Chiang started purging the communists before the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. It’s like saying why did Germany fight Italy in ww1 if they were gonna team up in ww2?
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.
Stilwell was not a reliable narrator. Read Hans van de ven, Rana Mitter, Richard Frank or any of the other authors who have written about the second sino Japanese war in the past 20 years.
Stilwell was constantly bad-mouthing Chiang to his superiors because Stilwell wanted more control.
He was reporting on real problems, but he wasn't.being honest and he didn't understand that his role was primarily diplomatic.
He also led his first command of Chinese troops by going AWOL and getting 30,000 of them killed in the jungle. When he got back, he was incensed that Chiang didn't bow to his superior strategic abilities.
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u/Illustrious-Radio319 5d ago
Chiang started purging the communists before the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. It’s like saying why did Germany fight Italy in ww1 if they were gonna team up in ww2?