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Chiang Kai-shek was a Chinese statesman, revolutionary, and military commander. He was the head of the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party, General of the National Revolutionary Army, known as Generalissimo, and the leader of the Republic of China (ROC) in mainland China from 1928 until 1949. After being defeated in the Chinese Civil War by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, he led the ROC on the island of Taiwan until his death in 1975.
Soong Mei-ling, also known as Madame Chiang Kai-shek or Madame Chiang, was a Chinese political figure who was First Lady of the Republic of China, the wife of President Chiang Kai-shek of the Republic of China. Soong played a prominent role in the politics of the Republic of China and was the sister-in-law of Sun Yat-sen, the founder and the leader of the Republic of China. She was active in the civic life of her country and held many honorary and active positions, including chairwoman of Fu Jen Catholic University. During World War II, she rallied against the Japanese; and in 1943 conducted an eight-month speaking tour of the United States to gain support.
Wang Zhaoming, widely known by his pen name Wang Jingwei, was a Chinese politician who was president of the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, a puppet state of Japan. He was initially a member of the left wing of the Kuomintang, leading a government in Wuhan in opposition to the right-wing government in Nanjing, but later became increasingly anti-communist after his efforts to collaborate with the Chinese Communist Party ended in political failure.
Claire Lee Chennault was an American military aviator best known for his leadership of the "Flying Tigers" and the Chinese Nationalist Air Force in World War II.
The Hull note, officially the Outline of Proposed Basis for Agreement Between the United States and Japan, was the final proposal delivered to the Empire of Japan by the United States of America before the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Japanese declaration of war. The note, delivered on November 26, 1941, is named for Secretary of State Cordell Hull. It was the diplomatic culmination of a series of events leading to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Notably, its text repeats previous American demands for Japan to withdraw from China and from French Indochina. No further American proposals were made before the attack on Pearl Harbor, as the US government had received intelligence that Japan was preparing an invasion of Thailand.
Bai Chongxi was a Chinese general in the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China (ROC) and a prominent Chinese Nationalist leader. He was of Hui ethnicity and of the Muslim faith. From the mid-1920s to 1949, Bai and his close ally Li Zongren ruled Guangxi province as regional warlords with their own troops and considerable political autonomy. His relationship with Chiang Kai-shek was at various times antagonistic and cooperative. He and Li Zongren supported the anti-Chiang warlord alliance in the Central Plains War in 1930, then supported Chiang in the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War. Bai was the first defense minister of the Republic of China from 1946 to 1948. After losing to the Communists in 1949, he fled to Taiwan, where he died in 1966.
The American Volunteer Groups were volunteer air units organized by the United States government to aid the Nationalist government of China against Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War. The only unit to actually see combat was the 1st AVG, popularly known as the Flying Tigers.
Owen Lattimore was an American Orientalist and writer. He was an influential scholar of China and Central Asia, especially Mongolia. Although he never earned a college degree, in the 1930s he was editor of Pacific Affairs, a journal published by the Institute of Pacific Relations, and taught at Johns Hopkins University from 1938 to 1963. He was director of the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations from 1939 to 1953. During World War II, he was an advisor to Chiang Kai-shek and the American government and contributed extensively to the public debate on U.S. policy toward Asia. From 1963 to 1970, Lattimore was the first Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds in England.
China Burma India Theater (CBI) was the United States military designation during World War II for the China and Southeast Asian or India–Burma (IBT) theaters. Operational command of Allied forces in the CBI was officially the responsibility of the Supreme Commanders for South East Asia or China. In practice, U.S. forces were usually overseen by General Joseph Stilwell, the Deputy Allied Commander in China; the term "CBI" was significant in logistical, material and personnel matters; it was and is commonly used within the US for these theaters.
This article is concerned with the events that preceded World War II in Asia.
Patrick Jay Hurley was an American politician and diplomat. He was the United States Secretary of War from 1929 to 1933, but is best remembered for being Ambassador to China in 1945, during which he was instrumental in getting Joseph Stilwell recalled from China and replaced with the more diplomatic General Albert Coady Wedemeyer. A man of humble origins, Hurley's lack of what was considered to be a proper ambassadorial demeanor and mode of social interaction made professional diplomats scornful of him. He came to share pre-eminent army strategist Wedemeyer's view that the Chinese Communists could be defeated and America ought to commit to doing so even if it meant backing the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek to the hilt. Frustrated, Hurley resigned as Ambassador to China in 1945, publicised his concerns about high-ranking members of the State Department, and alleged they believed that the Chinese Communists were not totalitarians and that America's priority was to avoid allying with a losing side in the civil war.
The Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, commonly described as the Wang Jingwei regime, was a puppet state of the Empire of Japan in eastern China. It existed coterminous with the Nationalist government of the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek, which was fighting Japan alongside the other Allies of World War II. The country functioned as a dictatorship under Wang Jingwei, formerly a high-ranking official of the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT). The region it administered was initially seized by Japan during the late 1930s at the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
The German Empire established diplomatic relations with the Republic of China in October 1913. After World War I and the creation of the Weimar Republic, Germany followed a policy of friendship towards China. Nazi Germany and the Nationalist government of the Republic of China maintained bilateral relations between 1933 and 1941. The Chinese Nationalists sought German military and economic support to help them consolidate control over factional warlords and resist Japanese imperialism. Germany sought raw materials such as tungsten and antimony from China. During the mid-1930s, thousands of Chinese soldiers were trained by German officers and German economic investment made its way into China. However, Joachim von Ribbentrop strongly favored an alliance with Japan over one with China, and starting with the 1936 Anti-Comintern Pact, Germany began to realign its East Asia policy. After Japan invaded China in 1937 and Ribbentrop became Foreign Minister the following year, German aid to China was cut off. In July 1941, Nazi Germany severed relations with Nationalist China and transferred their recognition to the Japanese-controlled Wang Jingwei regime. Nonetheless, China did not officially declare war on the Axis Powers until after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact was signed in Nanjing on August 21, 1937, between the Republic of China and the Soviet Union during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The pact went into effect on the day that it was signed and was registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on September 8, 1937.
Joseph Newman was an American journalist and writer from New York City. He worked for the New York Herald Tribune under George Cornish as a Japan correspondent, living in Japan with his wife Mary.
The wartime perception of the Chinese Communists in the United States and other Western nations before and during World War II varied widely in both the public and government circles. The Soviet Union, whose support had been crucial to the Chinese Communist Party from its founding, also supported the Chinese Nationalist government to defeat Japan and to protect Soviet territory.
The term Free China, in the context of the Second Sino-Japanese War, refers to those areas of China not under the control of the Imperial Japanese Army or any of its puppet governments, such as Manchukuo, the Mengjiang government in Suiyuan and Chahar, or the Provisional Government of the Republic of China in Beiping. The term came into more frequent use after the Battle of Nanking, when Chiang Kai-shek evacuated the government of the Republic of China to Chongqing.
Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45 is a work of history written by Barbara W. Tuchman and published in 1971 by Macmillan Publishers. It won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. The book was republished in 2001 by Grove Press It was also published under the title Sand Against the Wind: Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45 by Macmillan Publishers in 1970.
In American political discourse, the "loss of China" is the unexpected Chinese Communist Party coming to power in mainland China from the U.S.-backed Nationalist Chinese Kuomintang government in 1949 and therefore the "loss of China to communism."
The Second World War is a 2012 narrative history of World War II by the British historian Antony Beevor. The book starts with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and covers the entire Second World War. It ends with the final surrender of Axis forces.