Interesting Times
Another Chinese TLIAW by Japhy (Who finally has a computer again!)
Chiang Kai-Shek (KMT --- Right Faction / Nanjing Clique)
The Nationalists Warlord
(1926-1930)
It is an irony of history that the Chinese Nationalist Movement, the Kuomintang, which had set out to reunify and modernize China and bring her back to her place at the table of great nations oversaw not the triumphal climax but the final act of whimpering sorrow in the stage play that was The Hundred Years of National Humiliation. The factionalism, political violence and warlordism that had torn down China to its final depths in the aftermath of the 1911 Revolution would be mirrored within the KMT and when reflected back out into their nation, would ensure that the horrors of the 19th Century would be easily out shadowed by those of the 20th.
Song Jiaoren may have been able to turn the tide, with his popular support and commitment to Parliamentary rule and his unsurpassed wit, but his assassination at the instigation of the would-be Emperor Yuan Shikai had put paid on those dreams. Even the old Field Marshal may have been able to ensure a better fate, abet one would on skills and blood, had he not promptly died after declaring himself to be the select of the Heavens. Sun Yet-sen who had been ousted from Power by Yuan and played political patron to warlords and bandits in the first of many civil wars to follow too may have changed the course. It was he who had reorganized the Nationalists in the south after his ouster, secured alliances with the merchants of Guangzhou, had overseen the rapprochement with the young Soviet state and with it the Communists, had created a United Front against the despots and tyrants that ruled their own fiefs by force of arms. But just as this new movement was gearing up for action, cancer had taken the great man from the stage.
It is easy for a historian to point out that Sun’s 1912 regime, lasting only from January to March had been inept and easily swept away. Many note that with such a record there would have been little chance that Sun could have changed things given another chance in the second half of the 1920’s, and that the divisions that so crippled the KMT afterwards would have been beyond his control. That though ignores one simple fact. That the collapse of the movement after his death was in fact, due to his death.
Sun was the only force that could compel loyalty from all factions, the only man who could dive into the Machiavellian dealings of the KMT while remaining above them. And in his absence two overarching factions developed, the KMT Right, allied with the merchants and popular with the out-of-country support that came from Chinese diaspora communities from Malaya to New York City and the KMT Left which was on the best possible terms with the CPC and the operatives and advisers of COMINTERN and the urban working classes in China.
The division was one that rapidly led to mutiny, assassination, bombings and political turmoil in the Nationalist regions. Liao Zhongkai, the original American-born leader of the KMT Left was assassinated, his rival the intellectual leader of the KMT Right, Hu Hanmin was arrested in connection with the killing and thus critically sidelined, even though he would escape punishment with his life.
With those two partners of Sun out of the running the final fight would be between his two proteges, the political leader Wang Jingwei, and the military man Chiang Kai-shek. On March 20th 1926 though the political fight between the two men, which Wang was winning was superseded by a Military Coup led by Chiang. The KMT right would force Communists out of positions in the government and military, and Wang would, with little prodding exit the stage for the moment and head off to a comfortable exile in Paris. At which point Chiang would promptly renew the alliance between the KMT and the Soviets. Stalin, determined to maintain an opening for the Soviet Union in the East gladly looked over the dead corpses of COMINTERN and Chinese Communist men and ordered all support and supply to be given.
Unity reestablished via farce then, Chiang would turn his attentions beyond the Nationalist Zone as it then existed, and with all due haste so as to paste-over the divisions in the movement, launched his famed Northern Expedition. In the face of constant combat with the warlords of central and Northern China, divisions were easy to ignore, and by 1927 the Communists were hopeful and Wang Jingwei was not only back, but leading the Westernmost Army of the KMT as they pushed into the Yangtze River Valley.
In a series of brutal fights with warlord and Beijing forces --- and several diplomatic crises in regards to engagements with the gunboat troops of Britain, France, Italy and the United States --- the great cities of the Yangtze: Wuhan, Nanjing and Shanghai all fell. And so too promptly did the unity of the United Front.
Wang Jingwei, seeing his chance declared Wuhan the seat of Government for Republican China, with the popular support of the KMT Left, the peasantry as well as his coalition partner, the CPC and COMINTERN. While this force threatened the new order from the west, in the East a multi-national force of battleships aircraft carriers and troop transports being rushed in was at the mouth of the Yangtze and at the Shanghai International Settlement, the forces of the Western Powers being unwilling for the financial heart of their Chinese ventures to fall to any regime that accommodated with the Soviets and called for an end to imperialism. Squeezed between these two forces and facing warlords still fighting from the North side of the central river valley of China, Chiang took for what was him both a revolutionary, and natural course.
In what could have been a surprise to no one except the poor bastards who would be stuffed into the burning fireboxes of locomotives at the Shanghai rail yards, the military strong man and patron leader of the KMT right swiftly turned on the Communists, choosing accommodation with the West --- and organized crime --- over the Popular Front. CPC members, COMINTERN Advisers, Trade Unionists, Agrarian Reformers, Pesky newspaper editors, military officers and KMT men who dared side with Wang even when not being Reds themselves, all felt the pain and horror of being hunted by the Military Commission of Clandestine Investigation Section or the Green Gang. Wang held out for a short while, giving the Warlords to the north breathing room to clean up their act, cobble together a government in Beijing that could appear half-way legitimate and promptly lose the diplomatic fight anyway and Chiang came to accommodations with the business and banking interests of Shanghai, and thus the West. In the end accepting the hopelessness of his situation, Wang went to Nanjing and bided his time.
The second portion of the Northern Expedition, now that the government had relocated to Nanjing and had developed new relationships with the colonial powers was a vastly different and in many ways less impressive affair. The Warlords of the South and the Yangtze had been ground to nothing, their armies shattered all in the name of reunification. Now all that was sought was a change of flag. Many a warlord, offered a chance to keep on as they always had so long as they at least pretended they were operating in a Republic and under a Chain of Command, took the offer. Zhang Zuolin, the old warlord of Manchuria and Northern China though, used to having the final sway over any “government” that existed in Beijing held out, until pushed out of the old capital his silent partners, Japanese Military Intelligence promptly had him assassinated. Their anger over his failure to defeat the KMT though would bring about many ironies of history, the first of which was, that his son Zhang Xueliang developed an Anti-Japanese tendency and promptly changed the flag, accepting the Nationalist offer and seeing the final “reunification”.
The country, still now mostly under warlords, with a communist underground fleeing into the rural parts of the nation as organized crime oversaw their defeat in the cities, and with a political leadership that had little to no qualms about assassination as a means to securing power, was on paper at least unified for the first time in nearly two decades. Chiang, content with this headed back to Nanjing to rule, to intrigue and to bring in German advisers to help modernize his army.
But the supposed unity that the Northern Expedition had provided was now gone, and the following spring, elements of the KMT Right in the South of the country, operating out of Guangzhou turned on Chiang in a quest for blatant power, in this they were promptly joined by several of the Northern Warlords and in what what becoming a perennial turn of events, Wang Jingwei who attempted to create a political opposition in Nanjing and Shanghai before being forced to flee to the Northern Warlords.
Chiang took to the field shortly after the crisis began and within a month the National Revolutionary Army under his command was engaged with the rebels, North and South, on all fronts. Chiang personally assumed command of the fight against the strongest of these, the troops of Feng Yuxiang a warlord who had bent the knee, and renamed his forces the “Northwestern Army”. The ‘Christian General’ as Feng was known was quick on the offensive with one of the best of the Warlord Armies, and no matter how relative that superlative was, the sheer size of his forces made him the greatest of threats.
In June, Chiang was on the front, and was a prominent sight for his men as they retreated under the weight of the attack. Nearly 1.5 Million men were involved in combat along the central plains and on the south side of the Yangtze by this point, creating a conflict larger and bloodier than anything that had occurred under the warlords. Great clashes were developing at Kaifeng, Xuzhou, Sian. Hundreds of thousands were becoming casualties as the various leaders held back their trained forces and instead sought to overwhelm each other with untrained militias.
And it was at this point, outside of Kaifeng that with one singular shot, everything changed. A Northeastern Army sniper saw, on one of the ridge lines at the edge of the battle a party of officers on horseback. For a moment he paused to determine which man, downrange of his simple scope was in command. When he saw a salute given he knew, took a breath and squeezed the trigger.
The battle for Kaifeng did not end suddenly, the war itself would go on for a few weeks longer, with ever mounting death tolls the only thing to show for it. But the future of the Nanjing clique did come to an end as Chiang Kai-Shek lay dead on the field.