Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China

Harold M. Tanner

Description

The civil war in China that ended in the 1949 victory of Mao Zedong's Communist forces was a major blow to US interests in the Far East and led to heated recriminations about how China was "lost." Despite their significance, there have been few studies in English of the war's major campaigns. The Liao-Shen Campaign was the final act in the struggle for control of China's northeast. After the Soviet defeat of Japan in Manchuria, Communist Chinese and then Nationalist troops moved into this strategically important area. China's largest industrial base and a major source of coal, Manchuria had extensive railways and key ports (both still under Soviet control). When American mediation over control of Manchuria failed, full-scale civil war broke out. By spring of 1946, Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist armies had occupied most of the southern, economically developed part of Manchuria, pushing Communist forces north of the Songhua (Sungari) River. But over the next two years, the tide would turn. The Communists isolated the Nationalist armies and mounted a major campaign aimed at destroying the Kuomintang forces. This is the story of that campaign and its outcome, which were to have such far-reaching consequences.

A Note on Chinese Names
Introduction
1. China: Lost or Won?
2. The Struggle for Manchuria Begins: August 1945-June 1946
3. Nationalist Offensive, Communist Reaction: South Manchuria, July-November 1946
4. Breaking the Nationalist Offensive: The Three Expeditions/Four Defenses Campaign, December 1946-March 1947
5. The Summer Offensive and the Wedemeyer Mission, May-August 1947
6. Encircling the Cities: the Autumn and Winter Offensives, September 1947-March 1948
7. The Battle Behind the Lines: Building the North Manchuria Base Area
Chapter 8. Army of Learning: the Transition From Guerrilla to Conventional Warfighting Capability
9. Contention Within: Summer, 1948
10. Preparing to Annihilate the Enemy: September 1948
11. Close the Door and Beat the Dog: the Battles of Tashan and Jinzhou, October 1948
12. Putting Changchun Under Siege: March-June 1948
13. Death, Treason and Surrender in the Garden City: June-October 1948
14. Avalanche of Defeat: October-November 1948
15. Assessing and Remembering
Bibliography
Notes
Index

Sujets

• Conflicts
• Wars
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Military history
• General officer
• Military
• Chinese Civil War
• Taiwan
• History of Asia
• Chiang Kai-shek
• General
• Asia
• China
• Tchang Kaï-chek
• Mao Zedong

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 10 août 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253016997
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

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WHERE CHIANG KAI-SHEK LOST CHINA

THE LIAO-SHEN CAMPAIGN, 1948
HAROLD M. TANNER
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2015 by Harold M. Tanner
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tanner, Harold Miles.
Where Chiang Kai-Shek lost China : the Liao-Shen campaign, 1948 / Harold M. Tanner.
pages cm. - (Twentieth-century battles)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01692-8 (cloth : alkaline paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01699-7 (ebook) 1. China-History-Civil War, 1945-1949-Campaigns-China-Liaoning Sheng. 2. China-History-Civil War, 1945-1949-Campaigns-China-Manchuria. 3. Liaoning Sheng (China)-History, Military-20th century. 4. Manchuria (China)-History, Military-20th century. I. Title.
DS777.5425.L5T36 2015
951.04 2-dc23
2015016683
1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15
For WILLIAM
Contents
Acknowledgments
A Note on Chinese Names
Introduction
1 China: Lost or Won?
2 The Struggle for Manchuria Begins: August 1945-July 1946
3 Nationalist Offensive, Communist Reaction: South Manchuria, July-November 1946
4 Breaking the Nationalist Offensive: The Three Expeditions/Four Defenses Campaign, December 1946-March 1947
5 The Summer Offensive and the Wedemeyer Mission: May-August 1947
6 Encircling the Cities: The Autumn and Winter Offensives, September 1947-March 1948
7 The Battle behind the Lines: Building the North Manchuria Base Area
8 Army of Learning: The Transition from Guerrilla to Conventional Warfighting Capability
9 Contention Within: Summer 1948
10 Preparing to Annihilate the Enemy: September 1948
11 Close the Door and Beat the Dog: The Battles of Tashan and Jinzhou, October 1948
12 Putting Changchun under Siege: March-June 1948
13 Death, Treason, and Surrender in the Garden City: June-October 1948
14 Avalanche of Defeat: October-November 1948
15 Assessing and Remembering
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
One of the great pleasures of historical research is that the necessary materials are not available online. Consequently, researching and writing a book of this nature has given me the opportunity to travel widely, to connect with old and new friends, and to accumulate a long list of debts to be acknowledged. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Professor Liu Tong of Shanghai Jiaotong University for sharing his insights and for directing me toward materials without which this book could not have been written. In Beijing, Wang Chaoguang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of Modern History has been generous with his advice and with arranging the institutional support necessary when doing research in China. He Jiangfeng contributed his enthusiasm and knowledge of sources in Republican-era history as a research assistant in Beijing. Dr. Li Chen of Renmin University kindly shared his insights on the civil war along with a copy of his doctoral dissertation. Chen Yung-fa, Chang Jui-te, and the Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica in Taipei provided assistance and a comfortable base for research in Taiwan. Professor Sherman Lai at the University of Manitoba has kindly shared his advice and insights into the culture of the People s Liberation Army. Also in Canada, Sr. Huguette Turcotte, of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, kindly supplied me with material from the archives and publications of the M.I.C. I would also like to express my appreciation to an anonymous reader for his or her suggestions, to Spencer Tucker, editor of the Twentieth-Century Battles series and to editorial director Robert Sloan of the Indiana University Press.
I conducted research at the following libraries and archives: in China, the National Library in Beijing, the Jinzhou Municipal Archives, the Liaoning Provincial Library, and the Liao-Shen Campaign Memorial Hall; in the United States, the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland, the Asian Reading Room of the Library of Congress, the Research Library of the George C. Marshall Foundation, the Hoover Archives, Stanford University s East Asia Library, and the University of North Texas Libraries. All this travel and more was made possible thanks to the generous financial support that I have received from all levels of the University of North Texas: the Department of History and its Military History Center, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Office of the Provost, and also from the Hoover Institution and Archives for participation in the summer 2013 workshop Revisiting Modern China at the Hoover Archives. My department chair, Dr. Richard B. McCaslin has been consistently supportive of all faculty research, including my own, and made funds available to pay Professor Alexander Mendoza for drawing the maps for this book. Finally, my deepest thanks, as always, go to my wife, Yiyun, and our children, Sophia and William, for providing the foundations and the meaning for whatever professional success I may have achieved.
A Note on Chinese Names
In the main text, Chinese names have been written in the pinyin Romanization system. Most words are pronounced roughly the way an English-speaker would guess. There are a few important exceptions to this rule: c is pronounced as ts, q as ch, and x more or less like s. I have used non-pinyin spellings for the names of a few individuals and entities whose names have become universally recognized under those earlier spellings. For example, Chiang Kai-shek (pinyin Jiang Jieshi), Chiang Ching-kuo (pinyin Jiang Jingguo), Soong May-ling (pinyin Song Meiling) and T. V. Soong (pinyin Song Ziwen).
WHERE CHIANG KAI-SHEK LOST CHINA
Every war is rich in particular facts; while, at the same time, each is an unexplored sea, full of rocks, which the general may have a suspicion of, but which he has never seen with his eye, and round which, moreover, he must steer in the night.
- CLAUSEWITZ , On War
Introduction

Clausewitz s observation is as true for the historian as it is for the general: as we observe war from afar, every action seems to have been contingent on a host of other related actions, peripheral factors, and underlying conditions. As a result, any attempt to identify one specific campaign or battle as the crucial event that determined the outcome of a war or the fate of a nation runs the risk of oversimplification. When I say that the Liao-Shen Campaign (12 September-2 November 1948) marks the historical moment when Chiang Kai-shek lost China, I am clearly exercising a degree of poetic license. Some historians might argue that the Huai-Hai Campaign (8 November 1948-10 January 1949) deserves that honor. 1 Others might say that if we must search for the place where Chiang Kai-shek lost China, we will find it not on a battlefield, but in the hearts and minds of the Chinese people.
Nonetheless, the Liao-Shen Campaign clearly played a very significant role in determining the outcome of the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949). This campaign marked the end of the struggle for control of the key strategic theater of China s Northeast (Manchuria-I will use the two terms interchangeably). This struggle began immediately following the Japanese surrender in August 1945. By the time of the Liao-Shen Campaign, the Communists