Play as · WW2 1939 · L3 · Allies

Nationalist China - 1939

Nationalist China in 1939 is the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek, fighting Imperial Japan since the Marco Polo Bridge incident of July 1937 and the formal start of full-scale war. The capital has retreated from Nanjing (fallen December 1937, the Nanjing Massacre) through Wuhan to Chongqing in Sichuan. The KMT government controls the western interior; Japanese forces control the eastern coast and major cities; the Chinese Communist Party under Mao operates from Yan'an in the northwest. The Nationalist army is large (3 million-plus mobilized) but largely ill-equipped, with German-trained divisions decimated in Shanghai in 1937 and rebuilding from a much lower base.

Starting position

The strategic position in 1939 is the long defensive war Chiang has explicitly committed to - trading space for time while the international situation produces a great-power patron. The Burma Road from Lashio to Kunming is the supply lifeline; the volunteer American Volunteer Group (Flying Tigers) under Claire Chennault arrives in 1941; US Lend-Lease begins flowing through India and over the Hump after the Japanese close the Burma Road in 1942. Stilwell as US-China theater chief of staff runs continuous bureaucratic conflict with Chiang over reform, CCP-KMT cooperation, and operational priorities. The Chinese theater holds 1.5 million-plus Japanese troops that would otherwise have been available for the Pacific, which is the Allied strategic value.

What turns the campaign

What Nationalist China wants is the long war producing a Japanese economic-military exhaustion before Chinese state capacity collapses, the US patron commitment delivering aid at scales that modernize the army (the 30-division program Stilwell builds), the CCP held in the United Front structure of the 1937 agreement, and the post-war position established as one of the Big Four (the Cairo Conference 1943 attendance is the symbol). What Nationalist China fears is Japanese offensive operations (Operation Ichi-Go in 1944 produces the largest Japanese ground offensive of the war) collapsing the rear-area defense, the CCP expanding territorial control during the war faster than KMT recovery, and the post-war civil war that the 1945-49 sequence will deliver.

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