1st September – 13th November 1944 – China – Part II – The Great Southern Offensive
The Great Southern Offensive had no other official codename, the designation Operation Summer Storm being the invention of some creative Kuomintang officers post war when being interviewed by western historians. The operation would involve nearly 500,000 Kuomintang soldiers, attacking along two main lines of advance with their main jumping off points being Guilin and Liuzhou. Facing them would be the Japanese 11th and 23rd Army Groups, who could muster less than 150,000 men between them. Simple numbers do not tell the whole story for either side as they prepared for battle. The morale and discipline of the Kuomintang troops was still suspect in many cases, but the same was also true of much of the opposing forces and the condition 23rd Army Group perfectly encapsulates the issues the Japanese forces in China as a whole faced [1].
23rd Army Group had been created in 1941 and had been intended to serve as a garrison force to discourage any attempted Allied landings in Southern China, though the circumstances that made this prospect more likely had also seen it starved of resources. By 1944 it was under the command of General Hisakazu Tanaka and it was obvious to any external observer that it had become something of an irrelevance and had failed utterly in its mission to deter the Allies after the successful British landings in Hong Kong, with 23rd Army taking no part in the fighting there because of the prospect of a Kuomintang offensive. 23rd Army had been repeatedly plundered for men and equipment in the face of Allied attacks in South East Asia and efforts to shore it up had left it reliant on the dregs of the IJA. Filled with poor quality Japanese recruits, Korean and Okinawan auxiliaries, and men from labour battalions suddenly thrust into the role of combat troops. its formations lacked cohesion, its morale was rock bottom, and it lacked the means to conduct proper training. Nothing about the 23rd Army inspired any confidence that it would be effective against even the Kuomintang, whom the Japanese continued to hold in contempt [2].
The 11th Army Group, under Lieutenant General Isamu Yokoyama, was in somewhat better condition, or had been prior to their involvement in the attack on Liuzhou, which had not only depleted their manpower and supplies but damaged their morale after being driven back by the Kuomintang. The British assault on Hong Kong had required 11th Army Group to deploy part of its strength to cover the possibility of a British assault out of Kowloon in the direction of Guangzhou, since in August this was still viewed as a far greater threat than the prospect of Chinese offensive. This was partly because General Yokoyama and his staff had tried to save face by claiming that they had inflicted far higher casualties on the Chinese during the battle of Liuzhou than they had taken, and it would be many months before the Kuomintang forces could be reorganized to take any sort of offensive action. Yokoyama was projecting his own problems onto his enemies, and this was always a dangerous approach, and in the case of the 11th Army it led to Yokoyama ignoring intelligence arriving at his HQ, some of it coming from the Chinese Communists, that a Chinese offensive was in the offing and none of this information was shared with his superiors [3].
The rapidly deteriorating situation in Hong Kong fixated the attention of all the Japanese forces in Southern China and at the end of August both 11th and 23rd Army Groups were making plans to redeploy further troops to cover the threat of a British breakout and they were taken completely by surprise when their positions facing Guilin and Liuzhou came under heavy artillery and air attacks starting just before dawn on the 1st of September. The attack on the Japanese position was launched by four Kuomintang divisions, with American organized and led armour leading the way. The Japanese forces at Hezhou and Wuzhou were caught completely off guard and while they did their best to hold they had little choice but to withdraw on the 2nd of September, barely escaping being flanked and cut off [4].
The overall Japanese command initially assumed that the initial Kuomintang attacks were diversionary in nature and while orders were issued to 23rd Army Group for a counterattack at Wuzhou this would be carried out by the 108th Infantry Regiment with little in the way of support. What armour the Japanese had available in the region had been concentrated towards Hong Kong as part of the preparations for the anticipated British offensive and would remain there practically until the Chinese forces were on the outskirts of Guangzhou, in no small part because a lack of fuel meant that repositioning them was out of the question. Despite the odds against them the 108th Infantry enjoyed some success and managed to push the Chinese forces out of the centre of Wuzhou. The blame for this can be laid at the door of rampant indiscipline among the troops who had followed up the spearheads and taken over control of the town. The Kuomintang troops were taken just as much by surprise when the 108th Infantry attacked on the 4th of September as the Japanese had been by the opening of the Chinese offensive. This success led to the Japanese overreaching. The 137th Infantry regiment, part of the 104th Infantry Division alongside the 108th Infantry Regiment, was now thrown forward, followed swiftly by two companies belonging to the 161st Infantry, the third regiment of the 104th Division. This was a mistake as poor Japanese communications meant the reinforcing units were not aware that the Kuomintang forces had stabilized the situation at Wuzhou and in fact Kuomintang troops were moving to flank the town once more. What this meant was that almost the whole of the 104th Infantry Division was being sent into the very trap their comrades had escaped on the 2nd of September. Stragglers from the 161st Infantry who had been driven back by the Kuomintang advance advised their HQ of the situation of the rest of the division, but the only thing the senior officers could do given their available resources was to order the 104th to attempt a breakout and withdraw back to where the remainder of 23rd Army were trying to prepare a new line of defence [5].
The 104th did make several attempts to breakout between the 6th and 8th of September, though even had they been able to escape the immediate encirclement of Wuzhou they would have been completely cut off by the advance of the rest of the Kuomintang forces. In the end the remnants of the division laid down their arms on the 10th of September. How many actually surrendered to the Chinese has been a subject of controversy, whether the Japanese soldiers chose to fight to the death rather than fall into Chinese hands or if as some Japanese sources claim, the Kuomintang perpetrated a massacre of captured soldiers. Putting this emotive issue aside the counterattack at Wuzhou had been a disaster for the 23rd Army Group, with a third of its combat strength lost in a fight that had handed the Kuomintang a victory without even significantly slowing their advance [6].
About the only good news for the Japanese from this series of actions was that it had slowed the advance of the Chinese forces and bought time for 11th Army Group to begin to redeploy units away from Hong Kong, where it was now apparent the British weren’t planning any immediate attack towards Guangzhou, to reinforce a new defensive line between Yunfu at the southern end and Guangning towards the north, with 23rd Army filling the line still further north and extending the line to Dawan. This was a long front to cover with the available Japanese troop strength and yet there was little choice but to try. The new plan for the defence of Guangzhou as laid out by Generals Yokoyama and Tanaka was to hold this line long enough for reinforcements to arrive from the north, reinforcements that would both extend the line to prevent the Kuomintang flanking the northern end and deploy a reserve behind the line to counter any Chinese breakthrough. Unofficially neither General was confident such reinforcements would be able to intervene in time to make a difference and according to diaries and interrogations the real intention was to try and hold open a line of retreat so the 11th Army Group could pull back from Guangzhou if the position became untenable and allow both armies to make an organized withdrawal until they could finally link up with elements of the Kwantung Army. That this intention was not laid out as part of the official strategy for the two army groups is understandable given that it was pragmatic rather than what many of Yokoyama and Tanaka’s superiors in Tokyo would have regarded as honourable [7].
This strategy offered the Kuomintang the opportunity to destroy both Army Groups if they were willing to commit the necessary forces to turn the northern end of the Japanese line at Dawan, forcing 23rd Army to pull back to the south and opening the entire force up to encirclement. General Stillwell was certainly enthusiastic about this idea, perhaps too enthusiastic as his attempts to lobby in favour of it with his superiors further strained his relations with Chiang Kia-shek. The Kuomintang leader’s resistance to the idea was not simply born out of spite, there were conflicting reports on just how many troops the Japanese still had available to cover Guangzhou and how quickly they might be reinforced. To Chiang the key objective was Guangzhou, and while he would never admit it to Stillwell he was acutely aware that his forces lacked the tactical flexibility to embrace such a change of plan, better to maintain the focus on the existing plan and try to through the Japanese lines rather than going round it. Chiang confirmed that main weight of the advance would remain in the south, which was very bad news for the 11th Army Group [8].
A combination of the Chinese advance becoming somewhat ragged, and the high-level strategic arguments led to a temporary halt to operations being called around the 15th of September and the advance would not resume until the 23rd, much to Stillwell’s displeasure though he was at this point guilty of overestimating the capability of the Japanese forces. That the halt lasted so long reflected the poor infrastructure in the area of the offensive and the difficulty in moving supplies and equipment forward. This problem was made worse by the presence of bandits who attacked convoys and stole considerable quantities of food, weapons, and ammunition. These bandits were often nothing more than Chinese locals who had little love for the Kuomintang and were every bit as happy to steal from them as they would have been the Japanese. Suppressing these now well armed bandits would be an issue for the Kuomintang Army, but one they would be able to postpone until after the completion of the battle. When they did turn their attention to suppressing the bandits they treated the Chinese peasant farmers who made up their ranks every bit as harshly as they had the Japanese, much to the discomfort of their American advisors [9].
One comfort for the Kuomintang as they worked to prepare for the next phase of the offensive was that 11th and 23rd Army Groups faced an even worse struggle, the Kuomintang at least had supplies to be stolen after all. There are stories that some Japanese units tried to buy stolen equipment from the Chinese bandits, though how successful such attempts were is uncertain as many Chinese peasant would claim they had handed over rusty rifles or ammunition boxes full of dirt and stones, though these claims were made at a time when they had to answer to the Kuomintang. Despite all the travails Yokoyama and Tanaka were determined to hold the line, not only because of the strategic importance of Guangzhou, which was somewhat diminished as the British tightened their grip on Hong Kong, but because they had little choice except to try, unless they wished to fall on their swords immediately. The soldiers under their command cared nothing about matters of honour or grand strategy, they were simply soldiers with their backs to the wall whose only chance of survival was to hold the line long enough for the promised reinforcements to arrive, surrendering to the Chinese was not an option anyone wanted to consider [10].
[1] So I’ve had to patch together various forces that took part in battles in China in 1944, though of course with the roles of attacker and defender largely reversed.
[2] The 23rd Army was a poor formation IOTL, it’s even worse here.
[3] The 11th Army is stretched far too thin and unlike OTL the attack on Liuzhou was a failure.
[4] There are an awful lot more American ‘advisors’ in China than OTL.
[5] The Japanese have allowed their disdain for the Kuomintang to get the better of them.
[6] While ignoring the mistake that led to the Japanese retaking the town in the first place.
[7] It’s a desperate strategy and they don’t have the manpower anywhere to hold on.
[8] On this occasion Chiang Kai-Shek is right and Stillwell is wrong.
[9] The Kuomintang will not be magnanimous in victory to put it mildly.
[10] And we will see how that works out for them.
