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Chinese defenders overlooking a section of the Great Wall of China

The Defense of the Great Wall (traditional Chinese: ????; simplified Chinese: ????; pinyin: Chángchéng Kàngzhàn) (January 1 - May 31, 1933) was a battle between the armies of Republic of China and Empire of Japan, before official hostilities of the Second Sino-Japanese War commenced in 1937. Called Operation Nekka by the Japanese, also known as the First battle of Hopei (Hebei province), was a Japanese military campaign following the 1931/32 invasion of Manchuria.

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Japanese forces charging toward the wall defense

Falling back from Jehol, Wan Fulin’s 32nd Corps retreated to Lengkou Pass, while the 29th Corps of General Song Zheyuan fell back, Zhang Zuoxiang’s 37th Division retreated to Xifengkou Pass, General Guan Linzheng’s 25th Division to the Gubeikou Pass.

On March 4th, 139th Division of the KMT 32nd Corps recovered Lengkou Pass. On March 7th, 67th Corps beat off attacks by the 16th Brigade of the Japanese 8th Division, at Gubeikou Pass. Guan Linzheng’s relief forces also arrived.

On March 9th, Chiang Kai-shek discussed with Zhang Xueliang about resisting Japanese invasion in Baoding in Hebei Province. Chiang Kai-shek began to relocate his forces away from his campaign against the Jiangxi Soviet, which would include the forces of Huang Jie, Xu Tingyao and Guan Linzheng. Chiang Kai-shek also called over Fu Zuoyi’s 7th Corps from Suiyuan. On March 11th, Japanese troops pushed up to the Great Wall. On March 12th, Zhang Xueliang resigned his post to He Yingqin, who as the new leader of the Northeastern Army was assigned the duty of securing defensive positions along the Great Wall.

Over twenty close assaults were launched, with sword armed Northwestern Army soldiers, said to have cut off Japanese heads “by the hundreds” during each engagement.[3]

However on March 21st, the Japanese took Yiyuankou Pass. 29th Corps evacuated from Xifengkou Pass on April 8th. On April 11th, Japanese troops retook Lengkou Pass after dozens of seesaw fights over the pass defenses and Chinese forces at Jielingkou abandoned that pass.[4] The Chinese army was significantly underarmed in comparison with the Japanese in heavy weapons and many units were equipped only with trench mortars, a few heavy machine guns, some light machine guns and rifles, but mostly handguns, grenades, and traditional Chinese swords. Beaten back by overwhelming Japanese firepower, on May 20, the Chinese army retreated from their remaining positions on the Great Wall.

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 On May 22, Chinese and Japanese representatives met at Tanggu, Tianjin, to negotiate the end of the conflict. The resulting Tanggu Truce was extremely unfavorable and humiliating to the Chinese. The agreement created a demilitarized zone extending one hundred kilometers south of the Great Wall, which the Chinese army could not enter, thus greatly reducing the territorial security of China proper. Secondly, the Japanese were allowed to use reconnaissance aircraft or ground units to make sure that the Chinese stayed out of the zone. In essence, the Chinese government was forced to acknowledge the puppet status of Manchukuo, in addition to the loss of Rehe to the Japanese in the battle. In addition, the demarcated zone rested largely within the remaining territory of Zhang Xueliang, who had already lost Manchuria in the Mukden Incident. The assassination of his father Chang Tso-Lin by the Japanese, territorial losses, and his subsequent appointment by Chiang Kai-shek to fight the Chinese communists instead of Japan, greatly influenced Zhang Xueliang’s later determination to kidnap Chiang in the Xi’an Incident to form a united front with the Communists against Japan.

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Silhouettes showing Chinese soldiers armed with swords

Although the NRA suffered defeat in the end, several individual NRA divisions like the He Zhuguo platoon managed to hold off the better equipped Japanese army for up to 3 days before being overrun. Some NRA Divisions also managed to win minor victories in passes like Xifengkuo and Gubeikou by using the ramparts to move soldiers from one sector to another in the Great Wall, just like the Ming soldiers before them.[5]

12 years later, on 30 August 1945 after the Japanese surrender, a minor “mopping up” battle lasting for 3 hours was fought at the Great Wall of China, in the Shanghaiguan region with 3000 Japanese soldiers refusing to surrender, holed up in the Great Wall close to Manchuria. At the end they suffered total annihilation by the Chinese army commanded by Zeng Kelin with the Soviet Red Army providing shellfire, being one of the last conflicts at the Great Wall

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Map showing the extent of Japanese control in 1940

The Second Sino-Japanese War (July 7, 1937 to September 9, 1945) was a major war fought between China and Japan, both before and during World War II. It was the largest Asian war in the twentieth century.[2]

Although the two countries had fought intermittently since 1931, full-scale war started in earnest in 1937 and only ended with the surrender of Japan in 1945. The war was the result of a decades-long Japanese imperialist policy aiming to dominate China politically and militarily to secure its vast raw material reserves and other resources. At the same time, the rising tide of Chinese nationalism and notions of self determination made the war inevitable. Before 1937, the two sides fought in small, localized engagements in the so-called “incidents,” as the two sides for a variety of reasons refrained from fighting a total war. The 1931 invasion of Manchuria by Japan is known as the “Mukden Incident”. The last of these incidents was the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of 1937, marking the official beginning of full scale war between the two countries.

From 1937 to 1941, China fought alone. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Second Sino-Japanese War merged into the greater conflict of World War II.

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 In Chinese, the war is most commonly known as the War of Resistance Against Japan (traditional Chinese: ????; simplified Chinese: ????; pinyin: Kàng Rì Zhànzh?ng), but also known as the Eight Years’ War of Resistance (????), or simply War of Resistance (??).

In Japan, the name Japan-China War (????, Nicch? Sens??) is most commonly used due to its neutrality. When the war began in July 1937 near Beijing, the government of Japan used North China Incident (????, Hokushi Jihen), and with the outbreak of war in Central China next month, it was changed to China Incident (????, Shina Jihen).

The word incident (??, jihen) was used by Japan as neither country had declared war on each other. Japan wanted to avoid intervention by other countries such as the United Kingdom and particularly the United States, which had been the biggest steel exporter to Japan. American President Roosevelt would have had to impose an embargo due to the Neutrality Acts had the fighting been named a war.

In Imperial Japanese propaganda however, the invasion of China became a “holy war” (seisen), the first step of the Hakko ichiu (eight corners of the world under one roof). In 1940, prime minister Konoe thus launched the League of Diet Members Believing the Objectives of the Holy War. When both sides formally declared war in December 1941, the name was replaced by Greater East Asia War (?????, Dait?a Sens?).

Although the Japanese government still uses “Shina Incident” in formal documents, because the word Shina is considered a derogatory word by China, media in Japan often paraphrase with other expressions like The Japan-China Incident (???? [Nikka Jihen], ???? [Nisshi Jihen], which were used by media even in the 1930s.

Also, the name Second Sino-Japanese War is not usually used in Japan, as the First Sino-Japanese War (????, Nisshin-Sens?), between Japan and the Qing Dynasty in 1894 is not regarded to have obvious direct linkage with the second, between Japan and the Republic of China.

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Chiang Kai-shek announced the KMT’s policy of resistance against Japan at Lushan on July 10, 1937, three days after the Battle of Lugou Bridge

Japanese troops entering Shenyang during Mukden Incident

The origin of the Second Sino-Japanese War can be traced to the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, in which China, then under the Qing Dynasty, was defeated by Japan and was forced to cede Taiwan and recognize the independence of Korea in the Treaty of Shimonoseki. The Qing Dynasty was on the brink of collapse from internal revolts and foreign imperialism, while Japan had emerged as a great power through its effective measures of modernization. The Republic of China was founded in 1912, following the Xinhai Revolution which overthrew the Qing Dynasty. However, the nascent Republic was even weaker than before due to the dominance of warlords. The prospect of unifying the nation and repelling imperialism seemed a very remote possibility. Some warlords even aligned themselves with various foreign powers in an effort to wipe each other out. For example, warlord Zhang Zuolin of Manchuria openly cooperated with the Japanese for military and economic assistance. It was during the early period of the Republic that Japan became the greatest foreign threat to China.

In 1915, Japan issued the Twenty-One Demands to further its political and commercial interests in China. Following World War I, Japan acquired the German sphere of influence in Shandong. China under the Beiyang government remained fragmented and unable to resist foreign incursions until the Northern Expedition of 1926-28, launched by the Kuomintang (KMT, or Chinese Nationalist Party) rival government based in Guangzhou. The Northern Expedition swept through China until it was checked in Shandong, where Beiyang warlord Zhang Zongchang, backed by the Japanese, attempted to stop the Kuomintang Army from unifying China. This situation culminated in the Jinan Incident of 1928 in which the Kuomintang army and the Japanese were engaged in a short conflict. In the same year, Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin was also assassinated when he became less willing to cooperate with Japan. Following these incidents, the Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai-shek finally succeeded in unifying China in 1928.
 

Still, numerous conflicts between China and Japan persisted as Chinese nationalism had been on the rise and one of the ultimate goals of the Three People’s Principles was to rid China of foreign imperialism. However, the Northern Expedition had only nominally unified China, and civil wars broke out between former warlords and rival Kuomintang factions. In addition, the Chinese Communists revolted against the central government following a purge of its members. Because of these situations, the Chinese central government diverted much attention into fighting these civil wars and followed a policy of first internal pacification before external resistance. This situation provided an easy opportunity for Japan to further its aggression. In 1931, the Japanese invaded Manchuria right after the Mukden Incident. After five months of fighting, in 1932, the puppet state Manchukuo was established with the last emperor of China, Puyi, installed as its head of state. Unable to challenge Japan directly, China appealed to the League of Nations for help. The League’s investigation was published as the Lytton Report, which condemned Japan for its incursion of Manchuria, and led Japan to withdraw from the League of Nations. From the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, appeasement was the policy of the international community and no country was willing to take an active stance other than a weak censure. Japan saw Manchuria as a limitless supply of raw materials and also as a buffer state against the Soviet Union.

Incessant conflicts followed the Mukden Incident. In 1932, Chinese and Japanese soldiers fought a short war in the January 28 Incident. The war resulted in the demilitarization of Shanghai, which forbade the Chinese from deploying troops in their own city. In Manchukuo there was an ongoing campaign to defeat the volunteer armies that arose from the popular frustration at the policy of nonresistance to the Japanese. In 1933, the Japanese attacked the Great Wall region, and in its wake the Tanggu Truce was signed, which gave Japan the control of Rehe province and a demilitarized zone between the Great Wall and Beiping-Tianjin region. The Japanese aim was to create another buffer region, this time between Manchukuo and the Chinese Nationalist government whose capital was Nanjing.

In addition, Japan increasingly utilized the internal conflicts among the Chinese factions to reduce their strength one by one. This was precipitated by the fact that even some years after the Northern Expedition, the political power of the Nationalist government only extended around the Yangtze River Delta region, and other regions of China were essentially held in the hands of regional powers. Thus, Japan often bought off or created special links with these regional powers to undermine the efforts of the central Nationalist government in bringing greater unity to China. To do this, Japan sought various Chinese traitors for cooperation and helped these men lead some “autonomous” governments that were friendly to Japan. This policy was called the Specialization of North China (Chinese: ?????; pinyin: húab?itèsh?hùa), or more commonly known as the North China Autonomous Movement. The northern provinces affected by this policy were Chahar, Suiyuan, Hebei, Shanxi, and Shandong.

In 1935, under Japanese pressure, China signed the He-Umezu Agreement, which forbade the KMT from conducting party operation in Hebei and effectively ended Chinese control of North China. In the same year, the Ching-Doihara Agreement was signed and vacated the KMT from Chahar. Thus, by the end of 1935, the Chinese central government had virtually vacated from North China. In its place, the Japanese-backed East Hebei Autonomous Council and the Hebei-Chahar Political Council were established. There in the vacated area of Chahar the Mongol Military Government (?????), was formed on May 12, 1936 with Japan providing military and economic aid. This government tried to take control of Suiyuan in late 1936 and early 1937 but was defeated.

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 In order to understand the complexity of the involvement of China and Japan, and the later involvement of the Soviet Union, the UK, the US and France in the Sino-Japanese War, it is important to appreciate the underlying reasons and motives of the different parties that they brought to the war.

Japan: Imperial Japan launched the war in an effort to destroy the Chinese central government under the Kuomintang, and to create puppet governments that followed Japanese interests. From these actions Japan would obtain a secured supply of raw materials and a market to ensure the prosperity of the Japanese home islands. However, Japan’s inability to bring the war in China to an acceptable conclusion, coupled with increasingly unfavorable trading restrictions from the West in response to Japan’s continued actions in China, meant that Japan also needed to control sizable natural resources, such as those in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, which were at the time controlled by Britain, the Netherlands, and the USA, respectively. Japan’s strategy to seize these embargoed resources led to the attack on Pearl Harbor, opening the Pacific Theater of World War II.

China (Nationalist (Kuomintang)): Before the onset of full scale war, Nationalist China focused its energies on modernizing the army and building a viable defense industry to increase its combat power vis-à-vis Japan. Because China under the Kuomintang was unified only nominally, it was also constantly preoccupied with fighting internal wars against the communists, resurgent warlords, and other militarist factions. However, once the war against Japan broke out, backing down was impossible, even though China was far from prepared for fighting a war on such a massive scale against a vastly superior enemy. In sum, Nationalist China had several goals: to resist Japanese aggression, to unite China under one central government, to rid China of foreign imperialism, to defeat communism, and to re-emerge as a strong country. In essence, the war of resistance was seen by many as a war of national revival.

China (Communist): Chinese Communists generally avoided large-scale frontal fighting against the Japanese, while conducting guerrilla warfare and political activities in occupied territories to expand their base areas. As one of its main goals was expansion, the CCP sought to avoid direct conflicts with the Japanese Army in order to emerge from the war stronger than the Nationalist forces, so in the inevitable struggle for dominance, the CCP would be the victor.

Soviet Union: To allow Japan to overextend itself in China such that the USSR could fight Germany in the West without having to garrison strong forces in the East against possible Japanese aggression. Also, a weakened China would allow Chinese Communists to develop and eventually take over the country, providing a potential ally and a buffer zone against Western and Japanese expansionism.

United Kingdom: Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, British attitude was conciliatory toward Japan, as the two had already formed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Many in the British community in China also supported Japanese actions to weaken the Chinese Nationalist government. This was because British economic interests suffered substantially when the Chinese Nationalist government successfully revoked much foreign concessions, and regained the right to set its own tariff without British influence. Once World War II began, the UK had to fight Germany in Europe while at the same time hoping China and Japan fight to a stalemate, in order to buy time to regain its Pacific colonies in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Burma, and Singapore. The majority of British forces were committed to fighting in Europe, and could spare little for the war in the Pacific.

United States: The United States was generally isolationist prior to the attack of Pearl Harbor and did not wish to directly provoke Japan, while it aided China with its volunteer airmen and oil/steel embargoes. Following the American entrance to WWII, the US had to defeat Japan in the Pacific while also fighting Germany in the European Theater, with the emphasis on defeating Germany first. The US began a campaign of island hopping in order to secure bases close enough to Japan to support bombing raids and an eventual invasion. When Germany capitulated, the war in the East was to be finished as fast as possible with minimal US casualties. President Franklin Roosevelt also wished to aid China so that it would emerge as a democratic nation friendly to the US and a source of stability in post-war East Asia.

Vichy France: With massive U.S. supply coming to Yunnan through French Indochina’s northern state of Tonkin, the Japanese wanted to blockade the Chinese-Indochinese border. In 1940, following the establishment of the Vichy France puppet state, Japan staged an invasion of French Indochina. In March 1945, the Japanese staged a coup d’état in French Indochina and created their own colonies as the Empire of Vietnam, the Kingdom of Laos and the Kingdom of Cambodia.

Free France: In December 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Free France leader Charles de Gaulle declared war on Japan. In 1943 de Gaulle created the Light Corps of Intervention (CLI) Special Forces within the FEFEO to support the French Resistance in Indochina. From 1944 to 1945 the CLI operated against the Japanese in Vietnam, using the southern Chinese border as a sanctuary. In September French general Leclerc heading the CEFEO signed the armistice with Japan and landed in Vietnam and Java with the Franco-British task force to regain control of the colony in October. A partition was established with the Communist Chinese controlling north Vietnam and the British-French controlling southern Vietnam until 1946 when the First Indochina War broke out.

It is then clear that Nationalist China had an intensely difficult task in hand, with its Allies all having interests not necessarily in congruence with China’s. With these in mind some decisions of the other Allies are much easier to understand.

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Japanese marines at Guangdong in the Battle of Wuhan

Most historians place the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War on July 7, 1937 at the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, when a crucial access point to Beijing was assaulted by the Japanese. Some Chinese historians, however place the starting point at the Mukden Incident of September 18, 1931. Following the Mukden Incident, the Japanese Kwantung Army occupied Manchuria and established the puppet state of Manchukuo on February 18, 1932. Japan tried forcing the Chinese government to recognize the independence of Manchukuo. However, when the League of Nations determined that Manchukuo was a product of Japanese aggression, Japan withdrew from the League.

Following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937, the Japanese occupied Shanghai, Nanjing and Southern Shanxi in campaigns involving approximately 350,000 Japanese soldiers, and considerably more Chinese soldiers. Historians estimate up to 300,000 people perished in the Nanking Massacre, after the fall of Nanjing on December 13, 1937, while some Japanese historians denied the existence of a massacre at all. Throughout the next few years, the Japanese air force launched air bombing raids on nearly every city in China, leaving millions homeless.

The Marco Polo Bridge Incident not only marked the beginning of an open, undeclared, war between China and Japan, but also hastened the formation of the Second United Front between the Kuomintang (KMT)and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The cooperation took place with salutary effects for the beleaguered CCP. The high point of the cooperation came in 1938 during the Battle of Wuhan . However, the distrust between the two antagonists was scarcely veiled. The uneasy alliance began to break down by late 1938, despite Japan’s steady territorial gains in northern China, the coastal regions, and the rich Yangtze River Valley in central China. After 1940, open conflict between the Nationalists and Communists became more frequent in the areas outside Japanese control, culminating in the New Fourth Army Incident. The Communists expanded their influence wherever opportunities were presented, through mass organizations, administrative reforms, land and tax reform measures favoring peasants, while the Nationalists attempted to neutralize the spread of Communist influence and fight the Japanese at the same time.
 

The Japanese had neither the intention nor the capability to directly administer China. Their goal was to create friendly puppet governments favorable to Japanese interests. However, the atrocities committed by the Japanese army made the governments that were set up very unpopular. In addition, the Japanese refused to negotiate with the Kuomintang or the Communist Party of China, which fueled further anti-Japanese sentiments. The Japanese also forced the Chinese people living under their control to change their money into military banknotes, which the current Japanese government still refuses to exchange even today

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Chinese soldiers march to the front in 1939

Chinese soldiers in house-to-house fighting in Battle of Tai’erzhuang

Unlike Japan, China was unprepared for total war and had little military-industrial strength, no mechanized divisions, and few armored forces. Up until the mid-1930s China had hoped that the League of Nations would provide countermeasures to Japan’s aggression. In addition, the Kuomintang government was mired in a civil war against the Communists. Chiang famously was quoted: “the Japanese are a disease of skin, the Communists are a disease of the heart”. Though the communists formed the New Fourth Army and the 8th Route Army which were nominally under the command of the National Revolutionary Army, the United Front was never truly unified, as each side was preparing for a showdown with the other once the Japanese were driven out. All these disadvantages forced China to adopt a strategy whose first goal was to preserve its military strength, whereas a full frontal assault on the enemy would often prove to be suicidal. Also, pockets of resistance were to be continued in occupied areas to pester the enemy and make their administration over the vast lands of China difficult. As a result the Japanese really only controlled the cities and railroads, while the countrysides were almost always hotbeds of partisan activity.

However, Chiang realized that in order to win the support from the United States or other foreign nations, China must prove that it was indeed capable of fighting. A fast retreat would discourage foreign aid so Chiang decided to make a stand in the Battle of Shanghai. Chiang sent his German-trained divisions, the best of his troops, to defend China’s largest and most industrialized city from the Japanese. The battle saw heavy casualties on both sides and ended with a Chinese retreat towards Nanjing. While the battle was a military defeat for the Chinese, it proved that China would not be defeated easily and showed China’s determination to the world. The battle lasted over three months and proved to be an enormous morale booster for the Chinese people as it ended the Japanese taunt of conquering Shanghai in three days and China in three months.
 

While this direct army-to-army fighting lasted during the early phases of the war, large numbers of Chinese defeats compared to few victories eventually led to the strategy of stalling the war. Large areas of China were conquered during the early stages of the war, but the Japanese advancements began to stall in mid-1938. The Chinese strategy at this point was to prolong the war until it had sufficient strength to defeat the Japanese. Chinese troops often engaged in a practice of scorched earth in an attempt to slow down the Japanese. Dams and levees were sabotaged which led to the 1938 Huang He flood. In addition, industry was transported from coastal industrialized areas to inland cities such as Chongqing. By 1940, the war had reached a stalemate with both sides making minimal gains. The Chinese had successfully defended their land from oncoming Japanese on several occasions, while strong resistance in areas occupied by the Japanese made a victory seem impossible to the Japanese. This frustrated the Japanese and led them to employ the “Three Alls Policy” (kill all, loot all, burn all) (????, Hanyu Pinyin: S?ngu?ng Zhèngcè, Japanese On: Sank? Seisaku). It was during this time period that the bulk of Japanese atrocities were committed.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, which brought the United States into the war. China officially declared war on Japan on 8 December 1941. It refused to declare war earlier because receiving military aid while officially at war would break the neutrality of the donor nation. At this point, the priority changed from survival to victory. Enriched with foreign aid, China’s army, now better trained and equipped, began taking the fight to the enemy. Chinese forces took part in the Burma Campaign to liberate Burma from the Japanese. By 1945 China was making significant progress, liberating large areas conquered by Japan during Operation Ichigo. Operations BETA and CARBONADO, were joint Chinese-American plans to liberate the entire Chinese mainland, starting with a push into Guangdong and then north to Shanghai. But the dropping of the atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war, Operation August Storm, ended the war faster than anyone had expected.

The basis of Chinese strategy during the war, which can be divided into three periods:

First Period: 7 July 1937 (Battle of Lugou Bridge) - 25 October 1938 (Fall of Hankou). In this period, one key concept is the trading of “space for time” (Chinese: ???????). The Chinese army would put up fights to delay Japanese advance to northeastern cities, to allow the home front, along with its professionals and key industries, to retreat west into Chongqing to build up military strength.

Second Period: 25 October 1938 (Fall of Hankou) - July, 1944. During the second period, the Chinese army adopted the concept of “magnetic warfare” to attract advancing Japanese troops to definite points where they were subjected to ambush, flanking attacks, and encirclements in major engagements. The most prominent example of this tactic is the successful defense of Changsha numerous times.

Third Period: July 1944 - 15 August 1945. This period employs general full frontal counter-offensives.

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