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.