In the 20-40s. In the 20th century, there was a protracted military conflict between China and Japan, the apogee of which was the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945.
We would like to tell you about some of its features.
It is necessary, first of all, to take into account the difference and state of the armed forces of Japan and China. For a number of years, the Japanese army was preparing for a big war, and in its organization and armament approached the armies of European countries (in particular, it was saturated with a relatively significant amount of equipment, including tank and motorized units, a large number of aircraft, etc.).).
On the other hand, the Chinese army did not represent a serious force for a long time, and was very far from its contemporary European models. Each province had its own troops that were not subordinate to the central government. The organization and armament of the army were very diverse. The technical equipment of the army was unsatisfactory. A characteristic feature of the training of the Chinese army was the fact that both the central government and the governors general of the provinces invited foreign military instructors - Germans, Japanese, Italians, Swedes, etc. German General Seeckt with a group of German officers. All this determined the diversity in the training of various units of the Chinese army.
Only in 1934 - 1935. the central Chinese government began to reorganize the army and unite it under a single command. Despite the resistance of the governors-general, who saw in this event the usurpation of their rights, despite the subversive work of a group of Japaneseophiles in the ranks of the Kuomintang, the central government of China, relying on the country's democratic forces, was able to carry out a number of serious measures, in particular, to create a core of 18 divisions (the so-called "Nanking"), according to their organization and training approaching the divisions of European armies. Quite large consignments of weapons were purchased abroad, and the creation of its own military-industrial base began.
But by the beginning of the war, that is, by the middle of 1937, the Chinese army was significantly inferior to the Japanese, especially in terms of tank forces. Japan also possessed a strong navy.
A number of specific features of the theater of operations should also be taken into account.
China occupied vast territories, which made it possible for the Chinese government to wage a war of the widest scale, designed for a defensive maneuver and pulling the enemy deep into the territory, with the latter being exhausted during hostilities - for the subsequent transition to a general counteroffensive in order to completely defeat the presumptuous aggressor. Large reserves of valuable minerals, and primarily the necessary strategic raw materials, were located not only in the eastern part of China, but also in its deep provinces - in particular, in the provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan.
The huge population provided the Chinese national government with virtually unlimited mobilization opportunities. Japan did not have such a resource. The attempts of the Japanese government to rely (in terms of mobilization) on its colonies - Formosa, Korea and Manchuria - did not bring significant results.
Being very extensive, the territory of China was characterized by a significant variety of relief. If the eastern provinces of China are mainly characterized by a soft flat relief, then in the western and northwestern parts of China the relief is mainly mountainous, which makes it difficult to effectively use some types of military equipment - tank forces, heavy artillery, etc. And poor technical equipment the Chinese faded into the background.
A characteristic feature of the Chinese theater of operations was the poverty of railways and good dirt tracks. This gave the war in question the character of operations along the railways and improved dirt roads. The main groupings of Japanese troops operated mainly along these highways. In addition, the limited railways led to a fierce struggle for the possession of individual rail lines. Thus, fierce battles were fought for the capture of the Longhai Railway and the Hankou-Canton Line.
The conduct of operations only along certain directions also determined the enormous extent of the front of hostilities, reaching about 3,500 km. Difficulties in carrying out major maneuvers using railway lines, in using heavy means of suppressing the enemy and in organizing the delivery of supplies left a serious imprint on the operations being carried out. An important characteristic feature of the Chinese theater of operations was the presence of large navigable rivers connecting the ocean coast with inland territories (Yellow River, Yangtze, Xijiang). This allowed the Japanese invaders to make extensive use of their navy, giving them an edge over the Chinese army.
But the navigable part of the Yangtze ended in the Hankou area; R. The Yellow River was navigable for large vessels only up to the Baotou region (above, it is navigable only for small steamers and Chinese junks with a carrying capacity of 6-7 tons), and the river. Xijiang was navigable for large warships only in its delta.
The Japanese attempt to apply the concept of "total war" in China failed. The Japanese military used terrorist methods of warfare - involving the massacre of civilians and prisoners of war. Intimidation is an important element of such actions. The actions of aviation against the peaceful and defenseless cities, villages and ports of China were of key importance. Regular barbaric attacks by Japanese aircraft were accompanied by hundreds of civilians killed and wounded, with a significant percentage of these casualties being women and children. Japanese ground troops acted in the occupied territory with no less brutality - villages were destroyed and burned, innocent civilians were shot in dozens and hundreds, and Chinese women were raped.
But the methods of "total war" only dragged new broad sections of the civilian population into the armed struggle against the rapists, expanded the base for the deployment of a popular guerrilla war. A letter from an officer of a Japanese detachment operating in China is extremely characteristic. This officer wrote: “In the mountains, detachments of 'Hong-Chiang-Hui' ('Red Rifles') often roam. It is necessary to pay attention even to children and women. A few days ago, a sixty-year-old woman threw a grenade at our unit. Several people were injured and killed."
The figure of this sixty-year-old woman with a grenade in her hand actually symbolized the scale and universality of the popular anti-Japanese movement.
The guerrilla movement in China took on completely unprecedented proportions and grew into a genuine people's war. According to the far from complete estimates of foreign observers and the Japanese General Staff, in China at the end of the 30s. there were about 1 million partisans. The 8th PLA Army in the northern and northwestern parts of China and the 4th PLA Army in Shanghai-Nanjing region actively interacted with the partisans. A huge number of various armed detachments of peasants, workers, students (Red Lances, Big Swords, Red Rifles, peasant self-defense detachments, etc.) struck at the Japanese. Moreover, the detachments often acted not in isolation, but in accordance with operational plans common with the troops. To carry out important tasks in the rear of the Japanese army, detachments of several thousand people were sometimes created - and the Japanese were forced to use whole divisions to fight these detachments, but as a rule to no avail. So, in 1939, during an operation against the mountainous Utaishan region, the Japanese command involved 50,000 people, reinforced with appropriate equipment. But the Chinese, skillfully using the terrain, applying their hard-won tactical techniques (which we will discuss in more detail later), defeated many Japanese detachments, inflicted significant losses on them (about 7,000 people) - and the Japanese command was forced to stop the operation.
Some numbers. In the period from September 1937 to May 1938 alone, the 8th Army inflicted the following losses on the Japanese: killed and wounded - 35,000 people, captured 2,000 people; repulsed - about 7000 rifles, 500 machine guns of various systems, 80 field guns, about 2000 horses and the same number of pack animals; more than 200 aircraft, 20 tanks and 1000 vehicles were destroyed.
In the three autumn months of 1938, according to Japanese data, 321 military clashes took place in Xinjiang alone; the total number of partisans who participated in these battles is more than 20,000 people.
In the southern part of Rehe, three large partisan detachments with a total strength of up to 7000 - 8000 people operated on. The detachments have established operational communications with Chinese troops fighting in the northern part of Hibei province. The entire population of Inner Mongolia rose up against the Japanese invaders.
The PLA's 4th Army, which numbered 12,000 in April 1938, grew to 60,000 in 1939. Partisan operations developed westward along the river. Yangtze.
Thanks to the interaction of partisans and troops, the pace of development of the Japanese offensive from Nanjing to Hankow slowed down. The fighting in the Canton region demonstrated a striking example of the brilliant interaction of the Chinese army with partisan detachments.
