""""It should have been a strong China-US alliance starting in 1940's, if only US listened to General Stillwell and if there wasn't such feverish McCarthyism in US.""""
No need to aruge. Just get some facts. I guess you would be happy to have a US miltary man to tell Canadian government how to run Candian government. Hmmmmm. Even YiWu (bravo line.), Jay (bravo line.) and current CCP (Do not touch my China internal affairs line.) would not agree.
I should be able to wait and see in the future regarding the rest of your posts.
en.wikipedia.org
Other prominent powers, including the United States of America, Britain and France, only officially assisted in war supply contracts up to the attack on Pearl Harbor in late 1941, when major influx of trained military personnels and supplies boosted Chinese chance of keeping up the fighting.
Unofficially, public opinion in the United States was becoming favorable to China. At the start of the 1930's, public opinion in the United States had tended to support the Japanese. However, reports of Japanese brutality added to Japanese actions such as the attack on the U.S.S. Panay swung public opinion sharply against Japan. By the start of 1941, the United States had begun to sponsor the American Volunteer Group otherwise known as the Flying Tigers to boost Chinese air defenses. In addition, the United States began an oil and steel embargo which made it impossible for Japan to continue operations in China without another source of oil from Southeast Asia. This set the stage for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.
With that attack, both the United States and China officially declared war against Japan. Chiang Kai-shek received some supplies from the United States once the conflict was escalated to the Asian theatre of WWII, and he was appointed Commander-in-chief of the China war zone by the Alliesin 1942. Notoriously poor relations between Colonel Joseph Stilwell and Chiang led to Stilwell's devious criticism and his minimizing of the Chinese contribution in World War II in the American media and to President Franklin Roosevelt. The Allies thus underestimated the Chinese need for supplies and trained personnels. Stilwell also incited power struggles within the Kuomintang which eventually contributed to the rise of the CCP.
Both sides fought to a stalemate after 1941, mainly owing to the dispersion of Japanese forces through vast areas of China — Japan could not concentrate its superior armor and firepower. Guerilla activities behind the frontlines also meant constantly deploying stationary Japanese forces in major cities and at road and rail junctions. Control over the countryside and villages gradually swung towards the CCP and Kuomintang.
The United States saw the Chinese theater as a means to tie up a large number of Japanese troops, as well as being a possible location for American airbases. In 1944, as the Japanese position in the Pacific was deteriorating fast, they launched Operation Ichigo to attack the airbases which had begun to operate. This brought the Hubei, Henan, and Guangxi provinces under Japanese administration.
Nevertheless their prospect of transferring their troops to fight the Americans was in vain and they only committed the Guandong Army from Manchuria in their "Sho plan", which later facilitated the Soviet advancement after the war declaration on August 8, 1945.
Casualties assessment
The conflict lasted for 97 months and 3 days (measured from 1937 to 1945). The Kuomintang fought in 22 major engagements, each of which involved at least one hundred thousand troops from both sides, and in just over 40,000 skirmishes. The CCP fought in 111,500 engagements of various sizes. The Japanese recorded around 1.1 million military casualties, wounded and missing. The Chinese suffered much worse, losing approximately 3.22 million soldiers. 9.13 million civilians died in crossfire, and another 8.4 million as non-military casualties.
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