h i s t o r y
Japan attacked in 1937 because its leaders were afraid that Chiang would succeed in building a strong army and state in an alliance with one or several Western powers. This was Tokyo’s nightmare scenario: a strengthened China that could help to contain Japan on behalf of the West. Tokyo’s paranoia in 1937–8 did not much concern itself with which Western power would confront it – Germany and the USSR at first figured as prominently as the United States and Britain. What mattered was that a Chinese revival would benefit Japan’s potential enemies.
The Japanese casus belli also explains why this deeply unnecessary war proved so hard to settle. At first, in 1937 and 1938, Tokyo believed that total victory was in sight, as more and more territory was conquered and the Chinese forces were driven further and further west. The Japanese therefore pressed on, even though their China experts warned of a military quagmire ahead. And in 1939 and 1940, as that quagmire had become a reality, with Japanese losses rising and Chinese resistance becoming fiercer, Chiang Kai-shek saw no reason to settle, since he no longer believed that sacrificing territory would buy peace.
Chiang had another reason to hold out. He was sure that the United States would soon enter the war and China would gain a powerful ally. When Japan finally committed the ultimate strategic folly and attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, Chiang’s thoughts – committed to his diary – were similar to those of Winston Churchill half a world away: he went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.
The Sino-Japanese War was in effect two wars – one before and one after December 1941. Access to Allied supplies and Allied strategic advice made it easier for China to resist Japan, in spite of the many disagreements between Chiang and his mainly American sponsors about how best to fight. It is true, as Mitter points out, that China kept losing the war after 1941. But it did so at a slower rate than before and at a greater cost to Japan. This was of course why Chiang received so much US aid (though infinitely less than Britain and the Soviets): President Roosevelt funded Chiang not because he thought the Chinese would win the war, but because they held down about a third of the fighting strength of the Japanese imperial army, troops that otherwise would have been fighting the Americans in the Pacific.
The Japanese atrocities against Chinese civilians play an important role in the book. All sides in the war committed atrocities: at least half a million Chinese civilians drowned in 1938 when Chiang Kai-shek ordered the Yellow River’s floodgates opened to halt the Japanese advance. But the indiscriminate Japanese massacres of innocent people in Nanjing and elsewhere in China are in a class of their own. They were done as retaliation and by an occupying power already in control, as were the horrific ‘experiments’ carried out by Japanese doctors on Chinese prisoners throughout the war.
The matter of Chinese collaboration is an important one and Mitter deals with it well in his book. His conclusion is striking: just as in German-occupied eastern Europe, a lot more people wanted to collaborate and would have done so if only the occupiers had made it easier for them to. Instead Japan, like Germany, put in place policies directed against the local population that quickly eroded any support a quisling government might have gained. It is still remarkable that – according to recent research in China – more Chinese in uniform died fighting for Japan than against Japan in the Sino-Japanese War. These figures obviously include Chinese from Japanese-controlled Taiwan and Manchuria, but even so the numbers are striking.
That people were willing – if not always able – to collaborate tells us something important about the war. Chiang’s government fought in ways that alienated significant groups among the population it claimed to protect. The price China’s government paid for its survival was very high – probably so high that it contributed to the government’s downfall four years after the war ended and its replacement, through force, by a new dictatorial communist regime. Rana Mitter’s wonderful book gives us the story of Chinese heroism, of an almost unique ability to thrive in adversity and survive against the odds. But it also reminds us about the terrible cost for China of fighting the war, in both lives lost and opportunities squandered. To order this book for £20, see the Literary Review Bookshop on page 38
THE UNIVERSITY OF BUCKINGHAM MA in biography Consistently rated ‘excellent’ by external examiners and inspectors
The course will be taught by Jane Ridley and is based in London. Available full-time (12 months) or part-time, by research or as a taught MA. Courses start October or January. For more information visit www.buckingham.ac.uk/london/biography or email jane.ridley@buckingham.ac.uk d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 3 / j a n u a r y 2 0 1 4 | Literary Review 11
