Two what-ifs related to Japan's surrender in China, August 1945

An old soc.history.what-if post of mine:

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(All quotes in this post are from Jay Taylor, *The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China* [Harvard UP 2009], pp. 315-317.)

(1) Usually talk about the Chinese Civil War in this newsgroup involves asking whether there was any way to prevent a total Communist victory. My second what-if in this post will be related to that, but for my first one, I would also like to ask a different question--could the Communists have won a few years earlier than they did?

On the surface, the surrender of Japan in August 1945 offered them a golden opportunity to do so. After all, "most government troops were in the Northwest and Southwest and the commanders lacked trucks or access to working railways, which meant they required weeks of marching to reach the most important Japanese garrisons." (General Wedemeyer did employ the planes and ships at his command to rush Nationalist soldiers to key points. "Over the next few months, American airmen and sailors would move 400,000 to 500,000 government troops into areas south of the Great Wall." But note that we are talking about months here. The Communists had troops much closer to the big cities of Central and Northern China, and had they acted immediately, presumably they could have beaten the Nationalists--even with Wedemeyer's help for the latter--to at least some major cities.)

Mao, typically, wanted to take advantage of the opportunity with bold, unexpected strokes. On August 10, a few days before the surrender, "Mao ordered all guerrilla units in China proper to regroup into regiments and divisions, to expand their territory, and to seize major cities and railways in Northern and Central China. Shanghai, Peking, and Nanking were special targets. Three days later, he told a meeting of Communist cadres that civil war on either a small or a large scale was certain. He dismissed the importance of the atom bomb and refused Chiang's invitation for talks. For a week, Mao believed that through a combination of his own audacity, the weakness and division of the Chiang regime, and Washington's confidence in the moderation and good intentions of the CCP, he could seize control of many of China's key occupied cities. If he succeeded, he and the Chinese Communists could then be seen by the world and most Chinese as the real liberators of China..."

On August 15, Hirohito announced Japan's surrender. "The same day, the newly appointed Allied Supreme Commander in Japan, General MacArthur, issued General Order Number One, which the Emperor also signed, specifying that in China, except for Manchuria and areas whose status was in dispute such as Hong Kong, Japanese forces were to surrender only to the forces of the China Theater Supreme Commander, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek..." So there was clearly a potential for a clash between Mao's orders and MacArthur's order. But:

"Just as Mao's plan for a sweeping seizure of territory began to enfold with attacks on some Japanese garrisons, he received a message from Stalin warning that a full-blown civil war in China at this stage would be disastrous. Stalin's paramount concern was avoiding a third world war as long as America was the sole nuclear power. Because he would have exploited such a monopoly had it been his, he feared the Americans might do the same if events escalated in China. 'The only way out' of this confining box on Soviet behavior, Stalin reiterated, was to end the American monopoly on the atom bomb, which would take a few years.

"In China, as in Korea, Stalin's immediate goal was the departure of the American military. This required an American perception of a benign Soviet posture toward China. Consequently, Stalin believed that he had to go some distance in seeming to carry out his repeated commitments that he would support Chiang as the leader of a united China--he had, for example, just signed a treaty promising to support only the Generalissimo's regime. It was thus important to Stalin that the Chinese Communists concentrate on consolidating their positions in the countryside and avoid action that might provoke the Americans.

"After receiving Stalin's August 20 message, Mao quickly reversed course. Two days later, the Central Committee informed all bases that with the help of the Chinese puppets, the Japanese army, and the United States, Chiang Kai-shek would soon dominate the big cities and transport routes in China. Thus, Mao declared, the new CCP strategy would concentrate on occupying small cities and villages, consolidating the liberation zone, and mobilizing the people. He told the Politburo: "For now, generally speaking, we want to follow the French [Communist Party's] path, that is, a government in which leadership is exercised by the bourgeois, but with participation by the proletariat...this will continue for some time. We want to bore our way in and give Chiang Kai-shek's face a good washing, but we don't want to cut off his head."

So suppose either that Mao had ignored Stalin's message and gone ahead and seized all the cities and transit routes he could--presenting Stalin with a *fait accompli*--or else that Stalin had given Mao the go-ahead, thinking he could tell the Americans, "Don't blame me, I don't control what Mao does"? Would this have led to a much quicker Communist victory in the Civil War than in OTL? Or would the Americans--who unlike in 1949 still had considerable military forces in China--be so infuriated by this that they would give massive aid to Chiang, at least allowing him to consolidate his control in those areas of China, especially the South, that the Communists had not seized? One should note that if absolutely necessary to avoid massive American aid for Chiang, Mao could have withdrawn from the major cities. This would not necessarily mean that his seizing them would have been in vain; many people in those cities would still recall the Communists as their real liberators, and might nostalgically favorably compare the conduct of the disciplined Communist troops in 1945 to the subsequent behavior of the Nationalists.)

(2) Here is a different what-if relating to the surrender: After MacArthur issued his order that all Japanese troops in China (with the exceptions noted above) were to surrender only to Chiang's forces, "Bai Chongxi urged Chiang to accept [General Yasuji] Okamura's official surrender of Japanese troops in China only after Chinese government troops had taken over each garrison. That would have freed Japanese troops to fight aggressively, not just defensively, against Communist forces trying to take over territory the Japanese controlled.

"Instead, Chiang arranged a formal surrender date with Okamura, who agreed that the various Japanese garrisons in Japan, until relieved of their duty by government units, would resist if troops other than those of the central government demanded their surrender. In practice, what this meant was that, with few exceptions, the cities remained in Japanese hands until government troops arrived, but the Japanese garrisons did not carry out extensive patrols, and the Communists were able to move into the surrounding countryside. Within one year after Japan's surrender, the CCP had expanded its area of control from 57 to 310 counties. In North China and the northern part of Jiangsu, stiff battles resulted as Communist units attacked Japanese garrisons and forts in some smaller cities and along rail lines. Some 7,000 Japanese were killed or wounded in these engagements, but while the Communists overran a number of Imperial garrisons, none surrendered.

"In the Nationalist part of Shanxi, the warlord Wan Xishan began to recruit Japanese officers and soldiers to help fight the Communists, but when Chiang heard of this practice, he told Wan that it would provide the CCP propaganda opportunities. Also the Americans 'would not appreciate it.' All Japanese prisoners, Chiang decreed, would be sent back to Japan as soon as possible after the government units had taken over their positions. If Chiang had followed Bai's suggestion and ordered the Japanese to carry out aggressive patrolling of the rural areas, Okamura, who was strongly anti-Communist, would have doubtless agreed."

So suppose Chiang had indeed followed Bai's advice. Would the advantage of keeping the Communists from expanding their control of rural areas be worth the obvious offense to public opinion (both in China and the US) that such a use of the Japanese forces would involve? (Later, of course, Chiang would have no hesitancy about using Japanese military advisers in Taiwan--including the convicted war criminal "kill all, burn all, destroy all" Okamura.)
 
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