CHINA'S WAR WITH JAPAN, 1937-1945
The Struggle for Survival
Rana Mitter
Allen Lane; 457 pages; Rs 999
For almost five decades after 1945, the US-powered victory by the Allies over the Axis powers meant that histories of the war focused on the European and Pacific theatres in which American troops were most heavily engaged. By the end of the 20th century, as more countries started declassifying their wartime archives, thoughtful scholars began to re-calibrate the received narrative in significant ways. This book by the Oxford Sinologist Rana Mitter marks an important element of that reorientation.
The American edition of the book has been imaginatively titled Forgotten Ally, perhaps linking it to two earlier authoritative histories, Forgotten Armies (2004) and Forgotten Wars (2007), co-authored by Oxford historian Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper. Mr Bayly and Mr Harper were among the first major historians to focus greater attention on the brutal wars between the Japanese and the Allies in Southeast Asia. The scene of some of the Allies' most humiliating defeats, they argued that the outcomes of those confrontations were as far-reaching as those that followed the European war.
But it was the other respected World War II historian Antony Beevor who linked the two seemingly disparate theatres of conflict in Europe and Asia in his 783-page 2012 history by suggesting that the war actually began in August 1939 on the edge of Manchuria where the Russians defeated the Japanese in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol. Mr Beevor suggested that the Japanese defeat there persuaded the hawks in the Japanese imperial court to turn their attention to French, British and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia and take on the US in the Pacific.
Even this revisionism has skimmed over China's contribution to the Allied effort. Indeed, for most of the post-war years, the Sino-Japanese war was relegated to a sideshow, viewed largely as a struggle between a fractured post-imperial Chinese leadership (Chiang Kai-shek versus Mao Zedong) on the one hand and a venal Japanese imperial power on the other. China's wartime leader General Chiang Kai-shek, the ally who emerged on the side of the victorious Allies only to lose the power struggle within China, has also been treated less kindly.
Mr Mitter's lucid and mostly even-handed account redresses this imbalance. As he explains in the Prologue, "The history of China's war with Japan became wrapped in a toxic politics for which both the West and the Chinese themselves … were responsible." Cold War realignments meant that Japan replaced China "in American and British affections while the latter changed from ally against Japan to angry and seemingly unpredictable Communist giant." And after the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, "official histories were quickly revised to attribute the victory over Japan to the 'leading role' of the Chinese Communist Party. The role of the Nationalists [Chiang's party] was dismissed…."
If Chiang's role was downplayed, it was mainly the initiative of the prickly and xenophobic American general "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell whose views were propagated by the uncritical journalists around him. Assigned to serve as Chiang's chief of staff after Pearl Harbour, Stillwell quickly clashed with the admittedly enigmatic Chiang. Stillwell contemptuously called him "Peanut" in his diary, a nickname that condemned Chiang forever in western memory.
Chiang was undoubtedly a flawed and controversial character. He was dictatorial and presided over a cruel and corrupt administration (western journalists called him Cash My Check, suspecting him of commandeering Lend-Lease supplies for his struggle against Mao). But as Mr Mitter shows, he was undeniably charismatic too, not least for his implacable anti-imperialism. In 1936, when he was kidnapped by warlords, he was released under pressure from other warlords - including those who opposed him - and Stalin (variable in his support of the Chinese communists but strongly anti-Japanese). As Mr Mitter writes, they "realised that if Chiang was killed, there was nobody of his stature to rule China. Chiang's great success … was keeping control of over a Nationalist Party that consisted of factions in strong disagreement with each other."
His decision to challenge the Japanese in 1937, after the famous Marco Polo Bridge incident, may have not served China best. For instance, his decision to blow up the Yellow River dykes to delay the Japanese advance (it didn't) killed thousands of people and caused a prolonged famine that killed millions more. He ended up retreating to Chongqing and abandoning large tracts of the country to the colonisers - the Chinese leadership keeps the Rape of Nanking alive as a poignant memory in national consciousness.
But Chiang's, admittedly uneven, generalship served the Allies admirably because it kept a million Japanese troops engaged - and, therefore, unable to concentrate on territory claimed by the Soviet Union or against Burma and India.
Also, contrary to impressions purveyed by western journalists, Chiang was not just a parasitic buffer. He provided the Allies with several divisions of crack Chinese troops for the Burmese campaign. These facts may have been downplayed in western accounts because Stillwell was not only a terrible liaison - he was eventually recalled - he was also a very poor field commander who squandered troops with poor tactics (a fact that, in fact, can be corroborated by many western accounts, the second volume of former Chindit John Masters' autobiography being one good source).
Interestingly, Mr Mitter has drawn on a range of recently declassified documents in the Chinese state archives. This opening up is, interestingly, the result of a revisionism within China of Chiang's contribution to the war effort. Deftly contextualised within China's imperial and post-war historical settings, this book is much more material to understanding China than any of the obtuse business books that westerners churn out in thousands.
