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Top Tens – History (WW2): Top 10 Second World Wars (5) Sino-Japanese War

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(5) SINO-JAPANESE WAR

(18 SEPTEMBER 1931 – 27 FEBRUARY 1932 / 7 JULY 1937 – 2 SEPTEMBER 1945)

 

This is the other big one but in reverse to the Anglo-German war – the war no one thinks or talks about for the Second World War, despite its scale, not least reflected in Chinese casualties second only to the Soviets

That omission or oversight in popular culture or consciousness is reflected in the usual historiography of the Second World War commencing with the German invasion of Poland, rather than the Japanese war with China that commenced two years earlier – or arguably six years before that with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.

Well, for Europeans or Eurocentric history at least – it obviously gets more attention in Asian history. More accurately, it was the Second Sino-Japanese War, after the First Sino-Japanese war fought between Qing China and Japan in 1894-1895.

In fairness, it was largely isolated to the combatant nations of China and Japan. The actual combat was isolated to China itself, given that the Chinese forces involved could barely defend themselves or their territory. By barely I mean with extensive losses and limited longer term prospects of continuing to do so without outside aid or intervention, let alone any prospects of ejecting Japanese forces or taking the war to Japan. And of course, isolated is a relative term, given the scale of war with China as the world’s most populous nation and one of its largest in size.

I say largely isolated because there were various degrees of foreign involvement in support to China or on the edges of the war itself. The former surprisingly included aid from Germany at the outset, until Germany aligned itself with Japan and started its own war in Europe – prompting much of the foreign involvement on the edges of the war with Japan seeking to cut off routes of supply to China or resources for its own war effort in south-east Asia, ultimately leading to the larger Pacific War.

Also in fairness, the war received reasonably widespread attention at the outset, both for the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and for the Japanese war with China from 1937, the latter most infamously for the R*pe of Nanking or Nanjing, the Chinese southern capital that the Chinese Nationalist government could not defend and had to abandon.

I am only familiar with the basic highlights of the war until the European war in 1939 – the loss of Nanjing of course and the loss of Shanghai that preceded it, the Chinese Nationalist regime under Chiang Kai-shek deciding to blow up the dams of the Yellow River to flood the North China plain to slow the Japanese advance in 1938, and the Chinese government having to retreat first to Wuhan and second to Chungking as its capital.

Looking it up, the battle of Wuhan in 1938 was the largest battle of the war – Wuhan was lost but China managed to hold the city of Changsha through two battles in 1939 and 1941, as well as win victory at Taierzhuang in 1938. In fairness to myself, the major combat operations in this period of the war from 1938 to 1941 are usually not common knowledge.

And in fairness to world attention at the time, the Sino-Japanese war was not only overshadowed by the war in Europe, but also largely settled into stalemate – where Japan had mostly defeated Chinese forces in battle but lacked the forces to extend its occupation further beyond coastal cities or railways in a country that remained overwhelmingly hostile to it. At the same, Chinese forces lacked the ability for anything other than a defensive strategy – that is, avoiding open battle as much as possible while looking for salvation from outside forces, with the Nationalists and Communists also looking ahead to renewed civil war with each other.

However, Japan still had one surprise left for China, even while it was virtually collapsing in the Pacific War against the United States, and one that is almost entirely forgotten or overlooked in most Second World War histories – the Ichigo offensive in 1944. The largest Japanese army offensive of the whole war, it was also the last successful Japanese offensive – astonishingly so and on a scale unequalled for anything else by Japan or Germany at the time.

It was the last of a series of Japanese blows that ultimately proved fatal for the Chinese Nationalist government in the subsequent civil war with the Communists – Japan arguably doing the most of anyone, including the Chinese Communists themselves, to win victory for the Communists in the civil war.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Top Tens – History (WW2): Top 10 Second World Wars (4) Anglo-German War

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Battle of Britain map – public domain image (Wikipedia – “Battle of Britain”)

 

 

(4) ANGLO-GERMAN WAR

(1 SEPTEMBER 1939 – 8 MAY 1945)

 

This is the big one – the war everyone thinks or talks about for the Second World War, mostly because of the predominance of Anglophone history and popular culture

The war that started with the German invasion of Poland and Britain’s declaration of war on Germany to honor its guarantee to Poland, with a familiar narrative after that – Dunkirk and the fall of France, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, the war in the Mediterranean and Battle of El Alamein, and ultimately landings in north Africa, Italy, and France.

And yes – the Anglo-German war between Britain and Germany became what would more accurately be described as an Anglo-American war with Germany.

Even for the latter, however, the term Anglo-German war is apt as the Anglo prefix is as applicable to the United States as to Britain, whether in Anglophonic or Anglospheric terms (or both). Indeed, Hitler saw Germany’s ultimate contest for world power against the United States and its economic predominance – which he sought to offset by a Europe united under Germany and particularly by a German empire over the resources of the Soviet Union, with Russia in a similar role to Germany as India in the British Empire (at least as argued by historians such as Adam Tooze).

For that matter, that Anglo prefix is as applicable to the Dominions that were major combatants within the British Commonwealth – Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and even South Africa.

However, one should not overlook that for a year of the Second World War, from June 1940 to June 1941, the Second World War was almost entirely an Anglo-German war, with Britain as the only major combatant opposed to Germany, albeit with its Dominions and the Commonwealth.

That was a war very different from what might be characterized as the Franco-German war in the First World War – where France held the line on the Western Front and consequently remained the primary or supreme Allied combatant on land. Of course, Britain and France had the same hope for the Second World War, but the Franco-German component of the war effectively ended with the fall of France, with the primary contest no longer between French and German armies as in the First World War.

Instead, Britain found itself engaged in a war in which it relied predominantly on sea power and airpower against a German army which had won predominance in continental Europe. Of course, Britain had traditionally relied on sea power, as it did in both world wars – adding airpower in the Second World War – and sought to rely on allies with larger forces on land to bring to bear against its opponents.

On the one hand, Germany lacked the sea power and airpower to be able to defeat Britain. It might be observed that all of its major opponents in the Second World War, Germany was only able to defeat France – Britain had too much sea power and airpower, the Soviet Union was too big, and the United States combined the worst of both those worlds along with oceanic distance.

On the other hand, Britain could not defeat or even challenge German predominance on land, even with those allies briefly conjured up on the continent, Greece and Yugoslavia.

As H.P. Willmott noted in The Great Crusade:

“At no point could she challenge Germany’s control of western Europe. Never in British history, not even at the height of British naval supremacy, had British sea power been able to challenge, let alone defeat, a great continental power, and by 1940 the superiority of overland communication meant that German military forces could be moved in greater numbers and more quickly that any British force that attempted to establish itself on the mainland. In addition, the reality of the situation was that British naval power in 1940 was barely able to ensure Britain against defeat by the strangulation of her trade”.

In a sense, this was the war that both Britain and Germany had anticipated in the contest between them, both politically before the war and in the war itself – in which Britain stood as the guardian of the world order and of its world empire or power, secured by victory in the First World War, which Germany sought to challenge.

In The Winds of War, American author Herman Wouk has his German military analyst von Roon evocatively label the war as the War of British Succession – Germany’s bid for world empire to succeed Britain’s falling one – although even von Roon ruefully notes that all it (and the Soviet war effort) achieved was to see one Anglo-Saxon world empire replaced by another.

In that, it was arguably already too late – with the contest between Britain and Germany just shadowboxing over an illusion of world power that had already been eclipsed by the two true world powers, and which would only endure until those two powers ended their isolationism (or had it ended for them) to step into the conflict.

Britain’s strategic hope ultimately relied on the substitution of another power for France as ally with large forces on land to bring to bear against Germany. That hope was understandably focused on the United States but ultimately Britain saw not only one but two powers in that role, eclipsing Britain itself in the war and in the world – firstly the Soviet Union on the eastern front and secondly the United States on the western front.

However, even then it took some time for the United States to eclipse Britain in its army and air force in the European theater – the former in terms of American divisions engaged in combat shortly after the Normandy landings – although the British navy remained predominant in the Atlantic.

Speaking of scale, while even the Anglo-American war against Germany remained secondary to the Nazi-Soviet by a substantial margin, at least on land, it was still of an impressive magnitude – with the invasion of Normandy remaining as the largest seaborne invasion in history.

And speaking of the Normandy invasion, the Anglo-American landings throughout the war remain impressive, not least as that superiority of overland communications for Germany remained a factor to be overcome throughout the war. It is impressive that the Anglo-American alliance pulled off successful major landings not just once but three times – not counting the various minor landings on or about the same time – in north Africa in 1942, in Italy in 1943 (both Sicily and the mainland), and most of all in France in 1944, with the Normandy landings a military feat unequalled then or since.

Once again, while not so much a war in its own right as the previous entries – at least after 1941 given it overlapped with (and relied) on the Nazi-Soviet war to engage the majority of the German army – it is a war that can be a subject all of itself, or indeed many subjects, including that or those of its own top ten list or lists.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Top Tens – History (WW2): Top 10 Second World Wars (3) Pacific War

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Map of the Pacific War 1943-1945 by user San Jose for Wikimedia Commons under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

 

 

(3) PACIFIC WAR

(7 DECEMBER 1941 – 2 SEPTEMBER 1945)

 

The Eagle against the Sun!

And yes – that’s the title of a book by historian Ronald Spector, one of the best single volume histories of that war.

Like a mirror image of the Nazi-Soviet War on the opposite side of the world and in the vast expanses of sea rather than those of land, the Pacific War was the other central conflict of the Second World War, the war between the United States and Japan as the largest naval war in history.

And yes – again that’s my point, that the Pacific War might well be considered as a war in its own right and indeed having its own title as such, with which the other conflicts in the Second World War (and other wars in Asia) can be seen as overlapping or as prelude or aftermath.

As such, it is a war that can be subject all of itself. Or indeed, many subjects, including as subject or subjects of its own top ten lists – notably battles, but arguably even of a top ten wars list or continuity iceberg like this

It is a war that can effectively be considered or studied in isolation from other theaters or forces other than those of Japan and the United States – as indeed it was fought, with little overlap except the so-called CBI theater (for China-Burma-India) with which it merged to some extent.

Certainly, it was almost entirely separate from the conflict in Europe, except to the extent that it was a secondary commitment to that conflict for the United States in the guise of its Germany First strategy. It’s interesting to consider the possibility that it might have remained entirely separate, but for the German declaration of war on the United States after Pearl Harbor. Of course, on the other hand it is difficult to envisage how the United States would have entered the war but for Peral Harbor.

However, as H.P. Willmott observes, the American Germany First strategy was somewhat belied by the disposition of American forces in 1943, which more resembled a Pacific First strategy. It was certainly not the case for the American navy, for which the Pacific War remained its primary theater of operations throughout the war – and for the Marines, for which it was their exclusive theater of operation.

While similar in scale, the Pacific War lacked the decisive impact of its Nazi-Soviet counterpart, as Japan was that much weaker than Germany and that much outmatched by its American opponent in the long term that the ultimate outcome was effectively a foregone conclusion.

However, while some parts of the narrative of the war are well known, there often seems to me a curious hiatus in popular culture or imagination about that narrative as a whole.

And that curious hiatus is the Pacific War in popular culture or imagination seems to leap from the dramatic victories of Japan at the outset of the war in the six months from December 1941, at Pearl Harbor and onwards through South East Asia through to its equally dramatic defeat and reversal of fortune in the Battle of Midway in June 1942 – to the dramatic victories of the United States in Iwo Jima or Okinawa in 1945, effectively within the home island territories of Japan itself, or perhaps in the Philippines in 1944 at earliest. Of course, it helps that the staged photograph of the Marines raising the American flag in victory at Iwo Jima is one of the most iconic photographs of the war, if not the most iconic photograph.

In other words, it seems to skip the hard-fought campaigns from 1942 to 1944 or 1945 that brought the United States to those home island territories of Japan – including one of the best and most hard-fought American campaigns in the whole Pacific War, fought in the most arduous circumstances before the American quantitative and qualitative material advantages became truly overwhelming against its Japanese opponent, the campaign in and for Guadalcanal.

In fairness, those campaigns often seem like slogging matches over small islands, yet ironically without the decisive or big battles that capture popular attention or imagination. The latter was increasingly by design, particularly after the Marine casualties capturing the Tarawa atoll in November 1943, when the Americans improved their amphibious landing tactics – but even more so changed their strategy, substituting island-hopping or leapfrogging in which they bypassed Japanese strongholds such as Rabaul to “wither on the vine”.

As such, although they were often surprisingly resilient even when bypassed, many Japanese soldiers were simply left stranded without supplies, dying of starvation or disease without sighting an enemy soldier – or dying again without directly engaging any enemy combatant when their ships were sunk by American submarines.

In that, they reflected the situation of Japan itself, simply writ large for Japan as it was increasingly strangled by the American submarine campaign against its shipping. I often opine on the American submarines as the unsung victors of the war with their decisive contribution to American victory. With a smaller submarine fleet than Germany and initially defective torpedoes to boot (das boot? – heh), it managed to achieve what Germany did not – destroying the shipping of a maritime empire to bring that empire to its knees, albeit helped by Japan’s woeful neglect of anti-submarine warfare.

Japan’s problems were compounded in that it faced not one but two American campaigns in the Pacific – arising from the split between the American navy and army, which essentially saw two separate campaigns by them, the American navy campaign in the central Pacific, and the American army campaign in the south-west Pacific.

(Of course, Japan had its own issues with such a split, only much worse – which effectively saw a successful navy coup in 1944 against the army government under Tojo that had launched the war with the attack on Pearl Harbor).

It may have been better, as historian John Ellis opines, to have resolved the split and focus on the one campaign – the south-west Pacific with its shorter distances – but the fact remains that the Americans had the resources for both while Japan increasingly had them for neither.

As H.P. Willmott observes, the Pacific War was the second such war fought by the United States as it mirrored an earlier war – the American Civil War:

“Between 1941 and 1945, Japan was to the United States what the Confederacy had been 80 years before, and the parallels between the two wars were very considerable. Both wars, each about four years in duration, saw the United States opposed by enemies that relied upon allegedly superior martial qualities to overcome demographic, industrial and positional inferiority, but in both wars the United States’ industrial superiority and ability to mount debilitating blockades proved decisive to the outcome. In both wars, the United States was able to use the advantages of a secure base and exterior lines of communication to bring overwhelming strength to enemies committed to defensive strategies, and which were plagued by divided counsels, while in the military aspects of both wars there were close similarities…

The Union drive down the Mississippi that resulted in the capture of Vicksburg in July 1863 and the separation of the Confederate heartland from Texas has its parallel in the drive across the south-west Pacific to the Philippines to separate Japan from its southern resources area. The battles in the two-way states that culminated in the march through Georgia were not dissimilar from the central Pacific offensive that took American forces to Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the shores of the Japanese home islands”.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)