Battle for Taiyuan

Battle for Taiyuan

Part of: Second Sino-Japanese War

date	September to November 1937
place	Province of Shanxi , Republic of China
output	Japanese victory

Parties to the conflict
China	Japan
Commander
Yan Xishan Wei Lihuang Fu Zuoyi	Katsuki Kiyoshi Tōjō Hideki Itagaki Seishirō
Troop strength
approx. 580,000 men	about 140,000 men
losses
unknown	unknown

The Battle of Taiyuan was an early battle of the Second Sino-Japanese War , which was fought from early September to November 1937 for control of northern China's Shanxi Province . It ended with the capture of the provincial capital Taiyuan by the Japanese.

background

Map of Shanxi Province of the Republic of China

After the conclusion of operations in Chahar Province in August 1937, the Japanese, who had formed the Northern China Regional Army under Terauchi Hisaichi in late August, decided to invade Shanxi Province further south . Taiyuan , located in the Fen He valley between the Lüliang Shan and Taihangshan mountains, was an important industrial location and the capital of the province, whose resources (including coal) the Japanese wanted to exploit. The Japanese led a force of 140,000 men in three divisions of the 1st Army under Katsuki Kiyoshi and several brigades of the Chahar Expeditionary Army of the Kwantung Army . Further to the east, other Japanese troops also advanced south along the railway lines, including on Shijiazhuang in Hebei on the line from Beijing to Wuhan .

The Chinese national troops in the province were controlled by Yan Xishan , a warlord who had taken power in Shanxi as early as the 1910s. At the end of August the Kuomintang's 2nd military region was formed here to stop the Japanese advance southwards. The 7th Army Group under Fu Zuoyi was the main Chinese force. In addition, the 8th Communist Red March Army under Zhu De took part in the fighting. The Communist Party had founded a Soviet republic in the neighboring province of Shaanxi to the west in 1935 and had an interest of their own in not allowing the Japanese to penetrate too far. The Chinese had a total of 580,000 men.

course

On September 13, the Japanese captured Datong , a strategic railway junction 250 kilometers north of Taiyuan, where the line from Beijing to the western provinces crosses the north-south route from Mongolia to Taiyuan. The Chinese then had to withdraw to a new line of defense in the Taihang Mountains area. Parts of the Great Wall were included in the defense. At the end of September, the battle of Pingxingguan against communist troops took place at the Pingxing Pass , and a Japanese transport column was robbed of most of its vehicles. There was also fighting over the Niangziguan , a pass over which the railway line runs from Shijiazhuang west to Taiyuan. Shijiazhuang fell to the Japanese on October 10th.

On October 13, the Japanese attacked the Chinese lines north and east of Taiyuan. In the Battle of Xinkou, the Chinese suffered a heavy defeat against the significantly weaker Japanese and had to retreat further. A little later, the Japanese set up a puppet government under Xia Gong in northern Shanxi . The Japanese government had now decided to expand the China conflict by allowing Japanese troops to expand their territorial gains in northeast China. Agreements were also made with Mongolia, which should take part in securing the conquered areas. Operations were expanded into eastern Suiyuan with the help of the Mongol army .

In October the Japanese managed to coordinate their actions from the east and north in such a way that the city of Taiyuan could no longer be defended. On November 7th, the Japanese demanded surrender. When refused, they shot their way through the city walls and two days later the city fell into their hands. By the end of the month, most of the provincial rail network was under Japanese control.

Result

The Japanese had achieved an important victory with little effort, but without being able to completely eliminate the Chinese resistance in the region. It was here that it began to emerge what was to become a constant of the war against China: the control of the most important cities and the railway lines connecting them were not enough to bring down the enemy. The Chinese communists and also the Kuomintang resorted to guerrilla warfare which, in view of the Japanese atrocities, could count on the willing support of the population. The 8th Communist Marching Army was active in Chahar, Yan Xishan's troops in Shanxi, and Kuomintang forces under Chen Cheng in neighboring Hebei .

The Chinese suffered from their leaders ' wrangling over competence ( Chiang Kai-shek was in command of the 1st military region at the time, but interfered in the actions of the 2nd military region, whose commander Yan he distrusted), who hindered each other through contradicting orders.

literature

• James C. Hsiung, Steven I. Levine (Eds.): China's Bitter Victory: The War with Japan, 1937-1945. ME Sharpe, 1992, ISBN 0-87332-708-X .
• Stephen R. MacKinnon, Diana Lary, Ezra F. Vogel (Eds.): China at War: Regions of China, 1937–1945. Stanford University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8047-5509-2 .

Web links

• Chinese Forces, Battle of Taiyuan, early September 1937 on cgsc.edu (PDF; 74 kB)
• Japanese Forces, Battle of Taiyuan, September through November 1937 on cgsc.edu (PDF; 74 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ MacKinnon et al. (2007), p. 155 ff.
2. ^ SCM Paine: The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949. Cambridge University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-1-107-02069-6 , pp. 131 ff.