BobTheBarbarian
Banned
China had much more to lose than the Soviets, and conversely what would the Soviets have gained from fighting China? Booted out of the UN and alienated on the world stage?
Operation Beleaguer leads to more American involvement in the Chinese Civil War
- Thread starter Gillan1220
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China had much more to lose than the Soviets, and conversely what would the Soviets have gained from fighting China? Booted out of the UN and alienated on the world stage?
Anyways, with the United States committing significant forces into a major ground effort in China, that massively opens up Soviet options elsewhere. The commitment of transport aircraft to support American forces in China would make the Berlin airlift would be impossible, for example,
So the Nationalists rush in earlier into land they can't adequately (they actually begged the Soviets to stay in at certain places because they couldn't get their forces in a timely enough manner) and get cut off anyways when the communist armies that had been infiltrated into the Beijing area rise up like they did OTL.
So the Nationalists rush in earlier into land they can't adequately (they actually begged the Soviets to stay in at certain places because they couldn't get their forces in a timely enough manner) and get cut off anyways when the communist armies that had been infiltrated into the Beijing area rise up like they did OTL.
BobTheBarbarian
Banned
Not without Soviet aid they won't. If the Red Army turned over captured inventories to the KMT and evacuated Manchuria on-schedule, it would have been much more difficult for the communists to have defeated Chiang. I don't know if it would have been impossible, but booting out the Russians and bringing in the US as an overt economic and military ally rather than a 'friendly neutral.'
The Soviets have a veto on the Security Council, and had enough support in the General Assembly to not be expelled, and it was always alienated from most of the world. In 1945-46 the West is still trying to cooperate with the Soviets on issues more important to them then Manchuria. In 1945 China has no military option against the Soviet Union. In 7 years of brutal war Nationalist China, with the Communists on their side couldn't drive the Japanese out of China. The Red Army trashed the Japanese in two weeks, and they had the CCP Forces on their side. Attacking the Soviets would have been foolish, it would only rebound against them, with the Soviets occupying even more territory.
marathag
Banned
Zhou Enlai told Stalin, that while a million Chinese troops died in fighting the IJA thru 1939, only 3% were CCP Troops. Mao ordered no major engagements with the IJA for most of the War, only having a single battle where more than a regiments was used. That did not apply against KMT forces,, where there were larger skirmishes
Spent most of the war recruiting for after the war, and small scale guerilla attacks, not fighting directly against the Japanese
Yeah, they will. Soviet aid may have been there, but the number one source of Communist Chinese arms were the Nationalists, due to gross corruption and mass defections. More American weapons were actually being used by Communist forces by 1948 than were being used by the Nationalists. Not for nothing did Mao quip that "The Quartermaster of the Chinese Red Army is Chiang Kai'Shek."
Diplomatically, I would think the Soviets would stonewall by saying that they have been invited in by the People’s Republic of China and therefore the rightful government and hold a referendum or something to prove it. Yes it’s technically violating the previous agreement, but who’s going to stop the Soviets after letting them get away with the same thing in E. Europe?
BobTheBarbarian
Banned
Unless 25-40% of the KMT defected wholesale to Mao, that doesn't seem likely. According to Appendix VIII of "Kangzhan" by Leland Ness with Bin Shih, the Chinese Army had the following weapons and equipment in September 1945 (excluding communists or local defense forces):
- 638,323 rifles
- 57,029 SMGs
- 34,296 pistols
- 56,734 MGs (45,548 light, 11,186 medium)
- 15,503 rifle grenade launchers
- 25,412 artillery pieces (12,119 grenade dischargers, 10,662 trench mortars, 1,232 AT, 83 AA, 225 infantry guns, 639 mountain guns, 156 field guns, 18 howitzers, 58 fortress artillery, 220 "heavy artillery")
- 132 flame throwers
- 1,817 AT rifles
- 1,072 AT rocket launchers
This for an army of 3,139,259 officers and men, excluding the Chinese Army in India (which was well-equipped). Tanks and aircraft were also not shown.
Compare these numbers with the equipment taken from the Kwantung Army in post #16
At that time the PRC didn't exist yet, and the document signed was the "Treaty of Friendship and Alliance between the Soviet Union & the Chinese Republic." The Chinese side was represented by the KMT, then the internationally recognized government of China.
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And the “fraternal republics” in Eastern Europe didn’t exist, until they did. Similarly, the real question is on distance. The USSR shares a border with China while the US doesn’t. The willingness to invest political capital varies accordingly
BobTheBarbarian
Banned
In the case of China, it would be 1949 before the communists won OTL even with Soviet support. In the immediate aftermath of WWII this was still years away, and the US openly preferred the KMT, though relations between the two governments were chilly in the wake of Nationalist defeats in 1944 and early 45.
Not a bad estimate on what happened. The rates of desertion, defection, and surrenders can be seen by how the size of the NRA went from 4.3 million in 1945 to 1.5 million by 1949, whereas the PLA went from 1.2 million to 4 million in the same timeframe.
Regardless, the key base camp areas that enabled the Communist victory were established in the countryside around Beijing by 1944 and the KMT's movement into Manchuria in 1946 was poorly supported as it was, trying to rush it will put them in an even worse position.
Interestingly, most accounts indicate Chinese Communist forces were unable to use any stocks of vehicles and tanks, whether captured from the Japanese or KMT, until skilled technical operators defected to them from the KMT's forces.
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BobTheBarbarian
Banned
By 1949 the Nationalists were militarily beaten, so it's obvious that their army was badly depleted whereas the communists increased in strength. But, at the end of World War II the Chinese Red Army numbered about 1.2 million with 2 million irregulars.
It's not the same if the CCP is deprived of military and technical support from the USSR at an earlier date. If the Soviets and Chinese communists actually formed a military alliance to fight Chiang Kai Shek, the it would be a question of how much Stalin was willing to give up elsewhere for the sake of running off to fight in China.
The Soviet army probably had more to do with it; even at the end of the war the Japanese likely had more tanks on the Asian mainland than the KMT.
And the fact the nationalist could not replenish their army despite receiving far more in American aid than the Communist Chinese ever did from any foreign source speaks to how little the material factors mattered in the Chinese Civil War, since the overwhelming political support for the Communists meant that nationalist supplies quickly became communist supplies in short order. As Alfred Wedermeyer observed while in China*: "Lack of spirit, primarily lack of spirit. It was not lack of equipment. In my opinion they could have defended the Yangtze with broomsticks if they had the will to do it."
One of the reasons I observed that the 25-40% estimate isn't bad is because that Chiang was losing about 40% of his supplies to the communists through corruption, desertion, and defection was George Marshall's own estimate in mid-1947. He would add to that: "If the percentage should reach 50 percent, he [Chiang] will have to decide whether it is wise to continue to supply his troops." The observation that the communists had more American equipment than the Nationalists did was made by David Barr, the last senior military advisor to the Nationalist Regime, in the fall of 1948.
*Of course, Wedermeyer, like many of the Chinese lobby, did like to say one thing depending on whether he was in China on a fact-finding mission or out of it doing political lobbying. The quote in question on a former occasion. David Halberstom observes of this phenomenon that it was deeply tied to McCarthyistic politics: "there was one truth that you told in China when you were surrounded by Chinese and Americans who knew how pathetically Chiang's forces had fought, and another you told back in the States, when surrounded by conservative friends who wanted their truths reinforced."
Which your proposal does not do. The CCP would still have contact with the USSR through the lands it already gained control of via Mongolia and Siberia. Mao was already predicting his victory in the Civil War in mid-1945, before the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, in pretty much the exact timeframe as actually happened.
About as much as he was willing and had to give up OTL. Which wasn't a lot. After all, the Red Army is vastly superior to Chiang's forces and once the Soviets trivially crush the initial attack, they'll just let loose a bunch of their spare stocks of weaponry (which they were awash in during the late-1940s) to Mao's own communists and let them wage the Civil War as per OTL.
Soviets provided no technical advice until 1949. Although after reexamination, the CCP did manage basic operations in 1945-46, it wasn't until a number of technically trained Chinese forces from the KMT started defecting that they were able to consistently operate them.
Wikipedia said:
I want to emphasize the depth of the "bring the boys home" sentiment in the US in 1945-6. https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...hinkable-launched.351941/page-3#post-10672201 People were definitely not in the mood to fight the Soviet army just because it was dragging its heels over withdrawal from Manchuria or clandestinely helping to supply the CCP.
All those guns and equipment won't matter if the NRA/KMT aren't competent to use them. Does not help that their corruption caused so much division within themselves and the Chinese people that it made the Communists look like saints.
As evidenced by this poster some time after World War II:
I could see the American public not wanting to fight an irregular force in mainland China as well, since the period from 1945-49 was the time the U.S. demobilized its military after four years of war.
The British also had their own operations in post-WWII China coinciding with Operation Beleaguer. This article mentions how the HMS Amethyst was involved in tensions with Mao's communist armies that could have seen a larger British military operation in China.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/t...itish-frigate-took-communist-china—-won-25026
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/t...itish-frigate-took-communist-china—-won-25026
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Well then, this reddit post somehow answers this scenario:
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-U...were-willing-to-fight-China-in-the-Korean-War
https://www.quora.com/If-the-United...nism-from-spreading-to-Korea-Vietnam-and-Laos
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-U...were-willing-to-fight-China-in-the-Korean-War
https://www.quora.com/If-the-United...nism-from-spreading-to-Korea-Vietnam-and-Laos
Marines in China 1945-49 – Operation Beleaguer
A Marine Corps Grumman F7F-3N Tigercat at Peking’s Nan Yuan Airfield in December 1945. When World War II came to its abrupt atomic end in the summer of 1945, few paid much attention to Mao Ts…
weaponsandwarfare.com