As dictators and presidents, Xi of China, Putin of Russia, and Kim Jong Un of North Korea, and even our very own Dan Andrews and Bob Carr, celebrated the 80th anniversary of World War II in China, the story they were celebrating was a lie.
Firstly, the war against Japan was won largely by the US Navy, Marines, and Air Force, aided in no small measure by the Australian Army in the South-West Pacific and the Anglo-Indian 14th Army under Britain’s best general of World War II, Sir William Slim (also a former Governor-General of Australia), which destroyed the Japanese Army in Burma in 1944–45.
The victory was greatly helped by the heroic defence of China by the Nationalist Army of the Republic of China (KMT), led by President Chiang Kai-shek. The Chinese tied down one million Japanese troops that could have been deployed elsewhere. The KMT accounted for 90 per cent of Japanese casualties and bore the brunt of the losses inflicted by the Japanese Army.
By contrast, Mao Zedong’s PLA fought only one major battle, restricting itself mostly to small though useful guerrilla actions in northern China. Mao deliberately avoided major engagements in order to preserve his forces for the civil war against Chiang from 1946 to 1949, which he subsequently won.
For Xi and the CCP to claim that the Communist Party was a major player in the war against Japan is an insult to the KMT and to all the other nations who fought. One example of a true Chinese hero is General Xue Yue, who lived to 101 and died in Taiwan in 1998. Xue fought in every major Chinese conflict since the fall of the Manchu dynasty in 1912. He commanded the Chinese forces that bloodied the Japanese in Shanghai in 1932, and again during the three-month Battle of Shanghai in 1937, when Japan launched its full-scale invasion of China — the true beginning of World War II.
General Xue fought and won the first (1938) and third (1942) Battles of Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province, depriving the Japanese of consolidating their conquest of southern China. The second battle (December 1941–January 1942) ended in a draw.
After the war, General Xue withdrew from Hainan Island in 1950 and spent the rest of his life in Taiwan.
This fine old soldier was widely known as the “Tiger of Changsha.” USAAF General Claire Chennault of Flying Tigers fame nicknamed him “The Patton of Asia,” and the two became lifelong friends. General Xue even mentored Sir William Slim on strategies to defeat the Japanese in Burma.
China at the time was a struggling, impoverished, peasant-based nation just emerging from the chaos of the warlord era. Corruption was rife, the army was poorly supplied with food and modern weapons, yet the country still made a significant contribution in World War II. But it was the KMT — and men like General Xue — who did the lion’s share of the fighting against Japan and ultimately helped bring about its defeat, not the PLA.
So, Bob Carr and Dan Andrews — what do you say to that? Talk about useful idiots!
