Better KMT Performace During Civil War?

Drakker

Banned
What would have been nessacary for the National Revolutionary Army to do better in the Chinese Civil War, particularly in the stage after WW2 when it all fell apart? I know the officer corps was extraordinarily corrupt, but it seems like they let chance after chance to crush the communists fall through their fingers. How could they had done better, and if they had would we be looking at a partitioned mainline(Communists in the north and west with capital at Beijing, ROC in the south and east with the capital at Nanking/Nanjing maybe?)
 
The best bet is to avoid the cease-fire that gave the Communists time to regroup and consolidate Manchuria. Now the CCP still enjoys enough support and strength of underground organizations that it'll be very difficult to defeat them outright, but they can be prevented from gaining the strategic initiate that allowed them to go from Changchun to Guangdong in less than two years.

A rough border at the Great Wall, with sporadic fighting in North China and terrorist attacks in the south is the likely outcome of better Nationalist performance.
 
Pre-WWII:
No communist purge. Continued strong alliance with the USSR.
or
Buying more time as the Germans help mechanise Chinese divisions

Post-WWII:
No NRA deployments to Manchuria, bolstering borders along Yangtze/Huanghe River
 

Drakker

Banned
Pre-WWII:
No communist purge. Continued strong alliance with the USSR.
or
Buying more time as the Germans help mechanise Chinese divisions

Post-WWII:
No NRA deployments to Manchuria, bolstering borders along Yangtze/Huanghe River

Did the NRA have much in the way of mechanized divisions even with German aid? I know they had some Panzer II's (I think) and M24 Chaffee scout tanks, but I was under the impression this was more of an infantry affair. And yeah, digging in along the river makes sense
 

Drakker

Banned
The best bet is to avoid the cease-fire that gave the Communists time to regroup and consolidate Manchuria. Now the CCP still enjoys enough support and strength of underground organizations that it'll be very difficult to defeat them outright, but they can be prevented from gaining the strategic initiate that allowed them to go from Changchun to Guangdong in less than two years.

A rough border at the Great Wall, with sporadic fighting in North China and terrorist attacks in the south is the likely outcome of better Nationalist performance.

So almost like a Korean Peninsula situation only supersized?
 
Most of Chiang's mistakes after WWII was based on his assumption he could quickly wipe out the CCP and then institute any reforms afterwards. That proved wrong. Chiang would need to understand that there will be no quick victory over the CCP, and that his strategy needs to be based on a long war.

  • No demobilization of warlord troops after WWII. That provided the CCP with a lot of willing recruits who didn't care about ideology, but simply wanted a job.
  • Institute central payroll of soldiers. That would eliminate most of the corruption plaguing the army and ensure the ordinary soldier got paid.
  • Institute effective economic reform. The hyperinflation of the last years of the war destroyed whatever credibility and prestige the KMT had left.
  • Write off Manchuria and concentrate on wiping out the Communists south of the Great Wall.



The easiest way to secure a KMT victory is to avoid the Xi'an Incident in 1936. Without that, the KMT had a very good chance at wiping out the Yenan Soviet in early 1937. The CCP was very weak at this point. Chiang proved in the Fifth Encirclement Campaign that his armies could now defeat the Communists. While some of the CCP leadership and rank would survive, they wouldn't have a base area. The only remaining CCP unit would be those members who had stayed behind during the Long March who would become the New Fourth Army. The resulting changes would make it extremely unlikely the CCP would emerge as a major force after the Sino-Japanese War.
 
The best bet is to avoid the cease-fire that gave the Communists time to regroup and consolidate Manchuria.

See my posts at
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=10291583&postcount=22 and https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=10292027&postcount=24 for counter-arguments that the cease-fire made little difference.

Chiang's big mistake was not the cease-fire but simply getting so many of his troops tied down in Manchuria in the first place. If Marshall is to be blamed for anything, it should not be for the cease-fire but for (initially) encouraging Chiang to send troops to Manchuria. See Jay Taylor's discussion of this in *The Generalissimo*:

***

"The State Department’s White Paper, issued in 1949, declared that Chiang’s government “in occupying Manchuria took steps contrary to the advice of competent United States military observers who were aware that the Government could not reoccupy Manchuria and pacify the rest of China.” This claim is one of the most important unexamined, and incorrect, assumptions of the Chinese civil war. Wedemeyer did tell Chiang and the Pentagon in November 1945 that the Nationalists could not win in Manchuria and probably not in North China, but policymakers in Washington did not adopt this point of view. In addition, earlier that year Wedemeyer himself had been optimistic about the Nationalist Army’s prospects for dealing successfully with the Communists in the postwar period, including in Manchuria. Beginning with the negotiations on the Sino-Soviet treaty in the summer of 1945 in Moscow, the United States had made clear it wanted Chiang to take a tough stand in asserting Nationalist China’s sovereignty in Manchuria. After Japan’s surrender, America stood ready to transport almost a quarter million Nationalist soldiers to the region for this purpose and it completed the task during the Marshall Mission. At the beginning of the mission, the firmly, albeit privately, stated policy objective of Truman and Marshall was to support Chiang’s takeover of all of Manchuria while trying to prevent a civil war. To accomplish this goal, the United States sought to promote a coalition government, but did not make such a coalition a quid pro quo of U.S. assistance to Chiang. Marshall at first clearly encouraged Chiang to continue to try to assert his authority throughout the Northeast. Marshall’s original peace plan provided for a huge 14–1 advantage in government troop presence in Manchuria, and gave the Nationalist government the right to deploy its military anywhere in the region in order to establish its authority. Marshall even promised to find surplus winter clothing for the Nationalist troops heading north. As noted earlier, as far back as mid-November 1945, Chiang had decided tentatively to withdraw from Manchuria, but positive Soviet moves and Marshall’s initial steps and statements changed his mind.

"It was not until the spring of 1946 that Marshall began to tell Chiang he could not defeat the Communists in Manchuria, but even then, still believing a genuine coalition was possible, he did not urge Nationalist withdrawal from the region. Prior to Marshall’s arrival, Chiang had ranged from less to more pessimistic about Soviet cooperation in Manchuria and thus about his own prospects in the Northeast, and probably he would have withdrawn if Marshall, during their first meetings, had strongly echoed Wedemeyer’s advice.

"If Marshall had given this counsel, however, and Chiang had agreed, it would have saddled the United States with the responsibility for helping the Nationalists assert and maintain control along a line somewhere south of the Great Wall. America would have been caught up in the enormous civil war over whether there was to be one China under the Communists or two Chinas, and if two, where the lines between them would be drawn. Almost certainly, neither Marshall nor Truman had thought this through; they simply wanted the best of both worlds—to avoid getting caught up in the civil conflict while maintaining a united, non-Communist, non-Soviet, allied China that included Manchuria. Thus they pursued the chimera of the optimal solution: Mao’s abandonment of not only his revolutionary ideology, powerful army, and large territorial and population base, but also his support from China’s superpower neighbor, all in order to serve as junior partner in a democratic government and a truly amalgamated army under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek.

"Within weeks of Marshall’s arrival, Chiang began to fear that the Americans were headed down the path of appeasing the Communists, and he could have easily abandoned the struggle for Manchuria. It was primarily the Nationalist military victories in 1946 that misled Chiang into thinking he could hold the southern half of Manchuria, and he proceeded to pour in more and more troops for another almost two years, even when, beginning in early 1947, he again recognized that it was highly unlikely he could succeed. During the final and decisive 1948 Manchurian campaign from September to late October, Chiang, as usual, sent detailed instructions to the field commanders and often made it difficult for his senior commanders to give their subordinate generals tactical as well as strategic orders. But according to General Barr, “in spite of this unorthodox procedure,” the plans Chiang made and the orders he gave in the decisive battles for Manchuria in the fall of 1948 “were sound.” Had they been obeyed, the American general concluded, “the results probably would have been favorable.” Barr’s assessment seems highly doubtful given the powerful position the Chinese Communists with Soviet help had established in the region and the financial and moral decay within the Nationalist regime. But it does give some weight to the argument that had Chiang pulled out of Manchuria even as late as the spring of 1948, he might have had enough military strength to hold the line at either the Yellow River or the Yangtze, albeit only with large-scale U.S. military and economic aid." http://www.thegeneralissimo.net/excerpts.htm
 

Lateknight

Banned
Never should have formed a popular front in ww2 the communist just avoided fighting then stabbed the KMT in the back after they had done all the heavy lifting.
 
Never should have formed a popular front in ww2 the communist just avoided fighting then stabbed the KMT in the back after they had done all the heavy lifting.

The Second Popular Front (1937-41) was for the most part *before* the start of World War II--and had certainly broken down well before the Pacific War started:

"In the midst of the Second United Front, the Communists and the Kuomintang were still vying for territorial advantage in "Free China" (i.e. those areas not occupied by the Japanese or ruled by puppet governments). The uneasy alliance began to break down by late 1938 as a result of the Communists' efforts to aggressively expand their military strength through absorbing Chinese guerrilla forces behind enemy lines. For Chinese militia who refused to switch their allegiance, the CCP would call them "collaborators" and then attack to eliminate their forces. For example, the Red Army led by He Long attacked and wiped out a brigade of Chinese militia led by Zhang Yin-wu in Hebei in June, 1939.[5]

"The situation came to a head in late 1940 and early 1941 when there were major clashes between the Communist and KMT forces. In December 1940, Chiang Kai-shek demanded that the CCP’s New Fourth Army evacuate Anhui and Jiangsu Provinces. Under intense pressure, the New Fourth Army commanders complied, but they were ambushed by Nationalist troops and soundly defeated in January 1941. This clash, which would be known as the New Fourth Army Incident, weakened the CCP position in Central China and effectively ended any substantive co-operation between the Nationalists and the Communists and both sides concentrated on jockeying for position in the inevitable Civil War.[6] It also ended the Second united front formed earlier to fight the Japanese.[6]

"Afterwards, within the Japanese occupied provinces and behind enemy lines the KMT and CCP forces carried on warfare with each other, with the Communists eventually destroying or absorbing the KMT partisan forces or driving them into the puppet forces of the Japanese. The communists under the leadership of Mao Zedong also began to focus most of their energy on building up their sphere of influence wherever opportunities were presented, mainly through rural mass organizations, administrative, land and tax reform measures favoring poor peasants; while the KMT allocated many divisions of its regular army to carry out military blockade of the CCP areas in an attempt to neutralize the spread of Communist influence until the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War[7]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_United_Front

As for avoiding a united front in 1937-41, you have to remember that Chiang's power was not absolute, and that by 1936 not only popular opinion but even some warlords were demanding he stop appeasing the Japanese and reach some sort of agreement with the Communists. Incidentally, according to Jay Taylor, *The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China* (Harvard UP 2009) even before the kidnapping of Chang in the "Xi'an Incident" the KMT on the one hand and the CCP on the other, had already reached a preliminary agreement for a united front, with the KMT dropping its prior demand that Mao and Zhu De leave the country. http://books.google.com/books?id=03catqbPCmgC&pg=PA125 Thus Taylor concludes that the kidnapping itself did not change history: ..."if the kidnapping had not occurred, Mao, pushed by Stalin, would probably have agreed to a united front on the terms worked out by Chen Lifu, Zhang Qun, Zhou Enlai, and Pan Hannian--and if Stalin had then committed the Soviet Union in effect to a secret military alliance with China, Chiang would probably have called off the 'last five-minute' offensive, and the united front would still have begun. Thus the kidnapping itself did not change history; it was Chiang's decisions that shaped events." http://books.google.com/books?id=03catqbPCmgC&pg=PA136
 
Incidentally, although the Nationalists' chances of holding Manchuria were always problematic given Soviet aid to the CCP, the KMT might have had a better chance if Chiang had released the "Young Marshal" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Xueliang from house arrest and given him a major role in Manchuria. According to Jay Taylor, *The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China,* p. 315, "Bai Chongxi and others" did so recommend, but Chiang rejected their advice. Likewise, Brian Crozier writes in *The Man Who Lost China,* (p. 276) "...there was general agreement that the Young Marshal should be released and appointed overlord of Manchuria. For them the key argument was that nobody else could command as much support in Manchuria as as Chang Hsueh-liang [Zhang Xueliang]. But they had counted without Chiang Kai-shek's life-long vindictiveness towards the man who had 'rebelled' against him and--worse--kidnapped and humiliated him." It should be remembered that Chiang was not always so vindictive
toward former enemies. People like Feng Yuxiang (the "Christian General"), Yan Xishan (the "Model Governor"), the "New Guangxi Clique" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Guangxi_clique and Wang Jingwei--who had joined forces against Chiang in the "Central Plains War" of 1930--"reappeared over the years in his camp, sometimes only to fall out again" as Jonathan Fenby notes in *Chiang Kai-shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost,* p. 193. But apparently to Chiang, the Xi'an Incident was different, much worse than a mere "rebellion." (Anyway, in the 1930's Chiang's political base was too shaky to permit him to be vindictive against former enemies; in 1945, he felt more confident...)
 
That makes sense. The Nationalists did lose their best troops in Manchuria without being able to use them effectively (see the siege of Changchun), and it's not as though Chiang Kai-shek wasn't gearing up to crush the CCP between 1945 and 46.
 
Chiang shouldn't have held off on crushing Mao in Manchuria (partially Marshall's fault).

It would also have helped if the Communists did more in WWII rather than let the KMT bear the burden of most of the fighting. The Nationalist Army was badly beaten up after Operation Ichi-Go and the subsequent Chinese counteroffensive.
 
Chiang shouldn't have held off on crushing Mao in Manchuria (partially Marshall's fault).

It would also have helped if the Communists did more in WWII rather than let the KMT bear the burden of most of the fighting. The Nationalist Army was badly beaten up after Operation Ichi-Go and the subsequent Chinese counteroffensive.

That was the point. The Communists didn't want to dump lives just so the Nationalists could move in to crush them. Better to have the KMT exhaust themselves while they saved their strength.
 
The CCP was very weak at this point. Chiang proved in the Fifth Encirclement Campaign that his armies could now defeat the Communists. While some of the CCP leadership and rank would survive, they wouldn't have a base area. The only remaining CCP unit would be those members who had stayed behind during the Long March who would become the New Fourth Army. The resulting changes would make it extremely unlikely the CCP would emerge as a major force after the Sino-Japanese War.
Following on from this IIRC the main reason that the communists were able to escape during the Fifth Encirclement Campaign was thanks to forewarning from a senior spy Zhou Enlai was running in the KMT. If they were discovered and so couldn't warn the communists or were used, with or without their knowledge, to pass on false information it could potentially lead to the communist forces not being able to undertake the Long March to escape but being effectively wiped out. Even if Mao, who hadn't yet cemented his control of the part, or some of the other leaders did managed to escape with the loss of their armed forces they'd be of little consequence, giving the KMT the chance to rest and consolidate for a few years.
 
  • No demobilization of warlord troops after WWII. That provided the CCP with a lot of willing recruits who didn't care about ideology, but simply wanted a job.
  • Institute central payroll of soldiers. That would eliminate most of the corruption plaguing the army and ensure the ordinary soldier got paid.

Man, between this and the recent events in the Middle East and North Africa, it seems like demobilizing a recently defeated enemy army is never the right move.
 
Really? Didn't the KMT strike against the Communists first?Or am I getting my facts wrong?

This was the standard explanation told to people for most of the Cold War period. It is certainly what I was told whenever I asked about the Sino-Japanese War or Chinese Civil War. The story went: The Communists were the ones fighting the Japanese, and the KMT didn't; the KMT was more interested in fighting the Communist than the Japanese.

That's not true at all though. The Communists fought the Japanese in only a handful of battles throughout the entire war, and none of them was very large. The KMT did all of the heavy fighting. The Japanese never saw the Chinese Communists as a significant threat.

Chiang did attack the New 4th Army in January 1941, which the old narrative used to say Chiang attacked first, but in fact the Communists had stopped following the orders of the central government since the Battle of Wuhan in 1938.

The Communists disobeyed direct orders in violation of the United Front agreement. The Communists concentrated on building up Communist rule infrastructure instead of fighting the Japanese. And Communist guerrillas routinely went to war on Nationalist guerrillas behind Japanese lines to exterminate them so only Communists could be in control. There was sporadic fighting between Communists and Nationalists throughout the war, mainly initiated by the Communists.

When the New Fourth Army disobeyed orders for it to move, Chiang finally had enough of their mutinous behavior and authorized the army to attack it.

The Communists used it as huge propaganda.

American understanding of what was actually happening in China, and what the Chinese Communists were really like was greatly harmed because of some people'd dislike of Chiang, the pleasant personality of Zhou Enlai, the lack of knowledge about how Yenan Soviet was actually governed. A combination of actual Communist moles and Useful Idiots peddled the wrong story for decades.

Only in the past twenty years has the old story been slowly repudiated, but most people still remember and repeat what was told decades ago.
 
Once again, the notion thaat Chiang was on the verge of crushing Mao, and "held off" ignores that "Chiang’s armies faced logistical and manpower problems and that further advance might have fatally exposed Nationalist forces to Communist hit-and-run attacks..." https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=10291583&postcount=22

If it wasn't for the postwar delay, Chiang might have been able to destroy Mao before his army fully absorbed the Soviet training and Japanese weapons they took on at the end of WWII. The longer he waited, the stronger Mao got, and the KMT eventually paid the price.
 
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