China Rules the Seas
A Chinese Naval AAR
The Early Years: Part 2
Peace may have been signed with the Kuomintang on March 14, but the Chinese Civil War was far from over. With the Nationalists temporarily out of the way, the warlord state of Shanxi would have no outside support, and would hopefully collapse like a house of cards. So the forces in the province of Pingliang were transferred to Yan'an to participate in the coming war. Once they arrived, war was declared on Shanxi on April 1, 1936. The plan was to grab as much land as possible before Shanxi could put up any effective resistance, and then simply overrun Shanxi's troops.
Operation House of Cards: Phase 1:
However, Shanxi was not as weak as was expected:
And despite their complete lack of supplies:
They managed to eventually stall the Red Army's advance:
Before Operation House of Cards began, Shanxi had been supplying the Communists with necessary resources. However, now that the Communists were at war with Shanxi, this became impossible. So a trade deal was signed with the hated Nationalist enemy:
Since Operation House of Cards: Phase 1 had failed, the Red Army moved to its contingency plan: Operation House of Cards: Phase 2, which was very similar to phase 1, except that instead of trying to advance on all fronts, armies not advancing would merely try to hold their position, while advances were made in the southern part of Shanxi.
This plan proved to work far better than Operation House of Cards: Phase 1 had ever worked.
Shanxi was annexed on June 29. This opened up a trade route with the Soviet Union, and so all trade relations with Nationalist China were cut off in favor of the Soviets. The captured factories of Shanxi were then put to work producing new infantry equipment, and later, once all the damaged factories of Shanxi had been repaired, work also began on training some mountaineers:
