to Hankou were in the hands of the Japanese. A further development of active offensive combat operations of the Japanese army was the Hunan-Guilin operation of the 23rd Army against the Chinese troops of the 4th VR in the direction of Liuzhou. In May-September 1944, the Japanese continued to conduct offensive operations in a southern direction. Japanese activity led to the fall of Changsha and Henyang. The Chinese fought stubbornly for Henyang and counterattacked the enemy in a number of places, while Changsha was left without a fight. At the same time, the Chinese launched an offensive in Yunnan Province with Group Y forces. The troops advanced in two columns, crossing the Salween River. The southern column encircled the Japanese at Longlin, but was driven back after a series of Japanese counterattacks. The northern column advanced more successfully, capturing the city of Tengchong with the support of the American 14th Air Force. October, the city of Fuzhou was captured by a Japanese landing from the sea. In the same place, the evacuation of troops of the 4th VR of China from the cities of Guilin, Liuzhou and Nanying begins; on November 10, the 31st Army of this VR was forced to capitulate to the 11th Army of Japan in the city of Guilin. On December 20, Japanese troops advancing from the north, from the Guangzhou region and from Indochina, united in the city of Nanlu, establishing a through railway connection across the whole of China from Korea to Indochina. At the end of the year, American aircraft transferred two Chinese divisions from Burma to China. The year was also characterized by successful operations of the American submarine fleet off the Chinese coast. On January 1945, parts of a group of troops of General Wei Lihuang liberated the city of Wanting and crossed the Chinese-Burmese border, entering the territory of Burma, and on the 11th, troops of the 6th Front of the Japanese went on the offensive against the Chinese 9th BP in the direction of the cities of Ganzhou and Yizhang , Shaoguan. In January - February, the Japanese army resumed its offensive in Southeast China, occupying vast territories in the coastal provinces - between Wuhan and the border of French Indochina. Three more air bases of the American 14th Air Force Chennault were captured. In March 1945, the Japanese launched another offensive to seize crops in Central China. The forces of the 39th Infantry Division of the 11th Army struck in the direction of the city of Gucheng (Henan-Hubei operation). In March - April, the Japanese also managed to take two American air bases in China - Laohotou and Laohekou. On April 1, the USSR unilaterally denounced the neutrality pact with Japan in connection with the commitments of the Soviet leadership, given at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, to enter the war against Japan three months after the victory over Germany, which at the moment was already close. Realizing that his forces were too stretched, General Yasuji Okamura, in an effort to strengthen the Kwantung Army stationed in Manchuria, which was threatened by the entry of the USSR into the war, began to transfer troops to the north. As a result of the Chinese counteroffensive, by May 30, the corridor leading to Indochina was cut. By July 1, the 100,000-strong Japanese group was surrounded in Canton, and about 100,000 more returned to Northern China under the attacks of the American 10th and 14th Air Armies. On July 27, they abandoned one of the previously captured American air bases in Guilin. In May, Chinese troops of the 3rd VR attacked Fuzhou and managed to liberate the city from the Japanese. Active Japanese operations both here and in other areas were generally curtailed, and the army went on the defensive. In June and July, the Japanese and Chinese nationalists carried out a series of punitive operations against the communist Special Region and parts of the CCP. On August 8, 1945, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR officially joined the Potsdam Declaration of the USA, Great Britain and China and declared war on Japan. By this time, Japan was already drained of blood and its ability to continue the war was minimal. Soviet troops, taking advantage of the quantitative and qualitative superiority of troops, launched a decisive offensive in Northeast China and quickly crushed the Japanese defenses. (See: Soviet-Japanese War). At the same time, a struggle developed between the Chinese nationalists and communists for political influence. On August 10, the commander-in-chief of the CPC troops, Zhu De, gave the order for the communist troops to go on the offensive against the Japanese along the entire front, and on August 11, Chiang Kai-shek gave a similar order for all Chinese troops to go on the offensive, but it was specifically stipulated that the communists should not take part in this. -I and 8th armies. Despite this, the communists went on the offensive. Both communists and nationalists were now primarily concerned with establishing their power in the country after the victory over Japan, which was rapidly losing to its allies. At the same time, the USSR secretly supported primarily the communists, and the USA - the nationalists. The entry of the USSR into the war and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki accelerated the final defeat and defeat of Japan. August, when it became clear that the Kwantung Army had suffered a crushing defeat, the Japanese Emperor announced Japan's surrender. On August 15, a ceasefire was announced. But despite this decision, individual Japanese units continued desperate resistance throughout the entire theater of operations until September 7-8, 1945. September 1945 in Tokyo Bay, on board the American battleship Missouri, representatives of the USA, Great Britain, the USSR, France and Japan signed the act of surrender of the Japanese armed forces. On September 9, 1945, He Yingqin, representing both the government of the Republic of China and the Allied Command in Southeast Asia, accepted the surrender from the commander of Japanese forces in China, General Okamura Yasuji. Thus ended the Second World War in Asia. In the 1930s, the USSR systematically pursued a course of political support for China as a victim of Japanese aggression. Thanks to close contacts with the Communist Party of China and the difficult situation in which Chiang Kai-shek was placed by the rapid military actions of Japanese troops, the USSR became an active diplomatic force in rallying the forces of the Kuomintang government and the Communist Party of China. In August 1937, a non-aggression pact was signed between China and the USSR, and the Nanjing government turned to the latter with a request for material assistance. China's almost complete loss of opportunities for constant relations with the outside world has given the province of Xinjiang paramount importance as one of the country's most important land connections with the USSR and Europe. Therefore, in 1937, the Chinese government turned to the USSR with a request to provide assistance in creating the Sary-Ozek - Urumqi - Lanzhou highway for the delivery of weapons, aircraft, ammunition, etc. to China from the USSR. The Soviet government agreed. From 1937 to 1941, the USSR regularly supplied weapons, ammunition, etc. to China by sea and through the province of Xinjiang, while the second route was a priority due to the naval blockade of the Chinese coast. The USSR concluded several loan agreements and contracts with China for the supply of Soviet weapons. On June 16, 1939, the Soviet-Chinese trade agreement was signed, concerning the trading activities of both states. In 1937-1940, over 300 Soviet military advisers worked in China. In total, over 5 thousand Soviet citizens worked there during these years, including A. Vlasov. Among them were volunteer pilots, teachers and instructors, aircraft and tank assembly workers, aviation specialists, road and bridge specialists, transport workers, doctors and, finally, military advisers. By the beginning of 1939, thanks to the efforts of military specialists from the USSR, losses in the Chinese army dropped sharply. If in the first years of the war the Chinese losses in killed and wounded were 800 thousand people (5:1 to the losses of the Japanese), then in the second year they were equal to the Japanese (300 thousand). On September 1940, the first stage of a new aircraft assembly plant built by Soviet specialists was launched in Urumqi. In total, during the period 1937-1941, the USSR supplied China with: 1285 aircraft (of which 777 fighters, 408 bombers, 100 training aircraft), 1600 guns of various calibers, 82 medium tanks, 14 thousand heavy and light machine guns. , cars and tractors - 1850. The Chinese Air Force had about 100 aircraft. Japan had a tenfold superiority in aviation. One of the largest Japanese air bases was located in Taiwan, near Taipei. By the beginning of 1938, a batch of new SB bombers arrived from the USSR to China as part of Operation Zet. Chief military adviser for the Air Force, brigade commander P.V. Rychagov and air attaché P.F. Zhigarev (the future commander-in-chief of the USSR Air Force) developed a bold operation. 12 SB bombers under the command of Colonel F.P. were to take part in it. Polynina. The raid took place on February 23, 1938. The target was successfully hit, and all bombers returned to base. Later, a group of twelve SB under the command of T.T. Khryukin sank the Japanese aircraft carrier Yamato-maru. The German attack on the Soviet Union and the deployment of allied military operations in the Pacific theater led to a deterioration in Soviet-Chinese relations, since the Chinese leadership did not believe in the victory of the USSR over Germany and, on the other hand, reoriented its policy towards rapprochement with the West. In 1942-1943, economic ties between both states weakened sharply. In March 1942, the USSR was forced to begin recalling its military advisers due to anti-Soviet sentiment in the Chinese provinces. In May 1943, the Soviet government was forced, after declaring a strong protest in connection with the excesses of the Xinjiang Kuomintang authorities, to close all trade organizations and recall its trade representatives and specialists. From December 1937, a series of events, such as the attack on the US gunboat Panay and the Nanjing massacre, turned public opinion in the United States, France, and Great Britain against Japan and aroused certain fears of Japanese expansion. This prompted the governments of these countries to begin providing the Kuomintang with loans for military needs. In addition, Australia did not allow a Japanese company to acquire an iron ore mine on its territory, and also banned the export of iron ore in 1938. Japan responded by invading Indochina in 1940, cutting the Sino-Vietnamese Railway, through which it imported weapons, fuel, and also 10,000 tons of materials from the Western allies every month. In mid-1941, the US government funded the creation of the American Volunteer Group, led by Claire Lee Chennault, to replace Soviet aircraft and volunteers who had left China. The successful combat operations of this group caused a wide public outcry against the backdrop of the difficult situation on other fronts, and the combat experience acquired by the pilots was useful in all theaters of military operations. To put pressure on the Japanese and the army in China, the US, UK and the Netherlands established an embargo on oil and/or steel trade with Japan. The loss of oil imports made it impossible for Japan to continue the war in China. This pushed Japan to forcefully resolve the supply issue, which was marked by the attack of the Imperial Japanese Navy on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. In the pre-war period, Germany and China cooperated closely in the economic and military spheres. Germany helped China modernize its industry and army in exchange for supplies of Chinese raw materials. More than half of German exports of military equipment and materials during the German rearmament period in the 1930s went to China. However, the 30 new Chinese divisions that were planned to be equipped and trained with German help were never created due to Adolf Hitler's refusal to further support China in 1938; these plans were never implemented. This decision was largely due to the reorientation of German policy towards concluding an alliance with Japan. German policy especially shifted towards cooperation with Japan after the signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact. Conclusion
The main reason for Japan's defeat in World War II were the victories of the American and British armed forces at sea and in the air, and the defeat of the largest Japanese land army, the Kwantung Army, by Soviet troops in August-September 1945, which allowed the liberation of Chinese territory. Despite the numerical superiority over the Japanese, the effectiveness and combat effectiveness of the Chinese troops was very low, the Chinese army suffered 8.4 times more casualties than the Japanese. The actions of the armed forces of the Western Allies, as well as the armed forces of the USSR, saved China from complete defeat. Japanese troops in China formally surrendered on September 9, 1945. The Sino-Japanese War, like the Second World War in Asia, ended due to the complete surrender of Japan to the Allies. According to the decisions of the Cairo Conference (1943), the territories of Manchuria, Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands were transferred to China. The Ryukyu Islands were recognized as Japanese territory.
Each nation that took part in World War II has its own start date. Residents of our country will remember June 22, 1941, the French - 1940, the Poles - September 1939. The Chinese do not have such a date. For the Celestial Empire, virtually the entire beginning of the twentieth century was a continuous string of wars that ended about sixty years ago with the founding of the PRC.
In the second half of the 19th century, China experienced a period of anarchy and collapse. The Qing dynasty of emperors, who were descendants of the Manchu horsemen who arrived from the Amur northeastern lands and captured Beijing in 1644, completely lost the warlike determination of their ancestors, without gaining the love of their subjects. A huge empire, which at the end of the 18th century provided almost a quarter of world production, half a century later, suffering defeats from the army of Western states, made more and more territorial and economic concessions. Even the proclamation of the republic during the Xinhai Revolution, which took place under calls for the restoration of former power and independence in 1911, essentially did not change anything. Rival generals divided the country into independent principalities, constantly fighting each other. Control over the outskirts of the country was completely lost, foreign powers increased their influence, and the president of the new republic had even less power than the previous emperor.
In 1925, Jiang Zhongzheng, known as Chiang Kai-shek, came to power in the nationalist Kuomintang party, which controlled the southwestern lands of China. Having carried out a number of active reforms that strengthened the army, he undertook a campaign to the north. Already at the end of 1926, the entire south of China came under his control, and the following spring Nanjing (where the capital was moved) and Shanghai. These victories made the Kuomintang the main political force that gave hope for the unification of the country.
Seeing the strengthening of China, the Japanese decided to intensify their forces on the mainland. And there were reasons for this. The leadership of the Land of the Rising Sun was very dissatisfied with the results of the First World War. Like the Italian elite, Japan saw itself as deprived after the overall victory. Unresolved issues after a military confrontation usually lead to a new struggle. The empire sought to expand living space, the population grew and new arable land and raw material bases for the economy were required. All this was located in Manchuria, where Japanese influence was very strong. At the end of 1931, an explosion occurred on the Japanese-owned South Manchurian Railway. Under the guise of a desire to protect their citizens, Manchuria was overrun by Japanese troops. In an attempt to avoid open conflict, Chiang Kai-shek led the attention of the League of Nations to restore China's rightful rights and condemn the actions of the Japanese. The lengthy proceedings completely satisfied the conquerors. During this time, individual parts of the Kuomintang army were destroyed, and the capture of Manchuria was completed. On March 1, 1932, the founding of a new state, Manchukuo, was announced.
Seeing the impotence of the League of Nations, the Japanese military turns its attention to China. Taking advantage of the anti-Japanese protests in Shanghai, their aircraft bomb Chinese positions, and troops land in the city. After two weeks of street fighting, the Japanese captured the northern part of Shanghai, but Chiang Kai-shek's diplomatic efforts yield results - arriving ambassadors from the USA, England and France manage to stop the bloodshed and begin negotiations. After some time, the League of Nations renders a verdict - the Japanese should get out of Shanghai.
However, this was just the beginning. At the end of 1932, Japanese troops added the province of Zhehe to Manchukuo, coming close to Beijing. In Europe, meanwhile, there was an economic crisis, and tensions between countries were growing. The West paid less and less attention to protecting China's sovereignty, which suited Japan, opening up wide opportunities for further actions.
Back in 1927, in the Land of the Rising Sun, Prime Minister Tanaka laid out the memorandum “Kodo” (“The Emperor’s Way”) to the emperor. His main idea was that Japan could and should achieve world domination. To do this, she will need to capture Manchuria, China, destroy the USSR and the USA and form the “Greater East Asia Prosperity Sphere.” Only at the end of 1936 did the supporters of this doctrine finally win - Japan, Italy and Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact. The main enemy of the Japanese in the coming battle was the Soviet Union. Realizing that for this they needed a strong land bridgehead, the Japanese staged provocation after provocation on the border with China to find a reason to attack. The last straw was the incident on July 7, 1937, near the Marco Polo Bridge, located southwest of Beijing. Conducting night training exercises, Japanese soldiers began firing at Chinese fortifications. Return fire killed one person, which gave the aggressors the right to demand the withdrawal of Chiang Kai-shek's troops from the entire region. The Chinese did not respond, and on July 20 the Japanese launched a large-scale offensive, capturing Tianjin and Beijing by the end of the month.
Soon after, the Japanese launched attacks on Shanghai and Nanjing, the economic and political capitals of the Republic of China. To gain the support of the Western community, Chiang Kai-shek decided to show the world the ability of the Chinese to fight. All the best divisions, under his personal leadership, attacked the Japanese landing force that landed in Shanghai at the end of the summer of 1937. He appealed to the residents of Nanjing not to leave the city. About a million people took part in the Shanghai massacre. Three months of continuous fighting brought countless casualties. The Chinese lost more than half of their personnel. And on December 13, Japanese soldiers, without encountering resistance, occupied Nanking, in which only unarmed civilians remained. Over the next six weeks, a massacre of unprecedented scale took place in the city, a real nightmare, known as the “Nanjing Massacre.”
The occupiers began by bayoneting twenty thousand men of military age outside the city, so that they would never again be able to fight against them. Then the Japanese moved on to exterminating the elderly, women and children. The killings took place with particular brutality. Samurai tore out the eyes and hearts of living people, cut off their heads, and turned their insides out. No firearms were used. People were bayoneted, buried alive, and burned. Before the murder, adult women, girls, and old women were raped. At the same time, sons were forced to rape their mothers, and fathers were forced to rape their daughters. Residents of the city were used as “stuffed animals” for training with a bayonet, and were poisoned with dogs. Thousands of corpses floated down the Yangtze, preventing ships from landing on the banks of the river. The Japanese had to use the floating dead as pontoons to get on ships.
At the end of 1937, one Japanese newspaper enthusiastically reported on a dispute between two officers who decided to find out which of them would be the first to kill more than a hundred people with a sword in the allotted time. A certain Mukai won, killing 106 Chinese against 105.
In 2007, documents came to light from an international charity organization operating in Nanjing at the time. According to them, as well as records confiscated from the Japanese, it can be concluded that in twenty-eight massacres, more than 200,000 civilians were killed by soldiers. About 150,000 more people were killed individually. The maximum number of all victims reaches 500,000 people.
Many historians agree that the Japanese killed more civilians than the Germans. A person captured by the Nazis died with a 4% probability (excluding residents of our country); among the Japanese this value reached 30%. Chinese prisoners of war had no chance to survive at all, since in 1937 Emperor Hirohito abolished international law against them. After Japan surrendered, only fifty-six Chinese prisoners of war saw freedom! There are rumors that in some cases, poorly provisioned Japanese soldiers ate prisoners.
The Europeans who remained in Nanjing, mostly missionaries and businessmen, tried to save the local population. They organized an international committee, headed by Jon Rabe. The committee fenced off an area called the Nanjing Security Zone. Here they managed to save about 200,000 Chinese citizens. A former member of the NSDAP, Rabe managed to obtain from the interim authorities the status of inviolability of the “Security Zone”.
Rabe failed to impress the Japanese military who captured the city with the seal of the International Committee, but they were afraid of the swastikas. Rabe wrote: “I had no weapons except a party badge and a bandage on my arm. Japanese soldiers constantly invaded my house, but when they saw the swastika, they immediately left.”
The Japanese authorities still do not want to officially acknowledge the fact of the massacre, finding the data on victims too inflated. They never apologized for the war crimes committed in China. According to their data, in the winter of 1937-1938, “only” 20,000 people died in Nanjing. They deny calling the incident a “massacre,” saying it is Chinese propaganda aimed at humiliating and insulting Japan. Their school history books simply say that “many people died” in Nanjing. Photos of massacres in the city, which are indisputable evidence of the nightmares of those days, are fakes, according to Japanese authorities. This is despite the fact that most of the photographs were found in the archives of Japanese soldiers, taken by them as souvenirs.
In 1985, a Memorial to those killed in the Nanjing Massacre was built in Nanjing. In 1995 it was expanded. The memorial is located in a mass grave site. The mass grave is covered with pebbles. The huge number of small stones symbolizes the countless number of dead. There are also expressive statues on the museum grounds. And here you can see documents, photographs and stories of survivors about the atrocities committed by the Japanese. One room shows an eerie cross-section of a mass grave hidden behind glass.
Chinese women forced into prostitution or raped have petitioned Tokyo authorities for compensation. The Japanese court responded that the corresponding verdict could not be made due to the statute of limitations of the crimes.
Chinese-American journalist Iris Chan has published three books about the extermination of the Chinese in Nanjing. The first work remained among America's bestsellers for ten weeks. Influenced by the book, the US Congress held a series of special hearings, adopting a resolution in 1997 demanding an official apology from the Japanese government for war crimes committed. Of course, Chan's book was banned from publication in Japan. During subsequent work, Iris lost sleep and began to experience bouts of depression. The fourth book, about the Japanese capture of the Philippines and the death march in Bataan, took away the last of her mental strength. Having experienced a nervous breakdown in 2004, Chan ended up in a psychiatric clinic, where she was diagnosed with manic-depressive psychosis. The talented journalist constantly took risperidone. On November 9, 2004, she was found shooting herself with a revolver in her car.
In the spring of 1938, the Japanese finally suffered their first defeat - near Taierzhuang. They were unable to take the city and lost more than 20,000 people. After retreating, they turned their attention to Wuhan, where Chiang Kai-shek's government was located. Japanese generals believed that the capture of the city would lead to the surrender of the Kuomintang. However, after the fall of Wuhan on October 27, 1938, the capital was moved to Chongqing, and the stubborn Kai-shek still refused to give up. To break the will of the fighting Chinese, the Japanese began bombing civilian targets in all unoccupied major cities. Millions of people were killed, injured or left homeless.
In 1939, a premonition of world war arose in both Asia and Europe. Realizing this, Chiang Kai-shek decided to buy time to hold out until the hour when Japan clashed with the United States, which looked very likely. Future events showed that such a strategy was correct, but in those days the situation looked stalemate. Major Kuomintang offensives in Guangxi and Changsha ended without success. It was clear that there would be only one outcome: either Japan would intervene in the war in the Pacific, or the Kuomintang would lose control of the remnants of China.
Back in 1937, a propaganda campaign began to create good feelings towards Japan among the Chinese population. The goal was to strike at the Chiang Kai-shek regime. At the very beginning, residents of some places actually greeted the Japanese as brothers. But the attitude towards them very quickly changed to the exact opposite, since Japanese propaganda, like German propaganda, too strongly convinced its soldiers of their divine origin, which gave them superiority over other peoples. The Japanese did not hide their arrogant attitude, looking at foreigners as second-class people, like cattle. This, as well as heavy labor service, quickly turned the inhabitants of the occupied territories against the “liberators.” Soon the Japanese barely controlled the occupied land. There were not enough garrisons; only cities, key centers and important communications could be controlled. The partisans were in full control in the countryside.
In the spring of 1940, in Nanjing, Wang Jingwei, a former prominent Kuomintang figure removed from office by Chiang Kai-shek, organized the “Central National Government of the Republic of China” under the slogan: “Peace, anti-communism, nation-building.” However, his government was unable to gain much credibility with the Chinese. He was deposed on August 10, 1945.
The invaders responded to the actions of the partisan detachments by clearing the territories. In the summer of 1940, General Yasuji Okamura, who led the North Chinese Army, came up with a truly terrible strategy, “Sanko Sakusen.” Translated, it meant “Three All”: burn everything, kill everything, rob everything. Five provinces - Shandong, Shanxi, Hebei, Chahar and Shaanxi were divided into sections: “peaceful”, “semi-peaceful” and “non-peaceful”. Okamura's troops burned out entire villages, confiscated grain and herded peasants to work digging trenches and building many kilometers of roads, walls, and towers. The main goal was to destroy enemies pretending to be locals, as well as all men from fifteen to sixty acting suspiciously. Even Japanese researchers believe that their army enslaved about ten million Chinese in this way. In 1996, scientist Mitsuyoshi Himeta made a statement that the Sanko Sakusen policy led to the death of two and a half million people.
The Japanese also did not hesitate to use chemical and biological weapons. Fleas were dropped on cities, spreading the bubonic plague. This caused a number of epidemic outbreaks. Special units of the Japanese army (the most famous of them - Unit 731) spent their time conducting terrible experiments on prisoners of war and civilians. While studying people, the unfortunate people were subjected to frostbite, successive amputations of limbs, infection with plague and smallpox. Likewise, Unit 731 killed over three thousand people. Japanese brutality varied from place to place. At the front or during the Sanko Sakusen operations, soldiers, as a rule, destroyed all living things along the way. At the same time, foreigners lived freely in Shanghai. The camps for American, Dutch and British citizens, organized after 1941, also featured a relatively “soft” regime.
By mid-1940, it became absolutely clear that the undeclared war in China would drag on for a long time. Meanwhile, the Fuhrer in Europe subjugated one country after another, and the Japanese elite were drawn to join the redivision of the world. The only difficulty they had was the direction of the attack - southern or northern? From 1938 to 1939, the battles of the Khalkhin Gol River and Lake Khasan showed the Japanese that there would be no easy victory over the Soviet Union. On April 13, 1941, the Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact was concluded. And even without paying attention to the insistent demands of the German command after June 22, its conditions were never violated. By this time, the Japanese army had firmly decided to fight the United States, liberating the Asian colonies of European states. An important reason was the ban on the sale of fuel and steel to the Japanese, proposed by the United States to its allies. For a country that does not have its own resources, this was a very significant blow.
On December 7-8, 1941, Japanese aircraft bombed Pearl Harbor, the American naval base on the island of Oahu. The very next day, Japanese planes attacked British Hong Kong. On the same day, Chiang Kai-shek declared war on Italy and Germany. After four years of struggle, the Chinese had a chance to win.
China's help came in very handy for European allies. They pinned down as many Japanese forces as possible and also assisted on neighboring fronts. After the Kuomintang sent two divisions to help the British in Burma, President Roosevelt directly announced that after the end of the war, the situation in the world should be controlled by four countries - the USA, the USSR, Great Britain and China. In practice, of course, the Americans ignored their eastern ally, and their leadership tried to command the headquarters of Chiang Kai-shek. However, the fact that after a hundred years of national humiliation China was named one of the four major powers of the planet was very significant.
The Chinese coped with their task. In the summer of 1943, they held Chongqing and launched a counteroffensive. But, of course, the final victory was brought to them by the allies. Nuclear bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. In April, the Soviet Union broke the neutrality pact with Japan and entered Manchuria in August. Nuclear bombings and the record-breaking advance of Soviet troops made it clear to Emperor Hirohito that it was futile to continue to resist. On August 15, he announced surrender on the radio. It must be said that few people expected such a development of events. The Americans generally assumed that hostilities would last until 1947.
On September 2, on board the US battleship Missouri, representatives of Japan and allied countries signed the act of unconditional surrender of the Japanese armed forces. The Second World War is over.
After the surrender of Japan, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, which met in Tokyo, sentenced 920 people to death, 475 to life imprisonment, and about 3,000 Japanese received various prison sentences. Emperor Hirohito, who personally signed most of the criminal orders, was removed from the list of defendants at the request of the commander of the occupation forces, General MacArthur. Also, many criminals, especially senior officers, were not brought before the tribunal due to suicide after the emperor ordered them to lay down their arms.
| Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) |
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| Background to the conflict Manchuria (1931-1932) (Mukden - Battle on the Nunjiang River - Qiqihar - Jinzhou - Harbin)- Shanghai (1932) - Manchukuo - Zhehe - Wall - Inner Mongolia - (Suiyuan) Lugouqiao Bridge - Beijing-Tianjin - Chahar - Shanghai (1937) (Sykhan Warehouses)- Beiping-Hankou Railway - Tianjin-Pukou Railway - Taiyuan - Pingxinguan - Xinkou- Nanjing - Xuzhou- Taierzhuang - North-East Henan - (Langfeng) - Amoy - Chongqing - Wuhan- (Wanjialin) - Canton Second period of the war (October 1938 - December 1941) (Hainan) - Nanchang- (Shushui River) - Suizhou- (Shantou) - Changsha (1939) - Yu Guangxi - (Kunlun Gorge)- Winter Offensive - (Wuyuan) - Zaoyang and Yichang - Battle of a Hundred Regiments- S. Vietnam - C. Hubei - Yu.Henan- Z. Hubei (1941) - Shangao - South Shanxi - Changsha (1941) Third period of the war (December 1941 - August 1945) Changsha (1942)- Burma Road - (Taungoo) - (Yenangyaung) - Zhejiang-Jiangxi- Chongqing Campaign - Z. Hubei (1943)- S.Burma-W.Yunnan - Changde - "Ichi-Go"- C. Henan - Changsha (1944) - Guilin-Liuzhou - Henan-Hubei - Z.Henan- Guangxi (1945) Soviet-Japanese War |
Sino-Japanese War(July 7 - September 9) - the war between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan, which began in the period before World War II and continued during it.
Although both states had been engaged in periodic hostilities since 1931, full-scale war broke out in 1937 and ended with the surrender of Japan in 1937. The war was a consequence of Japan's imperialist course of political and military dominance in China for several decades in order to seize huge reserves of raw materials and other resources. At the same time, growing Chinese nationalism and increasingly widespread ideas of self-determination made a military response inevitable. Until 1937, the sides clashed in sporadic fighting, so-called "incidents", as both sides, for many reasons, refrained from starting an all-out war. In 1931, the invasion of Manchuria (also known as the Mukden Incident) occurred. The last such incident was the Lugouqiao incident, the Japanese shelling of the Marco Polo Bridge on July 7, 1937, which marked the official start of a full-scale war between the two countries.
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The Qing dynasty was on the verge of collapse due to internal revolutionary uprisings and the expansion of foreign imperialism, while Japan became a great power thanks to effective measures in the course of modernization. The Republic of China was proclaimed in 1912 as a result of the Xinhai Revolution, which overthrew the Qing dynasty. However, the nascent republic was even weaker than before - this dates back to the period of militaristic wars. The prospects for uniting the nation and repelling the imperialist threat looked very remote. Some military leaders even teamed up with various foreign forces in attempts at mutual destruction. For example, the ruler of Manchuria, Zhang Zuolin, adhered to military and economic cooperation with the Japanese. Thus, Japan was the main foreign threat to China during the early Republic.
The Mukden Incident was followed by ongoing conflicts. In 1932, Chinese and Japanese soldiers fought a short war called the January 28 Incident. This war led to the demilitarization of Shanghai, in which the Chinese were prohibited from stationing their armed forces. In Manchukuo there was a long campaign to combat the anti-Japanese volunteer armies, which arose out of popular disappointment in the policy of non-resistance to the Japanese. In 1933, the Japanese attacked the Great Wall of China area, leading to an armistice that gave the Japanese control of Rehe Province and created a demilitarized zone between the Great Wall and the Beijing–Tianjin area. The Japanese goal was to create another buffer zone, this time between Manchukuo and the Chinese Nationalist government, whose capital was Nanjing.
On top of this, Japan continued to exploit internal conflicts between Chinese political factions to reduce their power. This confronted the Nanjing government with a fact - for several years after the Northern Expedition, the political power of the Nationalist government extended only to the areas around the Yangtze River Delta, while other regions of China were essentially held in the hands of regional authorities. Thus, Japan often paid off or created special ties with these regional powers to undermine the central Nationalist government's efforts to unify China. To accomplish this, Japan sought out various Chinese traitors to interact with and assist these people heading some Japanese-friendly "autonomous" governments. This policy was called the "specialization" of North China and was also known as the "North China Autonomy Movement". Specialization affected the northern provinces of Chahar, Suiyuan, Hebei, Shanxi and Shandong.
Vichy France: The main supply routes for American military aid ran through the Chinese province of Yunnan and Tonkin, the northern region of French Indochina, so Japan wanted to block the Sino-Indochinese border. After France's defeat in the European war and the establishment of the Vichy puppet regime, Japan invaded Indochina. In March 1945, the Japanese finally ousted the French from Indochina, proclaiming their own colonies there.
Free France: In December 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the leader of the Free French movement, Charles de Gaulle, declared war on Japan. The French acted on the basis of all-Allied interests, as well as in order to keep the Asian colonies of France under their control.
In general, all allies of Nationalist China had their own goals and objectives, often very different from the Chinese. This must be taken into account when considering the reasons for certain actions of different states.
Strengths of the parties
Empire of Japan
Republic of China
By the beginning of the conflict, China had 1,900 thousand soldiers and officers, 500 aircraft (according to other sources, in the summer of 1937, the Chinese Air Force had about 600 combat aircraft, of which 305 were fighters, but no more than half were combat-ready), 70 tanks, 1,000 artillery pieces . At the same time, only 300 thousand were directly subordinate to the commander-in-chief of the NRA, Chiang Kai-shek, and in total there were approximately 1 million people under the control of the Nanjing government, while the rest of the troops represented the forces of local militarists. Additionally, the fight against the Japanese was nominally supported by the Communists, who had a guerrilla army of approximately 150,000 men in northwestern China. The Kuomintang formed the 8th March Army from 45 thousand of these partisans under the command of Zhu De. Chinese aviation consisted of outdated aircraft with inexperienced Chinese or hired foreign crews. There were no trained reserves. Chinese industry was not prepared to fight a major war.
In general, the Chinese armed forces were superior in numbers to the Japanese, but were significantly inferior in technical equipment, training, morale, and most importantly, in their organization.
The Chinese fleet consisted of 10 cruisers, 15 patrol and torpedo boats.
Plans of the parties
Empire of Japan
The Japanese Empire aimed to retain Chinese territory by creating various structures in the rear that made it possible to control the occupied lands as effectively as possible. The army had to act with the support of the fleet. Naval landings were actively used to quickly capture populated areas without the need for a frontal attack on distant approaches. In general, the army enjoyed advantages in weapons, organization and mobility, superiority in the air and at sea.
Republic of China
China had a poorly armed and poorly organized army. Thus, many troops had absolutely no operational mobility, being tied to their places of deployment. In this regard, China's defensive strategy was based on tough defense, local offensive counter-operations, and the deployment of guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. The nature of military operations was influenced by the political disunity of the country. The communists and nationalists, while nominally presenting a united front in the fight against the Japanese, poorly coordinated their actions and often found themselves embroiled in internecine strife. Having a very small air force with poorly trained crews and outdated equipment, China resorted to assistance from the USSR (at an early stage) and the United States, which was expressed in the supply of aircraft equipment and materials, sending volunteer specialists to participate in military operations and training Chinese pilots.
In general, both nationalists and communists planned to provide only passive resistance to Japanese aggression (especially after the US and Great Britain entered the war against Japan), hoping for the defeat of the Japanese by the allies and making efforts to create and strengthen the basis for a future war for power among themselves (creation of combat-ready troops and underground, strengthening control over unoccupied areas of the country, propaganda, etc.).
Start of the war
Most historians date the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War to the incident on the Lugouqiao Bridge (otherwise known as the Marco Polo Bridge), which occurred on July 7, but some Chinese historians set the starting point of the war at September 18, when the Mukden Incident occurred, during which the Kwantung Army under the pretext of protecting the railway connecting Port Arthur with Mukden from possible sabotage actions of the Chinese during “night exercises”, it captured the Mukden arsenal and nearby towns. Chinese forces were forced to retreat, and continued aggression left all of Manchuria in Japanese hands by February 1932. After this, until the official start of the Sino-Japanese War, there were constant Japanese seizures of territories in Northern China and battles of varying scale with the Chinese army. On the other hand, the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek carried out a number of operations to combat separatist militarists and communists.
On July 7, 1937, Japanese troops clashed with Chinese troops at the Lugouqiao Bridge near Beijing. A Japanese soldier disappeared during a “night exercise.” The Japanese issued an ultimatum demanding that the Chinese hand over the soldier or open the gates of the fortified city of Wanping to search for him. The refusal of the Chinese authorities led to a shootout between the Japanese company and the Chinese infantry regiment. It came to the use of not only small arms, but also artillery. This served as a pretext for a full-scale invasion of China, which the Japanese called the "China Incident."
First period of the war (July 1937 - October 1938)
After a series of unsuccessful negotiations between the Chinese and Japanese sides on a peaceful resolution of the conflict, on July 26, 1937, Japan switched to full-scale military operations north of the Yellow River with the forces of 3 divisions and 2 brigades (about 40 thousand people with 120 guns, 150 tanks and armored vehicles, 6 armored trains and support for up to 150 aircraft). Japanese troops quickly captured Beijing (Beiping) (28 July) and Tianjin (30 July). Over the next few months, the Japanese advanced south and west against little resistance, capturing Chahar Province and part of Suiyuan Province, reaching the upper bend of the Yellow River at Baoding. But by September, due to the increased combat effectiveness of the Chinese army, the growth of the partisan movement and supply problems, the offensive slowed down, and in order to expand the scale of the offensive, by September the Japanese were forced to transfer up to 300 thousand soldiers and officers to Northern China.
On August 8 - November 8, the Second Battle of Shanghai unfolded, during which numerous Japanese landings as part of Matsui's 3rd Expeditionary Force, with intensive support from the sea and air, managed to capture the city, despite strong resistance from the Chinese. At this time, the Japanese 5th Itagaki Division was ambushed and defeated in the north of Shanxi by the 115th Division (under the command of Nie Rongzhen) from the 8th March Army. The Japanese lost 3 thousand people and their main weapons. The Battle of Pingxinguan had great propaganda significance in China and became the largest battle between the communist army and the Japanese during the entire course of the war.
In January - April 1938, the Japanese offensive in the north resumed. In January the conquest of Shandong was completed. Japanese troops faced a strong guerrilla movement and were unable to effectively control the captured territory. In March - April 1938, the Battle of Taierzhuang unfolded, during which a 200,000-strong group of regular troops and partisans under the overall command of General Li Zongren cut off and surrounded a 60,000-strong group of Japanese, who ultimately managed to break out of the ring, losing 20,000 people killed and a large amount of military equipment.
In May - June 1939, the Japanese regrouped, concentrating more than 200 thousand soldiers and officers and about 400 tanks against 400 thousand poorly armed Chinese, practically devoid of military equipment, and continued the offensive, as a result of which Xuzhou (May 20) and Kaifeng (June 6) were taken ). In these battles, the Japanese used chemical and bacteriological weapons.
On October 22, 1938, a Japanese naval landing force, delivered on 12 transport ships under the cover of 1 cruiser, 1 destroyer, 2 gunboats and 3 minesweepers, landed on both sides of the Humen Strait and stormed the Chinese forts guarding the passage to Canton. On the same day, Chinese units of the 12th Army left the city without a fight. Japanese troops of the 21st Army entered the city, seizing warehouses with weapons, ammunition, equipment and food.
In general, during the first period of the war, the Japanese army, despite partial successes, was unable to achieve the main strategic goal - the destruction of the Chinese army. At the same time, the stretch of the front, the isolation of troops from supply bases and the growing Chinese partisan movement worsened the position of the Japanese.
Second period of the war (November 1938 - December 1941)
Japan decided to change the strategy of active struggle to a strategy of attrition. Japan is limited to only local operations at the front and is moving on to intensifying political struggle. This was caused by excessive tension and problems of control over the hostile population of the occupied territories. With most of the ports captured by the Japanese army, China was left with only three routes to obtain aid from the Allies - the narrow gauge road to Kunming from Haiphong in French Indochina; the winding Burma Road, which ran to Kunming through British Burma, and finally the Xinjiang Highway, which ran from the Sino-Soviet border through Xinjiang and Gansu Province.
On November 1, 1938, Chiang Kai-shek appealed to the Chinese people to continue the war of resistance against Japan to a victorious end. The Chinese Communist Party approved the speech during a meeting of Chongqing youth organizations. In the same month, Japanese troops managed to take the cities of Fuxin and Fuzhou with the help of amphibious assaults.
Japan makes peace proposals to the Kuomintang government on some terms favorable to Japan. This strengthens the internal party contradictions of the Chinese nationalists. As a consequence of this, there followed the betrayal of Chinese Vice Premier Wang Jingwei, who fled to Shanghai captured by the Japanese.
In February 1939, during the Hainan landing operation, the Japanese army, under the cover of ships of the Japanese 2nd Fleet, captured the cities of Junzhou and Haikou, losing two transport ships and a barge with troops.
From March 13 to April 3, 1939, the Nanchang Operation unfolded, during which Japanese troops consisting of the 101st and 106th Infantry Divisions, with the support of a Marine landing and the massive use of aviation and gunboats, managed to occupy the city of Nanchang and a number of other cities. At the end of April, the Chinese launched a successful counterattack on Nanchang and liberated the city of Hoan. However, then Japanese troops launched a local attack in the direction of the city of Ichang. Japanese troops entered Nanchang again on August 29.
In June 1939, the Chinese cities of Shantou (June 21) and Fuzhou (June 27) were taken by amphibious assault.
In September 1939, Chinese troops managed to stop the Japanese offensive 18 km north of the city of Changsha. On October 10, they launched a successful counteroffensive against units of the 11th Army in the direction of Nanchang, which they managed to occupy on October 10. During the operation, the Japanese lost up to 25 thousand people and more than 20 landing craft.
From November 14 to 25, the Japanese launched a landing of a 12,000-strong military group in the Pan Khoi area. During the Pankhoi landing operation and the subsequent offensive, the Japanese managed to capture the cities of Pankhoi, Qinzhou, Dantong and, finally, on November 24, after fierce fighting, Nanying. However, the advance on Lanzhou was stopped by a counterattack by General Bai Chongxi's 24th Army, and Japanese aircraft began bombing the city. On December 8, Chinese troops, with the assistance of the Zhongjin air group of Soviet Major S. Suprun, stopped the Japanese offensive from the Nanying area at the Kunlunguang line, after which (December 16, 1939) with the forces of the 86th and 10th armies, the Chinese began an offensive with the aim of encircling the Wuhan group of Japanese troops. The operation was supported from the flanks by the 21st and 50th armies. On the first day of the operation, the Japanese defense was broken through, but the further course of events led to a halt in the offensive, a retreat to their original positions and a transition to defensive actions. The Wuhan operation failed due to shortcomings in the Chinese army's command and control system.
Japanese occupation of China
In March 1940, Japan formed a puppet government in Nanjing in order to obtain political and military support in the fight against partisans in the rear. It was headed by former Vice-Premier of China Wang Jingwei, who defected to the Japanese.
In June-July, the successes of Japanese diplomacy in negotiations with Great Britain and France led to the cessation of military supplies to China through Burma and Indochina. On June 20, an Anglo-Japanese agreement was concluded on joint actions against violators of the order and security of Japanese military forces in China, according to which, in particular, Chinese silver worth $40 million, stored in the English and French missions in Tianjin, was transferred to Japan.
On August 20, 1940, a joint large-scale (up to 400 thousand people participated) offensive of the 4th, 8th Chinese Army (formed from communists) and guerrilla detachments of the Communist Party of China began against Japanese troops in the provinces of Shanxi, Chahar, Hubei and Henan, known as “ Battle of a Hundred Regiments. In Jiangsu province, there were a number of clashes between communist army units and the Kuomintang partisan detachments of Governor H. Deqin, as a result of which the latter were defeated. The result of the Chinese offensive was the liberation of a territory with a population of more than 5 million people and 73 large settlements. The personnel losses of the parties were approximately equal (about 20 thousand people on each side).
During 1940, Japanese troops limited themselves to only one offensive operation in the lower Hanshui River basin and successfully carried it out, capturing the city of Yichang.
The beginning of 1944 was characterized by offensive operations of a local nature.
In May - September 1944, the Japanese continued to conduct offensive operations in a southern direction. Japanese activity led to the fall of Changsha and Henyang. The Chinese fought stubbornly for Henyang and counterattacked the enemy in a number of places, while Changsha was left without a fight.
At the same time, the Chinese launched an offensive in Yunnan Province with Group Y forces. The troops advanced in two columns, crossing the Salween River. The southern column encircled the Japanese at Longlin, but was driven back after a series of Japanese counterattacks. The northern column advanced more successfully, capturing the city of Tengchong with the support of the American 14th Air Force.
On October 4, the city of Fuzhou was captured by a Japanese naval landing. In the same place, the evacuation of troops of the 4th VR of China from the cities of Guilin, Liuzhou and Nanyin begins; on November 10, the 31st Army of this VR was forced to capitulate to the 11th Army of Japan in the city of Guilin.
On December 20, Japanese troops advancing from the north, from the Guangzhou region and from Indochina, united in the city of Nanlu, establishing a through railway connection across the whole of China from Korea to Indochina.
At the end of the year, American aircraft transferred two Chinese divisions from Burma to China.
The year 1944 was also characterized by successful operations of the American submarine fleet off the Chinese coast.
On January 10, 1945, parts of a group of troops of General Wei Lihuang liberated the city of Wanting and crossed the Chinese-Burmese border, entering the territory of Burma, and on the 11th, troops of the 6th Front of the Japanese went on the offensive against the Chinese 9th BP in the direction of the cities of Ganzhou and Yizhang , Shaoguan.
In January - February, the Japanese army resumed its offensive in Southeast China, occupying vast territories in the coastal provinces - between Wuhan and the border of French Indochina. Three more air bases of the American 14th Air Force Chennault were captured.
In March 1945, the Japanese launched another offensive to seize crops in Central China. The forces of the 39th Infantry Division of the 11th Army struck in the direction of the city of Gucheng (Henan-Hubei operation). In March - April, the Japanese also managed to take two American air bases in China - Laohotou and Laohekou.
On April 5, the USSR unilaterally denounced the neutrality pact with Japan in connection with the commitments of the Soviet leadership, given at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, to enter the war against Japan three months after the victory over Germany, which at the moment was already close.
Realizing that his forces were too stretched, General Yasuji Okamura, in an effort to strengthen the Kwantung Army stationed in Manchuria, which was threatened by the entry of the USSR into the war, began to transfer troops to the north.
As a result of the Chinese counteroffensive, by May 30, the corridor leading to Indochina was cut. By July 1, the 100,000-strong Japanese group was surrounded in Canton, and about 100,000 more returned to Northern China under the attacks of the American 10th and 14th Air Armies. On July 27, they abandoned one of the previously captured American air bases in Guilin.
In May, Chinese troops of the 3rd VR attacked Fuzhou and managed to liberate the city from the Japanese. Active Japanese operations both here and in other areas were generally curtailed, and the army went on the defensive.
In June and July, the Japanese and Chinese nationalists carried out a series of punitive operations against the communist Special Region and parts of the CCP.
Fourth period of the war (August 1945 - September 1945)
At the same time, a struggle developed between the Chinese nationalists and communists for political influence. On August 10, the commander-in-chief of the CPC troops, Zhu De, gave the order for the communist troops to go on the offensive against the Japanese along the entire front, and on August 11, Chiang Kai-shek gave a similar order for all Chinese troops to go on the offensive, but it was specifically stipulated that the communists should not take part in this. -I and 8th armies. Despite this, the communists went on the offensive. Both communists and nationalists were now primarily concerned with establishing their power in the country after the victory over Japan, which was rapidly losing to its allies. At the same time, the USSR secretly supported primarily the communists, and the USA - the nationalists.
On September 2, in Tokyo Bay, on board the American battleship Missouri, representatives of the USA, Great Britain, the USSR, France and Japan signed the act of surrender of the Japanese armed forces. Thus ended the Second World War in Asia.
Military, diplomatic and economic assistance from the USSR to China
In the 1930s, the USSR systematically pursued a course of political support for China as a victim of Japanese aggression. Thanks to close contacts with the Communist Party of China and the difficult situation in which Chiang Kai-shek was placed by the rapid military actions of Japanese troops, the USSR became an active diplomatic force in rallying the forces of the Kuomintang government and the Communist Party of China.
In August 1937, a non-aggression pact was signed between China and the USSR, and the Nanjing government turned to the latter with a request for material assistance.
China's almost complete loss of opportunities for constant relations with the outside world has given the province of Xinjiang paramount importance as one of the country's most important land connections with the USSR and Europe. Therefore, in 1937, the Chinese government turned to the USSR with a request to provide assistance in creating the Sary-Ozek - Urumqi - Lanzhou highway for the delivery of weapons, aircraft, ammunition, etc. to China and the USSR. The Soviet government agreed.
From 1937 to 1941, the USSR regularly supplied weapons, ammunition, etc. to China by sea and through the province of Xinjiang, while the second route was a priority due to the naval blockade of the Chinese coast. The USSR concluded several loan agreements and contracts with China for the supply of Soviet weapons. On June 16, 1939, the Soviet-Chinese trade agreement was signed, concerning the trading activities of both states. In 1937-1940, over 300 Soviet military advisers worked in China. In total, over 5 thousand Soviet citizens worked there during these years. Among them were volunteer pilots, teachers and instructors, aircraft and tank assembly workers, aviation specialists, road and bridge specialists, transport workers, doctors and, finally, military advisers.
By the beginning of 1939, thanks to the efforts of military specialists from the USSR, losses in the Chinese army dropped sharply. If in the first years of the war the Chinese losses in killed and wounded were 800 thousand people (5:1 to the Japanese losses), then in the second year they were equal to the Japanese (300 thousand).
