So having had a blissful eight hours in the land of nod, its now back to events in the Far East. As others have already said, in 1942, Uncle Ho wasn’t in any position or the VM equipped to be of any use to the allies. He was at the time just one among a number of others calling for independence for FIC. If the allied forces come into the area overland, they will be fighting through areas that have little or no VM presence. Both because the VM just didn’t exist in large numbers at this time, or the area in question was populated by non Vietnamese. Which are in fact populated by peoples who have no love for the Vietnamese, and who would be very hostile to them. Just as in the other colonial possessions, FIC is not one nation, but is made up of various regions, who had prior to the French taking control often been at war with one and other,
As for Donavan’s Oh So Social dilatants, I for one can not see the Free French having much truck with them, or allowing them to play in their sand pit. So Mr Donavan, lets get this straight, what you want to do is give arms and equipment to communists and teach them how to fight an occupying force! NON. And without French and British cooperation, how are they going to do it, they can base there efforts in China, but even then they will need a degree of cooperation, and it just will not be there. This isn’t OTL, and events have moved in a different direction, all of the colonial powers are in a slightly better position, and far better able to dictate events in their area.
As in FIC so too in China, things here will not be as they were, and we are looking at a very different set up. I am no champion of Generalissimo Chiang; he was without doubt a double dealing, amoral, megalomaniac, who couldn’t be trusted as far as he could be thrown. And his KTM administration was corrupt, ineffectual, and oppressive, and thanks to his paranoia rivern with factional infighting. His habit, of staving his best generals, of men and equipment, to prevent them providing a meaningful challenge to his control, didn’t help maters ether.
That said at the time he was the only game in town, and was always going to be given the support of the Americans, and surprisingly the Soviets too. Stalin didn’t trust Mao, and had forbidden supplying the communists with arms or equipment. In addition to the major ideological differences between Mao and Stalin, Stalin didn’t want another leader to arise and challenge his leadership of international communism. He saw Mao as a threat, and was more than happy to see Chiang crush him, and thus for the fight against capitalism to be carried on by someone more subject to party discipline.
So with events now moving into a totally different realm, as a result of the failures of the Japanese to isolate China, and for want of a better word, Chiang’s plan, to hold on until the western powers intervened and then to let them do the heavy lifting, while building up the strength to defeat the communists, now coming to fruition. There is every chance we can see a very different post war world in China, ether a lot longer and more bloody civil war, a partial partition, with as has been said the south remaining nationalist while the north becomes communist, even a majority of the nation staying in nationalist hands with a small communist rump, left as a running sore.
The event that drove the nail into Chiang’s coffin, the sweeping advances by the Japanese in 1944/45 are not now likely to take place, the Japanese will have other far more to them important things to deal with. Events much closer to home that will force them to scale back their efforts in China, and concentrate on defending the homeland. Chiang too is going to be in a very different position, not as isolated as he was, better supplied and forced to conform far more with the wishes of his paymasters. Who will have a far bigger whip to weald over him than they did, and one that they will be far more willing to use. After all they are doing much better than they were IOTL, and Chiang isn’t seen as vital to their plans as he was, so they are freer to impose on him. He has to toe the line to a far greater extent than he did, after all, he wouldn’t want to find himself replaced by one of his rivals, and suffering a bout of lead poisoning, something he came very close to IOTL on a number of occasions.
The ripples on the water of world events that have been happening ever since the start of TRL and now getting bigger and bigger, and have become to a large extent waves. Things are now going to be very different, and the idea that there is an inevitability about the direction of the post war world, is a trap easily fallen into. Just because it happened IOTL, doesn’t mean it has to happen ITTL, so much has changed, and so much is going to change in the course of the next few years, that we wouldn’t recognize the post war world as it will form.