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United to unite!
We sympathize, but it has nothing to do with us
The Japanese war against China began in 1895, but the climax of the aggression was between 1937 and 1945. After defeating the corrupt Qing government and the Russian Empire and becoming an undisputed power in Asia, Japan began to move towards a more ambitious goal: to replace white European colonists all over Asia and create a huge new region dominated by Japan.
Japan took a big step towards this goal during World War I, but the good times did not last long. After the end of World War I, those Western countries quickly reacted and took action. This further stimulated Japan, and militarists and extreme nationalists in this narrow island country began to slide hopelessly to the other extreme - in the near future, Japan will eventually have a final showdown with the Western world, which will determine who can become the hegemon of Asia and even the world? ! (Don't laugh, this is indeed the true ambition of those Japanese pirates.)
To achieve this goal, dominating China is the primary goal. The first step to dominate China is to control the three northeastern provinces and build "Manzhou" into an expansion base.
In 1931, the "September 18th" Incident broke out. When the Japanese army captured Shenyang, the young commander Zhang Xueliang urgently sent Nanjing for instructions. At that time, Chiang Kai-shek was commanding the third encirclement and suppression of the Central Soviet Area, and he was not in Nanjing. After receiving the Executive Yuan’s reply to “handle properly on its own”, Zhang Xueliang ordered the Northeast Army to retreat without any attempt to organize military resistance.
The Japanese used more than 10,000 troops to seize control of the Northeast region. After Chiang Kai-shek returned to Nanjing, he neither ordered the Northeast Army to counterattack, nor sent the Central Army to reinforce. He stressed at the first military meeting after the September 18th Incident that China must avoid a full-scale conflict with Japan in the face of domestic turmoil and inadequate preparations. Commander-in-Chief Chiang called this policy of tolerance "sleeping on firewood and tasting gall."
Nothing can hinder Chiang Kai-shek's determination, that is, "suppression of rebellion" is overwhelming, whether it is social and political reform and turmoil, or resistance to the Japanese invaders, these issues are secondary. So when the Japanese army quickly advanced from Shenyang to various parts of the Northeast, Chiang Kai-shek just made a full gesture on the surface, such as launching a high-profile national boycott of Japanese goods, publicly claiming to send the Central Army to the Northeast, discussing military mobilization with his staff, and even discussing the need to move the capital and China's main forces to the Northwest. (Note 1)
Chang Kai-shek had only one purpose in making so many fancy moves: to try to make Japan and the whole world believe that he is sincerely prepared to fight against Japan in order to alert the international community to put pressure on Japan. And during this period, the only clear "anti-Japanese" attitude he made was to appeal to the League of Nations. However, in actual actions, he acknowledged Japan's invasion of the Northeast region, because it was in line with his "consistent strategy" against Japan, and exchanged space for time. Anyway, China is so big, he always has a way out. At least for now, the Northeast can satisfy the appetite of the Japanese for some time.
Faced with Japan's blatant invasion and the Nanjing government's mourning, the United States and Western powers only expressed their support in their words, but refused to send any observers or provide help. The League of Nations sent a weightless (Leedon) investigation team perfunctorily, and the final investigation report submitted was both hypocritical and understated, saying that "the cause of this conflict is not as simple as ordinary people think."
Japan! Convention crusher! ——Comics from 1931
Japan does not care about verbal criticism. Although Western powers are unwilling to Japan to annex other countries' territory alone to gain benefits, if the victim is only China, it doesn't matter. Because Japan's newly occupied areas bordered the Soviet border, European countries secretly encouraged Japan to take further adventures - to challenge the Soviet Union.
Either internationally or domestically, Chiang Kai-shek's several wishful thinkings were all lost, because it was impossible to stop by the successful invasion: in January 1932, the Japanese army found a new excuse to invade Shanghai, and the "January 28" Incident broke out. A Japanese Marine Corps landed in Shanghai in the name of protecting the expatriates. When Cai Tingkai's 19th Route Army opened fire on the Japanese army, Japan dispatched gunboats and aircraft to bomb densely populated Chinese residential areas and killed many civilians - this was also the first recorded indiscriminate bombing of urban centers in history.
The long-term, cruel and atrocities war of aggression that Japan tried to conquer the whole of China began. One "event" after another was fabricated by Japan, and all of these "events" became an excuse for Japan to further encroach on and invade China. Faced with Japan's pressing step by step, Chiang Kai-shek shouted the infamous slogan - "We must first calm the country when fighting foreign countries."
These aggression of Japan only attracted futile protests from the League of Nations. Even though the establishment of the "pseudo Manchukuo" was later considered illegal, the Western powers still did not take any practical measures to punish Japan.
Chang Kai-shek once had high expectations for Britain and the United States, but the reality is that although Japan excluded these two countries from doing business in Northeast China and even dared to challenge the sphere of influence of the two countries in Shanghai, the United States and Britain were indifferent to Japan's encroachment and provocation.
The United States once announced in a harsh tone that it hopes that the "open door policy" will be respected - but no American would agree that the government will make a big move overseas for a policy that does not involve the core interests of the United States - such as supporting China's territorial integrity. Although many Americans attach great importance to China emotionally, and US President Roosevelt also likes to tell his guests about the origins of his ancestors and China, until 1940, the full-scale war between China and Japan had been fighting for almost four years. The United States was still continuing to sell large quantities of important war raw materials such as scrap steel, copper, lead, and machine tools to Japan. Without these raw materials, Japan's war machines would not be able to operate freely.
As for the British government, they felt that their losses had been compensated sufficiently and even began to actively seek excuses and excuses for Japan's aggression. For example, the British Foreign Minister Sir John Simon at that time tried hard to prevent the International League from opposing Japanese aggression. This person's hypocritical face, even Matsuoka, the representative of the Japanese League of Nations, sighed sincerely - "As a Japanese, I cannot give a better explanation for what Simon is doing to Japan!"
The only country in the world that opposed Japan's aggression was the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union's active and powerful actions to safeguard China's rights forced the Kuomintang regime to change the situation of not establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union for a long time. At the end of 1932, Moscow and Nanjing finally established diplomatic relations.
Japans are not satisfied with occupying just one Northeast region. Their goal is to become a true "Far East Power", which requires continued control of East Siberia, North Korea, mainland China and Taiwan, the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. Australia can also piggyback if necessary.
Due to the development of air power, in order to try our best to prevent the land from being attacked by the Soviet Union, Japan also wanted to "push the frontier into the desert of the Gobi and force Russia to fight on the other side of the desert." This requires gradually eroding and controlling Inner Mongolia and North China. As expected, Japan soon launched a new plan to achieve "complete autonomy" in North China and Manchuria and Mongolia - five provinces in Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi and Inner Mongolia, Chahar and Suiyuan, each province will find a puppet general who surrenders to Japan to cooperate with Japan.
Under Japan's pressure, the sovereignty of North China gradually collapsed like a sand slope impacted by rivers: the Tanggu Armistice Agreement was followed by the "He Mei Agreement", and all anti-Japanese officials were removed, and puppet officials replaced them. The Kuomintang army was also required to withdraw all from North China.
Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang refused to cooperate, but the others defected to the Japanese. Chairman Jiang wrote passionate words such as "Now there is only self-improvement and resistance, and there is no other strategy" in his diary, and started a civil war even more fiercely. Faced with the surging enthusiasm for the War of Resistance in China, Chiang Kai-shek just repeatedly emphasized: "I have never been afraid of Japan (not afraid of Japan), but China is not strong enough to fight against Japan" - this argument obviously cannot satisfy the Chinese people in all aspects.
Internationally, the Nanjing government, which clearly demonstrates its autocratic and corrupt inefficient nature, has also begun to plummet. Originally, Western powers did not want to be driven out of the Far East, nor did they intend to give up on China, because China's independence is crucial to the policy of opening up the door, but if the price of doing so is hostile to Japan, it would be too much of a loss.
The more fatal and direct blow comes from the realization of international trade and financial investment. The original intention of adhering to the open door policy is to make the United States and the United Kingdom significantly profit in trade with China. As a result, in the US's overseas investment in 1935, the Far East accounted for 6%, while China accounted for only 1%. Among the total foreign trade volume of the United States from 1931 to 1935, China's share of the overall share was less than 4%. Financial investment data are even more ugly: China, with a population of 400 million, accounts for only 35%-50% of Japan, which has only 70 million people.
In this regard, the UK made the choice: because China is not strong enough to defend its sovereignty, for the "peace" in the Far East, there must be some authority to fill this vacuum.
The United States' choice is: because it is worried that Japan will adopt war measures against the United States after being provoked, the U.S. government is determined to maintain its relations with Japan at a less dangerous level.
The two major powers of Britain and the United States are equivalent to making a guarantee of "non-interference" to Japan at the same time. The title published in American newspapers expresses the United States' attitude towards China in a concise way:
"We are very sympathetic (China). But it has nothing to do with us."
China is fighting
It was the Chinese people who saved North China. On December 9, 1935, a "29th" patriotic students protest against Japan and national salvation broke out in Peking, and the slogan "Although North China is big, it can no longer put down a calm desk." The demonstrations quickly expanded to other cities, and petitions flew to Nanjing like snowflakes.
After the December demonstration, various shouts from China could no longer make Western countries pretend to be deaf and dumb. They were forced to declare that the "independence" of North China fabricated by Japan does not look like "people's self-determination" at all. Chiang Kai-shek still expects the United States to provide assistance to him sooner or later, and for this reason he told the US ambassador that his policy is to "continue" armed resistance to Japan. However, after more than half a year of on-site investigation by Colonel Stilwell (yes, he was later General Stilwell), it was found that the military preparations for the Kuomintang government's war against Japan were - "zero" - what Chiang Kai-shek really prepared was a new round of "encirclement and suppression" against the red base in northern Shaanxi.
It was October 1936. On October 31, Chiang Kai-shek came to the headquarters of the Communist Suppression in Luoyang, Henan. Soong Mei-ling flew from Shanghai with two big cakes to celebrate his 50th birthday together. In order to "annihilate the remnants of the Communist Party surrounded by a few border areas in one fell swoop, Chiang Kai-shek mobilized tanks, bombers and ten divisions, and planned to go to Xi'an to supervise the war in person.
In November, Japan, Germany and Italy signed an anti-communist convention. In Japan, the pro-war faction has fully controlled the political situation and they intend to force China to become a vassal state of Japan. The "peace" condition intended to be given to the Nanjing government is to formally accept the "independence" in Northeast China and the region north of the Huai River - a total Sino-Japanese war is inevitable.
Faced with the rising calls for establishing a united front in anti-Japanese war, Chiang Kai-shek's reply was still: Anyone who advocates anti-Japanese war before finishing the CCP is a "traitor".
On December 7, 1936, Chiang Kai-shek invited senior generals from all the troops stationed in Shaanxi at Huaqing Lake in Lintong and told them that the long-term battle to eliminate the Communist army had reached the "last five minutes".
On December 9, snowflakes fell on the city walls of Xi'an. A group of students were about to go to Lintong to surround Chairman Jiang. The police fired at the crowd, causing several casualties and injuries. Zhang Xueliang, who arrived at the scene, told the students that he would confront the commander-in-chief on behalf of everyone - this was also the last persuasion made by Zhang Xueliang. The two quarreled and parted in an unhappy manner.
In the early morning of December 12, Northeast Army soldiers wearing fur hats rushed into Chiang Kai-shek's place, and the "Xi'an Incident" that shocked China and the world broke out - Chiang Kai-shek could not escape death, and even he himself thought so, but visionary leaders knew that if Chiang Kai-shek was eliminated, then China would fall into chaos, the civil war would be prolonged, and only Japan would become the only winner.
The reason is very simple. In 1936, no one had enough weight to replace him. If only Chiang Kai-shek wanted to stop the civil war and unify the entire country's resources to fight against Japan.
The Xi'an Incident was finally resolved peacefully with the efforts of all parties. The old enemies of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party also began to cooperate for the second time, and the Kuomintang and the Communist Party finally unified the foreign countries. And the Japanese also saw signals against it in the outcome of the Xi'an Incident - China showed signs of national and national unity for the first time - Tokyo's militarists decided to take direct action.
On July 7, 1937, at Lugou Bridge, a total Sino-Japanese war broke out. After several days of fierce fighting, Japan occupied Peiping.
On August 13, the Japanese Navy and Army troops began a joint attack on Shanghai. Chiang Kai-shek still had great expectations for foreign intervention at this time. He ordered to stand firm in Shanghai, where the Chinese army bravely resisted for three months - the Chinese showed their determination to fight to the people and the world, and most of the most modern troops in the Kuomintang army were sprinkled with blood.
Japan tore off its disguise, and the Chinese people are facing the most serious national crisis ever. But internationally, except for the Soviet government that provided China with a large number of loans, military aid and reinforcements to China in order to allow China to hold Japan, prevent it from advancing north, and avoid its own war on both sides of Europe and Asia at the same time, other countries only provided cheap and empty sympathy.
The tragic Battle of Shanghai: "Children under Japanese Air Raid at Shanghai South Station", photographed by Wang Xiaoting
Even though the atrocities of the Japanese army were repeatedly disclosed, they still had no help from foreign countries, and at best they only attracted their "attention":
In the first week of September 1937, the White House and the State Department received more than 2,000 letters from various peace groups, of which 95% asked the United States to continue to maintain peace, 80% tended to maintain peace at all costs, 70% urged a neutral plan immediately, and only 15% opposed it, citing that this would benefit Japan and harm China. (Note 2)
The UK took its appeasement policy to its extreme: in May 1938, Britain and Japan signed an agreement to transfer the Chinese customs rights it controlled to Japan. In 1939, the Arita-Claychi Agreement was signed with Japan, recognizing that Japan's invasion of China was "legal". In June 1940, the UK also handed over the huge deposits of the Chinese government's Tianjin Bank to Japan for "supervising" - in the same year, at the request of Japan, China's lifeline, the Yunnan-Burma Highway, forcibly closed for three months.
From the beginning of the full-scale war of resistance to the outbreak of the Pacific War, the Kuomintang government had been consulting with Britain, France, the United States and other countries to seek loans and military aid. Until the outbreak of the European war and France was defeated, the loan amount obtained from these countries was far less than the loans provided by the Soviet Union, and all countries did not agree to provide credit loans. China can only obtain urgently needed funds through commercial mortgage loans such as "tung oil loan", "Huatin loan", "tungsten sand loan" and "metal loan". By 40 years, China has mortgaged the expected delivery volume of mineral products as of 1945.
As Japan's threat to Britain and the United States rose sharply in the Pacific region, the US government finally officially declared China as a country qualified for lease assistance on May 9, 1941. From the end of March 1941 to January 1942, China applied for loan loans to the United States in three applications, with the amounts of US$218,038,500, US$461,834,253 and US$1,379,779,067 respectively.
If these applications can be fully met, China's anti-Japanese war will undoubtedly be of great help. However, in the allocation of leased materials, the US authorities showed a clear tendency to "focus on Europe and neglect China". Not only is the amount allocated to China far lower than China's application amount, but in fact, the materials delivered to China are also significantly less than the allocation quota.
The US Treasury Department once counted that in 1941, China actually received only US$26 million worth of lease aid, accounting for only 1.7% of the total lease aid provided by the United States to various countries that year.
Before the outbreak of the Pacific War, Chinese military and civilians fought the powerful Japanese invaders alone for four years, and suffered shocking huge losses in military, social and economic terms, but China's determination to resist was enough to shame most European countries:
Compared with China, France faced the German invasion in 1940 and surrendered for only six weeks; then established a government that was lowly and treacherous, until the Allies landed in Normandy in 1944, France was in a state of submissive destruction.
As for the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Serbia, Romania, Croatia, Greece and other countries, they were basically conquered by Germany within 1-2 months and became part of the German occupied area. . . .
In the war spreading around the world, Britain fought for nearly 6 years, the Soviet Union fought for nearly 5 years, and the United States fought for only 44 months - and the Chinese war, even if it did not include Japan's invasion of the Northeast in 1931, lasted for eight years. . .
This article is an original author of "Life of Life" and no reprints of any media are allowed.
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Note 1: Chiang Kai-shek's "suppression of rebellion" in his mind was not just aimed at the Communists. All local forces that disobey the Kuomintang central government, or in other words, disobey the central government headed by him, were all rebellions - but they had to be divided into many levels according to the degree of harm - that is, if there were no Japanese invasion, after the Communist Party was removed, it would be the warlords in various places.
Note 2: The United States' Neutrality Act prohibits trade with belligerents, and also prohibits the delivery of arms to China or Japan with ships flying the US flag - but does not prohibit the sale of arms - now know who would be more beneficial to citing this bill?
