All the KMT army is made of German trained divisions. How does this affect the war with Japan?

You mean keep them away from the Hanyang Arsenal.
Well, assuming the Hanyang Arsenal is able to manufacture complete armoured vehicles including ordnance & radios, trucks and other supporting logistics vehicles, cranes, railway components & construction elements, fuel, spare parts plus educate large numbers of mechanics, drivers, gunners, etc then yes. Otherwise we’re basically discussing how to equip the WW2 USA from Springfield Arsenal.

Edited to add: I may have misunderstood you. For Panzers etc the arsenal would not be significant, for basic weapons and especially ammunition it would probably make a useful contribution. But what China needed was the output of e.g. a small modern mid-thirties car factory making weapons from mostly the forties, which is a little ASB. Not sure you could churn out the required quantities with hand labour or old repurposed tooling. Thousands of sten guns per day, not hundreds of rifles.
This has been basic doctrine since at least Roman times, probably Sumerian. It's preferred to land at the lightest defended location practical. Sometimes it's not practical & a beach must be crossed against a strong defense. There is a misapprehension assualting a fortified beach is amphibious warfare. That is a subset of the broader set of amphibious or Littoral Warfare.

Most of the details and doctrines for Littoral/amphibious warfare lie outside the narrow context of a beach assualt. In that the USN was as well developed as the IJN. In technical details the Brits had not gained anything, perhaps athropied, but in overarching doctrine for Littoral Warfare they were still ahead of everyone. Five centuries of experience in naval warfare gave them that.
This is educational. A bit of a hijack but in the modern era are there practical crossover points when opposed landings became infeasible/feasible against a peer opponent? My gut feel is that after machineguns became widely available things were offensively pretty sticky until the development of specialised craft/vehicles in early WW2.
More directly related to the topic, were the Japanese so shockingly incompetent it would have prevented them from operations against the Chinese coast similar to what they did OTL and the Allies did up the Italian coast?
Again off topic, but if they had such good doctrine what on earth caused the Brits to have so many moments when they went near a coastline from 1939 through to about 43? Norway, Greece, Dieppe, Dodecanese, its a bit depressing even without considering the Far East. Just poor judgement or desperation/winston overriding better judgement?
 
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Those are all completely valid points, but comparing late thirties Japan to mid-war Allies seems a bit pointless. In mid to late thirties I think it’s fair to say that an opposed amphibious landing was fairly suicidal for anyone (indeed, I’d argue that an opposed landing is always a fairly desperate act). Doctrine elsewhere was mostly pure theory or obsolete experience. No-one had specialist equipment, other than the IJN. Later on things got more sophisticated but an enormous component of that sophistication was still “deploy overwhelming force, firepower and logistics and pray it doesn’t somehow turn into a disaster”.
The Japanese may not have fully put it together but in operations like Tarawa and Dieppe the Allies showed they hadn’t either. Early on the basic approach of “turn up by surprise at a weakly defended location, get ashore, fuck them up before they get ready” was as good as it got, and the Japanese could at least do it and had practiced. I’m not convinced the UK or US could have done any better in 1937 than the Japanese did at Shanghai, at least without loooong period of prep time. Being aggressive warmongers has the advantage of giving you a head start in some things.

And for operations in China you may be entirely correct, the Chinese likely lack the resources to fortify their coats so Japan never develops more than some guys with rifles in boats. But from a few accounts these troops were mediocre once ashore, shooting civilians was about the best they did, faced with real opposition the SLF often fell apart. In any event the Chinese have better chances of keeping the Treaty ports open since Japan should be facing less hollowed out and distracted European forces and an unknown American meddling. To get the KMT its Army we have altered Europe.
 
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This is educational. A bit of a hijack but in the modern era are there practical crossover points when opposed landings became infeasible/feasible against a peer opponent? My gut feel is that after machineguns became widely available things were offensively pretty sticky until the development of specialised craft/vehicles in early WW2.

The details of tactics always have to be adjusted to deal with new weapons. First it was skilled rock throwers, then well trained javelin hurlers, after many centuries disciplined archers with high powered bows, now in recent years rapid-fire guns. But, its always the same problem, getting through enemy projectiles to kill or chase them away.

More directly related to the topic, were the Japanese so shockingly incompetent it would have prevented them from operations against the Chinese coast similar to what they did OTL and the Allies did up the Italian coast?

No, the Japanese were not incompetent at all, the operational circumstances allowed landing at lightly or un defended locations and maneuvering inland to seize the objectives of the amphib op. The poor quality of the Chinese leaders/soldiers allowed doing this with relatively light landing parties. If the Chinese defense had been otherwise the Japanese would have tried to adapt. The successes of that would depend on their choices at the moment & not necessarily on some inherent quality.


Again off topic, but if they had such good doctrine what on earth caused the Brits to have so many moments when they went near a coastline from 1939 through to about 43? Norway, Greece, Dieppe, Dodecanese, its a bit depressing even without considering the Far East. Just poor judgement or desperation/winston overriding better judgement?

The short answer is poor technical execution. A longer answer does involve bad decisions made at the top. Many of those operations were forced through in a bad way where better execution was possible. Contrast the plan for Op RUTTER vs JUBALIE. The first is a reasonable plan, the second was 'inadequate', but ordered forward anyway. many of the operations of those years were well planned, but the wherewithal was lacking. There is also the long term problem everyone had of underfunding interwar, and impossible choices in priorities 1938-42.
 
And for operations in China you may be entirely correct, the Chinese likely lack the resources to fortify their coats so Japan never develops more than some guys with rifles in boats. But from a few accounts these troops were mediocre once ashore, shooting civilians was about the best they did, faced with real opposition the SLF often fell apart
Hmm. And yet these mediocre guys with rifles in boats were within a few years carrying out well-organised landings in the Philippines and Malaya against resistance that while feeble was still probably more than even much-improved Chinese could rustle up. That’s not even mentioning the warships and carrier aviation they were using in China. This is all a bit of a side track from the main issue, but in general I think it’s unwise to work on the assumption that once the Chinese army is improved a bit it’s just a handwave for the Japanese to go away and stop bothering the coast, when it was always an area where they could pick their battles and leverage an existing asset the Chinese couldn’t match.
Similarly for air forces. Working the kmt army up to a level that can bleed the Japanese army is fairly manageable but I can’t see a way through to neutralising the Japanese air advantage without either foreign direct intervention or a very long timeframe.

So it then the question is, if the Chinese strategy is to tar-baby the Japanese to exhaustion while humiliating them in the odd pitched battle (which I think would certainly work in the line run), how long does it take for the Japanese to either:
  1. give up and go home
  2. Get desperate and escalate in China (gas, plague, etc)
  3. Get desperate and escalate outside China
and which one do they opt for? OTL I believe they went for option 2 before an opportunity presented itself for 3, which is worrying. I think the Japanese were pretty badly equipped for chemical/biological warfare which might mitigate the damage somewhat, but they could still target the civpop. Might that be enough to trigger foreign intervention if there are no distractions in Europe? Abyssinia isn’t an encouraging precedent but that was mostly about European realpolitik. The US could use the embargo weapon and still keep clear of direct foreign entanglements.
 
Very interesting...

...Chiang at various times used the Russians, the Germans and the Americans. He could have imported arms from Germany through Rickmers Rhederei /Rickmers Linie which imported five and other oriental products to Hamburg and Bremerhaven. I have examined the potential effects of a near-alliance between the Kuomintang and Germany, notably in terms of giving the Kriegsmarine ports in China. Japan nearly missed the boat with Hitler and might have lost most of its Chinese possessions. That has implications in terms of Chinese relations with Standard Oil and the US government. Japan might have to look elsewhere for its Empire and resources.
 
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