The First Battle of Changsha

The First Battle of Changsha was the first great battle of the Second Sino-Japanese War to be fought after the outbreak of war in Europe. From mid-September to early October 1939 the Japanese 11th Army under General Yasuji Okamura advanced from three directions – from northern Jiangxi, from southern Hubei and from the shores of Lake Dongting – on Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. The city was defended by the troops of the 9th War Zone under the de facto command of General Xue Yue. The Chinese did not hold rigidly to a single line. They fell back from river to river, destroying roads and supplies, and when the Japanese columns, strung out and poorly supplied, reached the approaches to the city, they struck at their flanks and rear. At the beginning of October the Japanese turned back, and by 8 October they had returned across the Xinqiang River from which they had set out. China proclaimed a “great victory at Changsha”; Japan claimed it had never intended to take the city. Both versions held a measure of truth, but for the first time since the war began a major Japanese offensive had ended with a return to the start line, and the provincial capital it had advanced on remained in Chinese hands.

Name and dates

In China the battle is known as the First Battle (great battle, huizhan) of Changsha or the Battle of Northern Hunan. The Japanese called it the Kan-Shō Operation (贛湘作戦), that is, the Jiangxi–Hunan Operation, from the abbreviated names of the two provinces. This calls for care when reading Japanese studies: what in Japan is called the “First Changsha Operation” is the fighting of September and October 1941, which the Chinese count as the Second Battle of Changsha. The Japanese army did not regard its operations of 1939 as an attempt to capture the city.

The battle is held to have begun on 14 September 1939. On that day – or more precisely on the night of 14–15 September – the Japanese 106th Division attacked from the Fengxin area in northern Jiangxi against the positions of the Chinese 184th Division at Huibu. Chinese studies, including the official historiography of the Republic of China, date the battle from then, as do many war chronologies. Some of the latter, however, state that on 14 September the 11th Army set out “from Yueyang”, supported by divisions from Jiangxi. This is a simplification: on 14 September only the supporting operations in Jiangxi began, while the main thrust from the Yueyang area against the positions on the Xinqiang River was launched on 18 September, or according to some sources on 19 September. Many Western studies, and some other sources, date the battle only from 17 September, when the Japanese columns in Jiangxi turned west towards Hunan.

The battle is taken to have ended on 8 October 1939, when the main Japanese forces crossed back to the northern bank of the Xinqiang. Western studies often give 6 October, the day on which Okamura announced that the operation had achieved its objectives. Chinese sources extend the pursuit to 10–15 October, when the situation before the battle had been restored on all three sectors, in Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi.

Background

The war after Wuhan. In October 1938 the Japanese took Wuhan and Canton (Guangzhou), but the government of Chiang Kai-shek moved to Chongqing in Sichuan, beyond the reach of the Japanese armies. The war entered what Chinese historians call the “second stage”, or the period of stalemate. Japan, which in a year and a half had sent more than a million soldiers to China, kept winning battles – at Xuzhou, for instance – but could neither destroy the Chinese army nor force Chiang to capitulate. Tokyo therefore decided against new large offensives into the interior; it would hold the territory it had occupied and confine itself to strikes intended to break up Chinese concentrations that threatened Japanese positions. At the same time it sought a political solution. In December 1938 Wang Jingwei, one of the most important politicians of the Kuomintang, fled Chongqing, and throughout 1939 he negotiated with the Japanese over the formation of a Chinese government that would collaborate with them.

The main Japanese force in Central China was the 11th Army, with its headquarters in Wuhan, commanded since June 1938 by Lieutenant General Yasuji Okamura. He was one of the Japanese army’s foremost China experts – the same man who in May 1933 had signed the Tanggu Truce. Wuhan, however, was surrounded on three sides by Chinese war zones: the 5th to the north and west, the 3rd to the east and the 9th to the south. In the spring of 1939 Okamura fought two battles to loosen this ring. In March he took Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi (the city fell on 27 March), and in May he routed Chinese forces between Suixian and Zaoyang in Hubei. In both cases the Chinese quickly counter-attacked: in April and early May troops of the 3rd and 9th War Zones advanced on Nanchang, and after the Battle of Suixian–Zaoyang the Japanese had to return to their starting positions.

Changsha and Hunan. Hunan was of great importance to China. It supplied rice and soldiers, and through its capital ran the Wuhan–Canton railway and the roads to the south-western provinces where the government had taken refuge. Changsha, which lies on the Xiang River some 150 kilometres south of Lake Dongting, had already suffered one disaster. When, after the fall of Wuhan, Japanese troops occupied Yueyang in November 1938 and halted on the Xinqiang River, the Chinese authorities, convinced that the city was about to fall, prepared it for burning. On the night of 12–13 November 1938, on a false alarm, squads of arsonists set it alight. The fire – called the “Wenxi fire” after the date in the telegraphic code – burned for several days, consumed most of the city’s buildings and claimed, according to various estimates, anywhere from several thousand to more than twenty thousand lives. The Japanese had not in fact been advancing on the city at all. Chiang Kai-shek had three responsible officers shot, and the governor of Hunan, Zhang Zhizhong, lost his post. From then on the front in northern Hunan stood still on the Xinqiang River, a few dozen kilometres south of Yueyang.

Japanese plans. On 15 August 1939 the staff of the 11th Army drew up guidelines for an operation south of the Yangtze. Its aim, in the words of the document, was “to seize and destroy in the shortest possible time” the main forces of the enemy’s 9th War Zone, which after the counter-attacks at Nanchang were regarded as an increasing threat. The operation was to rely on surprise, be short, and end with a return “roughly to the original positions”. Permanent occupation of Changsha was not part of the plan. Three groupings were to attack. In northern Jiangxi the 106th Division, supported by the 101st Division, was to strike west through the mountains towards the Hunan border. From southern Hubei, near Tongcheng, the 33rd Division was to cross the Mufu Mountains towards Pingjiang. The main blow was to be delivered from Yueyang along the railway towards Changsha by General Shirō Inaba’s 6th Division together with two detachments drawn from other divisions, each of an infantry regiment with artillery: the Nara Detachment from the 13th Division and the Uemura Detachment from the 3rd Division. The latter, ferried by boat across Lake Dongting, was to land on the Chinese flank. Support was to come from army aviation, river flotillas and naval landing units. In all, according to most estimates, some 100,000 Japanese soldiers took part in the operation.

The operation came at a time when Japan was going through one of the gravest crises of its foreign policy. On 23 August Germany, with which Tokyo had been negotiating an alliance, concluded a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, and at the end of August the Red Army destroyed the Japanese 23rd Division in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol. The Hiranuma government fell, and the new prime minister, General Nobuyuki Abe, announced on 4 September that Japan would not involve itself in the war in Europe, which had begun with Germany’s attack on Poland, and would concentrate on “settling the China Incident”. On 12 September a new supreme command of all Japanese forces in China, the China Expeditionary Army, was created under General Toshizō Nishio, with the former war minister Seishirō Itagaki as his chief of staff. Some historians believe the strike on Changsha was also meant to raise the army’s morale after its defeat in Mongolia and to increase the pressure on Chongqing just as Wang Jingwei’s government was being prepared. The plan of the operation, however, had been drawn up in August, before these events, and its immediate target was the troops of the 9th War Zone.

The Chinese side. The 9th War Zone covered Hunan, north-western Jiangxi and a strip of southern Hubei. It was formally commanded by General Chen Cheng, one of Chiang Kai-shek’s closest associates, who held many other posts at the same time. In practice the zone had been run since the beginning of 1939 by General Xue Yue as acting commander. A Cantonese born in 1896 and a veteran of the Northern Expedition, in the 1930s he had commanded the pursuit of the Communists during the Long March, and in October 1938, during the Battle of Wuhan, he had encircled and smashed at Wanjialing in Jiangxi a large part of the Japanese 106th Division – the very division that was now to attack in Jiangxi. He was formally appointed commander of the 9th War Zone in the course of the Battle of Changsha itself.

The forces of the 9th War Zone numbered several dozen divisions. According to Chinese studies, more than 30 divisions and 3 guerrilla columns – more than 240,000 men – took part in the battle. Some studies put the strength of the whole zone at about 365,000. The Chinese thus enjoyed a large numerical superiority, but their divisions were weak, often under strength, with little artillery and no air or tank support. In northern Hunan the most important force was General Guan Linzheng’s 15th Army Group, with the 52nd Corps holding positions on the Xinqiang River. To the east, in the mountains on the Hubei border, stood General Yang Sen’s 27th Army Group, and in Jiangxi the 1st and 19th Army Groups, including Wang Yaowu’s 74th Corps, one of the best Chinese formations.

How Changsha should be defended had been disputed in the Chinese high command since the spring. Chiang Kai-shek and the deputy chief of the General Staff, Bai Chongxi, wanted to repeat the principles adopted at the Nanyue conference at the end of 1938: to resist on successive lines and, if necessary, give up Changsha, move the zone headquarters to Hengyang, and only there, once the Japanese had bled themselves white, strike at them with superior forces. Xue Yue accepted the principle that Chinese studies sum up as “withdraw to the decisive battle and gain the advantage on the flanks”, but he believed that Changsha itself had to be defended. Between Lake Dongting in the west and the Mufu Mountains in the east, northern Hunan is crossed by four parallel rivers flowing from east to west: the Xinqiang, the Miluo, the Laodao and the Liuyang. Xue wanted the Japanese columns to cross one river line after another, losing men and time, while the Chinese divisions drew off to the sides, into the mountains, from where they could strike at their flanks. The village population was evacuated to the hills, and the roads were dug up and turned into fields so that the Japanese could not use lorries and artillery. In keeping with the slogan “turn the roads into fields, carry the grain into the hills”, food was also removed. In practice this was a scorched-earth policy, applied this time according to plan rather than in panic, as in November 1938.

Course of the battle

The Jiangxi front (14–22 September)

The first blow fell in northern Jiangxi, some 250 kilometres east of Changsha. On the night of 14–15 September General Ryōtarō Nakai’s 106th Division attacked from the Fengxin area against the positions of the 184th Division of the Chinese 60th Corps at Huibu. The Chinese defences were broken, and within a few days the Japanese had taken Gao’an and were advancing west and north-west into the hill country towards Shangfu, Ganfang and Xiushui county. Their task was to cross the mountains to the Hunan border and join up with the forces advancing from the north, thereby threatening from the east the Chinese armies defending Changsha.

The Chinese quickly gathered forces here for a counter-attack. Wang Yaowu’s 74th Corps and Song Ketang’s 32nd Corps, supported by several other corps, struck the Japanese columns from the south and west. On 22 September – a day earlier according to some sources – the Chinese recaptured Gao’an. The 106th Division, strung out in the mountains and attacked from several sides, became bogged down. It neither destroyed the Chinese forces in Jiangxi nor reached Hunan, and over the following weeks it withdrew to its starting positions. The troops of the 9th War Zone in Jiangxi therefore did not need reinforcements from Hunan, and the zone command could concentrate on the main axis.

On the Xinqiang River (18–23 September)

On 18 September – 19 September according to some sources – the main offensive began. The 6th Division and the Nara Detachment, several tens of thousands of men in all with strong artillery, struck from Yueyang at the forward positions of the Chinese 52nd Corps north of the Xinqiang River. Okamura moved close to the front and directed operations in person. The Chinese outposts held out for several days, and according to Chinese accounts the Japanese used poison gas on a large scale in this fighting. Japan had signed the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning the use of chemical weapons in war, but had not ratified it, and the use of gas by its army in China was later confirmed by research in Japanese records.

In the east, on the border of Hubei and Hunan, General Jūtarō Amakasu’s 33rd Division entered the fighting on 21 September. The next day its units struck the positions of Yang Sen’s 27th Army Group at Maishi, broke through and advanced over the passes of the Mufu Mountains towards Changshoujie and Pingjiang. Their task was to outflank the Chinese from the east and close a pincer around the troops defending the river lines.

On 23 September the 6th Division and the Nara Detachment, under cover of a heavy artillery bombardment, forced the Xinqiang. The Chinese 52nd Corps, as planned, withdrew south towards the Miluo after brief resistance. On the same day the Uemura Detachment of the 3rd Division, together with naval landing units, crossed the eastern part of Lake Dongting in boats and river craft and landed at Yingtian, where the Miluo flows into the lake (today within the city of Miluo). The landing threatened the western flank of the Chinese defending the Miluo line. Most sources, Chinese and Japanese, place it on 23 September. The date 26 September is also sometimes given, and some Chinese studies describe fighting for the lakeside bridgeheads for several days after that.

On the Miluo and the approaches to Changsha (24–30 September)

Over the following days the Japanese crossed the Miluo and pressed on south along the railway and the road to Changsha. The Chinese divisions put up resistance and then drew off to the sides, into the mountains in the east, as Xue Yue had planned. The Japanese advanced through a deserted land: no people, no food, and roads so thoroughly dug up that lorries, and often the artillery too, had to be left behind. Supplies had to be carried on the backs of soldiers and porters, and more and more units were left behind to guard the lengthening lines of communication. The Uemura Detachment, instead of moving swiftly south, became bogged down in fighting with Chinese corps at Yingtian and Sanjiaoqiao. In the east the 33rd Division and the Nara Detachment reached Pingjiang, but lacked the strength to push on south to help the 6th Division.

As the Japanese approached the city, the dispute over whether to defend Changsha flared up again in the Chinese command. Chiang Kai-shek still wanted to give up the city in order to preserve his forces for the rest of the war. Around 29 September he sent Chen Cheng and Bai Chongxi to the 9th War Zone headquarters to persuade Xue Yue to carry out the original plan. Xue refused. According to Chinese accounts, Chen Cheng, seeing that the Japanese were exhausted, informed Chiang of everything but agreed that the zone command should act “as time and place require”, and allowed a counter-attack. Xue prepared a second line of defence south of the city and assembled six divisions for a counter-stroke.

On 29 September, the date most often given, the forward units of the 6th Division, having taken Fulinpu and Jinjing, reached the Laodao River, the last water line before Changsha. This was the furthest point of the Japanese advance. Chinese units that had let the 6th Division pass southwards were already operating in its rear and on its flanks, attacking supply columns and cutting roads. An American military observer later described how, in night fighting, the Japanese vanguard found itself surrounded by tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers attacking from the front, the rear and both flanks. Japanese aircraft tried to supply the troops by air drops, but could not make up for the severed roads.

The Japanese retreat (1–8 October)

At the beginning of October Okamura concluded that any further advance risked the encirclement and destruction of his forward units. According to Chinese studies, he ordered a general retreat on 1 October. On that day and the days that followed, the Chinese air force and the Soviet volunteer airmen who had been fighting on China’s side since 1937 bombed the Japanese airfields at Hankou. On 3 October Xue Yue ordered a general counter-offensive along the whole of the northern Hunan front, from the Mufu Mountains to Lake Dongting. Chinese corps set off in pursuit of the retreating columns, and artillery brought up to the front shelled the lines of retreat. According to Chinese accounts, on 5 October Chinese soldiers shot down a Japanese liaison aircraft and found on board Okamura’s order breaking off the operation. On the same day the Chinese 23rd Division attacked the Japanese flotilla’s anchorage at Yingtian and damaged several vessels. On 6 October the Japanese abandoned Yingtian and the Chinese retook Pingjiang. That day Okamura announced that the operation had achieved its objectives and that the troops were returning to their starting positions.

On 8 October the main Japanese forces, covered by aircraft, crossed to the northern bank of the Xinqiang. The Chinese 195th Division of the 52nd Corps crossed the river in pursuit and recovered its former forward outposts, and at night Chinese units raided Xitang and Yaolin. Over the following week, as the 106th and 33rd Divisions also returned to their positions in Jiangxi and Hubei, the situation before the battle was restored on all three sectors.

Losses

The casualty figures are among the most disputed aspects of the battle, since both sides needed it for their own propaganda. The Japanese officially announced that they had lost 850 killed and 2,700 wounded, while killing 44,000 Chinese soldiers and taking 4,000 prisoners. Chinese communiqués spoke of more than 30,000 – in some versions more than 40,000 – Japanese killed and wounded. According to one Chinese study, the Japanese admitted to more than 6,000 killed and wounded. The official Japanese figures are almost certainly too low: Chinese researchers point to Japanese records of replacements showing that some units lost far more men than the published totals would suggest. The Chinese figures, for their part, are clearly inflated. Western observers estimated the losses of both sides at several tens of thousands.

Chinese losses were certainly heavy, although their exact number is unknown. According to the memoirs of He Zhigui, then a staff officer of the 9th War Zone, after the battle the eleven corps that had taken part received replacements amounting to forty regiments. Another officer of the same staff, Zhao Ziliu, recalled that when, after the proclamation of the “great victory at Changsha”, foreign correspondents came to the city and asked to be shown the prisoners, it turned out that there were none – which they greeted with laughter. Japanese soldiers were rarely taken alive, but the anecdote also shows how far propaganda had parted company with reality.

The civilian population of northern Hunan suffered badly. The evacuation to the hills saved many lives, but villages, roads and stores were destroyed by both sides: by the Chinese, so that they would not fall into enemy hands, and by the Japanese during their advance and retreat.

Significance

On the battlefield there was no decision. The initiative lay with the Japanese throughout: they began the operation, set its extent and broke it off, and after a month both armies stood where they had started. The Chinese historian Zhang Xianwen wrote that, in terms of the battle alone, neither side had won. In terms of the war as a whole, however, the outcome favoured China. The Japanese failed to achieve the aim they had set themselves – the destruction of the main forces of the 9th War Zone – and they suffered losses and had to withdraw. The Chinese had prepared themselves to lose the city, so the fact that the Japanese had failed to enter it was counted as a victory.

The battle’s propaganda value was enormous. After two years in which China had lost one city and province after another, Changsha became the first major provincial capital that the Japanese had attacked and failed to take. The “great victory at Changsha” strengthened faith in the strategy of protracted war, and Xue Yue became one of the most celebrated Chinese commanders. The Japanese, for their part, began to recognise the limits of their strategy. After the battle Okamura wrote to General Nishio that “breaking the enemy’s will to resist is the hardest of all hard things”, and that abandoning captured ground and returning to the old positions “encourages the enemy to counter-attack and becomes material for his propaganda”. That is exactly what happened.

Encouraged by the result, Chiang Kai-shek ordered preparations for the first offensive of the war on many fronts at once. This winter offensive, conducted from late November 1939 to the spring of 1940 (the main attack began in December), did not, however, bring success. In November 1939 the Japanese landed on the coast of Guangxi and took Nanning in order to cut China off from supplies via Indochina. In March 1940 Wang Jingwei’s collaborationist government was set up in Nanjing. Changsha was fought over three more times. Xue Yue defended the city against a second assault in September and October 1941 (the Second Battle of Changsha) and against a third at the turn of 1941 and 1942, when, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Chinese victory was one of the few Allied successes in the Far East. The city fell only in June 1944, during the great Japanese Operation Ichi-Go.

The battle showed that the war in China had reached a lasting deadlock. Japan was no longer able to conduct operations that brought lasting gains, and China could not drive it out of the territories it had occupied. Okamura, who in 1941 took over command in North China, waged a ruthless war there against the Communist guerrillas and the civilian population, and from November 1944 until the surrender he commanded all Japanese forces in China. Seeking a way out of the Chinese impasse, Japan turned towards the European colonies in South-East Asia, weakened by the war in Europe – a course that in December 1941 led it into war with the United States and Great Britain. The war in China then formally merged with the Second World War.