China's experience in seeking foreign military assistance and cooperation in the fight against Japan
China's preparations to resist Japanese aggression can be traced back to the early 1930s. From then until the end of World War II in 1945, Germany, the Soviet Union and the United States were the main countries that provided military assistance and cooperation to China. This article mainly examines this period of history from the perspective of China, and focuses on two aspects:
first, the background of China's cooperation with the above three countries and the main military, diplomatic and domestic considerations of the Nationalist government when seeking foreign aid;
second, the process and scale of the military assistance provided by these three countries to China and its role in China's war of resistance. In the conclusion of this article, the three different cooperation models of China-Germany, China-Soviet Union and China-US will be compared.
1. German Advisors and German Arms Exports to China
When the Anti-Japanese War broke out in the summer of 1937, the Central Army commanded by the Nanjing Nationalist Government was trained by German military advisers. The most elite "demonstration army" was equipped with all German weapons. China's major military enterprises relied on German equipment for production, and even China's defense plan was formulated by German military advisers. The first major battle after the war, the "August 13 Battle of Songhu", was commanded by about 70 German military advisers, so that some Westerners and Japanese called this battle "The German War". Considering the relationship between Nazi Germany and Japan, this scene seems strange; however, this strange scene has its own historical reasons. The exchanges between China and Germany began in the late Qing Dynasty. At that time, Germany was one of the Western powers that invaded China, and the basis of Sino-German relations was the unequal treaty system. In the early development of Sino-German relations, Germany was one of the main countries that exported military technology, manufacturing equipment, ships and arms to China. In the early years of the Republic of China, Germany occupied more than half of the Chinese arms market. The First World War brought about major changes in Sino-German relations. After World War I, Germany lost all its privileges in China, but history provided another opportunity for the defeated. In the mid-1920s, Sino-German relations were not only restored, but also showed attractive prospects. In the eyes of some Chinese, Germany was the only advanced industrial country with which they could interact on an equal basis; in the eyes of some Germans, China happened to be a mutually beneficial trade partner needed to revive the German economy. For a time, whether it was the Beiyang government in northern China, the revolutionary government in the south, or some local powerful warlords, they were eager to carry out economic and military cooperation with Germany. It was just that due to the excessive chaos in China's political situation, the German Weimar government was hesitant to know which side to bet on. It is worth noting that although Sino-German relations lacked a solid foundation during this period and the development of German armaments was also constrained by the Treaty of Versailles, the traditional arms trade between the two countries had been rapidly restored, and Germany once again occupied the top spot in the arms export rankings to China. In April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek established the National Government in Nanjing. This provided new opportunities for military and economic cooperation between China and Germany. As early as a year ago, when Chiang was plotting his anti-Soviet and anti-communist policies, he commissioned Zhu Jiahua, a professor at Guangzhou Sun Yat-sen University who had studied in Germany, to find suitable German candidates so that Germans could replace Soviet military advisers when the two sides broke up in the future. The direct reason why Chiang favored the Germans was that he believed that the German army was well-trained and well-armed, and could be used as a reference for reforming the Chinese army; the deeper reason was his good impression and admiration for the Germans. In his youth, Chiang believed that China should learn from Germany and advocated taking Bismarck's "iron and blood policy" as the principle to guide China's unification. Later, he even put forward a slogan: "The great spirit of the German nation is our future model." The practical needs and the long-standing spiritual worship made Chiang Kai-shek determined to unite with Germany. At the end of 1927, Chiang met with Max Bauer, a retired German colonel recommended by Zhu Jiahua, in Shanghai. The two had a long talk for a week. Bauer made many suggestions on China's military construction and economic revival, which were appreciated by Chiang.
In 1928, the plan to organize a German advisory group was implemented. In March, the Nanjing government sent a delegation headed by Chen Yi and accompanied by Bauer to Germany for inspection. The delegation had two tasks: one was to attract large German companies and consortiums to join China's revival work, and the other was to hire German advisors, especially military advisors, to serve in China. The delegation carried out extensive activities in Germany and signed a cooperation and trade contract worth 1 million marks with large companies such as Krupp and Siemens, including arms. This was the first time that the Nanjing government ordered a large number of arms from Germany. In November of that year, a German advisory group was finally formed and set off for China. It is worth noting that the Germans who came to China to serve were directly employed by Chiang Kai-shek in a private capacity, and the advisory group was not recognized by the German government and military. According to the relevant provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, it is illegal for any German citizen to serve as a military advisor to another country even in a private capacity, so the German government was extremely cautious on this issue. But in any case, the military and economic cooperation between the Nanjing government and Germany began from then on.
Bauer naturally became the first head of the German Advisory Group in China, but he served for only half a year. In terms of military affairs, in addition to submitting some suggestions and initially forming a "teaching team", his main task was to assist Chiang Kai-shek in fighting the civil war. In May 1929, Bauer died of smallpox on the front line of the civil war.
From May 1930 to May 1934, Georg Wetzell was hired as the head of the German Advisory Group. During his four years in China, in addition to assisting Chiang Kai-shek in the civil war and encircling and suppressing the Red Army, Wetzell also participated in the military deployment and command of the Chinese army's two operations against Japan, one was the "January 28th Songhu Anti-Japanese War" in Shanghai in early 1932, and the other was the "Great Wall Anti-Japanese War" in Rehe in early 1933. As Sino-Japanese relations became increasingly tense, Wetzell took many measures to improve the combat effectiveness of the Chinese army. He systematically expanded the "teaching team" created by Bauer into three "demonstration divisions" and formed 10 artillery battalions, so that Chiang's Central Army had an elite force with German training and equipment. He personally served as the chief instructor of the Central Military Academy, improved the Chinese military education system, and improved the teaching and training level. He also proposed a set of plans to reform the Chinese military system, prompting the National Government to form specialized forces such as engineers, automobiles, anti-aircraft guns, coastal fortresses, telecommunications, and artillery aviation observation fleets. During Fotzel's tenure, the activities of the German Advisory Group in China began to receive attention and support from the German government.
After Fotzel, the person who came to China to serve as the chief adviser was General Hans von Seeckt, a veteran of the German Wehrmacht and known as the "Father of the Wehrmacht". Chiang Kai-shek highly respected and trusted Seeckt, believing that what was needed in China to "preside over the construction of the army" was "such a competent person." When Seeckt came to China to take up his post in May 1934, Chiang gave him a very special title - "Chairman's Entrusted Person, General Advisor", and entrusted him with great power, even stipulating that Seeckt had full authority to issue orders on his behalf when he was not there. During his short ten-month term, Seeckt focused on strengthening China's national defense capabilities. He developed a detailed logistics supply table and a plan for the development of the arms industry for China, closely linking China's national defense modernization with Germany's economic interests in the Far East. With the help of German consultants and German companies, China successively established new arsenals in Taiyuan, Jinan, Kunming, Chongqing, Nanning and Guangdong, and renovated old arsenals such as Hanyang and Gongxian. At the request of Chiang Kai-shek, Seeckt also designed the Jiangnan national defense fortifications from Shanghai to Nanjing. This line, known as the "Hindenburg Line of the East", was an important project of China's anti-Japanese national defense. In
March 1935, Seeckt left China for health reasons. His assistant, General Alexander von Falkenhausen, succeeded him and became the last head of the military advisory group in China. Falkenhausen's background had two special features: first, he had served as a military attaché in Japan in 1912 and had conducted in-depth research on Japan's army and military strategy; second, he was politically anti-Nazi. This background made it easy for him to gain the trust of the Chinese side, and in fact he had always actively supported China's war of resistance. Shortly after taking office, Falkenhausen submitted a "Proposal on Countermeasures to Cope with the Current Situation" to Chiang Kai-shek. In this proposal, he frankly stated that Japan was the most serious and direct threat to China, and China's response policy and preparation should be based on the Japanese military's advantage. After analyzing the offensive direction and strategic deployment of the Japanese army, he pointed out that under the current international situation, there was no possibility of joint or unilateral intervention by the great powers, and China must devote all its efforts to self-defense. He advocated that when China's military strength was not enough to carry out modern warfare, it could consider "using a protracted war to fight the enemy" and at the same time, Sichuan Province should be used as the "last line of defense" against Japan. In terms of military preparation, Falkenhausen continued the three main tasks identified by his predecessor: training an elite mobile force, strengthening defenses along the Yangtze River, and accelerating the construction of China's national defense industry.
As the work of German advisers in China unfolded, the scale of the Nanjing National Government's purchase of arms and military equipment from Germany continued to expand. This process can be roughly divided into two stages, with 1934 as the boundary. In the first stage, the two sides basically adopted the method of "one hand for money, the other hand for goods". The arms purchased by the Nanjing government were mainly light weapons and ammunition such as firearms, which were mostly used in the civil war. Only a small number of heavy weapons were ordered to equip the German-style "demonstration army". Due to China's limited foreign exchange reserves, the scale of arms trade was quite limited. In the latter stage, the two sides switched to barter trade, which enabled China to order a large number of arms from Germany to make up for the serious shortage of domestic military production. In May 1934, Chiang Kai-shek secretly told the German side that China would only purchase German arms in the future, and entrusted Seeckt, who had just come to China as the chief adviser, to study the procurement of arms with Yu Dawei, the director of the Ordnance Department of the Ministry of Military Affairs. In August of that year, Kong Xiangxi, the Minister of Finance of the National Government, and Hans Klein, a German businessman and friend of Seeckt, secretly signed the "Contract for the Implementation of the Exchange of Chinese Agricultural and Mineral Raw Materials with German Industrial Products" (hereinafter referred to as the "Sino-German Barter Contract"). According to the terms of the contract, China can first order military supplies and military equipment from Germany, and then repay with agricultural and mineral products. The mutually beneficial nature of this barter trade is very obvious. When China needs to rely on Germany to strengthen its national defense, Germany also urgently needs various strategic raw materials produced in China, among which tungsten and antimony are the most important and attractive, especially tungsten. With this contract, China's purchase amount has expanded rapidly. By the end of 1935, the total value of military supplies ordered by the Nanjing government in Germany had exceeded 100 million marks. Judging from the types of orders, the number of anti-aircraft guns, field guns, tanks, etc. has increased significantly, and these weapons are obviously needed for fighting against Japan. At the same time, in order to launch Seeckt's plan to develop China's national defense industry and meet the need to export mineral products to Germany, China also increased the import of industrial equipment.
In April 1936, the Chinese and German governments signed the "Sino-German Credit Loan Contract". This contract actually upgraded the previous contract signed between the Nanjing government and Crane to a contract between the two governments. At the same time, the German government provided the Nanjing government of China with a credit loan of 100 million marks for goods. For the Nationalist government, the new contract between governments is undoubtedly more advantageous than the old contract signed with private individuals, especially from the perspective of strengthening national defense; but for the German government, it is just a business and does not involve political stance. At that time, Nazi Germany was accelerating its rearmament. Its army needed to test its new weapons in China, the defense economic department needed to obtain and store China's strategic mineral raw materials, and industrial giants and arms dealers needed to promote their products to China and expand sales. These aspects formed the main force to promote trade with China and prompted the Nazi government to move from the backstage to the front stage. In June 1937, the Nationalist government sent Kong Xiangxi, Vice President of the Executive Yuan, and Chen Shaokuan, Minister of the Navy, to Germany to negotiate the exchange of arms and goods and the employment of German military technicians. The German government once again affirmed the principle of barter trade and expressed its willingness to dispatch military and technical personnel to serve in China. The results of this visit show that on the eve of the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, China and Germany still maintained friendly relations.
1936 and 1937 were the peak of China's purchase of German arms. The types of naval, land and air force equipment and military supplies ordered by China from Germany were wide-ranging, ranging from aircraft and submarines to pistols and bullets. It is very difficult to find out the details and exact amounts of Sino-German arms transactions during this period. On the one hand, due to the needs of the war, China's orders were constantly changing, for example, the submarine orders were finally cancelled; on the other hand, due to the changes in the relationship between the two countries later, the German side did not fully fulfill the contract. However, the existing archives still reveal some basic information. In August 1938, China and Germany cleaned up the accounts of the "Haudelsgesellsch aft fur Jndustrielle produkte" company (the company's German name is HAPRO), which was responsible for the barter trade between the two countries. The relevant report stated that since the implementation of the Sino-German barter contract in August 1934, the total value of China's orders to Germany (including arms and military equipment) was 389 million marks, the long-term orders that had been implemented were 140 million marks, and the arms shipped from Germany to China by October 1937 was 50 million marks. In November of the following year, in response to China's urgent orders, Germany drew 53 million marks of arms from its Wehrmacht equipment and shipped them to China. In December, Germany shipped two batches of arms, including more than a dozen dive bombers, with a total value of 44 million marks to China. It seems that at least 144 million marks (about 58.16 million US dollars at the exchange rate at that time) of German military supplies were shipped to China in the initial stage of the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan, which undoubtedly played a great role in strengthening the combat capability of the Chinese army.
After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, the German military advisers were loyal to their duties, but most of the achievements made by the German advisory group after 10 years of hard work were lost within a few months. On July 5, 1937, two days before the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, Falkenhausen seemed to have a premonition that the war was coming. In the name of the chief adviser, he sent a proposal to the Chinese side, requesting that the trained National Defense Army be immediately sent to various strategic defense locations in North China to prepare for emergencies. After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, Falkenhausen was first commissioned by Chiang Kai-shek to go to the North China front to discuss the anti-Japanese combat plan with the Chinese commander, and then rushed to Shanghai to participate in the command of the battle to encircle and annihilate the local Japanese garrison despite the ban of the German government. On August 13, the National Government launched a "preemptive" attack in Shanghai. The 87th and 88th Divisions, which were responsible for the main attack, were the elite troops trained by German advisers. In Falkenhausen's view, this was a rare opportunity to test the results of the German advisers' military reorganization. The Battle of Songhu lasted for three months. The Chinese army, which had been trained in the German style, showed strong combat effectiveness under the attack of the Japanese army. However, in early November, when the Japanese reinforcements landed in Hangzhou Bay, the situation took a sharp turn for the worse, and the Shanghai defense battle suffered a disastrous defeat. During the retreat of the Chinese army, the "Eastern Hindenburg Line" built at a cost of more than 1 million yuan was abandoned without playing any role in resistance. On December 13, the Japanese army occupied Nanjing, the capital of China. It is estimated that from the Battle of Songhu to the fall of Nanjing, the 300,000 central army lost about 100,000 to 180,000 people. The elite new divisions suffered the greatest losses, losing 10,000 junior officers, and basically lost the ability to fight independently. After the fall of Nanjing, most members of the German advisory group withdrew to Wuhan with the National Government. After that, they actually had little work to do. The rapid escalation and protracted nature of the Sino-Japanese War meant the end of the German advisory group's mission in China. Although Germany declared neutrality at the beginning of the war and told China that the German-Japanese Anti-Comintern Pact had nothing to do with the Sino-Japanese conflict, as the war expanded, Germany's neutrality was actually difficult to maintain, and the contradictions between China and Germany became increasingly apparent. For example, Germany was deeply disturbed by the improvement of Sino-Soviet relations and publicly expressed its dissatisfaction to China; in Sino-German trade, Germany turned to ask China to pay the shortfall in foreign exchange cash, and even put pressure on China by stopping the supply of military supplies. It was only due to the efforts of relevant people from both China and Germany that the relationship between the two countries did not immediately deteriorate significantly, and the supply of arms to China continued for a period of time. From late October 1937 to mid-January 1938, the German government mediated the Sino-Japanese conflict through its ambassador to China, Oskar P. Trautmann. After the failure of this mediation, the German government successively adopted a series of measures to cater to Japan, and Sino-German relations took a sharp turn for the worse. In February 1938, Hitler announced that Germany would formally recognize the "Manchukuo". In March, Germany unilaterally decided to suspend the cooperation project of Chinese military students to go to Germany for training, which had been implemented for many years. In April, Goering ordered a ban on the export of arms to China, and the German Foreign Ministry negotiated with China to recall all military advisers in China. In late June, in order to force the advisers to leave China as soon as possible, the German side issued an extremely severe order: anyone who did not comply "will be considered to be openly traitorous, and the country will immediately revoke their nationality and confiscate their property." Subsequently, the German side recalled Ambassador Trautmann to China on the grounds that China failed to allow all German advisers to leave China as scheduled, and has not sent an ambassador to China since then. On July 5, the German military advisory group headed by Falkenhausen left China and returned to Germany.
Since 1938, the Nationalist government's diplomatic efforts to restore Sino-German relations have been almost ineffective, but the channels for arms exports to China have not been completely closed for a while. In July of that year, after repeated lobbying by relevant Chinese personnel and German manufacturers, the German government finally acquiesced to transfer the arms ordered by China before the embargo and due to be delivered in July to Finnish companies for shipment. After that, a small amount of German arms were still shipped to China. After maintaining a cold relationship for several years, on July 1, 1941, Germany officially recognized the Wang Jingwei regime in Nanjing, and the Chongqing Nationalist government finally announced the severance of diplomatic relations with it.
II. Soviet Military Assistance to China
In June 1938, when German military advisers were about to withdraw from China, 27 Soviet military advisers and experts arrived in China. Eleven years later, Soviet advisers returned to their homeland, but their mission was no longer to support the Chinese revolution, but to help China resist Japan's aggression and expansion.
The first time Soviet military advisers came to China to serve was during the Chinese Revolution. At that time, the relationship between the Soviet Union and China was quite peculiar. From 1923 to 1924, while assisting the southern revolutionary regime led by Sun Yat-sen, the Soviet Union established diplomatic relations with the Beijing government. In 1927, the Soviet Union's relations with China suffered a double setback. In April, Chiang Kai-shek openly implemented anti-Soviet and anti-communist policies in the middle of the Northern Expedition, which led to the breakdown of the relationship between the Soviet Union and the Kuomintang, which was about to take power throughout the country. Almost at the same time, the Beiyang warlord Zhang Zuolin forcibly searched the Soviet Embassy in China in Beijing, which caused serious protests from the Soviet government and withdrew its representatives in China. However, the Soviet Union did not announce the severance of diplomatic relations with China at that time. It was not until July 1929 that the relationship between China and the Soviet Union was completely severed due to a conflict over the Chinese Eastern Railway.
After the September 18th Incident in 1931, Japan occupied Northeast China and threatened the security of the Soviet Far East. The common enemy prompted China and the Soviet Union to get closer again. On December 12, 1932, the two countries resumed diplomatic relations after a few years of interruption. However, the contradictions and mutual distrust between the two sides still existed, which made the adjustment of Sino-Soviet relations difficult. A key issue is whether the two countries need to sign a non-aggression treaty. In fact, when secretly negotiating with the Soviet Union on the issue of resuming diplomatic relations, the Nanjing government, out of domestic considerations, especially the need to "suppress the Communists", proposed to sign a non-aggression treaty first and then resume diplomatic relations. This unreasonable request was flatly rejected by the Soviet Union. After that, the Nanjing government was forced to agree to resume diplomatic relations unconditionally. In May 1933, China and the Soviet Union began to negotiate on the issue of signing a non-aggression treaty, but it was soon shelved due to issues such as the Soviet Union's sale of the Middle East Railway to Japan. The Nanjing government believed that it was meaningless to sign a non-aggression treaty under such circumstances. After 1935, facing the continuous expansion of Japan into North China, the Nanjing government had to adjust its policy toward the Soviet Union again and implement the policy of "uniting with the Soviet Union to resist Japan". To this end, Chiang Kai-shek sent people to the Soviet Union to test the Soviet Union, hoping that the two countries would bypass the non-aggression treaty and directly sign a mutual assistance treaty. However, the Soviet government insisted on signing a non-aggression treaty and expressed its willingness to provide military assistance to China after signing this treaty. The Soviets were worried that signing a mutual assistance treaty would likely drag the Soviet Union into the war against Japan, and the Nanjing government was trying to shift the burden of anti-Japanese war to the Soviet Union.
After the full outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, the Nationalist government had no choice, and China and the Soviet Union finally signed the Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty on August 21, 1937. Although Chiang Kai-shek repeatedly stated that he opposed linking the Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty with Soviet military assistance, in fact, it was this treaty that laid the political foundation for the Soviet Union to aid China in the fight against Japan. After the signing of the Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty, the Soviet Union immediately took active actions to assist China. The Soviet Union's strategic goal was very clear, that is, to hold back Japan through China's effective resistance and make it unable to invade the Soviet Far East.
On the eve of the signing of the Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty, the Nationalist Government sent a request for assistance to the Soviet Union. On August 14, the day after the battle in Shanghai, Zhang Chong, a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang, submitted a draft arms supply contract to D.B. Bogomolov, the Soviet plenipotentiary representative in China, in the name of Chiang Kai-shek. The Nationalist Government requested the Soviet Union to provide 350 aircraft, 200 tanks and 236 cannons, and requested the Soviet Union to send pilots, aviation technicians, gunners and tankmen to China to train the Chinese. After the signing of the Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty, the Nationalist Government immediately sent a Chinese military delegation led by Yang Jie, the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Military Commission (known as the "Soviet Industrial Delegation") to the Soviet Union to seek assistance. On the eve of the delegation's departure, Chiang Kai-shek personally summoned Yang Jie for a talk and assigned him the task of promoting the Soviet Union's participation in the war, that is, to promote the Sino-Soviet Mutual Assistance Agreement, and the minimum hope was "to allow the Soviet side to continuously provide our military supplies."
The Soviet Union responded quickly to China's request for arms assistance. The Chinese delegation arrived in Moscow on September 8 and was received by the Soviet side with great ceremony. According to Yang Jie's diary, the Soviet side "took every possible step to provide all the necessary items at once, and offered a very low price, showing its sincere desire for China's victory everywhere". The first batch of aircraft and military supplies provided by the Soviet Union to China was delivered to China between October 1937 and February 1938. They mainly included 297 military aircraft, 290 artillery pieces of various types, 82 tanks, 400 vehicles, various spare parts and a large number of guns and ammunition, with a total value of US$48,557,436. In this first batch alone, the heavy weapons such as aircraft, artillery, and tanks provided by the Soviet Union exceeded those provided by Germany, and some of them were the best equipment that the Soviet Union could provide.
During the Chinese War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, most of the Soviet Union's military aid to China was paid for by Soviet credit loans to China. There were three Soviet credit loans to China. The first credit loan to China was US$50 million, which was agreed in Moscow on March 1, 1938. The relevant treaty stipulates that the credit loan is used to purchase military industrial products and industrial equipment from the Soviet Union, which is actually to purchase aircraft, artillery and other military materials that China urgently needs in the war. Since the Soviet Union had provided China with a large number of arms of roughly the same amount before, the treaty stipulates that the loan will be calculated from October 31, 1937, with an annual interest rate of 3%, and will be repaid in 5 years from October 31, 1938, with an annual repayment of 10 million US dollars. The treaty also stipulates that China will repay the credit loan and interest with the goods and raw materials needed by the Soviet Union, mainly tea, tung oil, medicinal materials, leather, wool, silk, cotton, antimony, tin, zinc, nickel, tungsten, copper, etc. The second credit loan from the Soviet Union to China was still 50 million US dollars, which was agreed in Moscow on July 1 of the same year. The treaty stipulates that China will repay it within 5 years from July 1, 1940. The last credit loan from the Soviet Union to China was 150 million US dollars, which was signed in Moscow on June 13, 1939. The treaty stipulates that China will repay it within 10 years from July 1, 1942. The use, interest and repayment methods of the latter two credit loans were basically the same as the first.
The total amount of the above three Soviet credit loans to China was US$250 million, and China used them in 9 times. Among them, the first and second loans totaled US$100 million, which were used in 5 batches and were all used up by September 1, 1939. The third credit loan was used in 4 batches from September 1, 1939 to 1942, totaling slightly more than half. Shortly after the outbreak of the Soviet-German War, the use of the third Soviet credit loan to China was stopped. In this way, China actually used about US$173 million of Soviet credit loans.
The Soviet Union not only provided China with preferential credit loans, but also provided China with weapons and ammunition at prices much lower than the international market at that time. According to Gu Weijun's memoirs, after returning from his second visit to the Soviet Union in 1939, Sun Ke, the president of the Legislative Yuan, said that he had obtained a new loan of 160 million rubles from Moscow. According to international prices, this was equivalent to 400 million rubles because the price set by the Soviet Union for orders to China was particularly cheap. For example, the price of each aircraft was only 30,000 US dollars, and the cost of equipping each Chinese division was only 1.5 million Chinese currency. These conditions were negotiated by telegrams between Marshal Joseph Stalin and Chairman Chiang Kai-shek. According to statistics, by the time the Soviet-German War broke out in June 1941, China had purchased 904 aircraft of various types, including 318 light and heavy bombers, 82 tanks, 1,526 vehicles, 24 tractors, 1,190 cannons of various types, 9,720 light and heavy machine guns, 50,000 rifles, more than 167 million rifle bullets, more than 17 million machine gun bullets, 31,100 bombs, more than 1.87 million artillery shells, as well as aircraft engines and a full set of spare parts, gasoline and other military supplies.
Sending air force volunteers to China was an important action of the Soviet Union to aid China in its fight against Japan. When the Anti-Japanese War broke out in 1937, the Chinese Air Force had about 300 combat aircraft. After the "Songhu War" began in mid-August of that year, the Chinese Air Force, which was obviously at a disadvantage, fought a desperate battle. By the end of November, the Chinese Air Force had only about 30 combat aircraft left, completely losing its combat capability. After the Nationalist government issued an urgent request for assistance, the Soviet government quickly allocated aircraft from the Soviet Air Force for China to use. The first batch of aircraft arrived in China on October 22, accompanied by a fighter squadron and a bomber squadron of the Soviet Air Force Volunteer Team, totaling 254 people.
After arriving in China, the Soviet Air Force volunteers immediately took on two tasks: one was to directly participate in air battles and bombings against Japan, and the other was to train Chinese pilots and aviation technicians to rebuild the Chinese Air Force. In early December, at the critical moment of the Battle of Nanjing, the Soviet Air Force Volunteer Team went into battle. In the first few days of fighting, the Soviet Air Force Volunteer Team shot down more than 10 Japanese bombers and sank a Japanese cruiser and two transport ships in Shanghai Port, winning the first battle. After that, the Soviet Air Force Volunteer Team carried out air combat missions in Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan, Lanzhou, Xi'an, Chongqing, Chengdu and other places many times and launched surprise attacks on Taipei, dealing a heavy blow to the Japanese Air Force, Navy and ground forces. From the autumn of 1937 to the summer of 1939, more than 700 Soviet Air Force volunteers (including aviation technicians) came to China, and more than 200 of them gave their lives for the freedom and independence of the Chinese people. At the same time, Soviet instructors also trained more than 1,000 pilots and more than 8,000 aviation technicians for China. According to statistics from the Nationalist government at the time, from August 1937 to 1941, the Soviet Air Force Volunteer Team and the Chinese Air Force shot down and destroyed a total of 1,049 Japanese planes. According to statistics from Taiwanese scholars, the Soviet Air Force Volunteer Team participated in 25 battles, shot down more than 100 Japanese planes, and sank more than 70 Japanese warships. In the summer of 1939, the situation in Europe became increasingly tense, and the Soviet Air Force volunteers returned home in batches. After that, only a few Soviet Air Force advisers and instructors were left in Lanzhou, Yining and other places to continue training Chinese Air Force personnel.
As the scale of Soviet aid to China continued to expand, in June 1938, at the request of the Nationalist government, the Soviet Union sent high-level military advisers to China. This request was made directly to Stalin by Chiang Kai-shek through Ambassador to the Soviet Union Yang Jie. The Soviet side responded quickly and sent 27 advisers to China that month. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Soviet Union sent four military advisers to China. The first was M.I.Dkatwin, the military attaché of the Soviet Embassy who came to China in November 1937. After that, A.I.Cherepanov (August 1938 to August 1939), K.M.Kachanov (September 1939 to February 1941), and B.I.Chyikov (February 1941 to February 1942). The Soviet military adviser was affiliated with the Supreme Command, and under the general adviser, an advisory agency covering all war zones and arms of the National Government Army was established. The military advisers sent to China were all relatively outstanding officers in the Soviet Army, with high military theoretical literacy and rich combat experience.
The work of the Soviet military advisers mainly consisted of two major tasks: training the National Government Army and participating in the formulation and implementation of major battle plans. Since the Chinese army suffered heavy losses in the early stages of the war, training and replenishing junior officers and technical backbones of various arms became a top priority. According to actual combat needs, Soviet advisers adopted a hierarchical and branch-based training method to strive to improve the quality of the Chinese army in a short period of time. In technical arms such as the air force, artillery and tank troops, the role of Soviet advisers and instructors is even more irreplaceable. According to Soviet historical materials, by October 1939, there were 80 military advisers in China, and by early 1941, the number had increased to 140. From 1937 to 1942, more than 300 Soviet military advisers came to work in China, and the total number of Soviet military advisers, experts, technicians and volunteer pilots was about 5,000. There were about 90,000 Chinese military academy students trained by Soviet advisers and instructors. From
1938 to 1941, Soviet military advisers participated in the formulation of combat plans for several major battles on the Chinese front battlefield, but the suggestions of Soviet advisers were rarely fully accepted by the military authorities of the National Government. During the Wuhan Campaign held in the summer and autumn of 1938, the newly arrived General Advisor Cherepanov found that the Chinese army adopted a backward passive defense, so he proposed an active defense plan to Chiang Kai-shek. Unfortunately, this plan was only partially adopted after the passive defense failed, and it did not play much of a role. In the summer and autumn of 1941, the Chinese army launched a counterattack on Yichang. Before launching the counterattack, Soviet General Advisor Chuikov spent three weeks in-depth on the front line for field investigation, and finally agreed on the battle plan with Chen Cheng, the commander-in-chief of the Sixth War Zone, and reported it to Chiang Kai-shek for approval. However, at the critical moment of the battle, Chiang Kai-shek ordered to stop the attack, and as a result, all the previous efforts were wasted and Yichang was lost again. The only exception was the Second Battle of Changsha, which was launched immediately after the counterattack on Yichang. This time, the Chinese military authorities fully accepted the battle plan formulated by Soviet advisers, which caused the Japanese army to suffer heavy losses and was forced to retreat northward, temporarily abandoning the attempt to advance southward.
In general, the Soviet military advisers maintained a relatively good relationship with the military authorities of the National Government, although Chiang Kai-shek never trusted the Soviets as much as he trusted the Germans. Due to their rich experience in working in China, Soviet advisers paid great attention to working methods. A typical example is the Second Battle of Changsha. When formulating the battle plan, Soviet advisers knew that Chiang Kai-shek and his generals lacked the courage to attack, but they did not criticize them face to face, but patiently persuaded them to win their support. After the victory of the Changsha Battle, Soviet advisers immediately retreated behind the scenes, "as if they did not exist." When Chiang Kai-shek enthusiastically invited all the heads of military missions in China to fly to Changsha with him on a special plane to inspect the battlefield, Chuikov declined Chiang's invitation on the grounds of physical discomfort and ordered all Soviet advisers not to participate in this "review" in order to let Chiang Kai-shek and his generals enjoy all the honors of victory. As a Soviet adviser in China said, "Experience shows that advisers should be diplomats to some extent."
In the process of aiding China, the Soviet Union carefully avoided touching on sensitive issues in China's internal affairs. The most important point was to insist on giving all aid to the National Government headed by Chiang Kai-shek. It is said that in the early days of aiding China, the Soviet Union considered giving some weapons to the Eighth Route Army led by the Communist Party of China. Regardless of whether this happened or not, Chiang Kai-shek was extremely sensitive about it. He had telegraphed Yang Jie and Sun Ke in Moscow several times, asking them to "reject sternly and not agree" to any "idea of direct Russian aid to the Communist Party with Russian goods". Stalin's attitude towards this issue was also very realistic. On the eve of Chuikov's visit to China, Stalin told him bluntly: Logically, the Chinese Communist Party is closer to us than Chiang Kai-shek. Logically, the main aid should be given to them. However, this aid seems to be exporting revolution to a country with which we maintain diplomatic relations. The position of the Chinese Communist Party in China is not yet consolidated. Chiang Kai-shek has the aid of the United States and Britain. Mao Zedong will never get the support of these great powers. With the aid of the Soviet Union and the aid of the British and American allies, even if Chiang Kai-shek cannot repel the Japanese invasion, he can delay it for a long time. Stalin's strategy is to let China delay Japan to avoid the Sino-Soviet war, while Chiang Kai-shek's highest goal in his policy towards the Soviet Union is the Soviet Union's participation in the war. To this end, the National Government has made continuous efforts. Chiang Kai-shek himself has twice urgently requested the Soviet Union to send troops. The first time was between October and November 1937. At that time, the war in Shanghai was at a stalemate, and the Nine-Power Treaty Organization was about to hold a meeting in Brussels to discuss the Sino-Japanese conflict. On October 22, Chiang Kai-shek sent a telegram to the Soviet ambassador to the Soviet Union, Chiang Ting-fu, asking about the Soviet Union's participation policy. The question he was very concerned about was "If the meeting fails, our country will resist militarily to the end. Is the Soviet Union determined to join the war, and how long will it take?"
On November 11, Stalin met with Yang Jie and Zhang Chong, and made a solemn reply to China's request for the Soviet Union to join the war: "The Soviet Union hopes that Japan will be weakened, but the Soviet Union has not yet reached the time to go to war with Japan." Two weeks later, Chiang Kai-shek personally sent a telegram to Stalin, calling on the Soviet Union to send troops "at the current critical moment" to "help China survive" and "save the crisis in East Asia." Naturally, this call was useless. The second time was at the turn of summer and autumn in 1938. In July of that year, the Soviet and Japanese troops clashed in the Zhanggufeng area on the Sino-Soviet border. In August, the Chinese and Japanese troops launched a major battle in the Wuhan area. At this time, Chiang Kai-shek again raised the issue of concluding a mutual assistance treaty with the Soviet Union, hoping to urge the Soviet Union to send troops as soon as possible. In mid-September, the Soviet People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs replied that the Soviet Union could only participate in the war against Japan under the following three circumstances: (1) if Japan attacked the Soviet Union; (2) if Britain or the United States joined the war against Japan; (3) if the League of Nations ordered the countries in the Pacific region to join the war against Japan. This was actually a clear rejection of Chiang's request. It is difficult to say how much Chiang Kai-shek expected the Soviet Union to send troops, but in the difficult situation, he must have been reluctant to give up on it, even if there was only a slight possibility. After that, from May to September 1939, the Soviet and Japanese troops clashed on a large scale at Nomonhan on the Manchu-Mongolian border. Chiang Kai-shek once again rekindled his hope that the Soviet Union would join the war. However, this larger-scale conflict was eventually resolved peacefully.
In 1941, many factors led to the rapid cooling of Sino-Soviet relations. In January, the "Southern Anhui Incident" occurred, in which the Kuomintang army encircled and annihilated the New Fourth Army of the Communist Party of China. This forced the Soviet Union to intervene and put pressure on Chiang Kai-shek by stopping aid. On April 13, after seeing that Japan had no intention of advancing northward, the Soviet Union signed the "Neutrality Treaty" with Japan. On June 22, the Soviet-German War broke out. After that, the Soviet Union had no time to look east. In February 1942, Soviet military chief adviser Chuikov was summoned back to his country, which can be seen as a sign that the Soviet Union's policy of aiding China in its fight against Japan had come to an end. At this time, China and the United States had already formed an alliance, and Chiang Kai-shek no longer planned to continue to invite Soviet advisers to China. In fact, some Soviet advisers and experts remained in China until the Sino-Soviet relations deteriorated in May 1944 due to the Xinjiang issue, and the Soviet government recalled them all. After the end of the Soviet-German War, the Soviet Union sent troops to Northeast China in August 1945 in accordance with the Yalta Agreement, accelerating the end of World War II.
3. The Sino-US alliance and the US lend-lease aid to China
On December 8, 1941 (December 7, US time), the Japanese army attacked Pearl Harbor and the Pacific War broke out. On December 9, the government of the Republic of China officially declared war on Japan and announced that it was at war with Germany and Italy. On New Year's Day 1942, 26 countries including the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China jointly signed the United Nations Declaration. China was listed as one of the "four major powers" in the world and formally formed an alliance with the United States. The alliance between China and the United States seems to have once again confirmed the long-standing saying that there is a "special relationship" between China and the United States. But in fact, China and the United States were originally two rather estranged countries, and for a long time they were on the edge of each other's foreign relations. If it were not for the promotion of Japan's crazy expansion and aggression, they would probably have a long way to go on the road to getting closer to each other. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, the United States proposed the famous open door policy, which is often regarded as the beginning of the "special relationship" between China and the United States. In fact, this policy is just the diplomacy of the United States towards the great powers. It proposes the rules of competition among the great powers in China, and its purpose is to reserve opportunities for the future expansion of American business in China. It confirms the alienation of Sino-US relations rather than the closeness. In essence, the Sino-American relationship at that time was no different from the relationship between China and other powers. The "September 18th Incident" in 1931, in which Japan invaded Northeast China, was in a sense a blatant challenge to the open door policy, but the United States only responded weakly. Secretary of State Henry Stimson proposed "non-recognitionism" but did not intend to take any practical action. After the Franklin Roosevelt administration came to power, facing the serious economic crisis and isolationist sentiment at home, it basically implemented a non-intervention policy towards the Sino-Japanese dispute, allowing the situation to develop as it wished, and even wanted to improve US-Japan relations to some extent to avoid conflict. It was not surprising that the United States stood aside because it had no special interests in China that needed to be protected.
In the first half of the 1930s, due to economic considerations, the distance between China and the United States was shortened a little. In May 1933, China and the United States signed a cotton and wheat loan agreement worth 50 million US dollars. In May 1935, the two finance ministries reached a silver agreement in the form of a memorandum and exchange of notes. The United States also participated in the start of China's aviation industry, which was the only aspect related to China's national defense construction. In 1932, John H. Jouett, a colonel of the U.S. Air Force, led a group of advisors to China to assist China in establishing the Central Aviation School. From 1933 to 1937, the United States was China's main aircraft supplier. In the first six months after the outbreak of the War of Resistance, 279 American-made aircraft were still delivered to China, and then they decreased sharply. Although the United States was cautious and low-key in helping China develop its aviation industry, it played an important role in the embryonic stage of China's air force.
After the July 7 Incident, the Nationalist government did not initially extend a helping hand to the United States. Chiang Kai-shek's idea was to cause Western countries such as Britain, the United States, and France to intervene through a short resistance, so as to end the Sino-Japanese conflict as soon as possible. At that time, the focus of China's diplomatic work was on Britain rather than the United States. After the failure of the Nine-Power Treaty Conference and the Toadman Mediation, the Nationalist government seriously considered the issue of formulating a wartime foreign policy. In the first half of 1938, the central topic of discussion within the Nationalist government was where China could get the most support during the war, from Britain, the United States, and France, from Germany and Italy, or from the Soviet Union. Officials were divided into three groups, each holding their own views and arguing endlessly. The discussion ended only in mid-1938, when the international situation became clearer. Chiang Kai-shek concluded that "Britain is shrewd and cunning, and it is not easy to persuade. Russia also has its own national policy, and asking for help is futile. However, the United States is a country of democratic public opinion, which is more likely to arouse a sense of chivalry, and President Roosevelt does have the ambition to solve the entire Far East issue. If public opinion leads and Congress agrees, President Roosevelt will be able to do something."
After this discussion, the Nationalist government finally determined the wartime diplomatic policy centered on winning over the United States. On June 9, Chiang Kai-shek summarized China's wartime diplomatic policy as follows: (i) We should actively trust Britain and the United States and use their strength to solve the Sino-Japanese issue; (ii) We should contact the Soviet Union; (iii) We should be neither too close nor too distant from Germany. In order to strengthen diplomatic work with the United States as soon as possible, the National Government sent Hu Shih as ambassador to the United States in September 1938. On October 1, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a telegram to Hu Shih, listing the policy towards the United States, which included four contents: (i) Promote the United States to amend the neutrality law; (ii) Strive for US financial aid to China as soon as possible; (iii) Urge the United States to implement an "isolation" policy towards Japan and restrict US-Japan trade; (iv) Look forward to cooperation between China, the United States and Britain in Asia, and use the United States to contain Britain to prevent Britain and Japan from compromising after the outbreak of the European war. This telegram shows that the National Government has formed a clear policy towards the United States, and the United States and Britain have focused on winning over the United States. Since then, these four aspects have become the main tasks of China's diplomacy with the United States, and the process of Sino-US rapprochement has begun.
Seeking financial support and loans from the United States is the focus of the National Government's efforts to win over US aid. On the second day of the "July 7 Incident", Kong Xiangxi, Vice President of the Executive Yuan and Minister of Finance of the National Government, signed the "Silver and Gold Swap Agreement" with Henry Jr. Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. According to this agreement, in the first year after the start of the War of Resistance, China sold a total of $138 million worth of silver to the United States. In the spring of the following year, the United States allowed China to use part of the loan related to this for purposes other than stabilizing the currency, which formed a de facto purchase loan. With this loan, China purchased war materials worth $48 million. From the end of 1938 to the beginning of 1939, China and the United States reached the first loan agreement during the war, namely the tung oil loan. According to this agreement, the Export-Import Bank of the United States will loan 25 million US dollars to Chinese companies at an annual interest rate of 4.5% for a period of 5 years. During this period, Chinese companies will sell 220,000 tons of tung oil to American companies. The main purpose of this loan is to purchase cars and improve transportation on the Burma Road. It is generally believed that this loan is the beginning of American aid to China and Sino-US cooperation during the war. In March and September 1940, China and the United States reached two loan agreements in a similar way, a loan of 20 million US dollars for Huaxin and a loan of 2500 US dollars for tungsten ore. The annual interest rate of these two loans was reduced to 4%, and other conditions were also more favorable than the tung oil loan. Although according to the terms of the contract, China still could not purchase arms prohibited by the Neutrality Act, in fact, the Chinese government used these two loans to purchase not only military supplies such as automobiles, military materials, and aviation gasoline, but also 45,000 pistols and other military equipment worth 2,684,700 US dollars. Later, when the Pacific War broke out, China and the United States revised the tungsten ore loan contract, and China received greater concessions.
Since 1939, the National Government has begun to put the issue of seeking military cooperation with Britain, France, the United States and other countries on the agenda. In the early spring of this year, the Japanese army occupied China's Hainan Island and the Nansha Islands, and its intention to move south was obvious. In March and April, the National Government drafted a Sino-British-French cooperation plan and submitted it to the governments of Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union. The main content of this plan is: China, Britain and France will first carry out military and economic cooperation in the Far East, invite the Soviet Union to participate at an appropriate time, and ask the United States to take parallel actions. All countries will take consistent steps against Japan and jointly maintain their rights and interests in the Far East. Countries fighting against Japan shall not individually cease fire or negotiate peace with the enemy. Regarding this proposal of China, Britain, France and the United States passed the buck to each other, and no one was willing to make a clear statement. After that, the National Government made similar suggestions to the United States, Britain and other countries many times, but these efforts were fruitless until the outbreak of the Pacific War.
Since the establishment of the wartime foreign policy centered on the United States, the Nationalist government racked its brains to win American aid, but achieved little. When the European war broke out in 1939, Chiang Kai-shek had expected that China's international environment might improve, but the situation became increasingly dangerous in the following year. In the summer and autumn of 1940, France's resistance on its homeland collapsed, and it had to allow the Japanese army to occupy Indochina. Britain was in a state of panic under Hitler's clamor for cross-sea warfare; when Japan threatened to declare war, it had to close China's only remaining external channel, the Burma Road. Although the United States announced an embargo on Japan, its aid to China was still extremely limited. The reason why China had a very difficult time winning American aid was, on the one hand, the constraints of the United States' domestic neutrality law, and on the other hand, the Roosevelt administration had been cautiously seeking a balance between its policies toward China and Japan. Its minimum goal of aiding China was to prevent the collapse of China's war of resistance, and the maximum limit was to prevent Japan from taking retaliatory actions against the United States. Officials of the Nationalist government felt that the United States would not provide aid unless the Chongqing regime was in "the most critical crisis or when the enemy was most rampant". Although these sums of money were "no more than the value of a battleship" as Morgenthau said, they always served as a "heart-strengthening shot" for Chongqing. The difficult experience of seeking aid made Chiang Kai-shek say with mixed feelings: "It is easy to be with an enemy country, but difficult to be with a friendly country. If you are helped by others, you will be despised by others. If you cannot endure this kind of pain, you will never be able to take on this important task."
The process of Sino-US rapprochement accelerated suddenly after the signing of the Tripartite Treaty between Germany, Italy and Japan in the autumn of 1940. On the one hand, the evolution of the international situation made the Roosevelt administration realize that it was necessary to strengthen China's power to contain Japan; on the other hand, Chiang Kai-shek also took this opportunity to put pressure on the United States. Chiang's success was not only that he quickly received a huge amount of aid from the United States, but more importantly, he greatly influenced the direction of the development of Sino-US relations thereafter.
After the signing of the Tripartite Pact between Germany, Italy and Japan, Hu Shi, the Chinese ambassador to the United States, sent a telegram to the Central Government, suggesting that the ambassadors to Germany and Italy be recalled at a time when "the world situation is extremely clear" to show China's integrity and position. However, Chiang Kai-shek decided to "take a wait-and-see approach to Germany and Italy" and spread the news of the peace talks with Japan to give the outside world the impression that China's future was uncertain. Afterwards, he invited the British and American ambassadors for long talks. On October 14 and 16, when talking with the British ambassador, Chiang emphasized three points: First, "Britain and the United States have always viewed China as a colony and looked down on China's strength. If we do not first abandon this prejudice and boundary, there is no need to discuss ways of cooperation." Second, "Britain and the United States rely solely on their navy and air force to plan for the Far East. They feel that victory over Japan is insufficient and must be assisted by a large number of land forces to be successful." Third, "If China stops the war of resistance, will Japan reduce one of its biggest threats and use its manpower and material resources to freely implement its southward policy?" "China has been fighting the war of resistance for more than three years and has reached the stage of determining its own status. The future policy that adapts to this new situation will be decided within two months and must not be left undecided for too long." On the 18th, Chiang met with the American ambassador again and emphasized three points: First, the National Government "is only worried about the rampant Chinese Communist Party" and "we are no longer worried about the invasion of the Japanese enemy army, but about the collapse of the domestic economic and social status quo." If the United States can provide assistance, "the Communist Party of China will have nowhere to use its skills." Second, in order for the Nationalist government to continue the war of resistance, "it is necessary for the United States to continue to provide assistance in fact." "Only the United States' air force and economic assistance can consolidate our shaken economy and people's hearts." Chiang asked the United States to provide him with 500 to 1,000 aircraft every year and send American Air Force volunteer pilots to China. "This is actually the only good alternative to the United States' war against Japan." At the same time, "I deeply hope that the loans to me will be consolidated in the future and a huge amount of money will be loaned to me at one time." Finally, Chiang once again raised the issue of cooperation between China, the United States and Britain. He hoped to establish an alliance in name only and said that no matter how the international situation develops, "it is self-evident that our country should follow the leadership of the United States."
Chiang Kai-shek's plan really succeeded. In late November, Roosevelt asked Morgenthau to quickly provide China with a huge sum of money out of concern that "some activities are going on between Chiang and Wang." On the 30th of that month, the day when Japan officially recognized the Wang Jingwei regime in Nanjing, Roosevelt issued a statement announcing a loan of 100 million US dollars to China. Half of this huge loan was a stabilization fund loan from the Treasury Department, and the other half was a metal loan from the Export-Import Bank that was negotiated later. Subsequently, Roosevelt asked the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the Army and Navy departments to seek feasible ways to provide military assistance to China. After the encirclement and suppression of the New Fourth Army of the Chinese Communist Party, US aid was temporarily suspended, but after the news that the Soviet Union might sign a neutrality treaty that day, the United States once again accelerated its aid to China.
From 1941, US aid to China was gradually incorporated into the Lend-Lease Act aid program. In February, Roosevelt sent his administrative assistant Lauchlin Currie to China to investigate China's political and economic conditions. One of his main tasks was to study China's needs during the war and prepare for the upcoming implementation of the Lend-Lease Act. During the talks in Tongjuli, Chiang Kai-shek put forward four requirements on the issue of US aid: first, he hoped that the United States would send political advisers to China to strengthen communication between the leaders of the two countries; second, American advisers would assist in the management of the Burma Road and the United States would invest in the construction of the Burma Railway; third, he asked the United States to provide China with the aircraft and various weapons it needed as soon as possible; fourth, he asked the United States to help China stabilize its economy, including legal currency, prices and foreign exchange. In view of the great impact of the signing of the Sino-Soviet Neutrality Treaty on Chinese morale, on April 17, the US government decided to immediately provide China with 45 million US dollars in military supplies, which was the beginning of the military aid to China under the Lend-Lease Act. On May 6, Roosevelt officially issued a statement that the Lend-Lease Act applied to China, and declared: "Defending China is the key to defending the United States." The National Government immediately appointed Song Ziwen as a representative to apply for and receive US aid materials to China under the Lend-Lease Act. According to Chiang Kai-shek's instructions, Song Ziwen negotiated with the United States for military aid to China with three key points: first, the United States provided training and technical assistance to help China build a modern air force; second, trained and equipped 30 divisions of the Chinese army; third, helped China build the Yunnan-Burma railway and highway, and provided transportation vehicles, etc. In July, Roosevelt sent Owen Lattimore to China to serve as a political adviser to the Chinese government. In August, the United States announced that John Magruder would be the military attaché in China and the head of the American Military Mission to China (AMMISCA), whose main task was to lend-lease materials to China.
After the outbreak of the Pacific War, China and the United States immediately formed an alliance. This not only aroused too many fantasies in both countries, but also covered up the various problems between China and the United States and the war of resistance. Alliance with the United States was the dream of the Chongqing government. When this goal was suddenly realized, Chiang Kai-shek had no intention of fighting the war with all his strength. He believed that Britain, the United States, and the Netherlands had already agreed on a joint combat plan in the Pacific, but never notified China, which was "regarding China as insignificant and using us to consume Japan's strength." At the same time, he felt that due to the outbreak of the US-Japan War, "the danger of our country's war of resistance...has passed more than half. In the past, the United States restricted Japan and did not allow it to advance south or north, but did not oppose its advance westward. Now the crisis of Japan's full-scale invasion of China no longer exists." Chiang's mentality, coupled with his increasing view of the Communist Party of China as a more dangerous and more important enemy, made Sino-US wartime cooperation very difficult.
Due to lack of mutual understanding and insufficient preparation, China and the United States failed to establish a coordinated and efficient joint command organization at the beginning of cooperation. Later developments showed that this was a serious mistake. In order to strengthen Sino-US wartime cooperation, Roosevelt asked Chiang Kai-shek to serve as the commander of the Allied Forces in China, and at Chiang's request, sent Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell, who had 15 years of experience in China, to China to serve as the US government's military representative in China and chief of staff of the theater and commander of the US military in the China-India-Burma Theater. However, this theater of operations was in name only, and worse still, the appointment of Stilwell went against Chiang's original intention. Chiang needed a chief of staff who did not understand the situation in China but could obey him and ask for aid from the United States. However, the one sent by the United States was a "China expert" with dual responsibilities: as a military representative in China, Stilwell had to accept instructions from the US government and be responsible for supervising and controlling all US military aid to China; and as the joint chief of staff, he should obey Chiang Kai-shek's leadership. Since China and the United States could not reach a consensus on the definition of Stilwell's powers, this later became the fuse for the friction between the United States and Chiang Kai-shek during the war.
The sudden involvement of the United States in the war disrupted the aid plan that had just begun. The U.S. strategy of "Europe first, Asia later" and China's position at the end of the thinnest of all U.S. supply lines determined that the United States was unable to provide China with a large number of modern military equipment. The Chinese battlefield was destined to rely on extremely meager resources to fight against a large number of enemies. However, Chiang Kai-shek did not intend to fight the war on his own according to the actual situation. For the Chongqing government, one of the main tasks of Sino-U.S. cooperation during the war was to constantly make lists of requests for materials and loans from the United States.
Lend-lease aid to China was troubled by transportation problems from the beginning. In 1941, according to the amount of the first Lend-lease grant to China, the United States planned to transport 45 million U.S. dollars of materials to China, of which 15 million U.S. dollars were used for the construction of the Yunnan-Burma Railway. However, due to the inability to find enough ships, only 26 million U.S. dollars of materials were actually shipped from the United States; after these materials were transported to the transit port of Yangon, they were mostly stranded there because the Yunnan-Burma Road, China's only external channel, was overcrowded; due to chaotic management, the materials shipped from Myanmar suffered great losses on the way, and only about one-third of them arrived in Chongqing. In April 1942, the "South Burma Defense War" led by Stilwell failed, and the Burma Road was cut off. After that, in order to maintain China's war of resistance, the United States opened an air transport line from Assam, India, over the Himalayas to Kunming, China, known as the "Hump" air transport. This is an extremely dangerous route. In 1942, only 1,571 short tons of aid materials were transported to China via this route. Although the number is extremely small, it has a huge psychological effect as a symbol of the Allies' persistence in aiding China. From 1943 to 1944, the US Air Transport Command (ATC) and the China Airlines (CNAC) made the greatest efforts and paid heavy casualties, and the total amount of materials transported to China reached 194,072 short tons. In May 1944, the Chinese Expeditionary Force in India led by Stilwell recovered northern Burma. After that, the amount of air transport materials increased significantly due to the greatly shortened route. In early 1945, the Stilwell Road was opened to traffic, and transportation conditions further improved.
From mid-1941 to mid-1944, the shortage of supplies and the resulting distribution problems made Sino-US cooperation quite tense. Almost from the beginning, the US Army and the Treasury Department required strict control and supervision of lend-lease materials to China. This was not only to reduce losses and improve the effectiveness of aid, but also because Magruder, who was in charge of lend-lease aid to China, reported that China required more modern equipment, not out of the need to fight against Japan, but to make the central government safer after other countries used diplomatic pressure to drive Japan out of China. However, in Chiang Kai-shek's view, the key reason for the ineffective aid to China was that the allocation of lend-lease materials was controlled by the Munitions Assignments Board of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CCS) of Britain and the United States. China was not allowed to send representatives to participate and was not treated equally. "It was just a pawn in this war game." At the same time, Chiang was even more dissatisfied with the method determined by the Munitions Assignments Board after May 1942, which required Stilwell to be responsible for accepting lend-lease aid to China. Because before that, the ownership of American aid to China belonged to China after it was shipped from the United States, and after that, as long as Stilwell had not delivered the materials to China, the ownership still belonged to the United States. The aid materials provided by the United States to China were too few, and it often failed to fulfill the promises it had made, which caused Chiang Kai-shek's growing dissatisfaction. At the same time, Chiang Kai-shek's passive approach to the war of resistance also caused growing dissatisfaction among the US military represented by Stilwell. They asked Roosevelt to implement a policy of "exchange" and "pressure" against Chiang, using aid as a condition and weight to force Chiang to resist Japan and reorganize the Chinese army. A crisis in Sino-US wartime cooperation thus arose. In October 1944, Chiang Kai-shek finally drove Stilwell away with the help of Patrick Hurley, a special envoy sent by Roosevelt.
In fact, the contradictions caused by the distribution of lend-lease materials not only existed between China and the United States, but also between the US Army in China represented by Stilwell and the US Air Force in China represented by Chennault. In this internal struggle, since Roosevelt could not provide effective assistance to China, he had to adopt the air force priority strategy proposed by Chennault and supported by Chiang Kai-shek. As a result, Chennault's air force once had priority over "Hump" materials and obtained 70% of the limited aid materials to China at the most difficult time. At the same time, the monthly "lend-lease" quota of the Chinese army was only around 500 tons. By May 1944, the accumulated weapons and equipment obtained were no more than 10,000 tons, and they were mainly used to supplement the Chinese Expeditionary Force stationed in western Yunnan and trained by the US military.
During the war, China's demand for aircraft was the most urgent, and the US military assistance to China was also first concentrated on the air force. In the spring of 1940, the Japanese Air Force bombed Chongqing and Sichuan air bases, which put the Chinese Air Force in trouble again. Before the implementation of the Lend-Lease Act, China had proposed to the United States to add 500 new aircraft before March 1941, and Chennault recruited volunteer pilots in the United States to come to China. After the implementation of the Lend-Lease Act, China's plan to develop an air force was to reach 1,000 combat aircraft. The first step was to organize 350 fighters and 150 bombers, and gradually increase the monthly replenishment according to losses. But in fact, before the outbreak of the Pacific War, China only received 100 P-40 fighters. After the outbreak of the Pacific War, China kept negotiating with the United States about the issue of aircraft. The number promised by the United States was very small, and the aircraft promised to aid China often could not be implemented or transferred to other war zones in the middle of the journey. The implemented aircraft also suffered serious losses during transportation due to the long transportation route. For example, in 1942, a batch of aircraft shipped from the United States to India to aid China was 263, and only 136 were left when they finally arrived in China, about half of them.
After the outbreak of the Pacific War, the "Flying Tigers" fighting over China wrote the most legendary scene in the wartime cooperation between China and the United States. The official name of this unit is the American Volunteer Group (AVG). It was approved by Ross in the spring of 1941 and officially established on August 1st by the order of Chairman Chiang. Its main task is to assist the Chinese Air Force in covering the transportation on the Burma Road and defending the airspace of Yunnan. Chennault, an American consultant, is the commander and group leader. It has three chaser squadrons with a total of 125 aircraft, mainly the 100 P-40 fighters obtained by China. The Volunteer Group was put into combat against Japan on December 20 of that year, and successively shot down 299 Japanese planes in Kunming, Yangon, Guilin and other places. On July 4, 1942, the Volunteer Group was abolished and merged into the 23rd Combat Group of the 10th Air Force of the US Army, called the Air Task Force in China. The task force shot down 149 Japanese planes in central and southern China and dropped 214 tons of bombs. In March 1943, the team was expanded into the 14th Air Force of the US Army and continued to fight in China. In October of that year, Chennault promoted the implementation of the modernization plan of the Chinese Air Force and organized a mixed Chinese and American air force under the 14th Air Force to fight with Chinese pilots who went to the United States for training and the US air force in China.
Although there was a large gap between the number of aircraft provided by the United States and China's needs during the war, the total number of aircraft provided by the United States had firmly ranked first by the end of the war. According to statistics from Taiwan, China obtained a total of 2,351 aircraft from foreign countries during the War of Resistance. Among them, a total of 1,394 aircraft were purchased and leased from the United States, including 1,038 fighters, 244 bombers, 15 reconnaissance aircraft, and 97 transport aircraft, accounting for 59% of the total. There were 885 aircraft from the Soviet Union, including 563 fighters and 322 bombers, accounting for 37.6% of the total. The rest were from Britain (36), France (24), and Germany (12), accounting for only 3%. It is worth noting that among the aircraft provided by the United States, 552, or nearly 40%, were not delivered to China until the second half of 1944, and most of them were allocated to the 14th Air Force of the United States. It was not until 1946, after the end of the war, that the number of aircraft provided by the United States roughly met the requirements of the Nationalist Government.
Equipping and training 30 army divisions was one of the three priorities set at the beginning of the Lend-Lease Act to aid China. Before the outbreak of the Pacific War, China and the United States had discussed the issue of providing equipment to the Chinese Army, but nothing was finalized. Since then, the number of troops proposed by both sides to equip the Chinese army has increased and decreased from time to time. During the Cairo Conference, Stilwell drafted a plan for China to equip 90 divisions, which was the highest number proposed. Around the end of the war, the actual plan implemented was to equip 39 divisions of the Chinese army under the Nationalist Government.
From the autumn of 1942 to the beginning of 1944, there were two main Chinese armies that were trained by the United States and equipped with Lend-Lease materials. After the failure of the Burma Campaign, the remnants of the Chinese Expeditionary Force retreated to India. In order to achieve a counterattack, Stilwell proposed to the highest Chinese military authorities a plan to train Chinese troops in India. The main content was: 100,000 selected Chinese soldiers were sent to India in batches to be trained by American officers, and the Lend-Lease materials and equipment obtained by China were allocated to form two armies, each with three divisions, and equipped with a number of artillery and tank units, plus one division and six paratrooper battalions as reserve forces, and then the Chinese New Army was expanded to 30 divisions with this as the core. This force used Ramgarh in Bihar Province in northeastern India as its training base. Stilwell served as the commander of the training battalion and Luo Zhuoying as his deputy. The Expeditionary Force was renamed the Indian Army, known as the Yoke Force (Y-Force for short). The training started in September 1942 and was completed in January 1944. 32,293 Chinese officers and soldiers graduated and were organized into three divisions. Later, these three divisions were expanded into the New 1st Army and the New 6th Army, which were the main forces for the future recovery of northern Burma. Shortly after the training in Langga began, Stilwell proposed a plan to train a second batch of 30 divisions of Chinese troops as the main force to open up the Yunnan-Burma Road and implement a general counterattack, which was agreed by the highest military authorities of China and the United States. On February 1, 1943, Chen Cheng was ordered to serve as the commander-in-chief of the Chinese Expeditionary Force. On April 1, infantry training centers were established in Kunming and Guilin at the same time. The training of the second batch was different from that of the Indian Army. The trainees were drawn from the front and trained in batches for 6 weeks. The United States only provided instructors, and most of the weapons used were provided by China itself. After the Quebec Conference in August 1943, the strategic plan for the counterattack on Burma changed from recovering all of Burma to recovering only northern Burma. Therefore, the plan to train the second batch of 30 divisions was largely unimplemented. The new army trained in Yunnan was considered part of the first batch of 30 divisions. Only three divisions were allowed to be equipped with American weapons, which was one-tenth of the original plan. They were called Z-Force. In April 1944, in order to force Chiang Kai-shek to send Z-Force to participate in the battle to recover northern Burma, the United States even threatened to stop allocating aid to China. This made Chiang unbearable. Shortly after the end of this battle, the Stilwell incident broke out. After Stilwell left China, his successor Albert Wedemeyer decided to follow the plan of equipping the Chinese army with 39 divisions: 30 divisions of the Expeditionary Force, 5 divisions of the Indian Army, 3 divisions of the second batch of 30 divisions originally planned, and 1 division of the Student Army. According to statistics from Taiwanese scholars, the Chinese troops that received American equipment and training were: the New 1st Army, the New 6th Army, the 5th Army, the 2nd Army, the 8th Army, the 13th Army, the 54th Army, the 53rd Army, the 73rd Army, the 74th Army, the 71st Army, the 94th Army, and the 18th Army. Each army had 3 divisions, totaling 39 divisions. Although the training and equipment plan was formulated at the end of the war, this work was completed after the war. According to statistics from mainland scholars, the Kuomintang army equipped with materials leased by the United States should have at least 44 divisions. Among these troops, except for the 16 divisions of the New 1st and New 6th Armies and the Chinese Expeditionary Force (2nd, 6th, 8th, 53rd, 54th and 71st Armies) that participated in the Battle of Northern Burma, the rest of the troops were equipped and almost did not engage in fighting with Japan before they were put into the civil war, and were mainly put into the Northeast battlefield. The struggle between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party for that area was the fuse that triggered the full-scale civil war.
In addition to providing assistance to the Chinese Air Force and Army, the United States also helped the National Government rebuild its navy. In January 1944, the Nationalist government proposed a plan to lease eight ships to the United States. The United States agreed in principle to lease four destroyers and four minesweepers, and determined that they would not be returned after the war. In February 1945, the Nationalist government sent 1,060 officers and soldiers to the United States for training. In mid-1946, the officers and soldiers who completed the training sailed the eight ships back to China. On
August 15, 1945, Japan announced its surrender and the Second World War ended. On the 21st, Truman officially announced the end of the "Lend-Lease Act", but the lease to China continued until 1947. During the entire Second World War, the United States provided more than $50 billion in material and labor assistance to 38 anti-fascist allies under the Lend-Lease Act. China, as one of the main allies, only received $1.602 billion (including after the war), accounting for 3.2% of the United States' total foreign lend-lease assistance. Although China ranked fourth after Britain, the Soviet Union and France, the aid it received was difficult to compare with the first three countries, especially Britain and the Soviet Union.
There is a big gap between the statistics of the United States and China on the lend-lease materials China received during the war. According to the White Paper on Sino-US Relations, from May 1941 to the end of the war, the total amount of lend-lease materials and labor provided by the United States to China was about 846 million US dollars, of which guns, ammunition, aircraft, tanks, vehicles, ships and various military equipment were worth 517 million US dollars, and the rest were basically industrial and agricultural goods and various labor expenses. The National Government's Material Supply Committee in the United States calculated the amount of aid to China based on the US "Notice of Payment for Shipment of Materials" and calculated that the amount was about 685 million US dollars. The Ministry of Finance of the National Government calculated about 598 million US dollars based on the comprehensive account of "lease" material shipping provided by the committee. The reason for the statistical gap between the United States and China may be that some materials were directly transferred to China by the US military without going through the Chinese Supply Committee; in addition, the Chinese statistics do not seem to include labor costs.
From the perspective of the process of military lend-lease aid to China, from mid-1941 to the end of 1943, when China was in the most difficult period of the war of resistance and needed foreign aid the most, China received very little aid. According to US statistics, it was only US$201 million, including US$25.4 million in transportation costs. From the beginning of 1944 to the end of the war of resistance in 1945, China received about US$645 million in lend-lease materials. Most of the materials were shipped to China after the Stilwell Road was opened to traffic in early 1945, and the purpose and role of US aid began to change at this time. At the beginning of this year, Hurley said to Chiang Kai-shek: "When the war is over, your well-equipped divisions will be able to easily defeat the Communist army." From the end of the war of resistance to the end of 1947, the Nationalist government continued to receive US$694.7 million in military aid under the Lend-Lease Act. Together with the military aid provided by the United States in various other forms, the military aid received by the Nationalist government after the war actually exceeded the military aid received during the war.
4. Brief Conclusion
The Chinese Nationalist Government sought assistance from Germany, the Soviet Union and the United States and carried out military cooperation with these three countries at different stages of the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan. As three cases, they each had different bilateral relations backgrounds, faced specific different environments, and had different forms of cooperation, and the results were also different. Here I just want to summarize their respective characteristics through a simple comparison.
From the perspective of the background of bilateral relations, China and Germany carried out cooperation on a relatively equal basis. Although the military was the main area of cooperation between the two sides, this cooperation was not initially aimed at a specific third party. The form of Sino-German cooperation was very simple. Chiang Kai-shek hired Germans in his private name, and the German advisers were only responsible to Chiang personally. This form of cooperation circumvented the various difficulties that may be encountered in cooperation between countries. Although the two countries have different historical and cultural traditions, the similar ideologies and value orientations of the partners basically filled this gap. In general, Chiang Kai-shek had a high degree of trust in the German advisers, and the work of the German advisory group in China also promoted the improvement and development of Sino-German relations.
From a military perspective, the role of German military advisers was to initially instill modern military concepts into the Nationalist government’s army, help establish a relatively modern army demonstration unit, improve China’s military industry and logistics system, and transform China from an army that could only fight civil wars to a national defense army. The import of a large number of German weapons and military equipment improved the combat effectiveness of the Chinese army and brought huge commercial benefits to Germany.
An interesting and peculiar phenomenon is that the two parties did not have a common strategic goal, and the cooperation was only for each side to get what it needed. However, it was this point that ultimately made the cooperation between the two sides unsustainable. Japan’s aggression against China and the increasingly close strategic relationship between Germany and Japan destined China and Germany to part ways. The military cooperation between China and Germany did not leave much mark in history. This was not only because the elite Chinese troops trained by German advisers for ten years were exhausted in the first half of the War of Resistance, but more importantly, because the anti-fascist nature of World War II itself made this history unwilling to be mentioned.
The cooperation between China and the Soviet Union was based on the common strategic interests of resisting Japan’s aggression and expansion, but the cooperation was a stopgap measure for both sides. In view of the lessons learned from the first cooperation, the new cooperation had clear limits. Both sides were cautious to prevent the other side from damaging their more fundamental interests. Chiang Kai-shek was worried that the Soviet Union would take the opportunity to interfere in China's internal affairs, while Stalin was worried that China would drag the Soviet Union into the war against Japan. Therefore, the form of Sino-Soviet cooperation was relatively simple, basically limited to the Soviet Union providing military assistance to China, and trying not to involve issues in other areas.
In terms of the Soviet Union's national strength at the time, Stalin was quite generous, and the military assistance he provided to China was timely and large. The Soviet Union provided China with a large number of aircraft to help China rebuild its air force, and also sent hundreds of air force volunteers to China to participate in the war. The Soviet Union provided the Chinese Army with a large number of arms including heavy weapons such as tanks and artillery, and Soviet military advisers also participated in the planning and command of several major battles. Taking various factors into consideration, it can be considered that the military assistance provided by the Soviet Union to China between 1938 and 1940 was roughly equivalent to the assistance provided by the United States to China between 1942 and 1944, if not more, and the Nationalist government did not have to go through as much trouble to obtain this assistance as it did to obtain American assistance later.
Stalin's shrewdness was reflected in his grasp of the goal of aiding China. His goal was clear and limited, which was to enable China to be able to hold back Japan. When the Soviet Union was relieved of the concerns about Japan's attack, the cooperation between the two sides actually ended. In the years when the Soviet Union aided China, Sino-Soviet relations had improved significantly, and the cooperation between the two countries was generally smooth. This cooperation fully achieved the expected purpose for the Soviet Union; for China, after all, it received huge foreign assistance during the most isolated and dangerous stage of the War of Resistance. The experience of the Sino-US alliance illustrates the dilemma of cooperation between two partners who do not understand each other, have a huge gap in strength, are difficult to connect with each other, and have too high expectations of each other. The cooperation between China and the United States is comprehensive in form, but the areas where the two sides really cooperate in the fight against Japan are actually very limited. However, in any case, China and the United States formed an alliance to completely defeat Japan. In this sense, this alliance was still successful for both sides.
In terms of military, although the assistance provided by the United States was limited, it did maintain an air force for China. Almost throughout the War of Resistance, China's air force was supported by foreign assistance. In the ground war, the Americans did little. The Chinese army led by Stilwell fought mainly to open up China's external transportation lines. This belated victory had limited impact on the overall situation of China's war of resistance.
During the entire war of resistance against Japan, the United States provided the most comprehensive and largest aid to China; however, few people gave high praise to the US aid and Sino-US cooperation during the war, and criticisms abounded. From the perspective of the effect of the aid, both the aid provider and the recipient had reasons to express their dissatisfaction. From the perspective of the United States, it is difficult to believe that the aid to China was effective. Its role was only to "keep China in the war" and failed to prompt China to deal a strong blow to Japan. From the perspective of the Nationalist government, the US aid was mostly "lip service", because although the government received all the US aid, it received not only far less than it requested, but also less than what the United States promised. From the perspective of the Chinese Communist Party, the US aid laid the seeds for the Kuomintang to launch an anti-communist civil war in the future. In order to fight against Japan, the US military and Stilwell had the idea of equipping the Chinese Communist Party's anti-Japanese troops with "Lend-Lease" materials, but this was limited to words and paper, without any actual action, and this intention was largely to put pressure on Chiang Kai-shek. Although the Chinese Communist Party made efforts to obtain US aid and carried out intelligence cooperation with the US military, it ultimately did not obtain a single gun or bullet of Lend-Lease materials. The crux of the problem is that although the Sino-US wartime cooperation was mainly military, it soon became entangled with complex political issues. Chiang Kai-shek hoped to subdue the Chinese Communist Party with the support of the United States from the beginning, and the US government hoped to prevent the rise of the Soviet Union by supporting Chiang Kai-shek in the later stages of the war. It was precisely because of various considerations other than the goal of defeating Japan that the wartime alliance only temporarily narrowed the distance between China and the United States, but eventually led to a long-term confrontation between the two countries.
In general, the aid China received from foreign countries during the War of Resistance Against Japan was quite limited, totaling only about 1.1 billion US dollars. Using extremely limited equipment and materials to fight against a large number of enemies was a situation that did not exist in any theater during World War II. At the same time, as a weak country without unity, it is difficult for China to find a stable ally, and it is difficult for other countries to regard China as a reliable partner. This makes China's experience in seeking foreign assistance and cooperation full of hardships.
(Source: CCP Party History Research Publication Date: 2007 Issue 5)
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