Thanks for the explanation, I don't have much background knowledge on the Sino-Japanese War. So would an ATL Sino-Japanese war where either: A) The Burma Road stays open, or B) a naval power allies with China and somehow keeps the southern ports open enable the NRA to launch more counter-attacks, leading to less communist base areas?
a) Tricky, since by that point the ROC were pushed back to the western and southwestern part of the country, and most of the bigger Communist Base Areas were in the north; however, with the Burma Road open, you could very well see stiffer Chinese resistance during Ichi-Go (if that still happens) and a counterattack that probably reaches Guangzhou by the time Japan surrenders; [1]
b) Hooo boy, if a naval power's ballsy enough to force the Japanese blockade before 1941, you just might butterfly away the entire Pacific War...
[1] I am of course basing this on the assumption that Chiang Kai-shek would want to recapture a southern port to enable easier resupplying after the IJN lost offensive capabilities post-Philippines Sea.
How would the war have changed if the Nationalists hadn't flooded the Yellow River in '38?
IOTL the subsequent floods turned a good portion of Henan Province into impassable terrain for mechanised forces, which delayed Japanese advances by at least three months as they reorient their offensive.
Without breaking the dykes, they would lose Wuhan much earlier, and with it most of their (meagre) industry and combat-effective field formations.
The massive power vacuum created by the Japanese surrender seemed to be a major contributing factor, but changing that requires differences in the war that may be difficult or impossible. No matter how well the Chinese nationalists played their hand, the hand they were dealt was a poor one that constrained their options. I'm trying to figure out how the communists would either A) lose the civil war or B) be too weak to start one without boiling everything down to muh land reform.
There are a few contributing factors for the CPC victory, so I guess we can work our way backwards:
a) Manchuria: as soon as August Storm halted, Mao sent a massive amount of his available forces and a host of cadres into the former Manchukuo, with the Soviets turning a blind eye on that and doing everything they can to block the National Revolutionary Army out. This allowed the CPC to take over IJA warehouses and a MASSIVE amount of supplies (I'm talking stuff like tonne upon tonnes of rifles, MGs, artillery pieces, ammunition, even a squadron or more of IJAAF warplanes), as well as a huge pool of recruits in the form of the former Manchukuo Defence Force. [1]
b) the Soviets ran a lot of interference for them i.e. blocking the National Revolutionary Army from entering Manchuria until the CPC's set up shop, as well as providing crucial training for the CPC about how to operate army-sized formations (prior to 1946, most of the forces loyal to CPC were guerrillas specialising in small-unit actions);
c) American negligence and disinterest: i) cultural differences, coupled with heavily-biased reports by people like John Service and Joseph Stilwell, turned the American leadership against Chiang; [2] ii) a misguided attempt to foster inter-party cooperation between the KMT and CPC, without realising CPC ain't interested in anything but total domination; iii) George Marshall's interference came at the worst possible time - another month of NRA offensive, and Lin Biao would've been force out of Manchuria proper and into the USSR;
d) the KMT government was so desperate to rebuild the country they unilaterally demobilised a significant portion of their force quickly, without properly planning the whole thing. [3] It led to a dangerous drop in troop morale and unit cohesiveness; as well, many of the pro-NRA wartime guerrillas were let go without proper compensation, and the former Collaborationist Army were shunned by NRA leadership; the CPC, of course, weren't as scrupulous about that, so...
e) ROC government incompetence and corruption: much as I'd loathe to admit it, it's a thing, and some of the officials [4] acted like utter assholes during the takeover of formerly-occupied territories; this turned a lot of the intelligentsia to the CPC (which, of course, they'll come to regret come 1957)...
f) "muh land reform": in actuality, it's less an economic move than a political one; what they did was to make the peasants participate in violence against former landowners, then threaten them with consequences of what would happen should the KMT win; it's essentially a Proof of Loyalty that dates back to the classic novel
The Water Margin. [5]
g) when the IJA in China was ordered to lay down their arms, they were also ordered to assemble along railway lines and transportation hubs; this created a vacuum in the countryside which the CPC took full advantage of
[1] I don't have statics on me right now, but former MDF personnel were basically the muscle of Lin Biao Northeast Field Army (later Fourth Field Army) that conquered everything from Manchuria to southwestern China
[2] I'll be the first to admit Chiang is not the most pleasant of man to deal with, and corruption and incompetence is in fact a problem within the ROC government; however, it is also important to remember that up until 1937, the ROC government in Nanjing only have effective control over a few provinces in Central China and on the eastern coast, and that until 1950, the NRA (later the ROC Army) was more a coalition of the (not necessarily) willing than a lean mean fighting machine...
[3] Contrary to the whole "dem mad KMT capitalist dogs will not stop waging war on muh proletariat" CPC propaganda; yeah, I know, I was surprised too;
[4] The so called "High Fives", named so because they get these five things: positions (inside the government), nice houses, cars, women and gold bars;
[5] Like when you join the Mob, the bosses might make you kill a cop to make sure you're not an undercover cop or something;
I should specify that by Sichuan troops I meant some scenario where a portion of the best equipped, German-trained divisions that were sacrificed at Shanghai OTL somehow made a fighting retreat to the KMT base area in Sichuan intact, then formed the core of a more battle hardened NRA that retook territory faster than OTL.
While saving more of the German-trained divisions earlier on may further delay the IJA, and the personnel from said divisions were, on average, better trained than their counterparts, ultimately it wouldn't matter once Germany cut off arms shipments; indeed, prior to the Burma Campaign (1942), Chinese corps (their basic tactical unit) were mostly Soviet- or indigenous-armed; and as the war drew to its conclusion, the Five Great Hosts (TM) of the NRA gradually received American training and equipment (SUN Li-jen's New I Corps and LIAO Yaoxiang's New VI Corps) [1] or at least American equipment (QIU Qingquan's V Corps, HU Lien's XVIII Corps and ZHANG Lingfu's LXXIV Corps).
[1] aka. X Force in India
Marc A