QUOTE=renrich;527172]" Most of Mao's forces, however spent the war struggling to feed themselves and survive, skirmishing only spasmodically with the Japanese. Today, the myth of Communist dominance of the struggle against the occupiers is discredited even in China. If Chiang's armies were less than effective on the battlefield. Mao's guerillas lacked either the will or the combat power to do more than irritate the Japanese. By 1944, 70 per cent of Japan's forces in China were committed against the Nationalists. A staff officer at Japan's army headquarters in Nanjing, Maj. Shigeru Funaki, said: 'The Communists operated in regions that were strategically unimportant to us.Their troops were much more motivated than the Nationalists, but we sought only to contain them. Our attention was overwhelmingly concentrated on confronting Chiang's forces further south."
"The Communists were not strong enough to offer a major challenge to the Japanese occupation," says a modern Chinese historian, Yang Jinghua. "In the anti-japanese war the Kuomintang did most of the fighting and killed far more of the enemy--- I say this, as a Communist Party member for 30 years. Statistics tell the story. Some 1200 KMT generals died fighting the Japanese, against just ten Communist ones." Page 405, "Retribution," Max Hastings, copyright, 2007. Joe Stilwell and the British Generals in the CBI would probably disagree with your evaluation of the KMT's contributions toward winning the war against Japan.[/QUOTE]
Ren
Your comments are not valid for the fighting prior to June 1941. In that period, the Communists fought more battles than the nationalists, and inflicted more casualties on the Japanese than did the KMT. There 14 major battles, of which 5 are considered Chinese victories. Threee of those battles were fought and won by the Communists, including the largest single victory by the Chinesse until the great batles in central China that virtually destroyed the Japanese forces in that region. I have mentioned this battle before, it is called the "Battle Of the 100 regiments" and resulted in approximately 50000 unrecoverable casualties for the japanese.
The reason for the greater level of activity in the Communist camp is twofold. Until well into the war (before 1940), the Nationalists were concentrating the majority of their efforts in defeating the Communists rather than fighting the Japanese. However, much of their foreign aid was linked to the proviso that they fight the Japanese rather than pursue the Communists. By comparison, the Communists concentrated most of their efforts on fighting the Japanese.....not because they were interested in achieving a coherent national defence, but simply because in the initial phases of the war the Japanese concentrated thei attacks in the North, where the Communists were ensconced (I admit that the very early battles around Peking are the exception to this, but after the retreat of the Nationalists to Chungking, the Japanese operations were directed almost completely, for a while, against the Communist strongholds).
The second reason for the greater Communist effort and effect lay in their better access to arms. Up to June 1941, the Soviets were heavily supporting the Communists (who at that time did not include Mao, who had been relegated to a second line position in the hierchy by the Soviet dominated politburo. Mao never forgot or forgave that action by the Russians). After 1941 the situation was reversed, with the nationailist having the greates access to wepons, via the allied airlift over the "Hump".
Even so, the Communists, now under Mao conducted operations strongly reminiscent to the Spanish irregular campaign during the napoleonic wars. It is true that in this period 1941-45 the Communists did not engage in any major campaigns against the Japanese, until 1945, when they supported the Russian attacks into Manchuria and Northern China. There was much activity expended in wresting provincila control from the Nationalists.
I dont doubt that the sources you are quoting would support the line that it was the nationalists who were the major protagonists of the war, and from 1941 this was in fact th case.....the Chinese lacked the resources to dictate the initiative, and were forced, as a result of resources and their peculiar doctrines, to merely react to Japanese initiatives. Because the Communists no longer controlled areas that were vital to the japanese, and because the Communists had inflicted a number of nasty defeats on the japanese earlier in the war, before 1941, and because the KMT was now th greatest threat to Japanese interwsts, courtesy of Allied aid, and air activity, the Japanese naturally concentrated the majority of their efforts on the KMT. The trend that had been set prior to 1941 (with the Communists doing the lions share of the effective fighting) was now reversed.....nearly all the major battles fought, were now fought between Japan and the KMT.
Wiki has this to say with respect to the effectiveness of the CCP forces:
During the Sino-Japanese War, Mao Zedong's strategies were opposed by both Chiang Kai-shek and the United States. The US regarded Chiang as an important ally, able to help shorten the war by engaging the Japanese occupiers in China. Chiang, in contrast, sought to build the ROC army for the certain conflict with Mao's communist forces after the end of World War II. This fact was not understood well in the US, and precious lend-lease armaments continued to be allocated to the Kuomintang. In turn, Mao spent part of the war (as to whether it was most or only a little is disputed) fighting the Kuomintang for control of certain parts of China. Both the Communists and Nationalists have been criticised for fighting amongst themselves rather than allying against the Japanese Imperial Army. Some argue, however, that the Nationalists were better equipped and fought more against Japan.[20]
In 1944, the Americans sent a special diplomatic envoy, called the Dixie Mission, to the Communist Party of China. According to Edwin Moise, in Modern China: A History 2nd Edition:
Most of the Americans were favorably impressed. The CPC seemed less corrupt, more unified, and more vigorous in its resistance to Japan than the Guomindang. United States fliers shot down over North China...confirmed to their superiors that the CPC was both strong and popular over a broad area. In the end, the contacts with the USA developed with the CPC led to very little.
My opinion is that with Russia engaged in the war against Japan, the CCP would be less concerned about scrounging for resources, and more concerned about prosecuting the war against Japan more effectively. I believe they would have continued their effective "major battle" campaigns, rather than being forced into the realm of the "poor mans war" that they were after 1941. Japan could not sustain the casualties she suffered against the communists as demonstrated by their reaction to the 100 regiments defeat (they stopped attacking the communists after that and decided to concentrate on the weaker, less effective KMY....another reason why the KMT was the object of most Japanese attacks after 1941), so the logical conclusion to draw is that if Russia was involved in the war, the Communists would be re-invigorated to continue their successful land campaigns, and would drive the japanese to an even quicker defeat.
There is only one flaw in all of this. The Russians did not support Mao, rather they supported a politburo opposed to Mao. Mao may not have emerged as the leader of the CCP (after his temporary eclipse in the late '30s), but then the Russian demonstated their flexibility her by working with Tito and the western allies during the war, so I dont see too much problem in this respect either