Wuhan Falls

The Japanese offensive begun in August culminated in the fall of Wuhan on October 25th 1938. The Japanese, exhausted but feeling victorious had suffered heavy casualties – perhaps a hundred thousand men, over a hundred planes and many small ships from their riverine navy. However, combined with their capture of Canton, the Wuhan offensive essentially completed the conquest of China’s eastern coastal region.

However, the determination of the Chinese to resist remained unbroken by their setbacks. One of my sources compares the Chinese to the British at Dunkirk. While the Chinese resisted, they withdrew everything from factory components to skilled civilian personnel into the interior and established their final wartime capital at Chunking. another source notes that during this time the Chinese also reformed their army command structure, stripping out three layers in order to improve efficiency and responsiveness.

I will add that in reading accounts of the battles I am struck by how things improve for the Chinese every time they are able to defend in hilly terrain. The Chinese were, if only by virtue of grim necessity, a light infantry force and practiced maneuver and infiltration while taking advantage of obscured lines of sight (and lines of fire) in an effective form of active defense against road bound and less maneuverable Japanese forces. Anyone who has read accounts of Chinese units fighting the Americans in Korea will will recognize the pattern and will conclude that these tactics were practiced by the Chinese army well before the 1949 Communist revolution.

Once again a sense of quagmire is in the air for the Japanese. Japan once again commits more troops to China and the Japanese cabinet of Prince Fumimaro Konoye is replaced due to rising dissatisfaction over the cost of the war. The Japanese declaring a policy of “all-out war on China” prepare to drive on into China’s interior protected as it is by extensive barriers of hilly and mountainous terrain. Hmmm.

Canton Falls

On October 21, 1938, Canton fell to the Japanese. Canton was China’s last major port through which China could receive outside aid. As a practical matter, China was now cut off from significant foreign assistance.

On October 12, the Japanese had landed a corps of 40,000 men at Taya Bay just north of Hong Kong. This use of sea power gave the Japanese the mobility they needed to take the Chinese by surprise. The Chinese were initially able to oppose only two brigades against this invasion and these along with their hastily assembled reinforcements were brushed aside. Thus did Canton fall in only nine days.

By contrast the main Japanese offensive toward Wuhan (begun on August 22nd) remained a hard slog although the Japanese have been at the outskirts of their main objective, Wuhan, since October 10th. It seems that the fall of Wuhan is imminent.

The Munich Agreement

On September 30th, 1938, Germany, Italy, Britain and France signed the Munich Agreement whereby the Sudetenland was ceded to Germany. Czechoslovakia, which did not participate in the Munich conference was told by Britain and France that it could resist Germany on its own or agree to the results of the conference. Seeing resistance as futile it chose to agree.

Chamberlain returned to Britain proclaiming that he brought “peace in our time”. It was raining and he had an umbrella. To this day you will never see an American or British diplomat carrying an umbrella upon returning from a diplomatic conference.

The gain of the Sudetenland, its ethnic German population, its iron, steel, and electric power resources and armaments factories, shifted the European military balance towards Germany. Before Munich it is clear in retrospect that the belief of Britain and France that they were at a military disadvantage relative to Germany was just as erroneous as Hitler’s belief in Germany’s superiority. Hitler’s subsequent contempt for Britain and France contained a substantial measure of anger that their weakness had denied him an opportunity for war. He was to get his opportunity eleven months later from a position of substantially greater relative strength than he had in 1938.

Winston Churchill is famous for his quick denunciation of Munich as a “disaster of the first magnitude” and “defeat without a war” which would lead to further concessions and still result in the need for resistance and, if necessary, war as the best possible outcome. Soon however he was not alone as opinion quickly shifted from alignment with Chamberlain’s optimism to a growing conviction that Munich was a mistake.

An account of these events and those that followed up to the outbreak of war along with related internet links can be found here .