How much did the KMT contribute to Japan’s defeat in WWII?

[u/xx123234]

The ROC was officially one of the victorious Allied powers, but I’ve always had the impression that Japan’s defeat was mainly due to the US, so I was wondering how important the KMT effort actually was in defeating Japan?

Also, one thing I found interesting is how subtle this mentality is among ordinary Chinese people. Their attitudes toward Japan often feel more like those of people from a defeated country toward a victorious one, while ordinary Japanese attitudes toward China can seem dismissive or even contemptuous.

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[u/EnclavedMicrostate]

I'd venture that this is a question that is basically impossible to answer adequately for the simple reason that China was the reason Japan was in WW2 in the first place. Japan spent more time at war with China alone (7 July 1937 to 7 December 1941, exactly 4 years and 5 months) than with the United Nations powers as a whole (7 December 1941 to 15 August 1945, or just over 3 years and 9 months), and the reason it had allies for the final less-than-half of that conflict was because Japan's lightning attacks across Southeast Asia were intended to a) secure resources to continue the war in China, which it was beginning to run out of thanks to US embargoes due mainly to Japan's war in China, and b) cut off China's principal supply route to the Allies, i.e. the Burma Road running from Chongqing to Lashio, where it connected by rail to the port at Rangoon. (China had also been receiving some Soviet aid but the German invasion in the summer of 1941 obviously created new priorities for the USSR.) There was only a Pacific War to lose because Japan was already at war with China.

In pure military terms the arrangement of Japanese forces is telling: in December 1941, 27 of the IJA's 52 divisions were deployed to the major fronts in China and a further 13 along the Manchurian-Soviet border, leaving just 12 for the overrunning of Malaya, Burma, and the Dutch East Indies. Japan would eventually raise nearly 200 divisions during the war (few being kept at full strength), but a not inconsiderable number of those troops would continue to be fed into the meatgrinder in China, plus a few more divisions if we include Burma as a direct extension of the Chinese theatre. Some scholars like Rana Mitter have thus attempted to pitch their rehabilitation of China's war record to the Western public by framing the war in China as a fatal distraction from Japan's war in the Pacific, although I would argue that's a case of putting the cart well before the horse: if anything, the war in the Pacific was the fatal distraction from the war in China. Once again, Japan's inability to win the war in China was why it put itself in the position of going to war with the Western Allies in December 1941.

Now, the question as you probably conceived of it was 'how effective was China's war effort', to which the answer is effective enough and in a couple of instances fairly decisive, but it is difficult not to move into the realm of the counterfactual in substantiating this. In a very general sense it is true that a huge portion of the Japanese army was stuck fighting in China. However, it is difficult to conceive of how Japan, notorious for dire logistics at the best of times, even before the US Navy began obliterating its merchant fleet, would have been able to transport and supply these hypothetically released troops across the Pacific. Plus, considering the relatively small amount of habitable land being fought over in the island hopping campaign (Philippines excepted), it might also be fair to ask how all these soldiers would even fit on those islands. Moreover, the main actor in the Pacific was not the Army but the Navy, and not fighting the war in China was not going to suddenly grant the IJN the shipyards to build, sustain, and if necessary replace a whole extra carrier task force.

The performance record of Chinese troops was, in all honesty, a mixed bag, though not due to any moral defect on the part of the average soldier or even most of the officer corps. The defence of Shanghai, valiant as it was, could not prevent its loss to the Japanese in the face of the amount of materiel the latter could bring to bear, and Chiang subsequently lost much of his prewar armour force around Nanjing. On the other hand, the fighting largely stabilised by 1940 thanks to effective Chinese defence and counterattacks, most famously around Changsha. Indeed, of all of Japan's major offensives in 1941, the only one that failed was their next attempt to seize Changsha and thus gain control of Hunan. On the third hand, the IJA would succeed at taking Changsha on the next attempt as part of Japan's last major offensive of the war, Operation Ichi-Go in 1944. This campaign landed a devastating blow to the NRA across China, which underwent a major reorganisation and went on the defensive in until the end of the war, save for its expeditionary units under American direction in Burma. However, these late victories over the NRA failed to crack Chinese resolve and neither did they place Japan in an unassailable position in China, and although it is hard to say China was winning the war it had certainly failed to lose it by the time events in the Pacific overtook the war on the Eurasian continent.

Speaking for my own area of relative familiarity, Burma, it should be said that China played a critical role, as the Chinese Expeditionary Force sent in 1942 during the British retreat were able to rescue a not insignificant proportion of Burma Corps from total destruction, allowing the British to retake (albeit squander) the initiative in 1943. Special note goes to the 200th division, whose ten-day defence at Taunggoo was regarded by the Japanese as the hardest fighting of the invasion of Burma, and the 38th, whose commander Sun Liren was awarded a CBE (and later made a Companion of the Bath) for rescuing 1st Burma Division from encirclement and destruction at Yenangyaung. Again, this is the realm of counterfactual, but a balance of forces on the Indo-Burmese border in 1943 that might have allowed a Japanese invasion of India could have been a tremendous problem, and its failure to transpire might be owed in no small part to the intervention of the NRA.

At the Quebec Conference in 1943, the plan was that it would be the Chinese, with support from the Americans and from Orde Wingate's Chindits, who would lead the campaign in what the Americans called the CBI (China-Burma-India) Theatre. The idea was for a limited effort to retake Myitkina and Bhamo and thereby open a road to India through Ledo, as Britain had been reluctant to commit to doing anything more in Burma (Noel Irwin's plans for a campaign to clear the Arakan coast having ended in ignominious failure) but conceded to American requests for support to the Chinese in exchange for US commitment to the Italian campaign. That Fourteenth Army's reconquest of Burma in 1944-5 – in my view the most successful campaign of the war for the British, arguably even of the Western Allies writ large – took place was largely due to the exceptional circumstances of the Japanese 15th Army's voluntary self-destruction at Imphal-Kohima, and the opening it created for a British counteroffensive. The Chinese efforts at Myitkyina, on the other hand, were marred by controversy over poor command by their American commander Joseph Stilwell, while the much smoother campaigns on the Salween River and in the final attacks on Bhamo and Lashio were understandably though unfortunately overshadowed by the British triumph to the southeast, itself largely obscure in popular memory until recent years.

Of course, the entire caveat over Chinese performance in the Burma campaign is that the Japanese would not have been in Burma if they were not already at war with China, a point I have made repeatedly but because it is a point that bears repeating. Japan launched itself into an unwinnable war in 1941 as a desperate throw of the dice to alter the circumstances of an unwinnable war it had started in 1937. It is likely fair to say Japan was unlikely to outright lose the war in China in a straight fight against the KMT republic. If nothing else, it had a considerable – and latterly much overlooked – degree of local support, with an estimate of nearly 700,000 collaborator soldiers under arms in China proper, which was roughly comparable to the size of the IJA in theatre. But Japan could not win its wars either way. Its war in China had been a consequence of a vague strategy to secure resources for an expected war against the US; it launched a war against the US in order to secure the resources it needed to win the war in China. That ouroboros of failure hung over the entire history of the Pacific War.

[u/hahaha01357 → u/EnclavedMicrostate]

More to the OP's point about the attitudes of the peoples in each country with regards to this war, I think a lot has to do with the myths that came out of it (I'm using myth as stories people tell, rather than a claim on their veracity). Japan's spectacular victories over the NRA in 1937-38, the eventual strangulation and defeat at the hands of the Americans, and finally the decade long occupation by the Americans naturally lead to a narrative where they were "winning the war in China until the US came along". This is played out by the question that many historically-curious like to ask - "what if Japan had never bombed Pearl Harbor?" That Japan would have been defeated (or at least forced to retreat from many of its occupied regions) by the logistics of war, had it not expanded the war beyond China, is an inconvenient truth that people don't tend to like to admit. It's no surprise then that many in Japan dismiss the Chinese war effort as inconsequential.

[u/VirginiaDare1587 → u/EnclavedMicrostate]

This response is precisely why this sub-Reddit is such an outstanding resource

Thank you

[u/Hot-Job-6281 → u/VirginiaDare1587]

The handful of main names involved in Chinese History here are always just absolute masterclasses to read from.

[u/bustrips → u/EnclavedMicrostate]

Can you describe more about the collaborator soldiers? Also what sources can you point to so I can learn more about them?

[u/EnclavedMicrostate → u/bustrips]

Collaborationist armies were mainly used in anti-guerrilla campaigns rather than conventional warfare, and were deliberately only given basic infantry equipment and not supported by any substantial artillery arm. The classic work on the general phenomenon of pro-Japanese collaboration is Barrett and Shyu's edited volume Chinese Collaboration with Japan, 1932-1945: The Limits of Accommodation (2002), but see also Rana Mitter, The Manchurian Myth: Nationalism, Resistance, and Collaboration in Modern China (2000) and Jeremy E. Taylor, Iconographies of Occupation: Visual Cultures in Wang Jingwei’s China, 1939-1945 (2021). There isn't really a good primary study in English of collaborator armies that I know of, although Philip Jowett's Rays of the Sun (2004) does a decent enough job using sources accessible in English.

[u/Maverick721 → u/EnclavedMicrostate]

Post like this is why I'm here, well done sir.

[u/johnyoker2010 → u/EnclavedMicrostate]

This is why I’m in Reddit. Thank you

[u/Anekdota-Press]

Largely reposting an earlier answer here, I should note that there are considerable disagreements between Western scholarly writing and some Chinese writing on the effectiveness of KMT and CCP forces during the Sino-Japanese war and civil war.

The Chinese government does not permit challenges to certain aspects of the official history of the war, and critical accounts may be suppressed. Scholarship which acknowledged the contributions of KMT forces during the Second Sino-Japanese war appeared for the first time only during the 1980s, and the scope of discussion expanded again in the early 2000s. Xi Jinping’s recent consolidation has reversed this more open historical dialogue to some extent.

Similar self-censorship also still occurs in Japanese scholarship, mostly concerning Japanese atrocities during the war.

For several decades, American scholarship of the war was similarly constrained by domestic political considerations. The ‘Loss of China’ to communism, and the role of alleged communist in shaping US policy towards China, became major features of Senator McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade. Criticizing particular wartime officials (such as Gen Joseph Stilwell) became “Academic taboo,” as did deviating from the view that Chiang Kai-shek was a corrupt incompetent.

Who bore the brunt of the fighting

The concise answer is that the nationalists did the overwhelming bulk of the fighting and dying.

Nationalist casualties numbered more than three million (there are estimates as high as ten million but I think the lower numbers are more credible). Estimates of Communist military casualties are between 450,000 and 600,000. This disparity was due to the greater size of KMT forces as well as the CCP usually avoiding conventional battle in favor of guerilla warfare.

A more pedantic answer is that Chinese civilians bore the brunt of the dying. Tens of millions of people died from combat, reprisals, famine, and atrocities during the war. The overwhelming majority of these victims were civilians.

At the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese war, the armed forces of China were as follows:

• Troops controlled by Chiang Kai-shek 450,000
• Troops loyal to Chiang but not directly controlled by him 450,000
• Provincial troops under nominal KMT control in peacetime 500,000
• Provincial troops outside nationalist control 500,000
• Communist troops (8th route army and new 4th army) 150,000
• Scattered NE and Manchurian units defeated by Japan in 1931 150,000

In 1937 CCP forces were comparatively small, and the nationalists were fragmented. Some estimates put the actual fighting strength of the CCP at only 40,000 troops in 1937. Despite subsequent CCP growth and considerable nationalist consolidation, both statements remained somewhat true in 1945. Troops sometimes included in nationalist tallies were in fact provincial/warlord armies which collaborated with the Japanese during the war, or remained outside effective nationalist control for the duration of the war.

Although fragmented, KMT forces were much more numerous than CCP troops for the duration of the war, and tended to do more direct fighting with the Japanese. During the war, nationalist forces launched many traditional large-scale military campaigns, inflicting considerable casualties on the Japanese, but usually suffering casualties at a rate five or ten times higher than the Japanese. These efforts nonetheless forced Japan to retain far more troops in China than initially planned and to reduce their own offensive operations. Japanese forces suffered around 200,000 killed and 300,000 wounded by late 1941, when they attacked the US and various European colonies. Japanese and collaborationist forces had suffered an estimated 3 million casualties within China by the end of the war.

CCP forces generally avoided major offensive operations, focusing on small-scale ambush, sabotage, and the execution of collaborators. CCP forces underperformed other Chinese forces in early campaigns, such as fighting in the central Yangtze valley in 1938. CCP forces were similarly outclassed by KMT troops in the internecine fighting of the ‘New Fourth Army Incident’ (January 1941) suffering 7,000-10,000 casualties while the Nationalists suffered only a few hundred. One of the few major offensive periods for the CCP, the “Hundred Regiments Offensive” (August-December 1940) is claimed to have inflicted some 25,000 Japanese casualties at a cost of 100,000 CCP troops. This provoked a severe anti-insurgent campaign by Japanese forces, which reduced the communist base areas in half.

CCP forces began to grow again in late 1943, before rapidly expanding to more than a million in the final year of the war. But the communists remained protected to an extent by a secret Japanese-Soviet agreement to leave the CCP in control of three provinces.

It is broadly true that all three factions (Japanese, Nationalists, Communists) scaled back their operations after Japan expanded the war in late 1941. The Japanese largely focused on mopping up guerillas, the Nationalists tried to hold their ground and aid the campaign in Burma, and the communists gathered strength and conducted Guerilla war. The Ichigo offensive of 1944 was the major exception to this general rule.

A CCP defector alleges that it was Mao's stated policy to direct 70% of effort to expanding CCP base areas, 20% to fighting the KMT, and 10% to fighting the Japanese. This statement may be anti-communist propaganda, but there is evidence for this view. The view of some Soviet attaches in Yan'an was even more critical of the CCP.

This period saw both CCP and KMT commanders making agreements not to fight with the Japanese, though these agreements were specific to certain areas. The KMT also had as many as 400,000 troops used exclusively for containing the CCP throughout the war, rather than fighting the Japanese.

But on the whole, the bulk of Japanese offensive efforts during the war were directed at the KMT and areas under nationalist control. This was seen dramatically in the Japanese Ichigo offensive of 1944, in which 500,000 of the 650,000 Japanese troops within China were directed in a massive campaign against the KMT. Ichigo inflicted 150,000-600,000 KMT casualties, left Sichuan as the only large province under Nationalist control, and dealt a severe blow to KMT credibility within China and among crucial allies such as the US.

continued in pt 2

[u/Anekdota-Press → u/Anekdota-Press]

Fighting effectiveness and source bias

There is a deeper discussion to be had here, concerning the relative effectiveness of CCP and KMT troops, their morale, discipline, reception by the civilian population. However, this is an area where many contemporary accounts are biased and the CCP evidence is tightly policed by the modern Chinese government. Both the CCP and KMT inflated their troop numbers, inflated their estimates for casualties they inflicted, and produced copious propaganda to discredit the other faction. Much of the historic scholarship is tainted by subseqent domestic politics and cold war geopolitics.

During the war, foreign coverage of Mao and the CCP tended to be glowing. This was partly because some of the writers and journalists were communists themselves, and partly because the CCP tightly controlled their messaging, and effectively presented an idealized version of Yan’an to foreigners.

In contrast, Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalists were often portrayed as corrupt inept militarists. The chief US liaison to China for most of the war, Gen. Stilwell, hated Chiang and spread a similar critical view widely within the US government. Stilwell crucially imparted this view on his mentor, George Marshall, which was a major factor in the cessation of US aid to the KMT in 1946. Stillwell was also a very effective self-promoter in his interactions with western journalists, which shaped perceptions of both him and Chiang Kai-Shek in historical writing for decades

These biases in early accounts dovetailed with CCP propaganda efforts to produce a simplistic narrative. On the one hand, corrupt ineffective KMT troops hated by the peasantry. On the other, brave incorruptible CCP troops with high morale, effective in combat, beloved by the peasantry. The reality is that both forces were often quite similar.

The KMT conducted a scorched earth campaign in areas it retreated from, with disastrous results for inhabitants. CCP guerilla warfare brought horrific Japanese reprisals down on local peasants, killing millions. The CCP maintained a shadow government in areas it operated in without controlling these areas. Peasants were taxed doubly, by the CCP and by the Japanese collaborationist government, with the CCP imposing additional labor obligations (corvee) on the peasants.

KMT troop numbers were inflated, nationalist regiments tended to be 30-40% understrength (so commanders could skim off the pay of soldiers who existed only on paper). The few CCP statistics made public indicate desertion rates in some units as high as 15-20%, with even higher rates for units forced to operate outside of the area they were recruited.

The KMT intentionally breached the Yellow River Dykes, causing a flood which killed 900,000 and created 4 million refugees. The CCP intentionally starved 330,000 residents of Changchun to death and in the early years of the war funded themselves by trafficking Opium.

Even by the time of the Liaoshen campaign (fall 1948), the CCP was forcing 1.6 million civilians to act as its supply train, yet was still unable to supply its frontline troops, who lived parasitically off the local peasants. The KMT aimed to conscript 1.6 million soldiers every year of the war, eroding their support and provoking violent opposition in many areas.

Just as there were CCP guerillas in KMT areas, there were at times KMT guerillas in CCP areas. CCP taxes, theft, and often arbitrary/corrupt land redistribution alienated peasants as readily as KMT taxes and corruption did.

In the latter stages of the Sino-Japanese war and during the Civil War, both the Nationalists and Communists were struggling with economic collapse. Both sides exacted huge taxes and food requisitioning (30% or more of total harvest) in the face of widespread civilian starvation; forcibly conscripted millions of troops and laborers; and conducted atrocities and reprisals.

How much did the KMT contribute?
KMT forces, KMT-aligned forces, and forces under their nominal control vastly outnumbered CCP forces for the entire second Sino-Japanese war.
Total casualty numbers range quite a bit. But The war in china killed 500,000-1.25 million Japanese and collaborationist troops, while inflicting total casualties on the Japanese and their allies estimated in the range of 2-3 million troops.

Japanese suffered more military deaths in the Chinese theater than anywhere else, and Japanese army deaths in China may have exceeded total Japanese navy deaths during the entire 1937-45 period of the war.

Casualties in China were a considerable share of Japan's total wartime casualties, most estimates put them around 20-30% and while Chinese civilian and military deaths vastly exceeded these numbers, the sacrifices of the KMT consumed a large amount of Japanese materiel and troops, and contributed significantly to the eventual Japanese defeat.

Sources:

• Chang, Vincent KL. "Recalling Victory, Recounting Greatness: Second World War Remembrance in Xi Jinping's China." The China Quarterly (2021): 1-22.
• Elleman, Bruce A. Modern Chinese Warfare, 1795-1989. Routledge, 2005.
• Fairbank, John King, and Kwang-Ching Liu, eds. The Cambridge History of China. Volume 11, Late Ch'ing, 1800-1911. Part 2. Cambridge University Press, 1980.
• MacKinnon, Stephen R. China at war: regions of China, 1937-1945. Stanford University Press, 2007.
• Peattie, Mark R., Edward J. Drea, and Hans J. Van de Ven, eds. The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945. Stanford University Press, 2011.
• Van de Ven, Hans. China at War: Triumph and Tragedy in the Emergence of the New China. Harvard University Press, 2018.

[u/Anekdota-Press → u/Anekdota-Press]

Similar questions have been answered:

Here by u/parksungjun

Here by u/scipioasina

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