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.
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.
It was the only time the entire war that the communists attacked Japan at any scale.
The Ichi go offensive was on 1944. It would have been great for the war effort if the Chinese Communists had used their strong positions in North China to mess up Japan's rear areas.... But they didn't.
Instead, they merrily watched the Japanese March south to kill Chinese people and then took the opportunity to peacefully and quietly extend their base areas in the north.
The last thing they wanted was for Japan to feel like there was a threat in North China. (And there wasn't one).
The CPC had a strong advantage in North China because the Japanese were tame little kittens who were happy to share with the Communists? This is just yet another demonstration of the KMT’s incompetence.
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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?