Situation at the end of the Second World War – Japanese occupation (red) of eastern China and Communist bases (striped) in public domain map by US Army (West Point history department)

(9) CHINESE CIVIL WAR

(1911-1949)

Or how the Japanese won the Chinese Civil War for the communists.

The Second World War, or least the Second Sino-Japanese War part of it, cut right across the Chinese Civil War. The two largest warring parties in the civil war, the Communists and the Nationalists saw themselves as the true successors of the revolution led by Sun Yat-sen (or Sun Yuxian) and his Kuomintang or KMT party that overthrew the Qing dynasty as China’s last imperial dynasty in 1911-1912.

As was often the case with the collapse of central state authority in China, that revolution devolved into the usual competing warlords or warring states from 1916 to 1927.

The warlord period is generally considered to have transitioned to the first phase of the Chinese Civil War proper from 1927, as Chiang Kai-shek led two thirds of the KMT’s military forces under the mantle soon to be known as the Nationalists against Wang Jingwei’s socialist or communist third.

The Soviets assisted the main warring party, the Nationalists seeking to reunify China under their Republic, as the Soviets saw them as the necessary prelude to socialism.

Intriguingly, Sun Yat-sen had sent Chiang Kai-shek to train in Moscow – and Chiang then became head of the military academy training military leaders in China, with Soviet assistance in “teaching material, organization, and munitions”.

Even more intriguingly, the Germans also assisted the Nationalists – and more intriguingly, that assistance continued from the warlord period to the first genuine phase of the Chinese Civil War, by both the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. It is intriguing to ponder how world history might have turned out if Nazi Germany had continued to support Nationalist China, but they swapped to the foreign power that ominously loomed over China to exploit its weakness and ultimately was the one to intervene most decisively of all – Japan.

In the meantime, Wang Jingwei was eclipsed by the new Chinese communist leader who became virtually synonymous with the Chinese Civil War and for whom Chinese communist ideology was named – Mao.

However, the Chinese communists did not do too well in this first phase of the civil war, with effective control of less than a twentieth of the population (compared to the third controlled by Chiang’s Nationalists) and poised on the brink of complete extinction. “Their doom was, historians agree, imminent and inevitable” – until they were effectively saved by the Japanese in the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937.

The Japanese had already indirectly given the Chinese communists some much needed reprieve with their invasion of Manchuria in 1931. In an episode which also showed that some of the warlord period chaos lived on in the Nationalists, the Xian Incident, two of Chiang’s generals kidnapped him to force him to form a united front with the communists against the Japanese.

Chiang subsequently reneged on the united front with renewed hostilities against the communists but the Sino-Japanese War from 1937 forced his hand again to put those hostilities on hold for a second united front against Japan, even if both he and the communists increasingly paid lip service to it. That lip service meant the Nationalists and Communists avoiding open battle with Japan as much as possible, looking for salvation from outside forces pending in the Pacific War while also looking ahead to renewed civil war with each other.

Despite the united front, Chiang’s Nationalists bore the brunt of Japan’s war in China, which arguably dealt them their mortal wound in China’s civil war.

Perhaps most of all in the one surprise Japan still had left for China, even while virtually collapsing in the Pacific War against the United States, and one that is almost entirely forgotten or overlooked in most Second World War histories – the Ichigo offensive in 1944. The largest Japanese army offensive of the whole war, it was also the most as well as last successful Japanese offensive – astonishingly so and on a scale unequalled for anything else by Japan or Germany at that late stage of the war.

It also severely weakened Chiang’s forces (as well as an economy increasingly ravaged by hyper-inflation), the last of a series of Japanese blows that ultimately proved fatal for the Chinese Nationalist government in the subsequent renewed civil war with the Communists – Japan arguably doing the most of anyone, including the Chinese Communists themselves, to win victory for the Communists in the civil war.

The civil war resumed soon enough – “as soon as it became apparent that Japanese defeat was imminent” (at the hands of the Americans) “with the communists gaining the upper hand in the second phase of the war from 1945 to 1949, generally referred to as the Chinese Communist Revolution”.

This again saw foreign intervention along predictable Cold War lines – the Soviets on the side of the Communists and the Americans on the side of the Nationalists, although each were cautious in their intervention, with that from the Americans notoriously resulting in accusations of “losing” China and communist infiltration of the American government.

However, the Soviets were equally cautious in their own intervention, perhaps from Stalin’s intuition that a united communist China would be their rival in the long term. Hence the Soviets consistently urged restraint on Mao to accept the north-south partition that was all the vogue in Cold War Asia – between a Communist north and a Nationalist south.

Mao ignored this and the Communists gained control of mainland China anyway, proclaiming the People’s Republic of China. However, the Communists ultimately had to accept a residual partition of a different kind with the Nationalists retreating to the island of Taiwan to proclaim their Republic of China there, as the Communists had no means to pursue them – particularly after the US gave their naval support to Taiwan. That partition of course continued even until today, remaining as a source of tension with no armistice or treaty signed between them.

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Allied occupation zones in post-war Germany by WikiNight 2 in Wikipedia “Allied Occupied Germany” under license https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:GNU_Free_Documentation_License,_version_1.2

(8) ALLIED OCCUPATION

(1943-1990)

This was the pointy end of the war for the Axis powers – their occupation by the Allies upon their defeat and surrender. Indeed, the regimes in Germany and Japan used the looming specter of Allied occupation to prolong military resistance well beyond any point of logic or reason, which otherwise should have prompted their surrender from their defeats well before when they did.

In part, that was because those regimes conjured up the specter of occupation as even more dire from the Allied policy of unconditional surrender for their Axis opponents. Whether that policy – first proclaimed by President Roosevelt (unilaterally on his part echoing the American Civil War) at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 (after the successful Allied landings in north Africa) – was a strategic error has been debated by historians, but its impact can certainly be ranked up there with many battles.

For the record, I think that the declaration of a policy of unconditional surrender was correct, particularly when it came to Germany – as Germany could hardly have expected much less given how they had turned what was effectively their conditional surrender (and lack of Allied occupation) in the First World War to their advantage, with insult added to injury by their incessant complaints about it. As it was, the Allies were flexible in adapting that policy for Axis nations such as Italy, Finland, and arguably even Japan.

Of course, the occupation of the Axis powers by the Allies simply was the boot on the other foot, given that the Germany or Italy had occupied other nations in Europe by the threats or use of force from 1938 and military conquest from 1939, while Italy had occupied Abyssinia from 1935, and Japan had occupied the territory of other nations in Asia even earlier from 1931. The Axis occupation of other nations is essentially featured in other entries, most notably that for the underground war of partisans, resistance and governments-in-exile.

As H.P. Willmott caustically points out, for most of their ‘defensive’ war, Germany and Japan were not defending their home territory but the territory they had conquered or occupied from other nations. Indeed, their resistance became distinctly less sustained once the fighting moved to their own home territory, albeit still tinged with fanaticism. Even so, only Germany fought throughout its own home territory, while sustained resistance by Japan was limited to its more remote islands, as Japan surrendered before any Allied invasion of its four major home islands.

The first Axis nation to see the point of logic and reason in surrendering from their defeat was Italy, perhaps not surprisingly given its exhaustion from war and that it was the weakest of the three major Axis nations – hence the starting year of 1943 for this entry reflecting Italy’s surrender to the western Allies and its declaration of war against Germany. The actual occupation of Italy by the Allies was thus relatively benevolent on the Allied side, but unfortunately it was limited as Germany succeeded in reinforcing and retaining their occupation of most of Italy. Italy became yet another battlefield between Germany and the western Allies, indeed arguably the hardest fought one due to Italy’s geography as well as the particularly sustained and skillful German defense.

It also became a battlefield for the Italian Civil War, which might be described as yet another civil war within national resistance to German occupation – but primarily as a three-sided contest between communist partisans, the Italian Co-Belligerent Army constituted by the government and forces that had surrendered to the western Allies and now fighting alongside them against Germany, and the German puppet government under Mussolini and his remnant fascist regime of the Italian Social Republic.

Thereafter, Germany’s remaining allies in Europe sought to pull the Italian solution switching sides to declare war against Germany, but were unlucky to be facing Soviet occupation instead – and being unable to avoid it or the pro-Soviet communist regimes it imposed upon them, even Bulgaria which had been prudent enough not to declare war against or participate in the invasion of the Soviet Union. The only exception to the rule of Soviet occupation was Finland, which through a number of factors was able to substitute neutrality instead of occupation. Hungary was an exception in another direction – with Germany occupying it before it could switch sides from alliance with Germany – although it still ended up under Soviet occupation with a pro-Soviet communist regime after the Soviets defeated German forces in Hungary.

It remained only for Germany and Japan to be occupied after their respective surrenders.

Germany was famously unluckier to end up divided in occupation, ultimately between West Germany from the three western allied occupation zones (British, American and French) and East Germany with its pro-Soviet communist regime from the Soviet occupation zone, albeit with the weird island of West Berlin within it (from Berlin being divided into similar occupation zones as Germany). That division persisted as two armed camps in a potential (and terrifying) Cold War battlefield until the end of the Cold War – indeed, the reunification of Germany is usually taken as one of the markers of that end (and hence the end date of 1990 for this entry)

Interestingly, Austria and Vienna had been divided into similar occupation zones as Germany and Berlin, but Austria was fortunate enough to be reunited without occupying forces in 1955 on promise of neutrality in perpetuity.

The occupation of Japan was effectively an all-American affair, albeit with some participation by British or Commonwealth forces – and with the exception of the Soviet occupation of the remote northern Kuril Islands and Sakhalin Island Japan had taken from Russia in the Russo-Japanese War.

Through a combination of factors, the western Allied occupation of Germany and Japan turned out to be largely benevolent, particularly as textbook examples of reconstruction or ‘nation-building’ on the lines of democratic models and economic miracles. Or rather, what might be characterized as textbook examples but for their lack of replication that borders on unique, if not actually unique.

In part that might be from the lack of any sustained insurgency after surrender, although not from lack of planning on part of their former regimes for insanely self-destructive levels of resistance to invasion or occupation. Notoriously, there was the Nero Decree by Hitler, ordering the destruction of German economic infrastructure on a scorched earth scale, but which was subverted by disobedience on the part of those ordered to carry it out, notably Albert Speer. Also notoriously, there were the Japanese plans to resist Allied invasion of the home islands, essentially as kamikaze attacks and banzai charges on a national scale, by both civilian and military forces, which were averted by the Japanese surrender. Once both nations had surrendered, they seemed to default to national stereotypes or traditions of political obedience.

The occupation of Japan is particularly noteworthy for the good judgement of General Douglas MacArthur as de facto shogun of the American occupation government – arguably ranking higher than any of his achievements on the battlefield, in either the Second World War or Korean War.

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

One of the most famous and iconic photographs from the war (and in public domain) – the surrender of Singapore, as Lieutenant-General Percival and his party carry the Union flag on their way to surrender to the Japanese

(7) DECOLONIZATION

(1941-1997)

Running through the Second World War, and even more so emerging from it as one of its primary effects, was decolonization – involving as it did, a combination of imperial cession or surrender without major conflict, and more dramatically, numerous wars of decolonization or independence.

Of course, the decolonization we’re speaking about here was primarily that for the modern European imperialism over non-European states or populations which reached its height in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

There had already been a major wave of that decolonization with the wars of independence in the Americas – firstly with the American War of Independence for the British colonies that became the United States, secondly (skipping that of Haiti) with the Spanish American Wars of Independence for almost all the Spanish colonies in Latin America, and thirdly with the independence of Brazil from Portugal.

That essentially saw the former European empires in the Americas, primarily those of the British, Spanish and Portuguese empires, as independent nations – although there remained some colonies or imperial possessions of those and other European empires in the Americas, particularly in the Caribbean.

Spain never really bounced back, even more so after losing the most significant of its imperial possessions to the United States in the Spanish-American War, and to some extent that is also true of Portugal after the independence of Brazil. However, Portugal and other European imperial nations reached their height of imperial power in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with expanded empires in Asia and Africa.

It was that height of imperial power that saw the most famous wave of decolonization during and after the Second World War, albeit it had its origins rising through the cracks in the European imperial edifice that had opened up with the First World War.

Those cracks opened even further with the defeat and occupation of European imperial powers – France, Belgium, and the Netherlands – by Germany, as well as the preoccupation of the foremost European imperial power, Britain, with fighting Germany.

And the wave took shape as its postwar tsunami that swept aside the European empires, including that of a victorious but exhausted Britain, firstly in Asia and then in Africa. The most decisive event for that wave taking shape was the fall to (and occupation by) Japan of their Asian imperial possessions in 1941-1942. Although Britain was to regain its Asian empire from Japan – and those of allies such as France in Indochina – like Humpty Dumpty after his fall, Britain and other European imperial powers couldn’t put their empires back together again.

To some extent, the Second World War itself was a war of decolonization, albeit with some ironies or paradoxes – fought to free or liberate nations under Axis occupation, both the old-fashioned colonial style empires of Italy in Africa or Japan in Korea (as well as Taiwan and other territory taken in the First Sino-Japanese War), but also the new colonial empires Germany sought to forge as its lebensraum in Europe and Japan as its Co-Prosperity Sphere in Asia.

Of course, that war of decolonization was formally directed only against the Axis powers, but was least implicit to other empires in declarations by the western allies from the Atlantic Charter onwards – foremost by the United States, consistent with its rhetoric of declaring itself for decolonization such as its own war of independence, but also by Britain, with implications for itself as the world’s largest empire.

The United States was not the only principal combatant in the Second World War to declare rhetoric of decolonization or anti-imperialism, including for its own imperial possession of the Philippines. The Soviet Union also declared such rhetoric, even as it reclaimed or expanded beyond former Russian imperial territory effectively as its own new empire.

On the Axis side, Japan famously declared its own rhetoric of decolonization or anti-imperialism but only against European (or American) imperialism of course, not its own – “Asia for the Asians” with itself as the Asians. However, Japan did indeed turn out to be the most effective agent for decolonization by its defeat of European empires in the war, albeit a role it had played to varying extent from the outset of its rise as a great power and its defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War.

Even Germany, engaged as it was in what it declared to be colonial imperialism in Europe – indeed with stated explicit models such as British colonialism, except with Russia as Germany’s India – found common cause as well as allies from decolonization movements elsewhere, particularly against its British antagonist, ironically enough including those from India. .

The process of decolonization, whether by war or otherwise, continued for decades after the Second World War – I’ve drawn the line for my end date for this entry with Britain returning Hong Kong to China, given that it was Britain’s last Asian colony that had been occupied by Japan.

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

German language areas in Poland, Czechia, Kaliningrad Oblast (Russia – formerly East Prussia), and Lithuania before expulsion of Germans (with green as completely German and yellow as ethnically mixed areas) – public domain image

(6) DEMOGRAPHIC WAR –

DEPORTATION, DISPLACEMENT & EXPULSIONS

(1939-1948)

“The Second World War caused the movement of the largest number of people in the shortest period of time in history.”

Of course, much of this movement was what might be described as ‘conventional’ refugees, caused by or fleeing from hostilities, from the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 onwards.

However, much of it was what might be described as demographic war – “mass evacuation, forced displacement, expulsion, and deportation of millions of people…enforced by the former Axis and the Allied powers…Belligerents on both sides engaged in forms of expulsion of people perceived as being associated with the enemy”.

Or just simply the enemy, targeted in a form of demographic warfare or in modern parlance, ethnic cleansing. We’ve already looked at the best known example of this in my special mention for the Holocaust – a primary component of which was the deportation of the Jewish population within Europe, as the preliminary step to something more…final.

That also illustrates the major location for demographic warfare was central and eastern Europe. The movement of people in more targeted expulsions than as refugees commenced with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 – on both sides of the line of Nazi and Soviet occupation. Both the Germans and Soviets expelled Poles in similar numbers – with the Germans expelling more 1.6 to 2 million Poles, not including “millions of slave laborers deported from Poland to the Reich”, while the Soviets expelled over 1.5 million Poles.

The Soviets were then the leaders in expulsions, either to secure the territory secured under the Nazi-Soviet Pact – Finns, Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians – or as ‘defensive’ measures against ethnic populations potentially aligned with the Germans. The latter involved the Soviets deporting ethnic populations from European Russia to Siberia, Central Asia or more remote areas of the Soviet Union – perhaps most famously the Volga Germans and Crimean Tartars, but also “Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachays and Meskehtian Turks”. Many of these were in 1943-1944, arguably  well after the time of any ‘defensive’ emergency had passed.

The United States infamously had its own version of internal deportation with the internment of Japanese-Americans.

Elsewhere the Balkans was the scene of ongoing demographic warfare or outright ethnic cleansing, most well known of which was that of the Serbs from Croatia and Bosnia in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia.

However, one of the largest but still least well known expulsions came at the end and in the aftermath of the Second World War in Europe – the flight and expulsion of Germans from central and eastern Europe, either of Germany minority populations from other countries, now seen as the vanguard or at least casus belli of German aggression against those countries, or Germans from former German territory now ceded to other states, notably East Prussia to the Soviet Union and other eastern German territory to Poland.

“Between 13.5 and 16.5 million German-speakers fled, were evacuated or later expelled from Central and Eastern Europe”. The primary parties responsible for the post-war expulsions were of the new governments of the central or eastern European states formerly occupied by or allied to Germany – and behind them of course Stalin’s Soviet Union – but the western Allies had agreed in principle to such expulsions provided they were carried out in a way that was “orderly and humane”.

Sadly, they were not – with estimates of the number of those who died during or from them ranging from half a million to two or even three million.

While the western Allies played no active part in the post-war expulsion of Germans, except of course to receive them as refugees in their occupation zones in West Germany or Austria, they did notoriously play an active role in the postwar repatriation of Russian Cossacks taken as prisoners of war to a grim fate in the Soviet Union.

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)