Latest Possible Nationalist Victory in China?
- Thread starter Superman
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Victory for the Nationalists was probably technically possible as late as 1946, even after they'd made a plethora of mistakes, but realistically impossible. I'd pin the pivotal mistake on Jiang Jieshi's 1945 decision to use surrendered Japanese-collaborationist warlord forces for security (this would be the equivalent of Stalin deciding to post surrendered German/SS troops for garrison duty in Russia), which pretty much killed any remaining popular support for him.
I'd say the same, but the key here is preventing entirely any chance of Mao getting access to the population centers in the Yellow River valley. Even factoring in the issues you mentioned, if there doesn't exist a plausible alternative to Chiang (which means the Communists), I think he'll hold on, however tenuously. But the people would go over to Mao in a heartbeat.
Probably, though for best results, you probably should kill him while he's still in Jiangxi, so the PLA can fall apart properly.
My reading is that the key turning point was more the loss of the best Nationalist armies in Manchuria (along with all of the equipment the Communists captured.) And a lot of the reason the Communist offensives in the Huanghe valley were successful was because the best Nationalist armies had been sent from there to Manchuria. If Jiang Jieshi had abandoned Manchuria and focused his forces on securing the rest of China proper, he'd have a pretty good chance of pulling that off I think, but that sort of decision probably wasn't in his character.
Any Nationalist 'victory' in the civil war at this point is going to be very messy, very bloody, and pretty disastrous. The Communists did not win so much as the Nationalists lost, and a surviving Nationalist China is going to be corrupt to the bone and see periodic pro-Communist uprisings by the peasantry unless true reform is conducted.
Unlikely for a WWII death. It's questionable that the disarray would be that significant or damaging, and the decentralized nature of guerrilla warfare and the lack of real pressure on the Communist bases means that it wouldn't have that large of an effect. Zhou Enlai or someone else would take over, and may even have been better than Mao in many aspects.
If you want a post-1945 PoD you probably want less Soviet help to Mao, which isn't totally impossible considering that Stalin and Mao didn't always see eye-to-eye and Soviet-Chiang relations weren't as bad as they seemed at first glance. The two also had a mutual enemy in Japan, which certainly had the potential for resurgence even after the destruction in 1945.
Things like Soviets thoroughly scavenging and keeping all captured machinery to themselves, directly returning Manchuria to the Nationalists rather than evacuating it and allowing Communists to enter - that sort of stuff could strangle the Communist movement early in the Chinese Civil War, whether they had popular support or not.
A stronger move by the USSR and the USA to force negotiations could also leave Chiang with most of China and Mao with Manchuria... which wouldn't be such a raw deal since Manchuria was really the only industrial part of China at the time.
Things like Soviets thoroughly scavenging and keeping all captured machinery to themselves, directly returning Manchuria to the Nationalists rather than evacuating it and allowing Communists to enter - that sort of stuff could strangle the Communist movement early in the Chinese Civil War, whether they had popular support or not.
A stronger move by the USSR and the USA to force negotiations could also leave Chiang with most of China and Mao with Manchuria... which wouldn't be such a raw deal since Manchuria was really the only industrial part of China at the time.
The Soviets didn't really even help Mao that much is the thing. As far as I'm aware, the main thing they did was let the Communists have the captured Japanese weapon stockpiles, which cost them nothing. Even in 1946, Stalin was only giving a bit of aid to the Communists more as a negotiating technique to "keep the Nationalists honest", and thought that they had little chance of winning.
Scavenging and keeping captured machinery: This actually happened. Almost all of the Manchurian industrial base was shipped off by the Soviets to rebuild after World War II.
Directly returning Manchuria to the Nationalists: Also essentially happened. The Soviets let Jiang Jieshi airlift troops into the Manchurian cities and applied pressure to the Communists not to obstruct railway transport, even applying pressure to get the Communists to withdraw from the critical railway corridors.
The end result was, of course, that the troops in question were eventually cut off and forced to surrender (about 3-4 years later.)
The last year would be 1946. A combination of Jiang not wasting his best armies in Manchuria and full US support for the Nationalists (not killing Nationalist morale and momentum through US sponsored ceasefires; full military aid rendered - no embragoes; US advisors at battalion level and up as recommended by Wedemeyer), and it's possible the Chinese Communists would either be destroyed south of the Yellow River, south of the Great Wall, or even destroyed entirely. That would leave the Nationalists in control anywhere from The Yellow River to the Manchurian border.
Most likely Chiang would also need to implement critical reforms now rather than wait until after the Communists are defeated. A single payroll for the army, financial reform to stop inflation, and a comprehensive land reform (all of which he did once he only had Taiwan and there were no more regional rivals to deal with) would eliminate a lot of the problems he had.
This is easy to see in retrospect, but probably not very realistic. Perhaps if Dewey had won in 1944 and the Republicans were responsible for foreign policy.
Most likely Chiang would also need to implement critical reforms now rather than wait until after the Communists are defeated. A single payroll for the army, financial reform to stop inflation, and a comprehensive land reform (all of which he did once he only had Taiwan and there were no more regional rivals to deal with) would eliminate a lot of the problems he had.
This is easy to see in retrospect, but probably not very realistic. Perhaps if Dewey had won in 1944 and the Republicans were responsible for foreign policy.
Could they have done this knowing that Mao's forces could then cut them off and capture them? Or weren't they that forward thinking? It seems like Jiang could have smelled a trap realistically (though it's also easy to see how a general can get overly excited and take advantage of that opportunity without thinking it could be a trap
The Soviets weren't intending it as a trap. They genuinely wanted to get on Jiang's good side since they did not expect the Communists to win. As it is, it took the Communists three years to take Manchuria.
If there was a trap, it was of Jiang Jieshi's own creation - he tended to be too focused on popular centers/cities/industry sites with the result that they were inevitably cut off and forced to surrender.
And what would this achieve, besides the destruction of the US force?
Given how desperately corrupt Chiang's regime was, I'd be tempted to say that the latest possible date is when he took over the KMT. (Jiang, GMD, mutatis mutandis)
Chiang himself was personally not corrupt. And the KMT regime tended to provide much better governance in the areas it controlled than the warlords it replaced. Only a few warlords could be said to have governed equally effectively or better than the KMT - Yan Xishan, Li Zongren, and Long Yun.
Corruption was bad compared to Western countries prior to the Sino-Japanese War, but it was getting much better. There was real improvement during the Nanking Decade.
However, the Chinese economy suffered greatly because of the war, and especially after the Burma Road was cut, China was no longer self sufficient. Shortages were high. The KMT government did what lots of governments do during such situations - they turn on the printing press and cause high inflation which just ruins the economy even more. It was only really in 1943 onwards that corruption really killed the KMT. However, I doubt few governments in the exact same situation could have done much better.
Chiang's major problem is that he failed to adequately punish those who were known to be corrupt. He knew how close he had come to defeat during the Central Plains War when he prematurely tried to reform the army. He knew he could only afford reform once he was politically secure (by having the dominant military) and favored incompetents and thieves whom he knew to be loyal to competent, honest men who were not.
Yet once he was in position that he no longer relied on the support of regional powers (when he was alone in Taiwan without any warlords), he quickly cleaned house.
It's important to note the terrible damage that corruption did to the KMT's repuation in the later half of WWII and the Civil War, but also note that the level was tolerable during the Nanking Decade and disappeared completely on Taiwan. It's not a simple story.
In early 1947, the Nationalists discover that Xiong Xiang-hui is a Communist spy, so they don't tell him about their planned attack on Yan'an--and he can't tip off Mao. I realize that there will still be many Communist base areas left, but capturing Yan'an with Mao, Zhou and Zhu De still in it (as well as a large Communist field formation) will be an immense victory. (In OTL of course, the GMD captured an empty town, the CCP's leaders having had ample time to flee.) See my post at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/bRd435TZ8UI/gAX41Pn1eKgJ