Chapter II
Immediate Developments
Immediate Developments
With Li Jishen’s death, the strong hand and insurmountable spirit that had held together his vast empire vanished. Thus, understandably, the geopolitical make-up of the entire world changed significantly in the twenty-three days between Li Jishen’s passing on July 1 and the beginning of widespread hostilities on nearly all of China’s borders on the 24th of the same month. If China had event attempted to preemptively halt the revolutionary nationalistic forces arrayed against her, she would have most likely been drained of a great deal of her future vigor before the true conflict had even begun.
While there were alterations in many areas of the world, the most significant occurred in Europe. The Chinese Imperial Army abandoned Eastern Europe as well their holdings stolen from Portugal in the short Sino-Portuguese War. The United States of America quickly intervened, occupying and then returning all abandoned Portuguese holdings to Portugal. In a daring manner, as the Americans had as of yet no reliable intelligence network in Eastern Europe, they also occupied the remainder of the Balkans and Hungary. As the natives of Eastern Europe declared their independence from Imperial China, primarily becoming somewhat rightwing dictatorships, the United States saw that it did not require a territorial presence in Europe any more as the threat of China had receded from the area. It created several nations in central and southwestern Europe and withdrew the majority of its troops, keeping only a small garrison force whose role was as much to prevent the still continuing French Civil War from overflowing further east into other areas of Europe as to make sure their own client states were able to stand up on their own.
As mentioned, the French Civil War was continuing. Regardless of the American troops in the vicinity, the Vichy had finally occupied the Belgian town of Mons, as well as the rest of continental Netherlands, resulting in the second occasion in the past decade that the governments of both countries were forced to flee to London and rule from exile. The Vichy army was also holding its own against the Italians, having occupied nearly half of the industrialized north of the Italian nation. Against the Free French they also had much success, having driven them into three pockets of greater or lesser size. The only lasting Free French success by July 24 was their occupation of Corsica yet even then, it had been the Italians who conquered the island but had kindly turned over its administration to the Free French.
Europe had been, by the 24th of July, remade.
It was mentioned that the Imperial Chinese Army withdrew from Eastern Europe, it is now time to explain why. In Guilin, once news of Li Jishen’s death had reached the Imperial Court, a supposed peace faction seized power in a coup d’état. This peace faction was led by Chen Gongbo, the Chinese minister of industry. His power over the Chinese state, especially the economy, was so total that the mere threat of cutting off the flow of supplies to the ICA resulted in even those few unwilling generals obeying his summons back to China. Chen Gongbo claims in his own memoirs, Managing China, that he had “foreseen the general trend of events since before the actual invasion of the Soviet Union” and that he “knew that the Chinese advance would have not just eventually halted but would have eventually led to a retrograde motion of Imperial forces” and thus argued against the invasion of the Soviet Union in late July, 1943. This may be true, though the transcript of the last full meeting of the Imperial Council, just prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union, had apparently been lost in the Battle of Guilin and thus this aspect of his writings cannot be verified. However, once all the generals had reached Guilin he extracted a personal oath of allegiance from each of them personally, a fact he conveniently forgets to mention even though Li Zongren recorded the event in his own memoirs, A General of the Guangxi Dynasty and I found support for this when I spoke with other important Chinese generals, such as Chen Jitang and Long Yun.
Something has to be said of Chen Gongbo’s character, as he was absolutely central to the Chinese war effort. Though, as shown, he was not just quite cynical but also politically savvy, those who have met him, myself included, have seen that he is truly a benevolent gentleman of the highest caliber. He is rather reserved in conversation and, by his own admission, was a true workhorse in the office. He was not a man to be rid of able subordinates, and as such he kept the rest of Imperial Council intact; he had no reason to doubt their loyalty as the very survival of the Chinese state was at stake in the war in which they suddenly found themselves.
The Imperial Chinese government, headed by the second Emperor of the Guangxi dynasty, Chen Gongbo.
It is important too, to understand the course of the war, to examine the acting government of the revived Japanese state. Tojo Hideki himself occupied many of the important posts, including those of the head of state and head of government, as well as the chief-of-staff. In fact, he took the rank Dai-Gensui, a rank so exalted it has no real equivalent in the English language or military hierarchy. Partially, he was worried of American influence in his government; it already existed in the form of Yamazaki Iwao and Tsuchihashi Yuitsu, who were self-avowed Social Conservatives of the American style. The rest of the cabinet was rightwing to varying degrees, and this ideological split would lead to consequences later, consequences that would be vital to the direction of the war. In the beginning, however, they were unified in their immediate goal of ridding Japan of the nine division strong Chinese garrison.
The Japanese government, dominated not just by rightwing officials but primarily by Tojo Hideki.
To conclude this chapter, there is but one more item to examine; this is the actual situation in Japan on 24th, when the insurrection began. The three Chinese corps that garrisoned Japan at the times were quite inexperienced in real warfare. There had only been two poorly organized revolts during the entire occupation, no challenge for even an inexperienced corps, yet they had very real consequences. Specifically, these revolts had actually made the Chinese wary of leaving their home bases in Hiroshima, Nagoya and Akita. This allowed the secretly reviving Imperial Japanese Army to stockpile enormous quantities of weapons and other armaments quite easily. In fact, I was in charge of this operation as I had long held the reputation of being something of a logistics wizard. Tojo knew that I was quite skilled at organizing logistics, as I had had great experience in both China and Japan itself during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
I admit that I am quite proud of my achievements. By the 24th, I had stockpiled enough equipment in Osaka for two fully armed mountain divisions. Taishō Yamashita, my good friend and one-time mentor, was chosen to command these two divisions. I also ordered stockpiles to be created in Niigata and Tokyo itself. These hoards, though not as large as that in Osaka, were both large enough to fully equip two infantry divisions. Taishō Okamura was delegated to command the force in Niigata, while Chūjū Ishiwara took command of the Tokyo division. These three men had acquired reputations as being skillful, aggressive commanders, which was exactly what we were to need in the coming struggle, which was for survival itself.
The military situation in Japan just after the beginning of the uprising.
? I certainly hope it's not the latter because I don't want to miss the next episode!
