【正文】 id1939, he had mitted many of his best troops at various times between 150,000 and 500000to blockading the Communists’ base in the northwest. Although both Nationalists and Japanese after late 1938 were content to wage a war of attrition, fighting by no means abated pletely. Occasionally the Japanese launched an offensive to attain limited objectives. In June 1940, for example, they seized the important Yangtze River port of Ich’ang in order to staunch the flow of goods between the ricebowl provinces of Central China and Chungking and to obtain an air base closer to the Nationalist area. In the summer of 1942, after General James H. Doolittle’s bombing of Tokyo, the Japanese struck into Chekiang and Kiangsi with 100000 troops to destroy air bases that might be used in future raids against the home islands. Periodically, too, they launched attacks against the Nationalist lines, less to occupy new territory than to ravage the countryside, seize or destroy recent harvests, prevent the Nationalists from amassing potentially dangerous 3 concentrations of troops, or train recent recruits in actual bat. The casualties sustained in these years of socalled stalemate particularly during the early period — were considerable. The Chinese admitted to suffering 340000 dead in 1940: 145000 in 1941。中文 6295字 畢業(yè)論文 外文翻譯 題 目 論抗戰(zhàn)時(shí)期國(guó)民黨的敵后游擊戰(zhàn) 學(xué) 生 指導(dǎo)教師 學(xué) 號(hào) 年 級(jí) 專(zhuān) 業(yè) 歷史學(xué) 系 別 政史系 2021 年 5 月 1 Deterioration I939I945: the Military John After the fall of Wuhan and Canton in late October 1938, the character of the war and conditions in the Nationalist areas changed profoundly. The fighting progressively entered a stalemate. Especially after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, Nationalist leaders anticipated that the Western Allies could defeat Japan without the necessity of further Chinese sacrifices. After all, they had fought Japan alone for four and a half years already. They consequently devoted less attention to bating the Japanese than to containing the Communists, whose growing power and territorial control augured badly for national unity and stability in the postwar period. Most of all, however, the Nationalist government at Chungking found itself caught in a seemingly irreversible process of deterioration— military, economic, social, and political— that left it by 1945 weak and demoralized. When the Nationalists did not capitulate following their defeat at Wuhan in October 1938, the Japanese leaders realized that they had misjudged the Chinese powers of resistance and that the imperial army would merely exhaust itself if it continued to pursue the elusive defenders into the hinterlands. They therefore adopted a new strategy, stressing political means to secure control of China. First, they would consolidate control of the areas overrun since July 1937. They now effectively controlled only some 10 per cent of the territory in North and Central China primarily the major cities and areas bordering the major railways and highways. They needed to eliminate many pockets of resistance and to harness the productive capabilities of the occupied areas to the economy of the homeland. Second, the Japanese determined to wear down the Nationalists until they collapsed from ‘internal disintegration. They thus simultaneously tightened their economic blockade of the Nationalist areas and began a destructive air war. In the spring of 1939 they seized Nanchang in Kiangsi, cutting the important ChekiangHunan railway. In November they landed an amphibious force at Pohai (Pakhoi) in western Kwangtung, and advanced a hundred miles to take Nanning, the capital of Kwangsi. This was a damaging blow to the Nationalists, for it severed the new railway line from Hanoi over which the Chinese were obtaining fully a third of their critically needed imports. Then, in September 1940 the Japanese occupied the northern part of French IndoChina, closing the important rail line between Hanoi and Kunming. Thereafter the Nationalists were dependent for supplies from the outside world upon the newly opened but barely passable Burma Road, air transport from Hong Kong (which the Japanese were to occupy in December 1941), and the long caravan and truck route from Russia (see map). The Japanese air raids struck indiscriminately at military and civilian targets. Their purpose was less to destroy military installations and factories than to demoralize the population. Virtually all cities in the Nationalist area, including Kweilin, Kunming and Sian, were hit. Chungking, however, suffered most severely. Bombed 268 times during 1939— 41, much of the city was gutted, and many thousands died (4,400 were killed in just the first two days of heavy raids in May 1939). Yet neither the air raids nor the blockade broke the Chinese will to resist. Indeed, the perseverance of the Chungking population remained firm as long as the bombings continued, and wilted only after they ceased in late 1941. The blockade was less than a plete success, 2 in part because the Nationalists in July 1939 had legalized, and thereafter actively promoted, the trade in most goods from areas held by the Japanese. The Japanese were at a loss to stop this trade. They were incapable of guarding every foot, or even every mile, of the more than 2,000 miles of border between occupied and unoccupied China. Many Japanese also actively colluded in this merce, so that a sizeable but indeterminate part of Nationalist China’s imports during the war came through this socalled smuggling trade. A momentous discussion by the Japanese cabi in July 1940 also affected their operations i n China. Perceiving that success in China would continue to elude them unless they obtained access to the r