Wednesday, November 14, 1923. In from the cold.

German Gen. Hans von Seeckt ordered that Berlin cafés, halls and cabarets must admit the city's poor and cold in order to warm themselves, least the Government seize them to be used for that purpose.

Von Seeckt's tomb.

Von Seeckt had been an important figure in the Imperial German Army before going on to be a major figure in the Reichswehr.  He was in the German parliament from 1930 to 32 as a member of a center right party, but turned towards the hard right thereafter.  He was assigned to the German military mission in China in 1933, where he restored the failing relationship with the Nationalist Chinese.  His advice lead to the 1934 Nationalist campaign that resulted in the Communist Long March.

Germany suspended payments on its reparations.

New Zealand's laws were extended to Antarctica as Governor General John Jellicoe applied its jurisdiction to the Ross Dependency.

Monday, February 2, 1942. Things Chinese

Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress to loan $500,000,000 to Nationalist China.

US poster for China relief.  This is obviously an idealized poster, but its interesting in that the family is shown in typical Chinese dress for the time, with the Nationalist soldier pretty accurately shown with a export pattern contract M98 Mauser and attired in German inspired clothing, including the feldmutze adopted by the Nationalist Chinese Army.

This doesn't seem surprising now, but in retrospect, Nationalist China's road to being an ally of the United States was a circuitous one.  The Nationalist had been a Soviet client since 1921 and remained one even after the Communist were removed from the Kuomintang, the event that brought about the Chinese Civil War.  Indeed, while the Soviets also supported the Chinese Communist Party, it operated to force the CCP to make accommodations to the Kuomintang even while the two were fighting against each other.  Moscow's hand was so heavy that it can be argued that Stalin essentially prevented a Communist takeover of China before 1949 through its actions.  A pre-war effort by the Japanese to secure a treaty with the USSR that went beyond being a mere non-aggression pact had included, as part of its conditions, that the Soviets quit supplying the Nationalist, which the Soviets refused.

Soviet volunteer aviators with the Nationalist Chinese.  Soviet aircrews fought with the Nationalist until the German invasion of the USSR, making their volunteer effort earlier than the American one.

Indeed, the Soviets not only supplied aid and material to the Chinese Nationalist, they supplied a group of volunteer aviators.  The US AVG came about only after the Soviet effort concluded.  The Soviets, therefore, aided the Nationalist in real terms longer, and in some ways, more concretely, than the US did, right up until the late 1930s when the US became very interested in Japanese aggression in China.

Soviet I-16 fighter in Nationalist Chinese use.  This aircraft was a popular fighter of the 1930s and saw service early in World War Two, by which time it was obsolete.

At the same time, Nationalist China received significant support from Nazi Germany as well.

Poster symbolizing German and Nationalist Chinese military cooperation, and also demonstrating the very close appearance of their respective uniforms.  The German pattern helmets used by the Chinese were of the late M35 pattern, making them a more modern pattern, for example, than that usually shown worn by the Finns, who retained the old M16s until later patterns were supplied to them during World War Two.

German aid to the Chinese Nationalist military dated back to Weimar Germany, and China had been one of the outlet nations which allowed the Weimar government to basically bypass restrictions on the size of the German officer corps. This continued on into the 1930s with it going so far as to see one of Chiang Kai Shek's children, an adopted son, receive German military training, while another saw an education in the USSR, showing the nature of the relationship between the two countries and the Nationalist.

Chiang Wei-kuo.

The Germans pulled towards the Japanese in the late 1930s, although that relationship was not anywhere near as seamless or trusting as sometimes supposed, and was more than a little cynical on the German side (it was much less cynical on the Japanese side).  As this occurred the Germans began to slowly abandon the Chinese, although not before the Chinese Nationalist Army was essentially equipped in a fashion that distantly mirrored the German Army's to a significant extent.  The Nationalist Chinese fought the Second World War principally armed with German infantry weapons, and they even acquired a handful of tanks from the Germans before Japanese protests caused the supply of such things to cease.

Chinese soldier guarding American P-40s.  He's armed with a contract German M98 Mauser and  his uniform, sans footgear, is basically German in pattern.

The United States, in contrast, had never actually been a major military supplier to anyone prior to World War Two and only stepped into that role with China very late, indeed basically at the same time it started to supply the British in the Second World War. 

It should be noted that in spite of all of this aid, from all of these various sources, and in spite of the fact that the Nationalist Chinese fought much better than they have been credited as doing, massive corruption existed within the Nationalist Chinese ranks which enormously depleted their effectiveness.  Vast amounts of aid were wasted or subject to corrupt diversion and the plight of the Chinese enlisted man a bad one, which accounted for a massive desertion rate.

The US can be regarded as having been naive throughout this period in regard to China in every fashion.  The Nationalist Chinese fought much harder than they're credited with against the Japanese, as noted, but the Nationalist were not in a position to expel them and their own internal corruption hindered their effectiveness.  Chiang clashed with his American advisor's views, although he was always extremely polite to them even though he knew that some, such as Gen. Stilwell, held him in contempt.  The long history of his political movement demonstrates that it was one of complicated political beliefs which in fact included some sympathy to the very hard left, but the government was not a democratic one during Chiang's control of it, something he attributed to wartime and civil war conditions.

Wartime pro British Nationalist card.

During the war the US military mission to China would become significant, but wartime conditions also meant that the OSS mission was more than a little sympathetic to the Chinese Communists and, in fact, included members who were Communist themselves.  The rapid collapse of the Chinese Nationalist, who had held out throughout the 1930s, raised questions that have still never really been fully answered about how that came about, but it is clear that the Truman administration simply had no real sympathy for the Nationalist and had grown tired of them.  Here too, the US failed to appreciate China and where things were heading, once the Nationalist had lost the favor of their final patron, the United States.  Chiang, for his part, partially attributed his 1949 defeat to the corruption that has always existed in his movement, and he diligently worked to eliminate it once he was exiled to Taiwan.

Oddly, Chiang Kai Shek has undergone a bit of a rehabilitation in Communist China in recent years, with some scholarly articles reassessing his leadership favorably.  It's hard to know what to make of this.

On this same day, and on the same topic, more or less, Joseph Stilwell was designated Chief of Staff to Supreme Commander, China Theatre, which meant he was Chief of Staff to Chiang.

Stilwell didn't get along with Chiang and was outraged by Chinese corruption and military inefficiency, both of which were very real as noted.  He became more vociferous about his views as the war went on, and was ultimately partially recalled because of this.  He referred to Chiang as peanut, and his views might be best illustrated, in part, by this poem he authored.

I have waited long for vengeance,
At last I've had my chance.
I've looked the Peanut in the eye
And kicked him in the pants.

The old harpoon was ready
With aim and timing true,
I sank it to the handle,
And stung him through and through.

The little bastard shivered,
And lost the power of speech.
His face turned green and quivered
As he struggled not to screech.

For all my weary battles,
For all my hours of woe,
At last I've had my innings
And laid the Peanut low.

I know I've still to suffer,
And run a weary race,
But oh! the blessed pleasure!
I've wrecked the Peanut's face.

Also on this day, as Sarah Sundin's blog reports:

February 2, 1942: : US 808th Engineer Aviation Battalion arrives in Melbourne to build airfields near Darwin, Australia. Allied ships begin withdrawal from Singapore to East Indies.

At this time, there was a real fear that the Japanese would land on Australia.

On the Eastern Front, the Germans were forced to supply the troops surrounded at Kholm by air.

Life Magazine featured a P-47 on its cover, a stunning thing to realize in that in 1942 the common American fighter was the over matched P-40.  The P-47 would go on to be one of the great convoy escort aircraft of the war and obtain a reputation as a terrific ground support aircraft.  The plane had made its first flight in 1941 and had not yet gone into service, but the fact that it was at this stage meant that the US had already leaped an entire aircraft generation ahead of any other combatant in the war.

Friday November 14, 1941. The Ark Royal Sinks, the Marines Leave, and Suspicion.

Suspicion, the film, not the feeling, premiered on this day in 1941. 

The Ark Royal, hit yesterday by a torpedo, sank.

Remarkably, only one life was lost due to the sinking.

The movie is also mentioned on Sarah Sundin's excellent blog, along with the item that the United States ordered the withdrawal of Marines from China to the Philippines along with the river gunboats of the U.S. Navy.

Today in World War II History—November 14, 1941

The Marine Corps had a presence in China that dated back to the 19th Century, as indeed did the U.S. Army (the 6th Cavalry had once patrolled in northern China).  In context however, the Marines in China in 1941 were there, as were the Navy's gunboats, as part of a military mission in the country to protect American lives and property in the context of the Chinese Civil War. They'd been placed there with that mission in 1927.

Their withdrawal came at this point as it war with Japan was regarded as nearly inevitable and the Navy and Marine Corps mission in the country placed those assigned to it at the mercy of the Japanese, given their location.  The Marine Corps returned to China following the war's end, but were withdrawn again in 1948 as the Nationalist began to slide towards defeat.

Monday October 25, 1971. The Recognition of the People's Republic of China, The Electric Company and The Rural Purge

On this day in 1971 the People's Republic of China replaced the Republic of China s the US recognized representative of the Chinese people.  A resolution to oust Taiwan, i.e., Nationalist China, failed, but the Taiwanese representative walked out in anticipation of the inevitable future results.  Taiwan also announced that it would not pay the over $30,000,000 it owed the UN, given this result.

Chiang Kai-Shek was still living at the time and officially the Republic of China sought reunification with the mainland with it as the Chinese government.  In reunification, they were aligned in principle with the People's Republic of China, but only on that point.  The PRC saw reunification under their banner, not the Nationalist one.  As a practical matter, the U.S. Navy had precluded that from occurring following the 1948 retreat of the Nationalist to Taiwan.

The US had been a major factor in the hold out in according the PRC recognition at the UN. While the US, tired of Chiang Kai-Shek following the Second World War, and despairing of his abilities to force a successful conclusion to the Chinese Civil War, had chosen to slowly decrease its involvement with the Nationalist Chinese efforts following the war, was nonetheless shocked by the sudden collapse of the Nationalist Army in 1948.  This had caused Congress, which hadn't been taking a huge interest in the Nationalist's plight, to suddenly focus on China with the "who lost China?" query becoming a tag line for conservatives.  Moreover, the Chinese Red Army's recovery from eons of civil war and World War Two was evident when it intervened in the Korean War (using some formations that had been Nationalist ones earlier).  A widespread assumption that the PRC danced to Moscow's tune ramped up the concern, although PRC government was plenty repressive and scary in its own right without, as it turned out, much influence from the Soviet Union.

Be that as it may, the relucatance of the US to recognize Red China as the Chinese government had reached the fairly absurd level by the mid 1960s. It was clear that the Nationalist were not capable of jumping the Straits of Taiwan and taking on the Chinese Red Army.  And as the most populous nation in the world, recognition of it was overdue.  This didn't, of course, accord it American recognition, but that would be on the near term horizon.

Taiwan since has developed into a parliamentary democracy and the current ruling party has an official policy of independence.  Taiwan functions as a putative state, although it still is not recognized as a sovereign by anyone anymore, and it has not declared independence, that being too risky given its massive aggressive neighbor that still claims Taiwan as its own.  It's now likely the longest running unrecognized state in the world, and its odd status is such that it functions as a country in everything but name.  Tensions with Red China, of course, have been very much in the news recently.

From the outstanding Uncle Mike's Musings, we also learned that this is the day when PBS's Electronic Company premiered.  As he states there:

October 25, 1971, 50 years ago: The Electric Company premieres on PBS. A companion piece to Sesame Street, it is geared toward kids a little older who were, by then, learning to read. As the closing tagline say, it is produced by the same production company: "The Electric Company gets its power from The Children's Television Workshop."

The show had a truly remarkable cast, which I had not realized until I read the entry.

The odd thing about this for me is to realize how little I participated in this sort of television from the era.  I was just a kid when this came out, but I don't recall ever watching it.  That might be because, like a lot of other television from the early 1970s, it seemed so very urban.  I suppose it was all part of the "Rural Purge" of television that took place in the early 1970s.

The Chinese Civil War: Every Fortnight

Friday, July 1, 1921. Reds in China.

                       

The Communist Party of China, which ultimately would have the blood of millions on its hands, was founded on this day in 1921, or at least claims to have been.  The actual date is somewhat murky, which is natural given the circumstances, but it was right about about this time, perhaps within a few days.

Symbol of the Chinese Communist Party, appropriately in blood red.

An alien introduction in the first place, the Chinese Communist Party grew out of the May 4th Movement which expressed student discontent with the Versailles Treaty, which had failed to recognize Chinese claims to German colonial holdings on Chinese territory, finding in favor of Japan instead. While Japan was a full belligerent in the war, the failure to assign these territories to China was clearly a violation of Wilson's Fourteen Points and a shocking denial of legitimate Chinese claims in favor of illegitimate Japanese ones.  While the protests were legitimate, they came at a time during which radical Marxism was gaining ground in Europe and those movements spilled over into China.  At nearly the same time, many of the same ideas would begin to get a toehold in Japan, along with concepts of extreme nationalism, such as would take hold in Germany and Italy.  For that matter, the Bolsheviks, even thought they lacked a firm grasp on Russia at the time, was active in promoting Communism in China and had an early foundational role in the CCP by 1919.

Student protest in May 4th Movement.

The same was somewhat true of the Chinese Nationalist Party, the KMT, and early on the CCP ended up being a wing of the KMT. Sun Yat Sen, one of the KMT's founders, was at least somewhat sympathetic to Communism and the KMT early on adopted certain Leninist principals.  Indeed, some proto communist elements have never left the KMT, which remains a significant political party in Taiwan.

The party struggled with the KMT until after World War Two, at which time it defeated the KMT in the Chinese Civil War on the mainland.  The story is a long and complicated one, as is the story of the KMT itself, which we'll perhaps detail elsewhere, as that story has its roots in the era we are focused on. Suffice it to say, the CCP continues to rule China to this day, but on a model that draws some influence from the Leninist NEP.  It can't continue to govern China forever, and while it remains strongly in place, it's long-term prospects are probably shorter than generally suspected.  It has become, in recent years, the most serious military threat to the United States and the first peer level military opponent of the US since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

On the same day the left wing government of Mexico imposed increased tariffs on the export of petroleum products which brought oil production and exploration to a halt.

May 7, 1941 An Enigma Solved

On this day in 1941, as you can read in the item below, the British destroyer HMS Somali captured the German weather ship München off of Iceland.

Today in World War II History—May 7, 1941

With the ship the British also captured her July Enigma code book.  In fact, she was targeted for that.

Benchley Park had figured out that the fatal flaw of Enigma was the universality of the code books and they guessed that weather ships would have them, even though they didn't transmit in code, and that they'd have the following month's in a safe.  The plan was to fire over a weather ship and frighten the crew in the hopes they'd fail to dump the second book, which they in fact did.

Weather ships were a critical part of the German U-boat campaign but also a weakness in it.  In the days before satellite weather forecasting, weather forecasting relied upon weather readings and observations.  This meant that the Germans had no choice but to put weather ships in the North Atlantic and to also land men on Iceland and Greenland, and even Labrador. All of these efforts were vulnerable to Allied detection and they had to rely on the remoteness of their locations for protection.

On the same day, the Germans released the film Sieg Im Westen (Victory in the West).  It proved to be premature.

Also on this day, the Royal Air Force took its first delivery of B-17s.  The RAF would never use a large number of the American bomber, but they did employ some.  They would not see combat until July, when they were used in a high altitude bombing raid which served to confirm in British minds that daylight bombing was too costly.

The Battle of South Shanxi began in China and would result in one of the worst defeats for the Nationalist Chinese in the Second World War.  Critical to the result, Communist Chinese forces refused to come to the aid of encircled Nationalist Chinese forces due to embittered communist feelings over the New Fourth Army Incident of earlier that year.

That earlier incident had occurred in early 1941 and saw the Chinese communist sustain about 7,000 casualties at Nationalist Chinese hands. Accounts of the incident vary enormously and it is therefore almost impossible to figure out who broke the truce between the Nationalist and the Communist that was brokered in order to contest the Japanese, the bigger enemy.   At any rate, the Nationalist sustained over 100,000 casualties in the South Shanxi battle, so the Communist more than evened the score.

The Chinese Civil War Part Two.

The Chinese Civil War