Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937-1945 : Mitter, Rana: Amazon.com.au: Books

Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937-1945 : Mitter, Rana: Amazon.com.au: Books






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Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937-1945 Hardcover – 10 September 2013
by Rana Mitter (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars 698 ratings




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The epic, untold story of China’s devastating eight-year war of resistance against Japan

For decades, a major piece of World War II history has gone virtually unwritten. The war began in China, two years before Hitler invaded Poland, and China eventually became the fourth great ally, partner to the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. Yet its drama of invasion, resistance, slaughter, and political intrigue remains little known in the West.

Rana Mitter focuses his gripping narrative on three towering leaders: Chiang Kai-shek, the politically gifted but tragically flawed head of China’s Nationalist government; Mao Zedong, the Communists’ fiery ideological stalwart, seen here at the beginning of his epochal career; and the lesser-known Wang Jingwei, who collaborated with the Japanese to form a puppet state in occupied China. 

Drawing on Chinese archives that have only been unsealed in the past ten years, he brings to vivid new life such characters as Chiang’s American chief of staff, the unforgettable “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, and such horrific events as the Rape of Nanking and the bombing of China’s wartime capital, Chongqing. Throughout, Forgotten Ally shows how the Chinese people played an essential role in the wider war effort, at great political and personal sacrifice.
Forgotten Ally rewrites the entire history of World War II. Yet it also offers surprising insights into contemporary China. No twentieth-century event was as crucial in shaping China’s worldview, and no one can understand China, and its relationship with America today, without this definitive work.
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From Australia

Jason Walters

4.0 out of 5 stars A very good book

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on 18 November 2020

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Well researched and well written. A very good text on important history that is so important but has been largely ignored by all but the most direct participants.

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From other countries

Hugh Murray

2.0 out of 5 stars FORGOTTEN ALLY? NO, BETRAYED ALLY1

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 14 September 2017

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What's wrong with this book? In the Index one can find a listing for Chiang Kia-shek's “paranoia over Soviet Union,”(p. 431) but there is nothing in Mitter's Index concerning the assassination plots against Chiang by the chief US military leader in China during most of WWII. General “Vinegar” Joe Stilwell's plots included having Chiang jump from an airplane with a defective parachute or have him die from food poisoning with a botulism that would not show in an autopsy. These “plans,” even though not implemented, should have been included in the book. Also missing is the comment to Stilwell by the beloved Pres. Franklin Roosevelt concerning the Chinese leader, “If you can't get along with Chiang and can't replace him, get rid of him once and for all.”(Richard Bernstein, FP, 3 Sept. 2015) Mitter has truly mistitled his book: The Forgotten Ally, should have been The Betrayed Ally. And Mitter wrongly concluded that different approaches and policies were “character driven squabbles [which] would lead to one of the postwar tragedies in American politics: the sterile debate on 'Who Lost China'”(Mitter, 354)

What makes Mitter's book so important is that he is so representative of the mainstream history establishment. A professor of History and Politics at Cambridge U. in England, Mitter's volume will become the quick reference work on WWII China for many years. But his Leftwing bias is so clear and evident, yet so ubiquitous in academe that he us unaware of it and how it distorts his history. I hope to expose some of his biases.

There is a strong argument to be made that American “aid” to the Republic of China during WWII was destructive to Chiang and his Nationalist government, - that Roosevelt and Gen. George Marshall were willing to sacrifice China to entice Stalin to join the war against Japanesean. China, like Poland and eastern Europe, would be served to the Soviets by the West. The big difference, the Soviet troops were in Poland and eastern Europe, so the West “gave” the Soviets what they had already conquered. In China, FDR and Marshall were willing to give Stalin what his troops had not won, inviting them in at the war's conclusion.

In the 1930s Marshall had risen quickly in the US Army, being promoted over more senior officers. His work with the depression program, the Civilian Conservation Corps, had gone well, and he rose in the ranks. In part this may have been because his politics were more amenable to the Roosevelts, for in the US, the elected officials are the ultimate authority. Marshall served a stint in China, where he disliked the Nationalist regime, and so did his protege, Joe Stilwell.

In 1927 Chiang had turned against his allies within the Nationalist Party, and sought to destroy his erstwhile Communist colleagues. Simultaneously, Chiang was also fighting against local war-lords, trying to unify the nation. In 1931 the Japanese invaded several northeastern provinces, and established a puppet state to represent the Manchu minority, restoring the last Chinese emperor, Pu Yi, as the head of the new nation of Manchukuo. Chiang was too weak to do much about that or further Japanese inroads into northern China. In 1937 a minor incident on a bridge outside of Beijing with shots fired between Chinese and Japanese soldiers escalated. This time Chiang did not yield, and the 2nd Sino-Japanese War had begun.

The Imperial leaders of Japanesean were furious that China refused to follow the rising sun in its determination to expel Western colonialists and oppressors from Asia. Japanesean attacked Shanghai in the largest battle since the 1916 Battle of the Marne of WWI. China still would not surrender. Japanesean decided to be ruthless in its next major campaign, known today as “the Rape of Nanking (Nanjing).” Chiang was basically alone in his fight. He had had help from German military advisers, but in time they were recalled as Germany, Italy, and Japanesean joined in an anti-Comintern Pact. Stalin provided some minor help, and in the 1939 undeclared war – USSR and Mongolia vs. Japanesean and Manchukuo, the Soviets quickly smashed the Japanese defenses, and peace was restored.

Chiang was basically alone in trying to stop the Japanese with regular armies. The communists were limited to the north or their center in Yenan. They could only use guerrilla tactics against the Japanese. Chiang's army might delay the Nipponese invaders, but the Nationalists were not as well equipped, or trained, and they usually succumbed. Finally, some Nationalists, fed up with the loss of life and lands, decided for an alternative approach. Wang Jingwei, had once been the number 2 man to Sun Yat-sen, leader of the Chinese Revolution that had overthrown the Qing Dynasty in 1911. In 1940 Wang and several other prominent Chinese, left Chunking, the new evacuated Nationalist capital, for Hanoi, Indo-China (then under the Vichy French, collaborating with the Axis). From there they flew to Japanese occupied cities and soon established a collaborationist regime in Nanjing. For them, the fight against Japanesean was over. The fight against the West and the communists would continue. With the defection of these Nationalist leaders, Chiang was even more alone.

That changed in December 1941 when the Japanese attacked Hawaii. America entered the war. Chiang had an ally. Or did he? FDR's favorite Gen. Marshall appointed Joseph Stilwell to be the US military attache to China, and Stilwell was suddenly 2nd in command of the Chinese army. Although Stilwell had not been know for his generalship, he took some of Chiang's best-trained troops on a risky venture in Burma, and then abandoned them! Stilwell turned up in India and appeared before the newsreels. Chiang's troops were not trained for the jungle warfare where Stilwell had led them. There were serious losses by the Allies there, Chinese, Indian, and British troops. Soon Stilwell complained that Chiang was not fighting the Japanese, but instead keeping his troops for a later conflict against the communists. But some of the troops about whom Stilwell complained were in areas where they were also holding important junctions threatened by the Japanese. Mitter fails to ask a very basic question about Stilwell, - was he an enemy of the Nationalist Government?

Mitter writes: “During the summer of 1943 Stilwell fantasized about taking command of all Chinese troops, including the Communists, with Chiang and the Nationalist military leadership left as ciphers only.”(302) Note, he does not mention the Red leaders as ciphers. Was Stilwell and enemy of the Nationalists?

An answer to that question might be gleaned by reviewing a hand-written letter Stilwell sent to a friend on 6 April 1946. By then, WWII was over, Stilwell was in the US, and the Soviets had taken Manchuria at the end of the war as agreed to at Yalta by FDR and Stalin. The Soviets expropriated much portable, industrial material back to the USSR and later would give many confiscated Japanese weapons and some American lend-lease supplies to the Chinese Communists entering Manchuria. Both the USSR and the USA recognized the Nationalists as the official Republic of China, and America tried to get Nationalist (KMT) troops to Manchuria before the Reds got there. The Soviets blocked some American ships from the ports, but eventually the KMT troops disembarked and won some, and then some more of the cities of Manchuria. Suddenly there was open civil war between the Reds and KMT. The Reds were not nearly as well trained at this point, and the KMT was winning victory after victory when Stilwell wrote the letter. He wrote: “Isn't Manchuria a spectacle? ...It makes me itch to throw down my shovel and get over there and shoulder a rifle with Chu Teh.” (Barbara Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45, p. 527) Chu Teh was then the military leader of Communist forces. He would later command the Chinese “volunteers” who crossed the Yalu River to drive the Americans from North Korea. Tuchman adds that the Stilwell letter was published in the newsletter of a pro-communist journalist in January 1947. (Tuchman, 527, ftnote) Sen. Joseph McCarthy, in his book critical of Marshall, reported that the same letter was also published on 26 Jan. 1947, in photostat, in the New York Daily Worker (organ of the Communist Party, USA). (McCarthy, America's Retreat from Victory, p. 62)

Stilwell did not take his rifle to Manchuria in spring 1946, and he died a few months later. However, Gen. Marshall came to the rescue of Stilwell's communist friend. “Both Nationalist armies combined to take Szup'ing and push north...in June 1946...Only another cease-fire order on 6 June – agreed to as a result of great pressure from Marshall and later described by Chiang as his 'most grievous mistake' – saved Lin Piao's [communist] headquarters and permitted the central Manchurian front to stabilize...for the remainder of 1946.”(Edward L. Dryer, China at War, 1901-1949, pp. 324-25) At the same time that Americans were demanding Communists be excluded from the governments of Italy and France, Gen. Marshall was demanding that Chiang form a coalition government that included the Reds. Marshall threatened to cut off all American aid if this were not done. Neither Chiang nor Mao really wanted a workable coalition. Marshall then did cut off all aid to the KMT, the official government of China. Marshall, who was then Pres. Truman's Special Envoy to China would boast, “As Chief of Staff I armed 39 anti-communist divisions, now with the stroke of a pen, I disarm them.” (McCarthy, 90) With Marshall's friends in the US State Dept., Chiang was unable to get the proper license to purchase ammunition or weapons in the US. The State Dept. got Britain to fall in line, so Chiang could get no ammunition or replacements or new weapons. Marshall did more to harm the KMT. When Gen. Wedemeyer was suggested as the new Ambassador to China, Marshall received word from Zhou En Lai, the representative of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in many negotiations. Zhou objected to Wedemeyer, and Marshall then withdrew support for the general. Instead, John L. Stuart was appointed Ambassador to the Republic of China. Stuart had been a missionary, a university professor, a man who had called for the removal of Chiang, and a teacher of Zhou En Lai. So the new Ambassador to Chiang was a man more sympathetic to the radical rebels than to the official government of China. Marshall had a lot in common with Stilwell.

Though the KMT had been winning the civil war in China when Marshall first imposed the embargo, as the year went by, the Reds, with help from the Soviets, began to push the the KMT back from what Dreyer considered its high point with the capture of Yenan in March 1947. (Dreyer, 319) Meanwhile, China became an issue in American politics. While a big “Get America Out” rally in California featured labor leader Harry Bridges, Black singer and celebrity Paul Robeson, and Hollywood actors like Edward G. Robinson, the newly elected Republican Congress had other ideas. It passed legislation to provide considerable funds to the KMT. Left-wingers and Soviet agents in the Treasury Dept., Commerce, and State, obstructed and delayed delivery of the aid until it was too late. When US Ambassador to China Patrick Hurley had resigned in November 1945, he warned that “a considerable section of our State Dept. is endeavoring to support Communism generally as well as specifically in China.” (Tuchman, p. 523-24). Gen. Wedemeyer, who succeeded Stilwell, reported that the KMT could win the civil war with American help, but as this contradicted Marshall's view, the Wedemeyer Report was suppressed for several years. Gen. Claire Chennault, who led the Flying Tigers in China, had worked well with Chiang, and was critical of the communists and of Stilwell. The left wing had been extremely critical of the US during the Spanish civil war for not aiding the Republic against the rebels of the Falange, because the Republic was the legitimate government, - the left now reversed itself, demanding no aid to the legitimate government of China, Chiang and the KMT. Mitter dismisses these debates as personality squabbles, which led to the horrors of McCarthyism. Mitter accuses Hurley and the right wing of distortion (370), and concludes that the civil war “went badly for the Nationalists in large part because of Chiang's ... judgments.”(369) Observe Mitter's non-judgmental phrase, “...when the Korean War broke out in 1950.”(371) I would argue the question as to whether China became Communist or Nationalist was a major one, and there is good reason to suspect deception and treason in the American community led to the betrayal of Chiang and the victory of Mao.

Mitter describes how Chiang in 1937 was the recognized leader of China – recognized even by Stalin's USSR. Mitter notes how the early years of war in China received world-wide publicity. The Spanish Civil War was still on-going, and suddenly there was another war against cruel imperialism. If Guernica became a symbol for the world of the horrors or war, soon that picture was to be joined by newsreels of bombing when the Japanese invaded Shanghai, and even more so , Dec.-Jan. 1937-38 when Japanese troops were given free reign to loot, rape, and kill in Nanking, the city that had been the capital of Chiang's China. Although Mao in his out-of- the-way Yenan hoped to use guerrilla tactics, Chiang, with difficulty, maintained a regular Chinese Army to fight the Japanese invaders, even if they were usually loosing ground and battles.

In December 1941 the Japanese did not simply attack Pearl Harbor; they attacked the (American) Philippines, British Hong Kong, the Dutch Indonesia, Siam, the Malay States, the “Gibraltar of the East” Singapore, and Burma. By February 1942, all of SE Asia was controlled by the Japanese or their allies. How could Chiang receive any American supplies? Either on a Burma road (which was soon closed because of the Japanese), or by air over “the hump,” the Himalayas.

The Americans also supplied Chiang with two military figures – one of whom proved disastrous; the other helpful. “Vinegar” Joe Stilwell was theoretically 2nd in command of the Nationalist Army, directly under Chiang. Stilwell quickly developed a contempt for Chiang whom he called “the peanut” in his diaries. The other American advisor, who unlike Stilwell, stressed the role of air power in the war was Gen. Claire Chennault, whose Flying Tigers would become legendary in the Asian war. Because the Japanese' occupation of coastal China now extended to all of SE Asia, Chiang's Nationalists were isolated; getting supplies to them was a major problem. Of course, after Pearl Harbor, Germany had declared war on the US, and Gen. Marshall and the American leadership decided Europe would be the primary target, so most supplies and lend lease materials would be headed for Britain or the USSR rather than China. Stilwell was in charge of US lend-lease to China, which he used to force Chiang to do as the American general wanted. In many ways Stilwell (and perhaps Marshall and FDR) viewed Nationalist China more as a satellite than as an ally. Mitter concluded that FDR's appointment of Stilwell in China would lead “to the four-year duel between Chiang and that American general...”(242) In the clashes, although “Stilwell had no previous direct experience in generalship,...he had a powerful friend in George C. Marshall.”(250) On 6 February 1942 Marshall sent a message to China – “American forces in China and Burma will operate under Stilwell's direction...but Ger. Stilwell himself will always be under the command of the Generalissimo [Chiang].” (250) Stilwell thought that meant he was in command.

In the spring 1942 Stilwell engaged in a battle for Burma. As things went badly, he ordered the Chinese troops under his command to withdraw to India. Chiang was appalled that a foreign commander of Chinese troops would send them to another country rather than back to China. Chiang counter-manded Stilwell's orders. Then Stilwell and his small entourage arrived at Imphal, India, where he was interviewed by American journalists. Chiang was aghast that Stilwell, the commander, would abandon his troops. Many of those “best” Chinese troops became lost in the thick Burmese jungles, and lost to later fighting in China. Even Stilwell had described this as a “risky” adventure (255); Mitter writes of this episode as “the Burma debacle.”(260) Not only did China lose access to supplies when the Japanese captured and retained the Burma Road, but Stilwell's “highly risky gamble was much more likely to fail than to succeed. It led to the death or injury of some 25,000 Chinese troops along with over 10,000 British and Indian troops (with only 4,500 Japanese casualties). Retreat might” have saved many for the defense of China.”(260)

Again and again the Nationalists are depicted as incompetent and corrupt, and Mitter, either quoting Western observers or adding his own judgment, reinforces these negatives. For some Westerners, Chiang Kai-shek became “Cash my check.” Others found Chiang personally honest, but one who allowed corruption in his Army. Zhisui Li trained as a physician in the West, but with his wife was enthusiastic to return to the new China with his wife in 1949. On the way back, they stopped in Hong Kong where a friend introduced them to a man, reputed to be a high CCP official. The friend told Li to give a gift to the official for “a smooth return...you might land a good-paying job in a medical college in Beijing...give him a Rolex watch...” The idealistic couple refused to give a bribe. After some problems upon entry to the Peoples Republic of China, Li eventually became the personal physician to Mao. “In 1956, when I told Mao the story [about the request for a bribe], Mao laughed uproariously. 'You bookworm,' he chided me. 'Why are you so stingy? You don't understand human relations. Pure water can't support fish.'”(Zhisui Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, p. 41) It appears that the corruption denounced by leaders of the CCP in recent years began at the birth of the PRC with Mao's attitude.

As in other theaters of fighting in WWII, the changes in the popular image of Chiang would follow the pattern of another leader who fought against both Axis aggression and communism. On 25 March 1941, Prince Paul, Regent of Yugoslavia, agreed to adhere to the Tri-Partite Treaty, effectively bringing his nation into an Axis alliance. Because many officers were Serbs and opposed to the Germans, they staged a coup on 27 March. Hitler, preparing for his Operation Barbarosa against the USSR, did not want an anti-German Yugoslavia behind his lines. On 6 April 1941 Germany invaded Yugoslavia and was soon joined by several Axis allies. By mid-April, Yugoslavia had surrendered. Later that same month, Draza Mihailovic, an officer, gathered others together to begin a resistance to German occupation. Only after the Germans attacked the Soviet Union 22 June 1941 would any communist think of forming an underground against the fascist occupation and collaborating governments in the now dismembered Yugoslavia. The leader of the communist partisans was Josip Broz Tito, and he and Mihailovic forces at first agreed to cooperate. However, when sabotage provoked massive retribution by the Germans, Mihailovic's Chetniks were opposed to large-scale sabotage, except under special circumstances. Tito was for it. By year's end, there were skirmishes between the Chetnics and the communists.

Yugoslavia, unlike some European nations, was a multi-ethnic state with simmering feuds and hatreds. With defeat, Serbia was reduced in size; an independent Croatia created; and parts of the Yugoslavia were occupied by Hungarians, Italians, and others. There were Slovenians and Muslims, and Jewish and German minority groups. Mihailovic and the Chetniks did at time collaborate with the puppet government in Serbia; sometimes, Tito's Partisans also collaborated. However, more important for the future of both Tito and Mihailovic were some of the personnel of Britain's MI6 and the newly formed American Office of Strategic Services (the American intelligence agency). At the decoding area in Benchly Park in the UK, we now know several important figures were Communists and Soviet agents. Also, in the rush to create an American agency, Bill Donovan was chiefly concerned about recruiting people opposed to fascism, rather than worrying if they might have far-left backgrounds. With the help of Communist and Soviet agents inside Britain's MI6, and similar agents inside Donovan's OSS, soon MI6 and the OSS were reporting that Tito's partisans were doing all the fighting in Yugoslavia against the Germans and fascist collaborationist regimes, while Mihailovic either did nothing or was himself collaborating. When Mihailovic's guerrillas did fight, the MI6 crowd attributed such resistance to the Reds. The stage was being set for the betrayal of Mihailovic; by early 1943 Churchill, believing the distorted MI6 reports, gave up on Mihailovic, and at war's end,when Tito and the communists came to power, Mihailovic was executed. Many said that was a political decision of the court. In 2017 a Serbian court quashed the treason conviction of Mihailovic. Others maintain that was a political decision.

So initially, Mihailovic is portrayed as a national, patriotic hero fighting against the German oppressors. But when the communists backed Tito, a change in reporting about Mihailovic occurred.

A similar pattern can be observed in the treatment of Chiang and Mao. At first, Chiang is hailed as the Chinese leader standing up against brutal, Japanese aggression. But then he is portrayed as corrupt, inefficient, unwilling to fight the Japanese, always in retreat. By contrast, Mao was building a new egalitarian society where everyone pulled together for the same goals; and his forces led guerrilla campaigns against the Japanese and collaborators. Dreyer argued years later that all hoped to avoid battle with the Japanese, but all had to fight them if and when the Japanese attacked. But only the Nationalists maintained an army of 4 million to oppose the Japanese. Mitter even acknowledges that Chiang's armies held down about 500,000 Japanese troops who might have been assigned elsewhere.(379) such as a major invasion of India. Others place the number of Japanese stuck in the China quagmire at 700,000 to a million; it was a war that Japanesean simply could not seem to win because of the resistance by Chiang.

Mitter includes discussion of the repression in China under Wang's Axis-Nationalist regime in Nanjing; Chiang's anti-Japanese regime in Chunking; and Mao's communist territory in Yenan. In war time, of course, the first two imposed repression. Here's how Mitter describes what was occurring in Yenan: “The communist terror was different. The purpose...was not to line anyone's pocket. Rather, it envisioned – and achieved – one clear aim: it would bring together radicalized ideology, wartime isolation, and fear to create a new system of political power. The war against Japanesean was giving birth to Mao's China.”(295) The History Channel in 2017 showed a special on Mao which provided an example. After arriving in Yenan after the Long March, Mao had posters announce requests for criticism. Next day, some critics posted their views on the wall. Mao found the author of the main critique, had him arrested. Mao then watched as the man's knees were bent in various, unnatural ways, meant to cause as much pain as possible. Mao did not touch; just watched. Additional pain was inflicted upon the critic. Eventually, the fun was over and Mao had the victim killed. Thus, Mao was forging unity among the radicals.

In WWII America was clearly more interested in defeating Hitler and fascism in Europe, deeming them a greater threat than Imperial Japanesean. The US and Britain had much in common, and when FDR and Churchill met in the Atlantic, sailors of both nations sang Christian hymns, shown in newsreels, reinforcing the common bonds. There were no similar bonds with Stalin's USSR. But like Churchill, FDR would make a deal with the devil to defeat Hitler. Lend lease and military supplies were sent to Britain and the Soviets while American servicemen in the Pacific might be 3rd on the priority list. We did not want Britain or the Soviets to collapse.

But we did not want the Republic of China to collapse either! America sent Stilwell to be the number 2 military figure in the Republic of China! We were turning Chiang's China into a satellite. Could you imagine Roosevelt sending an American general to be the number 2 military figure in Stalin's USSR? Although we were giving much more to Stalin, Americans could not even stop when American aid was being re-labeled in the USSR so it appeared to the recipients as Soviet home aid. Stalin was given a free hand. FDR's Administration even asked Hollywood to produce films sympathetic to Stalin, so “Mission to Moscow” and other films glorifying Stalin's Soviet empire were produced.

Even if the remarks by FDR to Stilwell, to get Chiang to do what we want or eliminate him- even if this conversation were another Stilwell fantasy, it would not alter the way the US treated the leader of the Chinese Republic. China was snubbed as a satellite, and as the war wore on, and the influence of the left-wingers in the American bureaucracy waxed, their smearing of Chiang prepared the way for the disarming of the KMT and the victory of the communists in 1949.

After four years of fighting the Japanese alone, with America as a new ally, Chiang was left to deal with an inept general who recklessly wasted Chinese troops on ventures that weakened China and permitted Japanesean to launch a major assault into China in 1944. There is also good reason to believe leftists and communists were inside American intelligence organizations working inside China, providing information to the “peasant rebels.” So “hero” Chiang of 1938 was transformed into the corrupt, inept, un-willing-to-fight the Japanese, fascist-tainted Chiang of the mid-1940s. That is why Chiang deserved to abandon Chinese claims to Outer Mongolia (which was by then the Soviet satellite of Mongolia), and deserved to have the Soviets plundering Manchuria at the end of WWII. And of course, that is why Chiang did not deserve any weapons for his KMT during the civil war against the peasant reformers of Yenan led by Mao.

Like others, I think Chiang with American help could have defeated the Communists in the civil war following WWII. Deception and treason crippled Chiang's chances to win. The results – China under Chairman Mao for decades with millions of Chinese starved, tortured, or executed. And the other legacy of that era – the Kim Il Sung dynasty in North Korea. What a legacy of the Left?

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Clem

5.0 out of 5 stars Great History Lesson

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 22 September 2019

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One of the reasons I loved this book so much is that I felt that I learned an awful lot. Although I’ve always considered myself fairly astute when it comes to the history of the second world war, reading this book reminds me that my knowledge of the subject has always been somewhat skewed to one side. I could tell you a lot about the European events, but not much about the Asiatic affairs; especially the conflict between Japan and China. I’m sure there are many in the same boat as I am. This is probably why the author, Rana Mitter, accurately uses the word “forgotten” in his title for this book.

This book is a very linear, easy to understand account of the events that led up to Japan’s invasion of neighbor China in 1937 which, one could argue, was when and where World War II actually started. We read of all of the major military and political events of the war in China up until the war's conclusion in 1945. We read this narrative from the eyes of the Chinese and, as good as the book is, it can be awfully sickening and depressing. Well….it is war.

There are a lot of Chinese names and places within these pages, and it can be quite easy to get lost while trying to assimilate all of the Sino monikers. Whether or not the author made a conscious effort or not, he somehow manages to keep his readers connected and never overwhelmed. Example: I’ve always heard Chiang Kai-Shek’s prominent wife referred to as Madame Chiang, yet the author always refers to her by her Asian name – Song Meiling. Now, this could be incredibly confusing, yet whenever she’s back in the narrative after a long absence, the author reminds us who she is by simply interjecting “…Chang Kai-Shek’s wife…” after we’re reintroduced to her. I found these instances a huge relief and it prevented me from getting lost and overwhelmed. I’d be lying if I told you I could pass a quiz that covers all of the names and places mentioned in this book, but when compared to other books of a similar nature, this one excels in this area. The author also includes a “cast of characters” at the beginning of the book, but since I read on the Kindle, it wasn’t necessarily easy for me to flip back and forth. Still, give the author kudos for realizing that most of his readers can benefit from such an inclusion.

Speaking of Chiang Kai-Shek, there’s a lot of politics in this book as well. Although probably not completely necessary, it’s definitely warranted and does add needed color to the overall picture. Not only do we have Chiang’s Nationalist party, but we also read of the internal conflicts with Communist leader Mao Zedong. There’s even a third influence (again, new to me), Wang Jingwei, who starts off siding with Chiang, but later splits to attempt to collaborate with the invading Japanese. It’s not that Wang is a traitor necessarily, but he feels it’s probably best for all for China to become subjects of the more powerful Japan. Think of the French Vichy government during World War II as a comparison. All of these rival factions want the same thing for China, and we see many uneasy alliances at different times during the conflict with Japan. In fact, we even see the other Western leaders flirt with Zedong’s communist ilk at times. If it can aid in a better, quicker outcome for the war, it’s definitely worth considering.

Sadly, we also learn that the “superpower” allies (The U.S., England, and Russia) almost see the Chinese as inferior in terms of intelligence and the ability to lead. Looking back at history, this seems horribly racist, but had the Chinese been a race of white people instead of yellow people, you get the impression that Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin would have probably involved Chiang-Kai-Shek in a lot more discussions involving strategy and the future of the allies. Winston Churchill, in particular, comes across as a racist dinosaur who still yearns for the time of English Imperialism.

Yet through all of this, China survives. Things get somewhat easier when Japan devotes its energy to the United States midway through their war with China, yet things never seem to go as well as any of the Chinese leaders would like. They also feel almost as isolated from their allies as they do from their enemies during many of their brutal struggles.

The book, as its title suggests, ends when World War II ends, but everyone knows there’s so much more story to tell with China, and where the next few years would take them. The author gives us a quick postscript of what “happened next”, but I wanted much more. Of course, that’s always a sign of a good book; when the story is over, but you wish the author would keep going. That would warrant an entirely new book, though, and my personal quest is to find one that continues this magnificent (yet horrific) story.

Note: If you have Amazon Prime, there’s a video documentary you can watch that is narrated by the author of this book about these events. It serves as a good companion piece. The video places more emphasis on the battles and the survivors then it does the politics, but it’s a great tool to reinforce what you read about here.

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Julie Merilatt

4.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive Chinese History

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 15 February 2023

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It has been my goal to read more about WWII outside of the European theater, and this is probably the most comprehensive book about China’s role in the war. They endured years of onslaught from the Japanese long before western countries were involved. China was invaded and large swaths occupied and brutalized by Japan’s superior army starting in 1937. China didn’t fight offensively, but tried to defend when and where they could. Unfortunately, inadequate leadership was ineffective in so many aspects of governance and military management.

Before the war truly became international, there were more details about internal Chinese conflict than about fighting the Japanese. It was Nationalists versus Communists versus Collaborationists. On top of enemy air raids and assault, there was flooding and famine as a result of poor decision-making by Nationalist Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and skirmishes with Mao Zedong’s communist forces.

If you thought China was a hot mess prior to international involvement, it got even worse when the Allies tried to interfere. Yes, the Chinese government was corrupt and indecisive, and therefore the Allies viewed them as inferior and incapable. Even as the war wound down, China was treated as a second-rate ally and was not included in most of the summits that would shape the post-war world. This attitude toward China would have lasting effects on its relationship with the USA and would influence the trajectory of the country for decades to come. This book definitely gave me an in-depth look at China’s role in the war and the global consequences.

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Shiraj s.

5.0 out of 5 stars Very nice book

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on 4 April 2023

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A detailed account & detailed story

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Auditor

2.0 out of 5 stars NOT “FORGOTTEN”- SLANDERED AND ABANDONED

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 1 June 2017

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NOT “FORGOTTEN”- SLANDERED AND ABANDONED

Nineteen chapters of entertaining but relatively obscure background events of WW2 China lead up to a fictitious Epilogue. While Mitter headlines “Forgotten Ally”, he wants the shameful dissolution of that alliance “forgotten”. Claiming it a “sterile” issue, he evades and contradicts three years of U.S. State Department records, key papers of Mao Zedong and other defining documents in order to cover-up reality and complicity. He uses comments of fellow authors to support wildly inflated statistics on Communist strength and completely ignores the denial of promised U.S. aid to the faithful, devastated ally that fought the bulk of the Japanese Army throughout WW2. In the real world, State Department records contain Ambassador Stuart’s, 3/17/48 report from China; “America still delays the long promised aid on which survival of democratic institutions depends.” Two weeks later he reported “The Chinese people do not want to become communists, yet they see the tide of communism running irresistibly forward.” Mitter finds these assessments by America’s Official Representative in China easily ignored. He claims Red military superiority at end of WW2 made Red victory inevitable. Consider; In 1946, General Lucas, Commander of U.S. Military Advisory Group- China, reported that his MAG staff could build a first rate Chinese Army and defeat the Communists in two years if the U.S. provided arms and supplies equivalent to those required by ten American Divisions. Consider; Admiral Cooke head of U.S. Military in China testified to Congress “Several times in 1946 … when they had the Communists licked, a truce took place.” Consider; After two years of civil war, General Wedemeyer, former China commander, conducted a Special Presidential fact finding tour. On returning to the States, he urged immediate shipment of WW2 surplus arms to China and Korea. When Wedemeyer refused to revise his findings, his report was suppressed.

Mitter cites a fellow author as his source for claiming a 1941 Red Base Area population of 44 million, but Mao reported at his 1942 Conference of Senior Cadres that his Base Area population was 1.5 million. Mitter lists no source for his claim that, in early 1945, Mao commanded “900,000 regular troops supplemented by a similar number of militia”. Consider; Chiang blockaded Mao’s Base Area with 200,000 Government troops, (The Reds claimed 400,000), until Japan surrendered. Mitter doesn’t explain how 200,000 (or 400,000) could maintain a three year blockade while facing nearly two million Red troops. The quality of Mao’s troops is indicated by his many directives urging more crop production from his troops. Mao’s “Army” was in reality a militia of part time farmers. Its limitations are described in detail by Stalin’s liaison in Mao’s HQ. (See China’s Special Area- Petr Vladimirov).

Mundane details in the body of this book reveal a subtle bias. The author seems to raise Chiang Kai-shek, from his past status as victim of slanderous attacks, towards the level of respect he enjoyed with world leaders of his era. But, each mention of Chiang’s government is tagged with the adjective “corrupt”. This book’s Index lists 22 pages that describe (but do not document) corruption in Chiang’s government. (This, while history’s deadliest terrorist merits 3 listings under “Terrorism”.) Is the level of China corruption worthy of seven times more print than the horror inflicted Mao Zedong? Consider; China fought the bulk of the Japanese Army throughout WW2 on less than 2% of U.S. aid to WW2 allies. By keeping the Japanese Army out of India and Australia, China saved countless of thousands of American and British lives at virtually no cost to America or Great Britain. Why the incessant interest in China’s morality? Why the underplaying of Mao Zedong’s monstrous crimes against humanity? Crimes that began before and continued through the era covered in this book.

The mundane emerges again when Mitter’s map of “Areas of Communist control …” is examined. Applying the scale listed on this map to this map, the distance from Peking to Taiyuan measures approx.750 miles. Rand McNally has it approximately 250 miles. This map presents Communist Areas 300% larger than reality.

Mitter also has problems with major events and key characters and seems to lack insight regarding the U.S. wartime military situation. He presents General Marshall prioritizing war theaters and deciding what forces to commit. Roosevelt and Churchill decided war theater priorities. Marshall was U.S. Army Chief of Staff . He had no direct authority over other branches of the U.S military. In regard to U.S. efforts in Asia that produced a mountainous supply road, Mitter’s concept “… the road might have played a more significant role.” is wrong. The road was a precipitous mountain route, after more than a year of two lane construction it was bottlenecked to one lane. A road, that was predicted to fail, did fail. It provided a tenuous 1000 mile trip that required trucks to carry fuel for the 2000 mile round trip, (China had no fuel). One summer rain sent boulders weighing as much as six tons crashing down on the road and washed out 300 river crossings. The British in Burma christened it the “White Elephant Road”. Mitter misses again on China’s Manchuria concessions to USSR saying they were “unresolved” when Stalin left for Potsdam. Yalta records attest that, with Chiang absent, Churchill and Roosevelt awarded Stalin “preeminent rights” in Manchuria in a signed agreement at Yalta. The only China concession at Potsdam was a grant of port control of Dairen, Manchuria by Truman to Stalin based on Stalin’s pledge to maintain it as an “Open Port”. By year’s end, USSR closed Dairen to American ships and it remained closed until China succumbed.

On the conversion of China into the world’s deadliest regime, long evaded documents attest that China wasn’t “lost”. China didn’t “fall” into communism. China, with one fifth of world population, was targeted by Lenin, shortly after his takeover of Russia. Stalin’s first subversion was foiled by Chiang Kai-shek. His second succeeded with help from Washington insiders.

We now know that the one endlessly maligned as “Corrupt Despot” later founded a thriving democratic nation and the one hailed as “The Great Teacher” was really history’s deadliest dictator. How could they be so wrong? History’s deadliest betrayal needed history’s most pervasive cover-up. The list of cover up participants is long and depressing. That cover-up fiction is only now refuted by recently revealed documents that have been carefully avoided for decades.

FOR MORE OF THAT EVADED INFORMATION:

U.S. Dept. of State- Foreign Relations of the United States- The Far East and China-1946,1947&1948

U.S Senate- Committee on the Judiciary- Testimony of Adm. Cooke re; General Marshall Disarming China 10/51

U.S House Committee on Foreign Affairs- General Marshall Testimony on China, 2/20/48

U.S. CIA Docs. ORE 32-48, ORE 32-49

* Key excerpts from the above now appear in book form.

Also recommended:

Mao: The Unknown Story- Chang & Holliday

Galahad- Charles N Hunter

Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung- Vols. 1-5, Mao Tse-tung

China’s Special Area- Petr Vladimirov

Wedemeyer Reports- Albert C Wedemeyer

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H. Schneider

5.0 out of 5 stars Forgotten? Abused? Neglected?

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 29 November 2013

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We need to keep challenging our perceptions of the world. That's the essence of science, even of history. Sometimes, history is rewritten when new material comes to light, when archives are opened. (At other times, it is rewritten when political power shifts.)

This book first retells the period up to the start of 'real' war between Japan and China. Japan's occupation of Manchuria doesn't even count as war, because China did not resist. The Chinese state and military were too weak to resist modern international forces. That was an heritage from Qing times, which the KMT hadn't been able to repair.

This war before WW2, between 37 and 41, is retold in part 2. The West stayed neutral like in Spain. Ironically, the only real help for CKS, the anti-communist, came from the Soviet Union, who didn't want a victorious and aggressive Japan on its eastern border. When war in Europe started in 39, and Russia had her temporary non aggression pact with Germany, help from Russia was lost to China. CKS hoped to pull in the US on his side, but progress was small and slow.

During this period, two major outrages happened: the Nanking massacre, when Japanese troops killed 300 000 civilians, and then the breaching of the Yellow River dikes by the nationalists, which held up the Japanese advance by a few months, and killed half a million people. A stalemate ensued, in which nationalists, communists and Japanese (with collaborators) each controlled chunks of the country.

1941 brought a big geopolitical shift. The Germans attacked Russia, and the Japanese, despite being unable to fully subdue China, set their goals higher. American support to China started only after Pearl Harbor, when Japan became a shared enemy. However, American and British war strategies did not place high priority on China. 'Europe first' was the doctrine. The relationship was doomed from the beginning, considering the disagreements on necessities. CKS was not treated as an equal ally, and he didn't have Stalin's bargaining power to overcome the contempt.

America sent a general to lead the Chinese army, under the Generalissimo. That was a poor substitute for real help, and it was bound to fail in view of personal issues. CKS and Stilwell never accepted each other. Mitter places much of the blame with Stilwell, who is described as headstrong and rash, while inexperienced. Furthermore, army man Stilwell disagreed with Air Force man Chennault on strategy. Similarly, different American intelligence units operated in China without coordination. American help didn't seem to be of much use to China.

Anyway, the war went badly for years, as did the situation in the nationalist regions, where famines, inflation, and chaos ruled. This softened up the people for the later take over by communists. Terror ruled in all 3 zones, that was not either party's privilege.

By 44, when a major Japanese push into central China caused devastating defeats for nationalist armies, American confidence in CKS' leadership and war effort had eroded to such a low level, that the seemingly more active and efficient CCP seemed a viable alternative towards the war effort.

A vast field for alternative history and 'what if' speculation opens itself up... Would CKS have stood a chance to survive as leader and unite the country if he had had more American support? Etc

I recommend the book strongly, but I warn against expectations of major disclosures. New perspectives move in gradually, not in leaps and bounds.

The author doesn't 'take sides' for CKS, but his view of CKS and his deficiencies is a bit friendlier than has been standard lately. Vinegar Joe gets downgraded. (I need to re-read Tuchman's sympathetic biography.) Regarding strategy, Mitter tends to agree more often with CKS than Stilwell. An important subject, which was played up in the American public, is the question of CKS' attitude towards fighting against Japan. His critics accused him of being unwilling to wage war against the invader. Mitter paints his attitude more in the light of limited resources and strategic disagreements.

The book raised my awareness of the weak position of China among its 'allies'. Stalin remained 'neutral' towards Japan until near the end, so he was useless to CKS. The Brits were never supportive, because their hardly hidden agenda included holding their colonies. The Americans had other priorities too.

The book's title is therefore inaccurate. It should not be 'forgotten ally', but 'ignored and neglected ally'. It should certainly not be misunderstood as support for the 'who lost China' school of thought. China was never America's to lose. Mitter makes that point explicitly.

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historyguy

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, the long lost and long sought after missing chapter of WWII

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 9 December 2013

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Great leadership/strategic level view of the war between China and Japan with an honest look at the triumphs and failures of China's real leader during the conflict, Chiang Kai-Shek, and the lesser personage (during the war anyway) of Mao Zedong. Mitter also relays the story of the puppet leader of China under Japanese occupation, Wang Jingwei. China has been ignored for a very long time in the World War II narrative even though they consistently held down over a million Japanese troops before and after the West finally entered World War II in Asia. Chiang is shown as a brutal dictator, but someone who was able to hold the divided nation of China together through massive Japanese attacks, civil war with the communists, betrayal by close friends, and allies with a penchant for throwing their weight around and treating China like a second class power. China's sacrifice in World War II is estimated by Ritter to be at least 14 - 20 million lives lost. This is second only to the losses of the Soviet Union. I think this alone entitles China's story in the war to be told by someone who understands the chaotic past, politics, and pragmatism of China's leaders at this unbelievable time in China's history. Ritter also connects the threads and shows why Mao gained the upper hand in the civil war, and how WWII had made things easier for the Communists, and harder for the Nationalists.

Don't expect exhaustive descriptions of battles, but do expect to see how China's leaders made decisions based on the outcome of battles, and other disasters during the war.

Highlights:

*Ritter is unsparing of the Imperial Japanese government. He rightfully places most of the blame for events in China on them, and does not fall for the Japan is the "victim" theory (due to the atomic bombs) that I have seen in other books about the war in Asia.

Japan wanted to splinter China into disparate states forever so they could exploit China's resources and labor for their own power. Other colonial regimes did the same prior to Japan (on a much smaller scale), but Japan's invasion of China was an epic war crime which almost ended the existence of the Chinese state and people forever.

*The description of Mao's war is revealing and flies in the face of official Chinese Communist propaganda. Mao and his men fought hard guerrilla campaigns against the Japanese, and they deserve credit for that. However, Chiang and the Nationalists fought all of the big battles where the outcome mattered, and the life and death of China were at stake. Ritter makes it very clear that China is starting to come to grips with the contribution of the Nationalists in the war effort rather than believing that Mao beat the Japanese single handed.

*The Nationalists are no saints. You will cringe at some of their decisions in the face of the Japanese onslaught. They would cause a lot of unnecessary suffering for their own people.

*Ritter rightfully condemns British and American treatment of the Chinese before and during the war. The special privileges they enjoyed in China were humiliations for the Chinese, and British colonies on the Chinese mainland were a slap in the face to a proud people. However, when Ritter compares Britain, and especially the US with Japanese colonialism in China it rings a little hollow. The British and the US should be mentioned, and are appropriately criticized in this book, but Japanese aims, aggression, and war crimes far outstrip anything ever done in China by a western power. The Japanese invasion is second only to Hitler's brutal attack on the Soviet Union in the violent history of the twentieth century. Ritter also makes it clear that American and Allied assistance to China is one of the factors which allowed China to survive as long as it did against Japan (8 years).

Buy this book and open your mind to a titanic lost chapter in the most researched and written about war in all history.

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doc peterson

5.0 out of 5 stars Forgotten history

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 19 March 2014

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Rana Mitter does a remarkable job in exploring the pivotal role China played in the Second World War and in explaining why this has largely been forgotten (or overshadowed by other events) in the West. China's place in the conflict is forgotten and ignored at our peril, the Chinese historical narrative is crucial to understanding regional politics between China and Japan now, and China's perspective of the West looking forward.

Why China's contributions have disappeared from Western histories of the war is fairly straightforward - as Mitter writes, "Put simply, (because of) the early Cold War ... The history of China's war with Japan became wrapped in toxic politics for which both the West and Chinese themselves ... were responsible." This, of course, hints at the complex and tumultous relationship between China (both the Nationalists under Chiang Kai Shek and the Communists under Mao) and the Allies (the US, Great Britain and the USSR).

Mitter begins with a brief overview of post Qing-dynasty China and the in-fighting and competition between rival groups for control of the country, matters greatly compounded by the Japanese occupation of Manuchuria. The collapse of China two years before Nazi Germany invaded Poland is convincingly argued as the real starting point of the war, the fact that China stood alone against Japan highlighted against the image of a brave Britain standing alone against German fascists in 1940.

The theme that Mitter revisits again and again is the paradoxical view the West took of China: on one hand as a backwards state (a view dating back to the Opium War of the mid-19th century), whose internal corruption and military ineptitude did not warrant serious attention, and on the other hand, the recognition that China was necessecary to keep in the war as it occupied hunderdes of thousands of Japanese soliders who may otherwise have been used to expand into Siberia, India, Australia or shore up the war in the Pacific. For years, MItter writes, "China had to fight practically alone without any assurance that help from the outside world was forthcoming."

Added to this, the Japanese occupation also effectively interrupted efforts by the Nationalists to unify China, the Communists literally on the ropes and hanging on by the skin of their teeth when the country was invaded. Mitter points out that the Japanese in effect, provided breathing room and opportunity for the Communists to catch their breath, reoutfit and reorganize.

While the scope of the book focuses on World War II, this is not a military history per se; rather, it is more of a history of the war in China, and its social and geopolitical effects. I much prefer this approach to the topic than a more narrow (and more military-oriented) focus. It is a part of world history that has sadly not received much attention. For that reason, as well as for Mitter's depth, detail and outstanding analysis I give it an enthusiastic five stars. Highly recommended.

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S. Kenneth Pai

4.0 out of 5 stars Why China has been a Forgotten Ally?

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 12 April 2014

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Mitter can be considered biased in favor of China in his presentation of facts and his tone in general.. But unless he believes in what he is saying, and unless he felt injustice has been done to China--as most Chinese do--that their contributions in human life and and suffering were not being appreciated but ignored, he would not have been so fired up to write a book so powerful such as this one.

It's true that Mitter did not break any new grounds in research or scholarship. But c'mon! Count the number of pages occupied by footnotes. Every significant historical fact he cites has been publicly known for decades. But general American public didn't care; policy makers and opinion leaders have had their minds made up already. The chain of events was not kind to China.

After the war ended, images from China were none but negative: internal turmoil, civil war, corruption, Chinese army enters the Korean:conflict:, talks of dropping the A bomb across the Yalu River on to Chinese territory.... The glow of hard-won peace after V-J day was followed almost immediately by a Cold War. To expect a sympathetic glance at a sad bygones ally would have been too much indeed.

Fast-forward to 2014. A Nixon-era honeymoon proved to be too short and soured by the tragic Tiananmen event (the students styro-foam "Statue of Liberty" gave Americans the wrong idea about what the Chinese really wanted--Equality and not Freedom in the American sense). Yes, China has stopped talking about exporting Communism. Yes, China has adopted capitalism all but in name. it doesn't matter! Americans believe in nothing short of American style Democracy. The ritual of the Vote--even if you have to bribe your way, steal them...the result almost didn't matter but the format counts. Well, China just wont buy it, especially when it is going to be a US import. This has become the roots of departure as China veers off to a different horizon.

Worse, China after over a century of foreign domination has decided to end the humiliations no more. It is powerless with the US Navy guarding Taiwan from China. Now the US is inducing Japan--who surrendered to the Allies including China in 1945, to be the lead in an island chain around China's coast to make sure its navy and Air Force cannot venture without running against American intervention under the shield of its bilateral defense treaties with China's neighbors.

In short , the former Ally and former foe have switched roles by no fault of China.

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From other countries

S. Martin Shelton

4.0 out of 5 stars Quite dense but fascinating

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 23 June 2014

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Rana Mitter has his premise exactly correct. The 1937-1945 war in China is largely unknown and not long remembered. In 1943, Allied leaders decided that the campaign in China was second tier in their long-term plan to defeat the Axis Powers—Germany, Italy, Japan, and other minor players. Yet the Sino-Japanese war was critical to our final victory over Japan. In all, approximately four-million Japanese troops were tied-down in the Kwangtung Army’s China campaign. In the last chapter of this detailed tome, Mitter avers that if China had capitulated in 1938, as was a serious possibility, Japan’s imperial ambitions would have been significantly enhanced. A pacified China would have encouraged Japan to invade British India and made their victory much easier.

Actually, the war in China began in 1931 when Japan’s Kwangtung Army seized China’s northeaster province Manchuria and set up a puppet government under the last Qing Emperor, Aisin-Gioro Puyi.

This book gives short shrift to the details of the war in China. The war is but the stage for Mitter to detail the political machinations between the various players: personalities and governments. In all, it was the iron determination of Chiang Kai-shek, President of the Republic of China that kept China in the war—twenty million casualties and 500 million displaced persons.

President Roosevelt appointed General Joseph (“Vinegar Joe”) Stillwell as Chiang’s Chief of Staff. In effect, Stillwell was the commander in chief of the Chinese army. Unfortunately, the misunderstanding between Chiang and Stillwell morphed into vitriolic hatred that seriously hampered China’s war effort. Chiang had to acquiesce to Stillwell’s authority because he desperately needed what help the USA was sending—initially over the Burma Road. After Burma fell to the Japanese, Army Air Corps transport aircraft, based in India, flew over the Himalayas (“The Hump”) into Chunking.

Except for a few offensive strikes, China’s –man army fought a defensive war. The notable was Stilwell’s disastrous 1943 campaign to recapture Burma with Allied troops—the vast majority was Chinese (“Chindits).

Of significance, Mitter almost ignores the American Volunteer Group (The Flying Tigers)—three squadrons of Curtiss P-40 aircraft operating in Burma and southern China and their outstanding victories over the Japanese’s Army aircraft.

This book is not an easy read. It is more of a reference book for those deeply interested in the politics of China during the war years.

[...]

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William L.

4.0 out of 5 stars Generalissimo stands up to Tojo

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 22 October 2016

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This refers to Audio version. I enjoyed this book and learned from it and got an idea of how Chinese experienced WWII. So four stars.

Announcer's style clear and easy on ear. Having no background in China Theater WWII, but having read a little on Burma campaign & Gen. Stillwell to spark interest, I felt the book might have benefited from a precis on pre-war China, Sun Yat Sen, and so on. Book 'plunges' into narrative of events so be prepared to start in "deep end." Also narrator pronounces Chinese names as spoken and as Anglicized and I found that interesting and helpful approach for someone who thought 'Chungking' was a brand of frozen noodles.

The book is at its best in developing the narrative of Gen. CKS's decision to take Initiative in 1937 and try to resist Japanese invasion despite his weak political hold on much of Chinese territory west of battle lines. (Japanese invaded from northeast to southwest, Manchuria to Shanghai.) Although it is a tale of defeats and retreats the emphasis is on personalities, character and decisions not the military history. There is some discussion of the technological advantage of Japanese air superiority and Flying Tigers, etc., but this is a narrative from the perspective of the staff billet, so to speak, not the view from the gap in the sandbags. Does take a little time to recount experiences of 'forgotten' Nationalist soldiery who bore brunt of resisting Japanese invasion but disparaged by agitprop after Communist post-war takeover.

The role of the Communists and Mao are covered, from minority pre-war political party, into retreat after invasion, to build up of fighting force in relative isolation in NE area, but this is secondary to main emphasis on Gen. CKS. Interaction between Gen. CKS and Mao and rivalry for Stalin's support covered (who knew in west: CKS knew Stalin personally, etc.). So I gained insight into the 'pull of political gravity' that affected revolutionary China in 1920's & '30's, you won't find in The Good Earth, etc., sort of sources.

Overall this is a good book and 'listened well' but would have benefitted from into letting reader know 'route of march' before heading out, so to speak. But will have to read on elsewhere as book winds up post-war struggle between Nationalists and Communists in couple of way too short chapters. Thus book best in discussion of events before 1945.

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A. T. Lawrence

3.0 out of 5 stars China's death toll in WW II was surpassed only by that of the Soviet Union

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 16 September 2013

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Though estimates of WW II casualty figures vary widely, conservative estimates proclaim that more than 40 million people died in WW II, approximately 20 million deaths were suffered by the Soviet Union, while China came in second with approximately 10 million deaths, some estimates increase these numbers by a third or more, and yet many people are unaware of the immeasurable suffering borne by the Chinese. Numbers of this magnitude are hard to fathom even today, and though the United States has a rather long military history, it has never suffered a million deaths in any of its wars; its highest death toll was during its Civil War in which more than 600,000 Americans died, approximately a third more than it suffered in WW II.

Historians generally consider Germany's invasion of Poland on the 1st of September 1939 to mark the beginning of World War II, instead of Japan's invasion of China in 1937 or Japan's attack against the U.S. at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Yet China was the catalyst that drove Japan into war with the United States and into its alliance with Nazi Germany. Japanese intervention in China began even earlier when Japan took control of Manchuria in 1931. The Japanese seemed to feel that they were simply mimicking the western powers by their encroachments, as though this is what great imperial powers were expected to do - expand.

Oxford Professor Rana Mitter's book, Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945, provides the reader with a balanced and insightful history of China and Japan. The first eighty pages (three chapters) explore the symbiotic relationship that existed between China and Japan during the three hundred years leading up to WW II, which I found of particular interest as the author discusses China's cultural power and influence during the seventeenth century under the Qing Dynasty, continuing up to the founding of the Republic of China in 1912, as well as Japan's rise as an industrial and military power during the nineteenth century. The five large maps are informative and detailed, and the sixteen pages of photographs are of interest. Mitter writes in an easy to read flowing style, while enabling the reader to better understand how these two Asian powers came to engage in one of the world's most horrific conflicts which morphed into one of the major conflagrations of the Second World War, as well as the pressing desire of the United States to keep China in the war as an ally in order to tie down Japanese forces. Then there was the interplay and deadly rivalry between Chiang and Mao for the hearts and minds of the people while they were both battling the Japanese. And though Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945, it was only after Japan surrendered on 2 September 1945 that WW II formally came to an end. A tremendous amount of research went into this book, such that it is essential reading for those with an abiding interest in WW II.

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Ron L

3.0 out of 5 stars The Poor Chinese

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 6 June 2017

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This is certainly the most comprehensive WWII account of China I’ve yet to see. Few Chinese you expect to see are neglected and many Americans get scrutiny. Fewer Brits and Japanese get attention while Russia largely appears only in the person of Stalin.

We also find those commonly ignored by others getting their just (or otherwise) due: Wang Jingwie is often dismissed as a mere collaborator; not so, according to Mitter.

We’re treated to some background in the relations between China and Japan which explains (as well as can be) quite a bit of Japanese attitude toward and treatment of China. The Japanese Manchurian occupation gets a look as a prelude to war.

Most of the war is depressingly well known to those who have an interest in WWII, and while the Japanese atrocities are not ignored, Mitter spares us un-necessary detail; we are told what happened not how many people did this horrible thing to that person. I appreciate the consideration.

Chiang’s responses to the Japanese are examined carefully and often from his personal notes and diaries; he is represented as far more thoughtful than most other treatments. Mao gets nothing he doesn’t deserve, the early mythology is treated as such and the hunger for power noted early on. As mentioned, Wang is sympathetically treated as a martyr to a higher patriotism; a very interesting view point.

The Brits are given a largely sympathetic hearing, while the Americans get less than that. Stilwell in particular is handled roughly, and quite possibly, justly. Too much written about him tends toward hagiography; he was never in a position where he could be judged against other general officers, and he certainly seemed a bit unconcerned regarding casualties.

Unfortunately, it is clear from the start that the view-point is strongly centered in the sceptered isle and too much of the book tends toward editorial comment. Stilwell may deserve his treatment, the supposed lack of support from the US, not so much. And then we are to forgive Chiang for the Henan famine (caused, for Pete’s sake, by his taxes-in-kind policy) because he was distracted by the war.

MItter also seems to spend much ink in the search for a villain to blame for the lack of compromise between Mao and Chiang, as if an outside villain were required. None is; neither those two nor their lieutenants were ever going to share power. Finally, his romance with post WWII Euro-socialism is far too evident and unwarranted.

In all, recommended reading, call it 3.5 stars, and a further example of how the Chinese are so poorly served by their governments, who have never figured out to get out of the way, and let the Chinese prosper.

They deserve far better.

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Andrew Desmond

4.0 out of 5 stars China's War

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 6 January 2014

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Most history books covering World War II use September 1939 as a starting point. This is quite reasonable. It was at this time that Germany invaded Poland in defiance of an ultimatum from Britain. It was all downhill from here.

In contrast, many Americans view the war through the lens of Pearl Harbour in 1941. Similarly, Russians tend to focus on the invasion of the motherland by Germany.

Rana Mitter in "Forgotten Ally" has looked at the tragedy of the war from another angle. He has concentrated on China. Too often, this nation is overlooked.

For China, the war began in 1937 when Japan invaded Manchuria. It also never ended in 1945 with the defeat of Japan but continued as a civil war until Mao's final victory in 1949. Over this time, up to 20 million Chinese died. Yet, the West focuses very little on this disaster. Indeed, it is all too often forgotten that in 1945, China was one of the "big four" powers that were instrumental in the formation of the United Nations. China sat alongside the US, USSR and Britain as victors over Germany and its allies. China truly was to become a forgotten ally.

Rana Mitter is to be commended for this book. Too often, the Second World War is seen through western eyes. Too often, China is rarely mentioned. However, if I was to have one criticism of the book it is that not enough attention has been given to the role of Mao. The book tends to concentrate on Chiang Kai-shek. However, this criticism can be overlooked to some degree. Mitter has at least brought the broader events in China to the readers of the west.

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Ghost71

4.0 out of 5 stars Important Reading On China

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 27 May 2015

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As a westerner my reference points about WW2 were always from the U.S. perspective primarily the D Day landing and Hiroshima. Lately we've heard more about Russia's contribution especially at Stalingrad. And with movies like Saving Private Ryan the Wests contribution remains dominant even today. China's contribution has simply been overshadowed, so this book does a good job of filling that gap and giving us a better understanding of China's rise to power in the modern era.

The book seems fairly sympathetic to Chiang, I suppose there are enough critics already. General Stilwell comes off as an idiot who almost/did ruined the war for China. The Burma road seems pointless at the time and his lack of even basic respect for even his fellow commanders like Chennault is simply unacceptable. The Marauders should have fragged him. Chiang should be applauded for having to put up with such a petty western idiot.

Vinegar joe? How about D-Bag Joe. Mao comes off as playing his cards almost perfect.

If the 21st century will be the Asian century the west and Europe will take on newer and smaller roles like post war England having to give up its colony's. China's rise will hopefully bring much needed balance and stimulus to a stagnating west. Hopefully we can maintain a balanced view of modern China as an emerging world power deserving a greater role in world affairs and not beat the drums of war into an unnecessary conflict.

I would have liked a more thorough epilogue with more information about Maos and Chiangs final years but overall the book was a good read with good photos, and was able to focus mostly on the era in China up to the end of WW2.

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Mark Longstroth

5.0 out of 5 stars Well worth reading. Eight years that remade China.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 15 December 2013

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This fascinating book is more about China in the twentieth century and not just the Second World War. It starts with the struggle to unite a fragmented China from a fragmented semi colonial opportunity for European and Japanese interests to a modern united nation. The book begins with a review of the struggles of the Nationalist party to united the various states within China many run by warlords with their own armies and the struggles within the party for dominance.

The fateful decision to resist the Japanese resulted in the War of Resistance which destroyed and remade China. Both the Nationalists and the Communists had to develop new ways of governing to support massive refuges and the eastern portion of the country was lost. It was as if the eastern half of the United States was lost and the government needed to retreat to Salt Lake City to continue the war and then needed to send the best troops to reconquer Mexico because their allies thought it was important. The war allowed Mao to solidify his dominance in the Communist Party and purge other elements.

China was always treated as a minor partner, seldom included in consultations amongst the three major powers in the European War against Hitler. China received relatively meager supplies from its allies. The impact of the war on China was almost as great as the Soviet Union but without the massive American Lend Lease the Soviets received it emerged much weakened from the war and the Nationalists lost the ensuing civil war with the Communists for the hearts and minds of a population that was disillusioned by the hardships of the war years.

This book is an excellent overview of China in the war and the war impact on China. The final chapter discusses recent revisionism in China as the efforts of the Nationalist are recognized by the Communist Party that had marginalized them for their benefit and China's effort to assume a position in the world befitting a major power.

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Carrosio Roberto

5.0 out of 5 stars An outstanding book that makes justice to a forgotten ally

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 25 December 2013

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Finally a book tells you the complete history of the Second Chinese-Japanese War, analyzing all the strategies , tactics and politics of all the powers involved in this war.

Believable or not the power that made so long this war, it was not USA but the Soviet Union.

Indeed USA had never loved so much the Chinese Nationalist, because of their corruption and of a civil war that had been lasting for at least 25 years ( it had begun on 1911, immediately after the abdication of the last Chinese emperor ) and that involved not just Comunists against Nationalists but even Chinese warlords against each other.

Instead, in spite of the natural alliance with the Chinese Comunist Party, Soviet Union understood immediately that just the Chinese Nationalists had a regular Army able to oppose , in some way, to the Japanese expansionism that , soon or later, could be menacing the soviet territory. They were right because , just because of the US oil embargo on 1941, Japan decided to follow the "Southern Strategy" (the offensive against the Dutch Indies and so the USA) ,instead of the "Northern Strategy" (the attack against Soviet Union, long favoured by the Japanese Army). So the Soviet Union decided to send, planes, weapons, instructors , in huge quantities and they did it until the beginning of the operation "Barbarossa".

The book begins with the famous Marco Polo's Bridge incident on 1937 and gives you not just a mere description of the military operations of this war, but even a complete description of the Chinese political life , with all the betrayals that happened .

The book describes you with many particulars even the awful relationship between Chiang Kai Shek and the disastrous american general Joseph Stilwell.

The book is a must because it tells you a story that you will not find so easily and because it covers all the aspects of a war that has brought Death to as much people as WWII.

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Matt

5.0 out of 5 stars since my geography of China isn't the best. A general knowledge of WWII would probably help ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 17 March 2015

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I taught history for four years, and I must admit (to my shame) that China was barely a footnote when I discussed WWII. This book has changed my thinking about the place of China in WWII and the affect that war had in shaping modern-day China and the political/economic realities in the Far East today.

Even though the book concentrates on China's part in WWII, the author begins the narrative long before WWII, as China moved from a monarchy/empire to a republic. He discusses the events and people which led up the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, which is where the main focus of the book begins.

As the title shows, the main portion of the book is dedicated to China's role during WWII. The author is unflinching in his retelling of the facts of the war, including both the "warts" and triumphs of everyone involved (Nationalist Chinese, Communist Chinese, Americans, etc.), though his sympathies do seem to lie with the Nationalist Chinese more than any of the other major players. The reader is left with a clear picture of the events that transpired during the war, laid out in chronological order, and the information is backed up by many quotes both from scholars and from the personal memoirs/journals of both the important national figures (leaders and generals) and some "foot soldiers."

Even with the huge amount of information, the writing flows well and isn't burdensome to read. The most difficult part of reading this book is keeping track of the location names, since my geography of China isn't the best. A general knowledge of WWII would probably help when reading this book, but the information is presented in such a way that anyone in high school or higher academically should be able to understand it.

I highly recommend this book for anyone seeking a better understanding of WWII, US-China relations, or the Cold War.

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Albatros D-3

5.0 out of 5 stars China's Struggle for Survival in World War II

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 4 February 2015

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Written by an Oxford University Professor of History, this book is a well written, meticulously-researched overview of China's struggle to free itself from European Colonial exploitation and naked Japanese aggression in order to gain self-determination as a sovereign nation-state. Drawing largely upon first person accounts such as diaries, newspapers and official documents, the author weaves his way through China's struggles to drive out foreign invaders, create political alliances among provincial warlords, overcome regional factionalism and create a viable central government. A central figure in this struggle is Chiang Kai Shek, much maligned by many writers, but whom the author treats as a sympathetic figure confronted by a myriad of seemingly insolvable problems. During the war years, there were four governments simultaneously operating in China: the conquered portions of China under the yoke of the Japanese, the Nationalist government in Chunking headed by Chaing Kao-Shek, the Communist government in the Northern Provinces led by Mao Zedong, and a puppet collaborationist government headquartered in Nanking headed by Wang Jingwei. The focus of the book is primarily in the political and social struggles confronting Chiang Kai Shek as China waged a war of survival against the Japanese during the 5 years between 1937 and 1941, when China stood alone in confronting the military might of Japan. After Pearl Harbor, the Western Allies joined the war against Japan but China was considered a junior partner in the "alliance" and the expected aid in the form of lavish military aid and American troops being deployed to China to help defeat the Japanese, never materialized. In fact, Japan almost succeeded in conquering China in 1944 during its Operation Ichigo. I highly recommend this book for anyone looking to gain insight into the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 with the emphasis being on China and its struggles against enemies both from within and outside of its borders.

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From other countries

Dean Donovan

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Overview of China's War, but Requires Several Grains of Salt

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 10 January 2019

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This is the only book I have seen with a comprehensive narrative of China's WWII. It is worth readying just to understand the story arc. It is also very helpful in understanding the war from Chiang's perspective and getting a sense of the things that weakened the Nationalist regime over time.

However, the book presents a one-sided history of events. Mitter is so eager to present a sympathetic view of Chiang's regime and to vilify his American and British allies that he leaves many issues unexplained. For example, the depth of the strategic debate around Burma is handled only superficially. The author suggests that deemphasizing the Chinese theater at Burma's expense was a strategic error leading to the catastrophe of the Ichigo offensive. Clearly Roosevelt and Marshal felt Burma was critical to stabilizing China, but the positions on this issue of those besides Chiang's are glossed over. Stilwell's victory in Burma in conjunction with the Chinese and its implications for China is touched on only lightly.

Similarly, Mitter makes a strong case that the Nationalist Chinese state was exhausted by 1944, which resulted in its late war collapse with Ichigo. However, in his rush to sympathize with Chiang and vilify Stillwell he does a poor job explaining how Mao, with far fewer resources, a weaker geographic based and without 30,000 US military personnel supporting him managed to run a far more effective statelet than Chiang. Nor does he explore why the Americans lost confidence in Chiang later in the war other than suggesting that Stilwell was a difficult and unsupportive man. These omissions reduce the credibility of Mitter's work.

I'd suggest that if you take this book on you also read Tuchman's "Stilwell and The American Experience in China." It is a much more American centric account, but was written by a very accomplished historian that can provide balance to Mitter's

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Ray

3.0 out of 5 stars Woefully incomplete

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 28 January 2014

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I have looking for a good book on the Sino-Japanese war, so I gave this book a try. After finishing it, I decided a better title for this book would be "Commentaries on Chiang Kai Shek's Diaries". That's slightly unfair, as we get more viewpoints, but so much of the structure of the book is driven by quoting things from the Generalissimo's diary.

This is especially distressing when you consider how little part of the actual war-making part of the war is covered. The 3 months of the Battle of Shanghai is glossed over in a paragraph, where the reader learns nearly nothing about the soldier's experience during the war, almost no concept of what the battle was like or how it was fought, while immediately thereafter the author goes on for pages and pages quoting the experiences of refugees after the battle. I don't know why there is the sentiment that the civilian experience matters more than the military one in a history text about a war, but this book is rife with that.

Consider Operation Ichi-Go. The book starts out covering it decently (sort of, no real mention of battles or how it was conducted, but it mentions the effectiveness of it), but it goes on for an entire chapter detailing the drama between Chiang and Stillwell. Nearly nothing is mentioned of the end of the operation, and why it ended (a paragraph briefly mentioning the fatigue of the Japanese is all we get); no mention of the Chinese counterattacks after the operation, no mention of Chinese victories in the months before Hiroshima and the plans made to retake Guangdong and those movements, we just go from Ichi-Go to Chiang+Stillwell drama to Hiroshima, with the implication that the Chinese just sat around on their hands after Ichi-Go praying for the US to kill their enemies for them.

The point is, if you wanted a complete picture of the war, how it was fought and conducted, then this book won't satisfy that itch. If you were curious in the personal dramas of Chiang Kai Shek and excerpts from the diaries of civilians in the war, it does the trick, sort of.

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simon h tang

4.0 out of 5 stars A Necessary but Forgotten Ally

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 1 March 2015

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It is a very balanced, impartial, and well-written book. History is so fascinating, because there is no one fit-all answer. The author has come closer to that than most others. However, his what-if scenario of Chiang's KMT could have united China if weren't for Japan's invasion is too creative to my taste. Based on what I've learned from this book, I think the ally (China) was forgotten because:

(1) Roosevelt's Europe First policy. Although I've found it hard to argue against it. Nazis was a much more formidable threat.

(2) The retaking of Burma was unnecessary. The author stresses that and I agree.

(3) The performance of KMT after 1942 was so deplorable that one can assume that even if the Ally had lost the whole China, the defeat of Japan was still inevitable. No matter how badly KMT performed before 1942, the West could see at least KMT was serous in resisting. However, the April to July 1944's KMT's defeat was so disastrous and disgraceful that Roosevelt lost confidence in KMT. The author's description of KMT's generals being total cowards was so vivid and shocking (supported by my other readings). I am so sad that all those sacrifices of Chinese soldiers and civilians were forgotten becauseof their leaders' incompetency. So SAD!!!!!!!!!!!!

(4) CCP folded up their military campaigns against Japan after 1941 per the author.

(5) The determining force of defeating Japan were American Pacific campaign, Russian invasion of Manchuria, and atomic bombs. The points I raised above (#2 - 4) had limited impacts to the final outcome.

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Danny Orbach

5.0 out of 5 stars If you want to understand contemporary China, you have to read this fascinating, first-rate book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 16 October 2017

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As a historian of modern Japan, I thoroughly and immensely enjoyed Rana Miter's superb book. The author is able to synthesize current research on China's WWII, dispelling persistent myths and giving a balanced, reliable account of a highly complicated reality, prone to manipulations by all involved sides and their blind supporters.

However, this is not only a good work of historical research, but also a fascinating read. Mitter is able to breath life into his characters, displaying the story of the Second Sino-Japanese War at a tragedy of three figures: the national resistance leader Chiang Kai-Shek, the would-be Communist tyrant Mao Zedong and the collaborationist leader Wang Jing-wei. All three of this men, cruel and vain as they were, are presented as nuanced and yet larger than life human beings.

You really feel the characters and the atmosphere through the book, and get a glimpse on the painful decisions these people had to make in impossible conditions. Through this story, we can understand not only the bickering of leaders, but the immense tragedy of modern China and the Chinese people. Most importantly, Mitter dwells on the long lasting effect of this horrible war on the development of modern China.

To sum up: this book is both a first-rate historical study and a fascinating read, almost like a thriller. Such books are extremely rare. Anyone who want to understand contemporary China absolutely have to understand China's WWII. And in order to understand China's WWII, you have to read Rana Mitter's "Forgotten Ally". I recommend it enthusiastically.

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prodi12

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing book if you want to learn about China's war of resistance against Japan

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on 27 May 2020

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Excellent book, I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the parts where the author used excerpts from private diaries of key figures such as Chiang Kai Shek and his confidants adds a very personal element into how they viewed the war situations individually. I'd say the author is pretty unbiased in this book and helps paint a picture from both the Nationalists, Communists and western powers' perspectives. Definitely get this book and give it a read if you want to learn more about this particular theatre, which is very often overlooked or very downplayed in Western education and media. The contributions made by the Chinese in their effort on refusing to surrender and resist for 8 painful years while lagging behind the Japanese in tech, training and economics greatly shaped the Asian theatre of WW2.

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Daniel C Deng

5.0 out of 5 stars Japan must apologize to Chinese people 100%, that's no doubt, but the CCP (Map) must apologize 800% more

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 15 August 2015

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I bouthgt this book for my sons, who were born in California, so they would know the truth about what exactly had happened during that period. His high school friends, who were also born in the USA, but whose parents were from PROC, all said that CCP (Mao) was the leader who led the Chinese people to win WW-II. How terrible the CCP's brain-washing has influenced the next generation in the USA.

Years ago, I met a old Chinese lady (who is from China), who claimed that it's the USA who invaded North Korea first, that's why Mao sent the troops to help N.Korea to defend the invasion.

Many times, the CCP has urged Japan to apologize to Chinese people for their crimes in WW-II, but how about the crimes made by the CCP after 1949? To the Chinese people and the mother land, both Japan and CCP (Mao, see ref. 1 and 2 below) must apologize.

However even today, Mao's picture is sitll up on the Tian-An-Meng Wall, his picture still shown on every RMB bill. Derived from this logic, essentially Chinese people would have a higher "nominal value" when they were killed by foreigners who then must aplogize for their crimes, but we are worthless and deserve to be treated like slaughtered pigs when our own race can ruthlessly murdered us and escaped from the crimes.

Ref:

1. http://www.scout.com/military/warrior/story/1405030-top-10-evil-dictators

2. http://www.thetoptens.com/worst-dictators/: at least 49-million people died because of Mao's policies

3. https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM: about 6-million people killed by Japan in WW-II

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Thomas M. Magee

5.0 out of 5 stars Rare gem on a forgotten theater

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 1 March 2021

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I really loved this book. I grabbed my attention. What hooked me in was the content of the book. It has material you don't see that often. I will give a blow by blow account of the war in China. Other books tend to give you a summary at best. Maybe they will talk about Stillwell and the advisory mission. This one is about the war on the ground. It will give you stories we don't know about.

I realized China for the Pacific is the Russia of the European front. They had 80% of the Japanese Army. They bore the brunt of the fight and took most of the casualties in the Pacific. The US obviously benefited from the Japanese fixation on China. It sopped up troops we didn't have to fight.

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Derek R. Burton

4.0 out of 5 stars Good history.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 28 March 2014

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I'm enjoying this and would recommend it...but more because I don't know of many texts on this conflict of WWII, not so much becauise its a great read. Honestly I prefer lengthy discussions of troop movements, copious maps, Order Of Battle tables, etc. Mitter's histroy of the Chinese conflict is more focused on the main characters (Chiang, Mao and Wang) and he does a good job of describing these personalities and their impact on this nation's titanic struggle.

I'm okay with the broader focus on political, military and characters but I did find it a difficult read at times with skips in the time frames of events. He does provide a bit of detail on many individuals and their experiences during this time period, but I think he could have plotted out the linear progression of events and stories to better match the time line of the conflict. There is very little detail on the Japanese other than a chapter dedicated to Nanjing and mentioning their attacks on Chinese cities/provinces.

I'd still recommend it. I'm a great lover of WWII history and I had never even heard of Wang Jingwei, so it has been enjoyable for me to read something new about conflicts in WWII that I have very little knowledge about.

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Stanley Weinstein

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 23 July 2022

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An insightful, informative and balanced view of World War II in China. It does provide a somewhat positive perspective of Chiang, but the author clearly outlines the seeds of change which led to the Communist takeover in 1949.

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Adam B. Ritchie Jr.

3.0 out of 5 stars Good introduction

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 14 April 2014

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I bought this book on reading a New Yorker magazine review, while further reading on this subject after Mitter showed me that the reviewer knew as little about the subject as I did myself. It is a good introduction to WWII in China, about which Americans who are not veterans of the war in Burma seem to know nothing. Although I may seem to give it short shrift by saying so, I think its most useful contribution is its bibliography for further reading. It falls essentially into a revisionist genre with a bent toward rehabilitating Chiang kai-shek from the ignominiously unflattering portrait of him by Barbara Tuchman in her biography of General Joseph Stilwell. Tuchman's book is a masterpiece, and it will be hard to rebut its thesis that Chiang and Madam and the officer leadership of the Chinese Nationalist Army were corrupt, incompetent, and politically authoritarian and anti-democratic. Tuchman's writing reflects the democratic and anti-colonial spirit of the FDR era which has faded from the earth perhaps never to return. The apotheosis of Chiang rehabilitation seems to be Jay Taylor's biography of Chiang which is next on my reading list. On reading the Prologue I am already discouraged. Taylor writes of Chiang as if to say, you see he can't be all that bad, saying that Chiang "had no trouble with an openly cross dressing lesbian who was his wife's niece and close companion." Yes, yes he is one of us! Chiang good, Stilwell bad with his hurtful speech calling Chiang "Peanut" for which he should be charged with a hate crime or with bias intimidation.

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Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945

Rana Mitter

4.13

1,857 ratings234 reviews

The epic, untold story of China’s devastating eight-year war of resistance against Japan.

For decades, a major piece of World War II history has gone virtually unwritten. The war began in China, two years before Hitler invaded Poland, and China eventually became the fourth great ally, partner to the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. Yet its drama of invasion, resistance, slaughter, and political intrigue remains little known in the West.

Rana Mitter focuses his gripping narrative on three towering leaders: Chiang Kai-shek, the politically gifted but tragically flawed head of China’s Nationalist government; Mao Zedong, the Communists’ fiery ideological stalwart, seen here at the beginning of his epochal career; and the lesser-known Wang Jingwei, who collaborated with the Japanese to form a puppet state in occupied China. Drawing on Chinese archives that have only been unsealed in the past ten years, he brings to vivid new life such characters as Chiang’s American chief of staff, the unforgettable “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, and such horrific events as the Rape of Nanking and the bombing of China’s wartime capital, Chongqing. Throughout, Forgotten Ally shows how the Chinese people played an essential role in the wider war effort, at great political and personal sacrifice.

Forgotten Ally rewrites the entire history of World War II. Yet it also offers surprising insights into contemporary China. No twentieth-century event was as crucial in shaping China’s worldview, and no one can understand China, and its relationship with America today, without this definitive work.

Genres

History

China

Nonfiction

World War II

War

Japan

Asia

 

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480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

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Rana Mitter

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Rana Shantashil Rajyeswar Mitter is a professor of modern Chinese history at the University of Oxford and the author of several books including A Bitter Revolution. He is a regular contributor to British television and radio. His writing has appeared in the Financial Times, the Guardian, and elsewhere.

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Matt

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April 5, 2020

“In recent years the sheer scale of the war in China has become apparent. What began on July 7, 1937, as an unplanned local conflict between Chinese and Japanese troops near Beijing, known as the “Marco Polo Bridge Incident,” escalated into an all-out war between the two great nations of East Asia; it would not end until August 1945. In the eight intervening years China’s Nationalist government was forced into internal exile, along with millions of refugees. Huge tracts of the country were occupied by the Japanese, who sponsored collaborators to create new forms of government aimed at destroying the authority of the Nationalists. In other parts of the country, the Chinese Communist Party grew in influence, burnishing its credentials through resistance to the Japanese, and vastly increasing its territorial base through policies of radical social reform. The toll that the war inflicted on China is still being calculated, but conservative estimates number the dead at 14 million…”

- Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937-1945

The Second World War has to be one of the most intensely covered events in all of history. It is a vast canvas, to be sure, stretching over eight years and across every continent except Antarctica, and involving 50 nations and hundreds of millions of people. Despite this scope, the literature is legion and exhaustive. There are, on my shelves, not only the usual strategic histories, battle narratives, and biographies of the top brass, but books covering individual companies, and individual planes, and individual ships. Obviously, I have a book on Patton, and MacArthur, and Montgomery, but I also have a surprising number of volumes by or about field officers and enlisted men.

With this detailed coverage, it is easy to get the sense that World War II has been deconstructed down to the granular level.

Nevertheless – and my apologies for burying the lede – I have always had a China-sized-and-shaped hole in my understanding of the conflict, knowing just enough about the Second Sino-Japanese War to recognize that it was not getting its due. I have read – to this point – dozens of books about the Pacific Theater of operations. From Pearl Harbor to Midway, from Guadalcanal to Okinawa, I have a title to match just about every step the United States Army, Navy, and Marines made as they engaged in their bloody hopscotch towards Japan. In those books, China is rarely mentioned, and if she is, it is usually in a cursory or indirect fashion.

Looking for some way to engage this topic, I came across Rana Mitter’s Forgotten Ally. This is not surprising, since – as Mitter notes – there are not a whole lot of volumes to choose from, despite the fact that China fought for eight years, took millions of casualties, and tied down thousands of Japanese troops.

(Note: The historian Richard B. Frank has signaled his intent to produce a trilogy on what he calls the “Asia-Pacific War,” with an emphasis on China. The first entry – Tower of Skulls – has been published, and is sitting on one of my sagging bookshelves).

Thankfully, tackling Forgotten Ally does not fall under the category of making virtue out of a necessity. To the contrary, as far as introductions go, this is quite good. Written for general audiences, and avoiding a lot of complexity by taking a sky-high perspective, it goes a long way toward giving an interested reader a solid foundation for China’s role in World War II.

Forgotten Ally is told chronologically, with the narrative broken into four sections. The first section is contextual, providing an overview of China’s unequal relationships with the rest of the world. China’s asymmetrical dealings began with Western imperialism (including foreign enclaves and the “unequal treaties”), but eventually included Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, which became the puppet state of Manchukuo.

Parts two and three cover the Second Sino-Japanese War, which began in 1937. Though marked by some morale-boosting victories, the Chinese experience was mostly one of defeat, disaster, and death. Covered here are both well-known atrocities, such as the “Rape of Nanking,” along with more forgotten tragedies, such as China’s attempt to slow the Japanese advance by breaching the dikes of the Yellow River.

The final section is given over to the evolution of China’s war once America entered the fray. In Mitter’s opinion, the alliance was a poisoned one, and claims – but does not really prove – that it set the stage for the Communist takeover, and the fraught U.S.-China relations today.

This is a work wherein I am more impressed by the functional aspects (quality of information, organization, clarity) than by any literary merits. Mitter is first and foremost a historian with a certain expertise in China. His authorial abilities are fine, the prose workmanlike, but there was never a moment, even in the Nanking chapter, when I was truly gripped.

Mitter mainly tells this story through three major players: Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong, and Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell. This makes sense, since these men were the dominant personalities, towering over their corners of fate. Chiang led the Nationalists; Mao led the Communists; and Stilwell was an American in charge of China’s armies, even though he was nominally under Chiang’s command. While Mitter attempts to bring these figures to life, and certainly takes pains to recount the clashes of temperament that altered the trajectory of history, I can’t help but feel this could have been done with more vibrancy and flair.

(Aside: the constant griping between Chiang and Stilwell is a leitmotif of Forgotten Ally. I suppose this is to be expected when you send a guy named “Vinegar Joe” into a situation calling for nuance and delicacy).

Forgotten Ally stays well clear of military history. Though Mitter alerts you to the important battles, he never describes a single one. There are no tactical discussions whatsoever, whether it concerns a set-piece battle between the Nationalists and the Japanese, or the guerilla strategy employed by the Communists. However much I learned, it is apparent I will need to do some more digging.

Despite a lack of style, there is a lot of substance. The methodical structuring of the book is perfect for a novice like myself. The maps are very wide-angled, yet extremely helpful, showing all the provinces and major cities, along with the limits of the Japanese advance during various time periods. There is also a dramatis personae, so you never run the risk of mistaking Zhou Enlai with Zhou Fohai.

The historiography of World War II is utterly fascinating, because even as the dust – some of it radioactive – was settling, old alliances were breaking, and new ones coming into being. The Soviet Union, which had done much of the heavy lifting in the European Theater, was suddenly a mortal enemy of the West. Meanwhile, China and Japan switched places as America’s new best friend. As China went over to communism – and ultimately surged across the Yalu in 1950, smack dab into MacArthur – Japan became an important (and lasting) friend.

This rapid switching of partners – geopolitics in the guise of a middle school dance – could not help but effect the interpretation of historical events. In the European Theater, that meant it would take some time for Westerners to accept that Operation Bagration was as important as the oft-celebrated Operation Overlord. The fullness of time has given us a broader perspective on the critical part played by the Soviet Union, and there are plenty of good-to-great books about Barbarossa, Kursk, and Stalingrad. (I would argue that the revisionism has gone a bit far, sometimes eliding Stalin’s devil-pact with Hitler).

China has yet to receive that particular benefit. Though China suffered as much as any nation – second only to the U.S.S.R. in terms of death and destruction – there is still a relative paucity of accounts exploring her contributions. A fuller understanding of World War II requires acknowledgment of China’s war. Forgotten Ally is a good place to start that investigation.

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December 9, 2022

Rana Mitter's book is a welcome addition to English language books on this subject area. It is a good book delving deeply into background, political causes and (Chinese) politics during the war years.

The Sino-Japan war is complex in its background as the nations evolved being sometimes on good terms and others not. The war itself, beginning with the Japanese invasion in 1937, is also complex with the three main Chinese leaders vying for prominence, influence and victory; this latter in both war and domestically. These leaders, Chiang Kai-Shek, Mao Zedong and Wang Jingwei all moved in different directions, sought power and never trusted each other. For Chiang and Mao, this is made very clear in this book during and after the Japanese defeat.

The author also ably describes aspects such as famine, inflation, government/party administration and the atrocities in China: Japanese against Chinese and Chinese against Chinese. The parts played by the Allies: USA, Britain and Russia sees Chinese engagement and frustration with allies, who were deemed untrustworthy, and in most points were, indeed, untrustworthy. The part played by "Vinegar" Joe Stilwell, and the less than warm relationship with Chiang is covered, including the meetings, letters, telegrams on strategy, Lend-Lease, tactics, troop command and later, Chiang's requirement for Stillwell to be sent home. Claude Chennault of the Flying Tigers fame also features, as does his less than positive relationship with Stilwell too.

So, why a three-star rating? For all the above, which is, as I say good, I felt there was a piece of the story missing. The Japanese and the war they and China fought.

There are some elements covered within the book such as the massacre at Nanjing, the taking of Shanghai and Wuhan, but throughout the book, I looked in vain for the actual war and the Japanese progress. There is no detail on Mao's guerrilla war against the Japanese. The war fought by Chiang's troops, even when covered in Burma, is little describe in troop progress and how that war was fought, although the home front, recruitment and need of supplies and training etc., does get some coverage as when linked to the areas I mention in my opening of this review.

The Japanese, by the end of 1944 and into 1945, had pressed far into China, notably with the Ichigo Offensive (April-Dec 1944). Yet the reader sees little of this in the text on how the Japanese prepared, their plans and tactics; where they thrust out to, why; the supply of troops and the progress and the treatment and administration of those conquered areas. It is only when presented with a map the reader has some idea of this reach and how that offensive challenged Chiang and Mao.

Overall, a detailed and well-written book by an author who has researched the subject deeply and used many other strong sources to create this account. Chiang is by far the central character with Mao and Wang playing walk on parts to some extent, but China's War with Japan 1937-45, has enabled me to learn a great deal about thos theatre and how it shaped China and its relations with countries such as Japan, the US and Taiwan, which still reverberate today. For me though, and I accept this period of 8 or so years is wide-ranging, complex and multi-layered, it lacked, as I wrote earlier the war with Japan and how it was fought.

My copy was a Penguin paperback published 2014 with 458 printed pages. There are 35 black and white photos of good quality and five maps that are clear but not hugely detailed.

A very strong three stars which is "Liked it" under the GR star rating system.

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August 5, 2019

A solid overview of the "War of Resistance". Ritter argues convincingly on why the Chinese-Japanese deserves to be better-known in the West, but his exclusive attention to politics, with no room to discuss battles or armies, fails to hold my attention...if it's any comfort to Ritter's effort, I already fully acknowledged the significance of 1931-1945 for the modern People's Republic of China...

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Tim Pendry

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March 28, 2015

This is a useful but flawed account of an important theatre of war in the struggle of liberal internationalism (Western imperialism) and socialism against the attempted imperialisms of rising powers.

The story has two contemporary sets of resonance - the obvious one is the tricky current state of Sino-Japanese relations that has Westerners rushing to books like this. The less obvious is the attempt by the West to answer the question, 'what to do with rising powers?'

On the surface it is traditional narrative history. It starts at the beginning (what led up to the Marco Polo Bridge incident, the 'Sarajevo' of eight years of slaughter) through to the surprise ending - the 'deus ex machina' of the Atom Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

With the usual unconscious racism of the Western armchair liberal, the debates on the use of the Bomb usually wonder about the dreadful morality of wiping out 100,000 persons in a few days in terms of saved men and materiel for the West.

A more open view would throw into the pot the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of Chinese and Japanese lives saved from not going down the Nazi route of a year or two of mayhem as Japan fought to the end despite its prospect of certain defeat.

Between 8 million and 20 million, variously estimated, died in those eight years with perhaps three to four million the victims of first the deliberate flooding of Henan and then its appalling famine (Mitter also notes the estimated 3m who died in a similar Indian wartime famine).

The whole business is another story of 'things getting out of control' with millions being disrupted, starved, conscripted, terrorised and murdered as a few 'big men' squabble for advantage and for 'values' that are often noble enough but equally as often hypocritical.

It is a story played out almost continuously even today - Africa being the current playground for 'big men' and psychopaths of all 'moral' persuasions. We should be pleased the rising thuggery of new empires was suppressed but it was not a simple tale of good and evil.

The flaws in the book, however, detract from its usefulness as analytical tool although the 'further reading' at the back is useful for anyone wanting to delve deeper.

Above all, the book often reads like an unjustifiable apologia for Chiang Kai-Shek, warlord leader of the Nationalist Chinese with most claim to legitimacy as ruler of China. It certainly spends more time on the squabble with General Stilwell than a straight narrative deserves.

What is going on here? The reality is that, legitimate though he was, Chiang Kai-Shek was soon run out of town (the core of China in the East) and was not much more than a superior warlord from an earlier era.

He could speak for China and for millions of men but he had proved an unimaginative and narcissistic leader before the Marco Polo Bridge incident and was not much better after it. Mitter justifiably contextualises his decisions but they were more often than not poor.

Most of the non-Communist warlords in the south marked time under his leadership but his control was limited, while the Communists under Mao cannily created a state within a state in North West China that treated the peasantry as if they mattered instead of as fodder.

By the time the Americans arrived (and the Communists are almost exclusively seen through American eyes by 1942/3 as Mittar swerves off into analyses of thinking in Washington), Chiang's China was virtually being re-colonised by the US by stealth without benefit to the people.

The blunders of Stilwell and the Americans can be charitably put down to them 'learning on the job' as they slowly displaced the British Empire as global arbiter. US foreign policy does not really settle down into full competence until after the McCarthy blood-letting.

Mitter's attempt to recover Chiang's reputation by pointing out the new status given to China in the 'UN' holds little water. Yes, this was a fact on the ground and it portended great things, a benefit that India failed to achieve, but China was always a tool under Chiang.

In essence, China held down some 600,000 Japanese troops and that was important for the Allied war effort but it presupposes that this was always in the interests of the Chinese who died in huge numbers holding together a ramshackle strategy of mere survival.

It is noticeable that in the struggle against the last Japanese offensive - like the last push of the Germans in 1918 - Nationalist troops were attacked by Henan peasants who had suffered deliberate flooding and then famine, fertile ground for communism later.

The second flaw is associated with the first. Mittel devotes about the right amount of space to the Communists in Yan'an but his coverage is still cursory and lacking in analysis. His great lack is any serious investigation of Japanese thinking and Japanese motives.

This is highly problematic. The book is about the Japanese war on China. That means it is about both main participants and the whole war zone yet we hear virtually nothing of East China other than Nanking and little of Japanese-collaborationist dealings.

He devotes a great deal of attention to the Petain of China - Wang JIngwei and his circle - but always in the light of them being implicitly honourable Nationalists who got it wrong.

This misses the point - they were naive and 'useful idiots' but there were important ideological and practical Japanese reasons for creating 'Vichy' regimes across Asia and for nationalists to choose what they thought might be the lesser evil. We get little sense of this.

Right or wrong, what was actually happening in the huge area of East China under Japanese rule needs to be explained in terms of Japanese conduct on the ground after the Rape of Nanking and of the motivations for Chinese collaborationism and resistance.

By the second half of the war, just as the National Socialists could put 'national' SS divisions into the field against the Soviets so there were substantial collaborationist Chinese troops fighting against the nationalists alongside the Japanese in the final offensive.

This has to be explained. It cannot be explained by giving excessive coverage to the superior warlord's dealings with Washington and almost completely neglecting the dynamic between Tokyo and Nanking except in terms of the factional struggles of a few failed politicians.

The net effect is that we have a book that does not take the detached and cold view of the struggle that we need to have in order to assist with the analysis of the twin issues noted at the beginning of this review - Sino-Japanese relations and the rise of new powers.

Instead, what we have is another easy read for liberal internationalists that seems intended to guide them through the group think politics of their own side rather than assist in understanding complexity and think about the unthinkable.

It is a morale-booster that seems to say that the 'real' China was only accidentally corrupt and incompetent and that if we (the West) had behaved in diferent ways and taken a flawed great man at face value, things would have been better. It is like a polemic for the past!

However, there is lot to learn from this book - about Mao's genius for making inaction look like action, about the cynicism of the Allies, about the delusions of the Japanese elite, about the resilience and humanity of the Chinese people and about the chaos of war.

One lesson is fascinating and well taught. Under conditions of war and threat, all three regimes in China turned to terror to try and hold power - Mao's reined in his intellectuals and mobilised the peasantry with the help of the Yezhov-trained Kang Sheng but he was not alone.

Chiang used the dedicated monster Dai Li (with the close co-operation of the Americans) to eliminate opposition to a regime that was really not much different from those targeted in Libya and Syria more recently. Chiang was not a democrat but an authoritarian militarist.

Wang Jingwei hired politicised gangsters to do much the same in Nanking from a class which, in Shanghai, had helped Chiang himself on his road to power. Even today, it is clear that, after seventy years of Communist 'totalitarianism', South China's gangster culture thrives.

Although the victor Mao adopted techniques later that taught Pol Pot and the extremists in North Korea their techniques of terror and power, thuggery arose on all sides out of warfare and whatever state might have emerged, none would have had much truck with 'human rights'.

This makes any attempt to make the 'less worse' seem good rather futile - Chiang murdered 800,000 Chinese in a somewhat poorly thought-out tactical attempt to slow down the Japanese by breaching the dams on the Yellow River. No wonder the Henanese peasants were obstructive!

At the end of the day, the whole debacle came down to an incident where a rising power thought that it had rights, demonstrated by its imperial enemies in the Opium Wars and subsequently, to use force to extract concessions on spurious grounds against a weak target.

That the target was weak was definitely not the fault of Chiang Kai-Shek. He was dealt an appalling set of cards but, given the realities of the situation, his decisions tended to make things worse, starting with his initial 'Night of the Long Knives' against the Reds.

Still, the book remains a valuable narrative introduction to one of the nastiest wars in an era of nasty wars. It left this reader with an abiding sense of solidarity with the Chinese people if not their leaderships.

Above all, I have come to admire the achievement of China in not merely holding itself together but appearing to cohere into a Great Power that has managed, through the construction of its own creation myth, to bind together the East, the Party and the nationalist impulse into one.

The nervousness of the West - and the margin states of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan and perhaps Vietnam and the Philippines as well - is understandable but it may be that the US in particular is still not learning the lessons of the 1940s.

The book reminds us of the fragility of the Communist 'achievement'. The European Union is now seeing old interwar attitudes re-emerge in troubled economies - notably Spain and Eastern Europe - and there is no reason why something similar might not happen in China.

In its hour of greatest need, 'Free China' needed unconditional love like the battered child it was but instead it got used as a tool and was patronised by its equals - no wonder its successors are disinclined to trust anyone but their own instinct for tough love.

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November 10, 2013

This book is published in two different titles: 1) China's War with Japan 1937-1945: The Struggle for Survival, and 2) Forgotten Ally: China's World War II 1937-1945. This review is made with reference to the latter.

The use of the first title conjures an impression of a chronicle, recording the events that took place in China between 1937 and 1945. In this, the author has exceeded the promise of the title. In fact, to his credit, Dr Mitter even went way back to the Sino-Japanese War (1894-5) albeit briefly, an era commonly ignored by most scholars. This reminder is important for two reasons. First of all, it was then that the Japanese began to station troops on the Asian mainland (in Korea). Second, it became a base from which Japan fought the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5) which really represented when the Japanese infringed upon China's territory.

The focus of the book however starts from 1937, after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which started off as 'just another skirmish' but took an unexpected turn when Chiang Kai-shek decided that he would make a stand and opened another front in Shanghai. From there the author took us through all the major events ending eventually with Japan's surrender. In between he culled documents and sources including diaries, official party documents, and reports from journalists to provide vivid details of the Nationalists' feeble attempts to govern 'Free China', their efforts to undermine the Communists, to draw any country into the war to help them, and to manage the aftermath of the defection of important party members, while fighting and initially retreating from city to city. Equally vivid are the descriptions of how the civilians caught in the war suffered from poverty, starvation, rape, and official corruption.

But if the first title reads rather blandly, the second title 'Forgotten Ally' proposes a thesis which the author made very clear - China was the forgotten ally of the allied forces in the Second World War. This powerful position can only come into consideration after Pearl Harbor, when Japan in a span of two days made itself the enemy of at least four other countries, the US, Britain, Australia and the Netherlands. The word Ally therefore was only relevant in the later part of the book. The main argument of the author is the Western powers are now at war with Japan, and China being also at war with Japan has become an ally to them and had even fought alongside them on at least one occasion (Burma). But even if that had not been the case, China has tied about half a million Japanese soldiers which might have been deployed against the Western powers, that would have qualified China as an ally. I do not feel qualified to dispute the thesis, rather I would like to offer my reflection on the significance of the worth Forgotten.

Dr Mitter was clear about who the forgotten party was and seen from the Nationalists' perspective, it would probably aptly describe their sense of indignation. They had been fighting the allies' enemy for six years before the Allies themselves entered the war. If China was by then "a battered nation on its knees, waiting for the Americans and British to save it from certain destruction at the hands of the Japanese", it could be partly attributed to, as the book made clear, the fact that they had been fighting the Japanese alone. Yet one can hardly blame the West for seeing it this way, for Japan, while surely on their radar even prior to December 1941, was secondary in relation to Germany then. Had Japan not made the blunder of attacking Pearl Harbor, their invasion of South East Asia would have at most threatened the European colonies, and not the European homeland, it would still have been of secondary importance.

Other reasons also made 'forgotten' inevitable. Firstly, the question of whether China really did contribute to the fighting (when they seem to lose on all fronts, not helped by the opinion of Stilwell) or whether it was just a corrupt regime always seeking more from the Allies (Chiang's request for a US$1 billion loan certainly did not help) also left many questions of China's position and value as an ally in the minds of the US and Britain. Secondly, the cold war narrative also quickly distorted the history of that time, focusing people's attention on China's political ideology rather than their history in the Second World War. Finally, the outcome of the civil war in China meant that certain events must be emphasised, others diminished, and some invented.

Which brings me to this question I had as I read the book - who was forgotten really? If the answer is China, then who in China? The situation in China then reminded me of China during the warring states (between 481 BC and 403 BC) when at one stage China was divided into three kingdoms (三分天下), only this time among the Nationalists, the Communists, and the Japanese (through Wang Jinwei's Reorganized National Government of China). And if the West can be accused of forgetting their Nationalists allies as the author implies, then whatever the Nationalists did right (among the many wrongs) was comprehensively eradicated by the Communists when they came to power (see pg 333-334). And to be fair, post-Second World War and even current Chinese discourse on that part of history hardly give enough credits to the West (used loosely here) too.

I cannot accuse the author of falling short in his effort to support his thesis, he might have felt that the two-thirds of the book before China became an 'ally' was necessary to provide the context but that leaves only the last third of the book to try and develop his argument. I also feel that too little was given on the Communists side of the story, perhaps because in the context of actually fighting the Japanese they haven't done much. One last question was whether Russia was as inconsequential to the events in China as it seemed, for very little was said about them throughout. Still, for anyone who wants a source of information on that period of history in China this book is indispensable. Dr Mitter, with his great scholarship, vivid descriptions, and dynamic style will take you on a throught-provoking ride through his riveting narrative.

(As you read Chapter 11, ask yourself what you would do if you were in Zhou Fohai's position.)

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February 21, 2021

This book was both an enlightening and a depressing experience to read: enlightening, because I learned much I did not know before of this phase of the World War II theatre, and depressing, because Mr. Mitter’s narrative vividly portrays the continuously unfolding horrors visited upon the Chinese people during these years. While I have been aware since my graduate student days of the multiple millions of deaths suffered by the Russian people during World War II, I was stunned to learn that upwards of 20 million Chinese died as a consequence of Japanese attempts to subdue China.

Accordingly, I wish this book could be required reading in the United States, as it would significantly assist American citizens to understand the remarkable progress made by China in a very short time, as well as the ongoing dynamics of the tensions between China and Japan. I certainly better appreciate why Chinese leadership and the people of China are so quick to bristle at any evidence that Japan is moving towards once again emphasizing “national patriotism,” while concurrently seeking to alter the pacifistic Constitution imposed upon Japan by the Americans following the end of W.W. II. I am also deeply alarmed at these developments!

Mr. Mitter also does a very good job illustrating the complexity of Chinese domestic politics during the long period following the sad denouement of Sun Yat-Sen’s revolution, including the post World War II armed struggle in China between Mao Zedong’s Communist forces and the conservative armies of the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek following the defeat of Japan. While it is clear that both men played a crucial role in defending China against the Japanese, I see how difficult it must be for the Chinese people, on the one hand, to balance acknowledging that the Nationalist troops valiantly fought against the Japanese invaders, while on the other to appropriately honoring the critical importance that Mao’s vision and force of personality played in ultimately unifying China and creating the groundwork for the resurgent China of the 21st Century. (For in my own country, over 150 years since the outbreak of our own civil war in the mid-19th Century, Americans continue to obsess in assessing, interpreting, and differing over the causes behind, and the meaning of, this pivotal period. As a consequence, passions still flare up occasionally between Northerners and Southerners, and the poison of centuries of discrimination against black people still distorts our civil discourse.)

This book could also provide the West with much needed perspective on the complicated history of Chinese-Western inter-relationships. China’s ongoing suspicions of the West’s intentions have their roots in an unsavory past in which the West regularly interfered with China, treating its ancient culture with insulting disrespect. If today’s Chinese government occasionally strikes some in the West as being “overly assertive,” this may be in part because we still subconsciously expect China to “remember its place,” and to maintain its former deference to Western powers. While as an historian I was aware of the shameful way China had been repeatedly treated throughout the 19th century by Western powers, I did not realize before reading this book how poorly China was often treated even as an ally of the Western powers during World War II. The following passage from Forgotten Ally [pp. 243-44] provides but one example.

The problem was that the Chinese and the Westerners looked at China’s role through almost entirely different lenses. To the Western Allies, China was a supplicant, a battered nation on its knees, waiting for the Americans and British to save it from certain destruction at the hands of the Japanese. In Chiang’s view and that of many Chinese, their country was the first and most consistent foe of Axis aggression. Despite numerous opportunities to withdraw from the conflict, China had fought on when the prospects of outside assistance seemed hopeless, and it now deserved to be treated as an equal power.

The United States itself waxed warm and cool towards China in the ‘30s and ‘40s. On the one hand, President Roosevelt was personally sympathetic to the Chinese and, despite British concerns over implications that a strong China might have for its still extensive colonial holdings in Southeast Asia, he strongly supported a role for China as an equal. However, the figure sent by America to act as the principal liaison between the U.S. and China – General Joseph Stilwell – repeatedly clashed with Chiang Kai-shek, placing his own judgment as to the appropriate use of Chinese troops before those of the Chinese leader. He even came to despise Kai-shek, referring to him privately as “the Peanut.” (In reading about Stilwell I often winced, for he seemed to embody one of the types of “ugly Americans” who have so often annoyed other cultures –an arrogant, self-righteous individual who was unaware that he was, in fact, not nearly as bright as he thought he was.)

Despite the difficulties Stilwell caused, the over-all American reaction to Mao initially ranged from neutral to positive. Of course, the fact that he was a Communist rattled many cages in Washington, but his clarity of purpose, demonstrated organizational skills, and obvious concern for the peasantry near his organizational headquarters in Yan’an made a very positive impression upon several American visitors, civilian and military alike. In contrast, while Chiang Kai-shek came across as forcefully anti-communist, his preference for hierarchical structures, and seeming relative unconcern for non-soldiers, left most American visitors with a less positive impression.

When the war ended more quickly than either Mao or Chiang thought likely, the United States tried to arbitrate some form of workable compromise between Chiang and Mao in order to avoid the continued disruption that a civil war would bring. However, their differences in vision for the future of China were so vast that this effort was doomed from the beginning. America’s right wing seized upon Mao’s subsequent triumph in 1949 as evidence of how the “liberals” in Washington had “lost” China (as if China belonged to anyone other than the Chinese people!). That charge was part and parcel of a right-wing resurgence in America, fueled both by the soon-to-emerge Korean conflict and the irresponsible charges of widespread communist infiltration throughout all levels of American government by Wisconsin’s Senator McCarthy, whose witch-hunts dressed up as congressional hearings were telecast nation-wide. This ugly period within the United States helped further poison relations with China for decades.

In fact, it was only after the Republican President Nixon’s remarkable decision to visit China in the ‘70s – and his gracious reception by the Chinese leadership on that occasion – that matters slowly began to turn back toward a more hopeful direction.

In these opening decades of the 21st Century, where China is clearly destined to be the equal of the United States in economic and military power, we must wonder: Are we doomed to continually replay the missteps of the past? Or are both sides capable of freeing themselves from the ideological shackles that distort what is possible while also masking new opportunities?

Right wing forces in the United States continue to argue that China “cannot be trusted,” for they believe that is the nature of communistic and single party states to be a danger to “free” societies. In their opinion, the U.S. posture toward China should be similar to that adopted by this country towards Soviet Russia in the years following the Cold War in which we sought to encircle the Soviet Union with commercial and military alliances which would stay its possible aggression against its neighbors.

The errors behind such arguments are many. American leadership failed from the beginning to recognize that one of the primary reasons Stalin was trying to erect his own network of friendly states was in order to reduce the likelihood of yet another invasion of Russia from the West. He remembered, although it seems that many in the West did not, that it was Russia who had been invaded by the French in 1812 and by the Germans in 1941. Further, Stalin recalled the intervention by several Western powers in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 when the West sought to assist the “Whites” in their struggle against the “Red” armies as that revolution played out.

In many ways, China’s current position is similar to the situation facing my own young country in the early 19th century: growing in both self-confidence and power, yet aware of the historically unfriendly – even hostile – posture of existing powers (Western and Asian), and seeking to demonstrate its earned right to be treated as an equal among nations. If only the United States would recognize this opportunity to create a true partnership with China – one obviously based first and foremost upon equal respect and working towards a relationship of mutual trust and inter-reliance – there is every likelihood that these two countries could work together to create, and maintain, the conditions for peace and stability in Asia and elsewhere.

The challenge is probably equally great for both countries. As the established superpower, I think it only proper that the United States be the first to offer a genuine hand of friendship. Suspicion and distrust will likely linger for some time, but the more Chinese-American communication and cooperation spreads at all levels – between governments and military, of course, but also between citizens – the more likely that genuine friendship based upon mutual respect will result.

The alternative, returning to the old days of power politics, has already shown in the past century how futile is that course. Do we have the courage to try a new way? For all the dead – Chinese, Russian, Asian, European and American – who have paid the price beyond measure – we had better try.

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Mikey B.

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June 13, 2014

This book gives a history of China covering mainly events from 1937 when Japan invaded China. The Japanese were in Manchukuo (Manchuria) prior, but this was seen as being peripheral to China proper. We are given the Chinese viewpoint on how western powers (mainly England and the U.S.), and then the Japanese, constantly treated China as a “territory” to be exploited. Chinese sovereignty was hardly recognized by any outside power.

There are three main characters focused on: Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of nationalist China, Mao Zedong, the leader of China’s Communist Party, and the rather enigmatic Wang Jingwei, who was initially a Chinese nationalist revolutionary (and follower of Sun Yat-sen the father of modern Chinese nationalism), but then in 1938 collaborated with the Japanese to try to establish peace in China and I also feel to assume the reins of power.

Chiang was recognized by the outside world and the Japanese as being the “ruler” of unoccupied China. The author is overly lenient in his treatment of Chiang. His leadership of the military and the Chinese people was inept. Corruption was rampant. Chiang must be held responsible for this – but the author hardly dwells on the implications of Chiang’s nefarious years of power. He defends Chiang by arguing that China was already a backward and exploited country which is true. However in all his years at the helm the situation never got better, in fact there was constant deterioration. Chinese troops were paid little, if at all, and they were poorly fed; some of their officers became rich and exploited the millions of poor peasants in the countryside. Fighting the Japanese occupiers was sometimes just not a priority in Chiang’s armies. The communists by contrast were far better organized and at least had programs in place to alleviate the peasants.

The author does well to point out that each group – Chiang, Mao and Wang Jingwei all had their own vicious police states. None were interested in establishing a liberal democracy (Wang Jingwei had little effective say in this, as he was a puppet of the Japanese). Also Chiang faced much more of the Japanese army than Mao did. Mao, in later years, tended to over-emphasize the impact the communists had in combating the Japanese.

The book provides us with the various stages of China’s years of cruel occupation by Japan. Western aid (mostly from the U.S.) was insufficient (and from other books, like The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern Chinaa lot of money went into the coffers of corrupt Chinese officials).

The author points out how Chiang Kai-shek was the only non-European leader,if somewhat overlooked, in the Allied coalition that was to become the U.N. We are also shown how the Japanese tried – and partially succeeded – in convincing the Chinese to enter and collaborate into their vision of the “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere”. But to this day this is hardly discussed in China.

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japan

 

world-war-ii

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Patricia

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November 27, 2020

An absolutely excellent history of the Sino-Japanese and subsequent involvement of China with Japan in WWII that has been long overdue in a post-Mao era. Historian Mitter has used resources and documents either long forgotten (or purposefully concealed) to write one of the first neutral histories of China's involvement with Japan. In this sense, it is truly the long-overdue revisionist history we have been waiting for although the title is misleading China's War with Japan, 1937-1945 as the story begins in the late 1890s and continues post-1945.

This is a complex history with many players (Chiang Kai-Shek, Mao, Wang Jingwei, Churchill, Hurley, Chennault, Fumimaro, Marshall, Mountbatten, Stalin, Stilwell, Roosevelt...), but Mitter has accomplished in less than 400 pages what might have taken others thousands, due to his immaculate, succinct writing. Not only is this book illuminating reading, it is also pleasurable reading. Those seeking detailed battle information will be disappointed; the important battles and their preparations and results are included, but this is a book that focuses more on the issues and personalities than battlefield logistics. Yet it dips into the personal stories of soldiers and journalists in the field to illuminate in short excerpts some of the lesser-known facts of the time--the flooding of the central Chinese plains that led to countless Chinese deaths, the lack of equipment and food and training for the foot soldiers, Churchill's disdain for Chiang Kai-shek (the joke being that SEAC stood for "Save England's Asian Colonies" and betrayals, the to-and-fro, in-and-out policies and treaties that created the political quagmire that Chiang had to manage--sometimes successfully, sometimes not. And of course, the righting of the wrongful impression that it was the CCP, Mao's leadership and the accomplishment of the Eighth Route Army and its Long March that were the heroes of the war, as long defended by post-1949 Communist historians.

Anyone interested in Chinese history should read this book; lay readers and academics alike will benefit from the tale, and I would highly recommend watching the YouTube video of Mitter's presentation at the 2014 Jaipur Literature Festival (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XK-DU...).

A personal footnote: when travelling in northern Myanmar in the early 1990s, we came across rural areas where bones and skulls were still visible from the battles fought on Burma's (as it was known in those days) soil. Those villagers we spoke with who were children during the war confirmed that they were the remains of Chinese and Japanese soldiers, abandoned by both sides. Mitter refers to these war dead in his chapter on Burma and tells the tale of a Chinese participant (Huang Yaowu) who mourns for his lost comrades who 'not even buried...might at least have hoped that their deaths would be remembered'. We need historians such as Rana Mitter to keep reminding us.

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Igor Ljubuncic

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October 7, 2021

This is a really good, eye-opening book.

First, it's a well-written piece of often-overlooked history, and gives us a good understanding of the Sino-Japanese war, which preceded (and haralded) WW2 by a good few years. It also provides insight into the Chinese national psyche, which has been strongly influenced by the war with Japan, by the relations with the Allied powers, and the subsequent political intrigue.

Second, it's extra interesting, because it takes a non-European, non-American approach to the conflict. I'm not saying this is good because it is different (that's a cultural cliche), but it is good in that it allows the reader to understand the conflict from a point of view that does not exist in the more Eurocentric narrative. The same is true of trying to understand the Soviet and Russian mentality when it comes to WW2. Understanding how the nation perceives it, even two or three generations later, is a good indicator of the national movement and behavior. Without that context, many of the modern actions are easily misinterpreted.

The same is true of China. It's very easy to go for simplistic explanations on expansionism and global influence. The reality is far more nuanced, and resonates in years of bitter fighting, starvation and humiliation that was the Sino-Japanese conflict. It's a sad reality that it can take decades, even longer for things to unravel. But hey, Europe today is a result of European wars in 1812-1815, the revolution of 1848, and the German-French war of 1871 (and the Berlin Congress). Everything else is one big aftermath echo of those moments.

Back to Rana's book ... you get a lot of good points on the Chinese internal and external struggle, the global stage "envy", the difference in mentality between the Nationalists and the Communists, the relations with the US. Eighty years later, it all makes sense.

All in all, if you like history, and you want to understand the global political scene a bit better, this is an excellent complementary read to your existing arsenal. It will help you understand the seemingly paradoxically defensive-aggressive posture that China has today.

(Aside: if you want to understand the American spirit, you need to look at the French-Indian wars and the life on the frontier. If you want to understand how the US became the leading superpower, you need to look at the Spanish-American war of 1898. For Russia, it's decidedly WW2. And for China, it's the conflict with Japan.)

Quite recommended.

Igor

history

 

rana-mitter

 

ww-2

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