Battle for Wuhan

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Battle for Wuhan
Japanese engineer troops with tankettes on the march near Naxi, Yangxin County, early October 1938
Japanese engineer troops with tankettes on the march near Naxi, Yangxin County , early October 1938
date June to October 1938
place Wuhan and the surrounding area
output Chinese strategic victory

Japanese tactical victory

Parties to the conflict

China Republic 1928Republic of China (1912–1949) China

Japanese EmpireJapanese Empire Japan

Commander

China Republic 1928Republic of China (1912–1949) Chiang Kai-shek Chen Cheng Bai Chongxi
China Republic 1928Republic of China (1912–1949)
China Republic 1928Republic of China (1912–1949)

Japanese EmpireJapanese Empire Hata Shunroku Okamura Yasuji Higashikuni Naruhiko
Japanese EmpireJapanese Empire
Japanese EmpireJapanese Empire

Troop strength
1,000,000 men in over 120 divisions

200 planes

40 ships

350,000 men

500 planes

120 ships

losses

~ 400,000 men

~ 140,000

The Battle of Wuhan was a campaign of several months by the Japanese in the Second Sino-Japanese War , which was fought from June to October 1938 against the National Revolutionary Army for possession of the temporary Chinese capital Wuhan .

background

Course of the war in 1937

The Second Sino-Japanese War, which began in July 1937, brought the Japanese quick successes in the war year 1937, initially in northeast China and against the then capital Nanjing and Shanghai . The Chinese seat of government was then temporarily relocated to the central Chinese city of Wuhan in the province of Hubei .

After the fall of Xuzhou in May 1938, the Japanese military leadership began working out concrete plans to end the war quickly. In a cabinet meeting in July, the decision was made to attack the provisional Chinese capital Wuhan and overthrow the Kuomintang government there. With a simultaneous attack on Canton one wanted to demonstrate to the Chinese that the Japanese military had the power to attack anywhere and that further resistance was hopeless.

After the end of the Battle of Xuzhou, the Japanese had first pushed further west along the Longhai Railway to take possession of Zhengzhou , the next important railway junction on the way to Wuhan. Here the Longhai Railway crosses the north-south railway line from Beijing to Wuhan. After reaching Kaifeng , some 70 kilometers from Zhengzhou, and threatening to continue their advance, Chiang Kai-shek , on the advice of Chen Guofu, ordered the demolition of the Yellow River dams at Huayuankou in early June . The resulting flooding affected three Chinese provinces ( Henan , Anhui and Jiangsu ), killing up to a million residents. The reason for the measure was that it would avert the immediate threat to Wuhan. In fact, the capture of the city was only delayed for several months. This prevented the Japanese from advancing south along the Peking-Hankou railway. They decided to attack further south, in the Yangtze Valley, instead . Here the action of the land troops could be supported by warships.

At the beginning of July the Japanese had sixteen divisions, most of which were divided into two armies (11th and 2nd Army) for the attack on Wuhan. In total, there were around 380,000 men who received support from around 200 aircraft. The Japanese 2nd Army was withdrawn from operations near Zhengzhou and relocated to Hefei . It was to advance north of the Yangtze overland through the Dabie Shan area to reach the Zhengzhou-Hankou Railway north of Wuhan. The 11th Army was formed from troops from the Central China Expeditionary Army in early July to advance further south along the river. The Chinese defenders, consisting of the troops of the 9th Military Region and the troops of the 5th Military Region who had fled from Xuzhou, numbered an estimated 800,000 men. South of the Yangtze in the south of Anhui Province and in the north of Jiangxi Province , the Japanese were also opposed by troops from the 3rd Military Region.

course

Operations map

The Battle of Wuhan began on May 31, 1938 with an aerial battle over the city. Bombardment intensified in July and August and eventually led to the destruction of Chiang Kai-shek's headquarters. The German military advisers in China under Alexander von Falkenhausen left the city in early July.

2nd Army operations

The Japanese 2nd Army opened its offensive in August with an attack on Lu'an . In mid-September it reached Shangcheng and Huangchuan in the south of Henan Province and on October 10 the railway line to Wuhan near Xinyang . From there, she turned south towards Yingshan on the Hubei-Anhui border, which she reached in late October. By then, Wuhan had already fallen to the troops operating in the Yangtze Valley.

11th Army operations

They began their offensive on June 12 with attacks on Anqing . The city fell into their hands after just one day, and they were given access to an airfield. In the last week of June, the heavily fortified Chinese position fell at Madang, which the Japanese had bombed with their warships from the river and filled with poison gas. At the end of July the important railway junction and river port Jiujiang , which was defended by 80,000 men under Generals Xue Yue and Zhang Fakui , fell to the Japanese after five days of fighting. The Chinese defenders of Wuhan were nervous about the unstoppable Japanese advance. The population feared a repetition of what happened after the capture of Nanjing, as it did in Jiujiang on a smaller scale. A particularly hot summer and the damp river climate led to numerous failures on both sides due to diseases such as malaria and dysentery.

In late August, the 11th Army attacked on the banks of Lake Poyang and in the direction of Yichang and captured Ruichang . The Chinese soldiers stubbornly defended their positions in spite of the constant Japanese bombing and carried out counter-attacks like at Huangmei . The Japanese 106th Division was badly hit in the Battle of Wanjialing, which lasted until after the fall of Wuhan . The Japanese needed a full three weeks in September to gain 15 kilometers of space. Tianjiazhen Fortress lasted two weeks before it was captured by the Japanese, again through the use of poison gas. In October, the two Japanese divisions operating furthest south succeeded in breaking the railroad from Wuhan to Canton. This sealed the fate of the city. The city, threatened from three sides, capitulated on October 25, four days after the southern Chinese canton.

Result

The Japanese victory did not bring the attackers to the end they had hoped for. A largely static period of war began that lasted through 1939.

This time the Chiang government had planned their evacuation in good time. Among other things, industrial plants and ammunition factories were dismantled from the end of June in order to be rebuilt hundreds of kilometers upstream in Sichuan . Chongqing became the new capital . In mid-November, Chiang had what he thought threatened Changsha , located 200 kilometers southwest on the railway to Canton, burned down. In fact, the city was first attacked by the Japanese less than a year later .

literature

  • Stephen R. MacKinnon: Wuhan, 1938: War, Refugees, and the Making of Modern China. University of California Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-520-25445-9 .

Web links

Commons : Battle for Wuhan  - Collection of images, videos and audio files