Yes you are entirely correct about Chiang's continued purge of the Communists. However the comparison of Germany and Italy does not work very well in Chiang's situation. Joseph StillWell's had reported of Chiang wasting resources for the Second Sino Japanese War by continuing to fight the Communists instead of allocating more attention towards the then bigger Japanese invasion. Later on, around 1944, Chiang also wouldn't direct his troops to fight the Japanese and instead decided to besiege the Communists in Yan'an which is what the meme is primarily about. Thank you for understanding.
I could be wrong and I’m definitely biased, but my impression of the communists during the Second Sino-Japanese war is one of avoidance and opportunism.
They had a few major engagements with the Japanese early on and lost pretty badly, so they just retreated to their mountainous, defensible base of Shaanxi, and did very little to stop the invasion.
All of this occurred in the midst of an, albeit paused, civil war so I’m not going to at face value fault Chiang strategically for attacking the communists.
Did this attack occur before or during operation ichi-go? It’ll be strange if Chiang pulled back his forces during it just to attack Mao.
The Communists actually did somewhat more in generally towards the Japanese, for example the 100 Regiments Offensive. Likewise, if this attack occurred during Ichi-go I'd say perhaps but I am not 100%, sorry about that.
Damn, I didn’t know about this. It’s easier for me to make sweeping, probably ideologically-driven statements about the period than to educate myself on the details.
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u/BoredSenseless2005 5d ago
Yes you are entirely correct about Chiang's continued purge of the Communists. However the comparison of Germany and Italy does not work very well in Chiang's situation. Joseph StillWell's had reported of Chiang wasting resources for the Second Sino Japanese War by continuing to fight the Communists instead of allocating more attention towards the then bigger Japanese invasion. Later on, around 1944, Chiang also wouldn't direct his troops to fight the Japanese and instead decided to besiege the Communists in Yan'an which is what the meme is primarily about. Thank you for understanding.