The Saga of World War 2: a Casus Belli Project · Cassus Belli Guy

The China Update: Part 2

May 19, 2023·28 min

The update opens with scale. What was supposed to be a brief catch-up has already run past 11,000 words, because the host decides the war in China deserves more than a quick summary. The road leads to Nanking. Chiang Kai-shek leaves the capital for Wuhan as Japanese forces close in, leaving General Tang with a defense the transcript treats as hopeless. Tang takes the burden anyway. His appointment also tests loyalty, since his relationship with Chiang had shifted between service in the National Revolutionary Army and opposition to it. The defenders are worn down. Elite troops have already been pulled away, leaving less trained men and battered formations from Guangxi, Hunan, and Cantonese units to face the assault. Two divisions still get named. The 36th and 88th have crack reputations, but many trained soldiers are dead and have been replaced by green conscripts. December 12 brings another blow. Japanese forces bomb Nanking and hit the USS Panay, docked in the Yangtze, sinking the ship and killing three crew members. The United States and other Western powers react with outrage. Japan calls it a mistake and offers reparations, trying to keep America from moving closer to the fight. Tang then abandons the city. After days of hard fighting and 70,000 soldiers lost, the Chinese retreat and burn parts of Nanking to deny them to the invaders. The Japanese enter the next day. The host does not dwell on the Rape of Nanking here, but he marks it as the point where the army turned its anger on civilians in what he calls a six-week murder frenzy. The wider war keeps tightening around China. The United States had already extended loans to the Chongqing government, and by February 1941 China gets more military aid. That same year brings an American military mission and the China branch of the OSS. Oil becomes decisive. In July, the Roosevelt administration imposes an oil embargo on Japan over its actions in China, just as Japan eyes European colonies in Asia. Pearl Harbor changes everything. The attack devastates the United States, but for Chiang Kai-shek it also brings the Western intervention against Japan that he had not expected to see.

As heard by us

A steady China war update that links Nanking, the Panay bombing, and the widening U.S. response.

This China update part 2 traces the war from the Polo Bridge incident through the retreat from Nanking with a steady sense of escalation. It keeps dates, places, commanders, and consequences in view, which helps the campaign stay clear instead of dissolving into background noise.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want the China update to connect the Polo Bridge opening to Pearl Harbor.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify