The Chinese front and Burma, 1941–42

The Chinese front and Burma, 1941–42

Japan’s entry into war against the western Allies had its repercussions in China. Chiang Kai-shek’s government on December 9, 1941, formally declared war not only against Japan (a formality long overdue) but also, with political rather than military intent, against Germany and Italy. Three Chinese armies were rushed to the Burmese frontier, since the Burma Road was the only land route whereby the western Allies could send supplies to the Nationalist Chinese government. On January 3, 1942, Chiang was recognized as supreme Allied commander for the China theatre of war; and a U.S. general, Joseph W. Stilwell, was sent to him to be his chief of staff. In the first eight weeks after Pearl Harbor, however, the major achievement of the Chinese was the definitive repulse, on January 15, 1942, of a long-sustained Japanese drive against Ch’ang-sha, on the Canton–Han-k’ou railway.

Thereafter, Chiang and Stilwell were largely preoccupied by efforts to check the Japanese advance into Burma. By mid-March 1942 two Chinese armies, under Stilwell’s command, had crossed the Burmese frontier; but before the end of the month the Chinese force defending Toungoo, in central Burma between Rangoon and Mandalay, was nearly annihilated by the more soldierly Japanese. British and Indian units in Burma fared scarcely better, being driven into retreat by the enemy’s numerical superiority both in the air and on the ground. On April 29 the Japanese took Lashio, the Burma Road’s southern terminus, thus cutting the supply line to China and turning the Allies’ northern flank. Under continued pressure, the British and Indian forces in the following month fell back through Kalewa to Imphāl (across the Indian border), while most of the Chinese retreated across the Salween River into China. By the end of 1942 all of Burma was in Japanese hands, China was effectively isolated (except by air), and India was exposed to the danger of a Japanese invasion through Burma.

Since the U.S. bombers that raided Tokyo on April 18 flew on to Chinese airfields, particularly to those in Chekiang (the coastal province south of Shanghai), the Japanese reacted by launching a powerful offensive to seize those airfields. By the end of July they had generally achieved their objectives.

Developments from autumn 1941 to spring 1942

Allied strategy and controversies, 1940–42

In the year following the collapse of France in June 1940, British strategists, relying as they could on supplies from the nonbelligerent United States, were concerned first with home defense, second with the security of the British positions in the Middle East, and third with the development of a war of attrition against the Axis powers, pending the buildup of adequate forces for an invasion of the European continent. For the United States, President Roosevelt’s advisers, from November 1940, based their strategic plans on the “Europe first” principle; that is to say, if the United States became engaged in war simultaneously against Germany, Italy, and Japan, merely defensive operations should be conducted in the Pacific (to protect at least the Alaska–Hawaii–Panama triangle) while an offensive was being mounted in Europe.

Japan’s entry into the war terminated the nonbelligerency of the United States. The three weeks’ conference, named Arcadia, that Roosevelt, Churchill, and their advisers opened in Washington, D.C., on December 22, 1941, reassured the British about U.S. maintenance of the “Europe first” principle and also produced two plans: a tentative one, code-named “Sledgehammer,” for the buildup of an offensive force in Great Britain, in case it should be decided to invade France; and another, code-named “Super-Gymnast,” for combining a British landing behind the German forces in Libya (already planned under the code name “Gymnast”) with a U.S. landing near Casablanca on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. The same conference furthermore created the machinery of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, where the British Chiefs of Staff Committee was to be linked continuously, through delegates in Washington, D.C., with the newly established U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Organization, so that all aspects of the war could be studied in concert. It was on January 1, 1942, during the Arcadia Conference, that the Declaration of the United Nations was signed in Washington, D.C., as a collective statement of the Allies’ war aims in sequel to the Atlantic Charter.

Meanwhile, Churchill became anxious to do something to help the embattled Soviets—who were clamouring for the United States and Britain to invade continental Europe so as to take some of the German pressure off the Eastern Front. Roosevelt was no less conscious than Churchill of the fact that the Soviet Union was bearing by far the greatest burden of the war against Germany; and this consideration inclined him to listen to the arguments of his Joint Chiefs of Staff Organization for a change of plan. After some hesitation, he sent his confidant Harry Hopkins and his army chief of staff General George C. Marshall to London in April 1942 to suggest the scrapping of “Super-Gymnast” in favour of “Bolero,” namely the concentration of forces in Great Britain for a landing in Europe (perhaps at Brest or at Cherbourg) in the autumn; then “Roundup,” an invasion of France by 30 U.S. and 18 British divisions, could follow in April 1943. The British agreed but soon began to doubt the practicability of mounting an amphibious invasion of France at such an early date.Attempts to conclude an Anglo-Soviet political agreement were renewed without result, but a 20-year Anglo-Soviet alliance was signed on May 26, 1942; and, though Churchill warned the Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov, not to expect an early second front in Europe, Molotov seemed gratified by what he was told about Anglo-U.S. plans.

Visiting Roosevelt again in the latter part of June 1942, Churchill at Hyde Park, New York, and in Washington, D.C., pressed for a revised and enlarged joint operation in North Africa before the end of the year, instead of a buildup for the invasion of France; but the U.S. Joint Chiefs resolutely upheld the latter plan. After further debate and disagreement, in July the U.S. Joint Chiefs yielded at last to British obstinacy in favour of a North African enterprise: it was decided that “Torch,” as this combined Anglo-U.S. operation came to be called, should begin the following autumn.Already, on July 17, 1942, Churchill had had to notify Stalin that convoys of Allied supplies to northern Russia must be suspended because of German submarine activity on the Arctic sea route (on June 2 a convoy from Iceland had lost 23 out of 34 vessels). Consequently, it was the more awkward to inform Stalin that there would be no second front in Europe before 1943. In mid-August 1942, when Churchill went to Moscow to break the news, Stalin raged against the retreat from the plan for a second front in Europe but had to admit the military logic of “Torch.”