China is the earliest, longest and most sacrificed battlefield, which has far-reaching influence and made great contributions to the process of the Second World War and the post-war historical development.
( 1)
China's anti-fascist national liberation war has been strongly supported and helped by people of all countries, the Soviet Union and democratic countries.
At the same time, as one of the anti-fascist countries, China also played an important role in the development and process of the Second World War.
Ignoring any aspect, some historical events in the Second World War cannot be scientifically explained.
As we all know, the purpose of Japan's war of aggression against China is not only to invade itself, but also to invade the Far East of the Soviet Union, South Asia and Southeast Asia in the north, and Australia and New Zealand in the south, with China as the main base.
However, due to China people's persistence in the war of resistance, although the Japanese army occupied a large territory of China in a short time, it fell into the sea of Wang Yang in the people's war, and a quick victory became a long-term war of attrition.
China contained nearly 80% of the Japanese main force, consumed most of Japan's limited military resources and expenditures, and disrupted its deployment in East Asia and the world.
Therefore, on the whole, the China people's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression is of great international significance.
As far as the specific influence of China and War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression on the development and process of the Second World War is concerned, at least the following aspects can be pointed out:
1. during the second world war, "Japan's policy has undergone extremely complicated changes ... completely depending on the situation of the Sino-Japanese war."
It was not until the end of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 that Japan was able to gain freedom of action, which would inevitably affect the harmony between Japan and Germany and Italy.
Although before the "July 7th Incident", Japan and Germany had already concluded an "International Production Agreement" with a secret supplementary agreement with the Soviet Union.
However, in May 1939, when Germany and Italy were preparing to wage war against Britain and France, Germany negotiated with Japan, demanding a military alliance with Japan, giving Germany and Italy military assistance, and threatening to "approach the Soviet Union".
However, Japan's answer is that before the end of the Sino-Japanese War, Japan "cannot give military assistance to the two countries at present or in the near future."
1September, 940, although Japan, Germany and Italy signed a three-nation military alliance treaty, which divided their respective areas of rule in Europe and Asia and stipulated that the three countries should "assist each other" by all political, economic and military means.
However, because Japan is deeply involved in the battlefield in China, it has never been able to give Germany any practical military help.
That is, "Japan's pro-German faction, even the German ambassador himself admitted that Japan could not participate in the European War until the Sino-Japanese War and domestic political differences were resolved."
2. During World War II, Japanese imperialism always regarded the Soviet Union as an "absolute enemy", and the Japanese even "attempted to wage war against the Soviet Union on June 9, 1937".
However, tojo hideki, then chief of staff of the Kwantung Army, thought: "If we look at the current situation in China from the perspective of preparing for war against the Soviet Union, we should first give the Nanjing regime a blow and eliminate the threat behind us." In the eyes of Japanese warlords, 1937, the Japanese army launched the war of aggression against China, which was also a step to complete the army's plan of "marching northward".
However, because of China people's loyal opposition, not only the "threat behind" was not eliminated, but also the Japanese had to deploy some Kwantung troops to fight in the pass shortly after the war began.
This will inevitably weaken its invasion of the Soviet Union.
The Zhanggufeng incident and Nomenkan incident that broke out in China in the second and third years after the Anti-Japanese War were both exploratory provocations by Japan against the Soviet Union, but both ended in failure because of the huge gap between their forces and the Soviet Far East Army.
Ishihara, deputy chief of staff of Kwantung Army, smiled and confessed: "In this Zhanggufeng incident, the Soviet Union threatened Japan, but used Japanese military reasons to deal with China.
Japanese humiliation and surrender to the Soviet Union also led to the use of military force against China.
..... If Japan makes peace with China, it can threaten the Soviet Union and lead the Far East ... "But because China insisted on the war of resistance, Japan not only failed to realize its dream of' threatening the Soviet Union', but even after Germany revealed its plan to attack the Soviet Union to Japan, Japan concluded the Treaty of Neutrality between Japan and the Soviet Union for its own benefit.
When the German-Soviet War broke out, Germany repeatedly asked Japan to attack the Soviet Union from the Far East and try its best to move westward so that Germany and Japan could meet before winter came.
This is a great opportunity for Japan to realize its long-cherished dream of invading the Soviet Union.
Therefore, Foreign Minister Matsuoka advocated a war against the Soviet Union.
But chief of staff Sugiyama believes that the Japanese "it is actually impossible for China to use a large number of troops now".
Even when the Germans went deep into the Soviet Union and hit the suburbs of Moscow, Japan still dared not take the opportunity to participate in the war against the Soviet Union.
Therefore, first of all, because a large part of the Kwantung Army was used in the war of aggression against China, the Japanese army "can only maintain the operational ratio of 1: 3 with the Far East Red Army in Manchuria"; Secondly, it is because "in the war against China that Japan fell into, it consumed an unexpectedly large amount of military supplies."
Japan wants to take advantage of the fire to rob and attack the Soviet Union, which is really beyond its power.
The words of zhukov, a Soviet historian, are not unreasonable: "During the Second World War, one of the reasons why Japanese imperialism did not dare to attack the Soviet Far East Army was the heroic struggle of the people of China, the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army and a large number of guerrillas. They tied the hands and feet of the Japanese army in China.
Therefore, the people of China gave great help to the people of the Soviet Union.
It made it easy for the Soviet people to wage a great struggle in the just great patriotic war against the German fascist aggressors. "
3. Expanding to Southeast Asia, establishing the so-called "Greater East Asia Glory Circle" from Myanmar to Australia and New Zealand, and establishing Japan's political and economic ruling areas are also the established "national policies" of Japanese warlords.
Although it has threatened to "expand by peaceful means", it will never give up its armed aggression in this region when there is an opportunity and need, and its premise is to solve the "China incident".
Although there was a strange strange bedfellows between Germany and Japan, after the outbreak of the European War, Germany still strongly encouraged Japan to "March southward". From September 1939 to early 1940, ribbentrop, the foreign minister, and Stama, the special envoy to Japan, lobbied the Japanese side to find allies for its large-scale attack on Britain and France.
However, the reaction they got from Japan was that "it is impossible to advance southward before the end of the Sino-Japanese war" (General Kuichi Temple, Japan's special envoy to Germany), and Japan's basic policy is to "take handling the China incident as its policy focus" and "adopt a non-interference policy" in the European war.
Therefore, in the summer of 1940, when Britain and France were in an extremely unfavorable position in the European war, Japan failed to attack Britain and France and aid the eastward invasion.
Churchill said happily afterwards: "1940 After the collapse of France, Germany tried to attack the British Isles, and Japan declared war on the British Empire and the United States, so the great disaster and pain we suffered were almost unimaginable."
1940 After France surrendered in June, Britain continued to make concessions to Japan and blocked the Burma Road.
Japan first implemented the so-called "peaceful southward advance" policy, actually occupied the whole French Indian zhina, conquered Thailand, and infiltrated into Malaya and the Philippines as a preparation for military southward advance.
Due to the fierce contradiction between Japan and the United States, the secret negotiations between Japan and the United States, which lasted for more than eight months, failed, and the American "Oriental Munich" policy went bankrupt. In order to come in from the south to solve the "China incident", Japan finally put all its eggs in one basket, regardless of the unfavorable timing, ventured to attack Pearl Harbor and at the same time went to war with Britain and the United States.
Japan's delay in moving south in this way has given its western allies, especially the United States, room to expand their armaments.
In other words, China's persistence in the war of resistance also won the Western allies time to fight back against the Japanese aggressors.
That is, at the beginning of the Pacific War, because the main force of the Japanese army was still confined to the battlefield in China, only 5 11divisions in the southwest Pacific were used to cooperate with the navy (there were less than 250,000 combat troops and about 400,000 logistics troops), and 13 divisions were left in Manchuria. Compared with the British, American and Dutch garrison at that time, there were about 300 thousand people. According to liddell hart, a British military theorist, the Japanese "only have such advantages, and launching a large-scale attack seems to be a bold gamble".
At that time, the Japanese navy was carried away by the quick victory in the early Pacific War, and once proposed to attack Ceylon in the west and Australia in the east. However, the Japanese army had to reject the navy's proposal, because its main force was deeply involved in China, and the Japanese army never occupied the above two places, and reserved two important bases for the Allied counterattack.
1943 to 1944, during the counter-offensive in Myanmar, the China Expeditionary Force in India under the command of General Stilwell defeated several elite divisions of the Japanese army, which made the British counterattack in south-central Myanmar develop rapidly.
At the same time, the battlefield in our Liberated Area also launched a counterattack, which shook the "fundamental" occupied territory of the Japanese army in China-North China, and nailed hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops firmly to the land in China, unable to move. As a result, not only the movement of "opening up the mainland traffic lines" failed, but also the collapse of the rule of occupying North China.
In this way, the China people's fighting in the battlefield behind enemy lines at the end of the Anti-Japanese War also effectively cooperated with the allied counter-attacks in the Pacific and Southeast Asia.
China's long-term War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression has dealt a heavy blow to Japan, but it is not enough. It never dared to invade Siberia on a large scale, ventured to launch the Pacific War, and finally failed, born to die.
We remember that one week before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Churchill worried in his telegram to Roosevelt that "the collapse of China will greatly increase the danger of Britain and the United States".
1942 In the spring, Roosevelt said to his son, "Without China, if China was defeated, how many Japanese soldiers in divisions could be transferred to other areas to fight?" They can immediately capture Australia and India-they can easily capture these places, and they can rush to the Middle East at any time ... cooperate with Germany, hold a large-scale attack, meet in the Near East, completely isolate Russia, annex Egypt, and cut off all communication lines through the Mediterranean. "In that case, the world situation will change dramatically and the whole process of World War II will change.
(2)
Generally speaking, China experienced a long and special battle course in the Second World War. China fought for eight years with weak soldiers and strong enemies. China was not only not destroyed, but also consumed a lot of effective strength and military resources of the enemy in the arduous battle, resisted the enemy's main force, disrupted the enemy's strategic deployment, effectively cooperated with the allies, and finally won the final victory.
In the Great War, China also made great national sacrifices.
However, internationally, China's war against Japanese fascism has not received universal attention and due evaluation.
Therefore, in addition to some political prejudices and prejudices, there are the following reasons:
1, with a vast territory and a large population, China, which is economically and militarily backward, still looks at the Sino-Japanese War with the old eyes of the traditional regular and positional warfare in the European battlefields of the two world wars, which is characterized by a protracted people's war.
2. Starting from 1939, Chiang Kai-shek basically passively resisted the war and avoided it. His troops often fail, retreat and surrender. After the Taierzhuang War, there was actually no serious war on the battlefield of * * *, thus losing a large territory of our country. "Many overseas people mistakenly thought that * * * was China", which made Chiang Kai-shek ineffective in the Anti-Japanese War.
3. The people's armed forces, led by China, who insisted on fighting in the battlefields and behind enemy lines in the Liberated Areas, were actually "the main force to cooperate with the Allies in fighting, expel the Japanese aggressors and liberate the people of China".
However, because Yan 'an lacked radio stations to broadcast news to foreign countries until the eve of the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, and suffered from * * * * *, many foreign people did not know the specific situation of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, China.
Although some foreign progressive writers, journalists or other international friends broke through the blockade and reported the truth of the battlefield in the liberated areas, which played an important role (especially for American readers), in the western countries at that time, the works that sympathized with and supported China * * * were "regarded with special respect", which did not sell widely and even suffered persecution (such as General Si Nuo, Smedley and Stevie's Xie Weisi).
Therefore, it is not surprising that the important role of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, the people of China, has not been properly evaluated internationally.
This situation has not fundamentally changed until recently. Therefore, in connection with the Second World War, under the guidance of Marxism and * * * *, it is necessary for China historians to conduct in-depth research and write the history of China and War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression truthfully and systematically.
Especially with major countries (such as the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain, Germany, Japan, etc.). People who participated in World War II have written and published books on the history of World War II and their own war history, but China, who has made great contributions to the victory of the people's anti-fascist struggle in the world, is particularly backward in this respect, which is almost a blank spot, which is not commensurate with our socialist country and sorry for the soldiers and civilians who died in War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.
It is imperative to sum up and draw lessons from history, to help stop the outbreak of new wars, to strengthen patriotism education for the young and middle-aged people who have not personally experienced the long-term dangerous disaster years in War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, and to strengthen the research and publication of the history of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and even the history of World War II.
This task is of great practical and far-reaching significance, which not only corrects the shortcomings of international audio-visual in this respect.