A report on World War II, Wuhan and Chiang Kai-shek

The League of Nations assembly, held in Geneva, Switzerland, 1930

Panlongcheng, located in the southernmost area of the Erligang culture

Adolf Hitler at a German Nazi political rally in Nuremberg, August 1933

Benito Mussolini inspecting troops during the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935

Sun Yat-sen and Chiang at the 1924 opening ceremonies for the Soviet-funded Whampoa Military Academy

The bombing of Guernica in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, sparked fears abroad in Europe that the next war would be based on bombing of cities with very high civilian casualties.

Foreign concessions along the Hankow Bund c. 1900.

Japanese Imperial Army soldiers during the Battle of Shanghai, 1937

Wuchang Uprising Memorial, the original site of revolutionary government in 1911

Chiang (right) together with Wang Jingwei (left), 1926

Red Army artillery unit during the Battle of Lake Khasan, 1938

Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano pictured just before signing the Munich Agreement, 29 September 1938

A map of Wuhan painted by the Japanese in 1930, with Hankou being the most prosperous sector

Chiang during a visit to an air force base in 1945

German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (right) and the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, after signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, 23 August 1939

Chiang and Soong on the cover of Time magazine, 26 October 1931

Soldiers of the German Wehrmacht tearing down the border crossing into Poland, 1 September 1939

Chiang Kai-Shek inspecting Chinese soldiers in Wuhan as Japanese forces approach the city

Nationalist government of Nanking – nominally ruling over entire China in 1930s

Soldiers of the Polish Army during the defence of Poland, September 1939

People's Liberation Army troops at Zhongshan Avenue, Hankou on May 16, 1949

After the breakout of the Second Sino-Japanese War, The Young Companion featured Chiang on its cover.

Finnish machine gun nest aimed at Soviet Red Army positions during the Winter War, February 1940

In his poem "Swimming" (1956), engraved on the 1954 Flood Memorial in Wuhan, Mao Zedong envisions "walls of stone" to be erected upstream.

Chiang with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in Cairo, Egypt, November 1943

German advance into Belgium and Northern France, 10 May-4 June 1940, swept past the Maginot Line (shown in dark red)

Huazhong University of Science and Technology

Chiang and his wife Soong Mei-ling sharing a laugh with U.S. Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell, Burma, April 1942

London seen from St. Paul's Cathedral after the German Blitz, 29 December 1940

Map including the Wuhan area (AMS, 1953)

Soldiers of the British Commonwealth forces from the Australian Army's 9th Division during the Siege of Tobruk; North African Campaign, September 1941

Chiang with South Korean President Syngman Rhee in 1949

German Panzer III of the Afrika Korps advancing across the North African desert, April-May 1941

The main gate of Wuhan Municipal Party Committee

Map of the Chinese Civil War (1946–1950)

European theatre of World War II animation map, 1939–1945 – Red: Western Allies and the Soviet Union after 1941; Green: Soviet Union before 1941; Blue: Axis powers

A night sight near a modern shopping mall in Hongshan District

Chiang with Japanese politician Nobusuke Kishi, in 1957

German soldiers during the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Axis powers, 1941

A tram in University Science Park Station

Chiang presiding over the 1966 Double Ten celebrations

Soviet civilians leaving destroyed houses after a German bombardment during the Battle of Leningrad, 10 December 1942

Chiang with U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in June 1960

Japanese soldiers entering Hong Kong, 8 December 1941

The National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall is a famous monument, landmark, and tourist attraction in Taipei, Taiwan.

The USS Arizona (BB-39) was a total loss in the Japanese surprise air attack on the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Sunday 7 December 1941.

Bianzhong of Marquis Yi of Zeng, made in 433 BC, now on display at the Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan

US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British PM Winston Churchill seated at the Casablanca Conference, January 1943

The old library (center), dorm (below), and schools of literature and law (left and right) of Wuhan University

Chinese propaganda poster proclaiming "Long Live the President"

Map of Japanese military advances through mid-1942

The Institute for Advanced Studies at Wuhan University

US Marines during the Guadalcanal Campaign, in the Pacific theatre, 1942

Chiang Kai-shek and Winston Churchill heads, with Nationalist China flag and Union Jack

Red Army soldiers on the counterattack during the Battle of Stalingrad, February 1943

Statue of Chiang Kai-shek in Yangmingshan National Park, Taiwan

American 8th Air Force Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombing raid on the Focke-Wulf factory in Germany, 9 October 1943

Doupi on the left and Re-gan mian on the right

U.S. Navy SBD-5 scout plane flying patrol over USS Washington (BB-56) and USS Lexington (CV-16) during the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign, 1943

Chiang Kai-shek with the Muslim General Ma Fushou

Red Army troops in a counter-offensive on German positions at the Battle of Kursk, July 1943

Chiang Kai-shek as Knight of the Royal Order of the Seraphim

Ruins of the Benedictine monastery, during the Battle of Monte Cassino, Italian Campaign, May 1944

Li Na, a former professional tennis player and two-time Grand Slam champion, serving at Wimbledon 2008, 1st round against Anastasia Rodionova

Mao Fumei (毛福梅, 1882–1939), who died in the Second Sino-Japanese War during a bombardment, is the mother of his son and successor Chiang Ching-kuo

American troops approaching Omaha Beach during the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944

Yao Yecheng (姚冶誠, 1889–1972), who came to Taiwan and died in Taipei

German SS soldiers from the Dirlewanger Brigade, tasked with suppressing the Warsaw Uprising against Nazi occupation, August 1944

Chen Jieru (陳潔如, "Jennie", 1906–1971), who lived in Shanghai, but moved to Hong Kong later and died there

General Douglas MacArthur returns to the Philippines during the Battle of Leyte, 20 October 1944

Soong Mei-ling (宋美齡, 1898–2003), who moved to the United States after Chiang Kai-shek's death, is arguably his most famous wife even though they had no children together

Yalta Conference held in February 1945, with Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin

Ruins of the Reichstag in Berlin, 3 June 1945.

Atomic bombing of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945.

Ruins of Warsaw in 1945, after the deliberate destruction of the city by the occupying German forces

Defendants at the Nuremberg trials, where the Allied forces prosecuted prominent members of the political, military, judicial and economic leadership of Nazi Germany for crimes against humanity

Post-war border changes in Central Europe and creation of the Communist Eastern Bloc

David Ben-Gurion proclaiming the Israeli Declaration of Independence at the Independence Hall, 14 May 1948

Bodies of Chinese civilians killed by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Nanking Massacre in December 1937

Schutzstaffel (SS) female camp guards removing prisoners' bodies from lorries and carrying them to a mass grave, inside the German Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 1945

Prisoner identity photograph taken by the German SS of a Polish Catholic girl who died in Auschwitz. Approximately 230,000 children were held prisoner and used in forced labour and Nazi medical experiments.

Polish civilians wearing blindfolds photographed just before their execution by German soldiers in Palmiry forest, 1940

Soviet partisans hanged by the German army. The Russian Academy of Sciences reported in 1995 civilian victims in the Soviet Union at German hands totalled 13.7 million dead, twenty percent of the 68 million persons in the occupied Soviet Union.

B-29 Superfortress strategic bombers on the Boeing assembly line in Wichita, Kansas, 1944

A V-2 rocket launched from a fixed site in Peenemünde, 21 June 1943

Nuclear Gadget being raised to the top of the detonation "shot tower", at Alamogordo Bombing Range; Trinity nuclear test, New Mexico, July 1945

The city later served as the wartime capital of China for ten months in 1937 during the WWII.

- Wuhan

When the Second World War ended, the Civil War with the communists (by then led by Mao Zedong) resumed.

- Chiang Kai-shek

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek deployed his best army to defend Shanghai, but after three months of fighting, Shanghai fell.

- World War II

In June 1938, Chinese forces stalled the Japanese advance by flooding the Yellow River; this manoeuvre bought time for the Chinese to prepare their defences at Wuhan, but the city was taken by October.

- World War II

The split was partially motivated by the purge of the Communists within the party, which marked the end of the First United Front, and Chiang Kai-shek briefly stepped down as the commander of the National Revolutionary Army.

- Wuhan

The NRA branched into three divisions: to the west was the returned Wang Jingwei, who led a column to take Wuhan; Bai Chongxi's column went east to take Shanghai; Chiang himself led in the middle route, planning to take Nanjing before pressing ahead to capture Beijing.

- Chiang Kai-shek

5 related topics with Alpha

Republic of China (1912–1949)

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Commonly recognised as the official designation of China from 1912 to 1949, when it was a country in East Asia based in Mainland China, prior to the relocation of its central government to Taiwan as a result of the Chinese Civil War.

Land controlled by the Republic of China (1946) shown in dark green; land claimed but uncontrolled shown in light green.

Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of the Republic of China.

Yuan Shikai (left) and Sun Yat-sen (right) with flags representing the early republic

Major Chinese warlord coalitions during the "Nanjing Decade".

China had been at war with Japan since 1931.

Chinese Nationalist Army soldiers during the 1938 Yellow River flood

The Nationalists' retreat to Taipei: after the Nationalists lost Nanjing (Nanking) they next moved to Guangzhou (Canton), then to Chongqing (Chungking), Chengdu (Chengtu) and Xichang (Sichang) before arriving in Taipei.

Nationalist government of Nanking – nominally ruling over entire China during 1930s

Boat traffic and development along Suzhou Creek, Shanghai, 1920

General Chiang Kai-shek, who became the Chairman of the Kuomintang after Sun's death and subsequent power struggle in 1925, began the Northern Expedition in 1926 to overthrow the Beiyang government.

The latter event forced the CCP and KMT's left-wing into armed rebellion, marking the beginning of the Chinese Civil War and the establishment of a rival nationalist government in Wuhan under Wang Jingwei.

The war lasted until the surrender of Japan at the end of World War II in 1945; China then regained control of the island of Taiwan and the Pescadores.

(clockwise from top left)Imperial Japanese Navy landing force in military gas masks in the Battle of Shanghai

Japanese Type 92 heavy machine gunners during Operation Ichi-Go

Victims of the Nanjing Massacre on the shore of the Qinhuai River

Chinese machine gun nest in the Battle of Wuhan

Japanese aircraft during the bombing of Chongqing

Chinese Expeditionary Force marching in India

Second Sino-Japanese War

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Military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan.

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Allied Commander-in-Chief in the China theatre from 1942 to 1945

Japanese troops entering Shenyang during the Mukden Incident

A baby sits in the remains of a Shanghai train station on 'Bloody Saturday', 1937

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek announced the Kuomintang policy of resistance against Japan at Lushan on 10 July 1937, three days after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.

Japanese landing near Shanghai, November 1937

Japanese troops in the ruins of Shanghai

Soviet embassy in Nanjing is being burned down by arson on 1 January 1938.

A Chinese POW about to be beheaded by a Japanese officer with a shin gunto

National Revolutionary Army soldiers during the 1938 Yellow River flood

Map showing the extent of Japanese occupation in 1941 (in red)

Theaters (military operational regions) of the Chinese National Revolutionary Army from late 1938 to early 1940

Wang Jingwei and officers of the Collaborationist Chinese Army

Chinese soldiers in house-to-house fighting in the Battle of Taierzhuang, March–April 1938

National Revolutionary Army soldiers march to the front in 1939.

Eighth Route Army Commander Zhu De with a KMT "Blue Sky, White Sun" emblem cap

115th Division of the Eighth Route Army Lieutenant General (NRA rank) Lin Biao in NRA uniform

War declaration against Japan by the Chongqing Nationalist Government on 9 December 1941

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Madame Chiang with Lieutenant General Joseph Stilwell in 1942, Burma

A United States poster from the United China Relief organization advocating aid to China.

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill met at the Cairo Conference in 1943 during World War II.

I-16 with Chinese insignia. The I-16 was the main fighter plane used by the Chinese Air Force and Soviet volunteers.

Flying Tigers Commander Claire Lee Chennault

A "blood chit" issued to American Volunteer Group pilots requesting all Chinese to offer rescue and protection

Free Thai, American and Chinese military officers in China during the war

The India–China airlift delivered approximately 650,000 tons of materiel to China at a cost of 1,659 men and 594 aircraft.

French colonial troops retreating to the Chinese border after the Japanese coup d'état in March 1945

WWII victory parade at Chongqing on 3 September 1945

Japanese troops surrendering to the Chinese

The Chinese return to Liuzhou in July 1945.

China War of Resistance Against Japan Memorial Museum on the site where the Marco Polo Bridge Incident took place

The Taiwan Strait and the island of Taiwan

Casualties of a mass panic during a June 1941 Japanese bombing of Chongqing. More than 5,000 civilians died during the first two days of air raids in 1939.

Japanese war crime against a Chinese POW

Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces with gas masks and rubber gloves during a chemical attack near Chapei in the Battle of Shanghai

Chinese suicide bomber putting on an explosive vest made out of Model 24 hand grenades to use in an attack on Japanese tanks at the Battle of Taierzhuang

The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Theater of the Second World War.

Later in the same year, Zhang decided to declare his allegiance to the Nationalist government in Nanjing under Chiang Kai-shek, and consequently, China was nominally reunified under one government.

Afterwards the IJA changed its strategy and deployed almost all of its existing armies in China to attack the city of Wuhan, which had become the political, economic and military center of rump China, in hopes of destroying the fighting strength of the NRA and of forcing the KMT government to negotiate for peace.

Kuomintang

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Major political party in the Republic of China (Taiwan).

The Revolutionary Army attacking Nanjing in 1911

The KMT reveres its founder, Sun Yat-sen, as the "Father of the Nation"

Venue of the 1st National Congress of Kuomintang in 1924

Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Kuomintang after Sun's death in 1925

KMT flag displayed in Lhasa, Tibet in 1938

The National Revolutionary Army soldiers marched into the British concessions in Hankou during the Northern Expedition

Nationalist soldiers during the Second Sino-Japanese War

The retrocession of Taiwan in Taipei on 25 October 1945

The former KMT headquarters in Taipei City (1949–2006), whose imposing structure, directly facing the Presidential Office Building, was seen as a symbol of the party's wealth and dominance

Pan-blue supporters at a rally during the 2004 presidential election

Kuomintang public service center in Shilin, Taipei

Lien Chan (middle) and Wu Po-hsiung (second left) and the KMT touring the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing, People's Republic of China when the Pan-Blue coalition visited the mainland in 2005

KMT headquarters in Taipei City before the KMT Central Committee moved in June 2006 to a much more modest Bade building, having sold the original headquarters to private investors of the EVA Airways Corporation

KMT Kinmen headquarters office in Jincheng Township, Kinmen County

KMT Building in Vancouver's Chinatown, British Columbia, Canada

KMT branch office in Pingzhen District, Taoyuan City

The KMT maintains offices in some of the Chinatowns of the world and its United States party headquarters are located in San Francisco Chinatown, on Stockton Street directly across the Chinese Six Companies

KMT Eastern U.S. headquarters is in New York Chinatown

KMT office of Australasia in Sydney, Australia

From left to right, KMT members pay tribute to the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Beijing in 1928 after the success of the Northern Expedition: Generals Cheng Jin, Zhang Zuobao, Chen Diaoyuan, Chiang Kai-shek, Woo Tsin-hang, Yan Xishan, General Ma Fuxiang, Ma Sida and General Bai Chongxi

From 1926 to 1928, the KMT under Chiang Kai-shek successfully led the Northern Expedition against regional warlords and unified the fragmented nation.

Wang Jing Wei, who led the KMT leftist allies, took the city of Wuhan in January 1927.

After Japan's defeat at the end of World War II in 1945, General Order No. 1 instructed Japan to surrender its troops in Taiwan to Chiang Kai-shek.

China

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Country in East Asia.

China (today's Guangdong), Mangi (inland of Xanton), and Cataio (inland of China and Chequan, and including the capital Cambalu, Xandu, and a marble bridge) are all shown as separate regions on this 1570 map by Abraham Ortelius

10,000 years old pottery, Xianren Cave culture (18000–7000 BCE)

Yinxu, the ruins of the capital of the late Shang dynasty (14th century BCE)

China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, is famed for having united the Warring States' walls to form the Great Wall of China. Most of the present structure, however, dates to the Ming dynasty.

Map showing the expansion of Han dynasty in the 2nd century BC

The Qing conquest of the Ming and expansion of the empire

The Eight-Nation Alliance invaded China to defeat the anti-foreign Boxers and their Qing backers. The image shows a celebration ceremony inside the Chinese imperial palace, the Forbidden City after the signing of the Boxer Protocol in 1901.

Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of Republic of China, one of the first republics in Asia.

Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong toasting together in 1945 following the end of World War II

Mao Zedong proclaiming the establishment of the PRC in 1949.

The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests was ended by a military-led massacre which brought condemnations and sanctions against the Chinese government from various foreign countries.

Satellite image of China from NASA WorldWind

Köppen-Geiger climate classification map for mainland China.

A giant panda, China's most famous endangered and endemic species, at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Sichuan

The Three Gorges Dam is the largest hydroelectric dam in the world.

Earliest known written formula for gunpowder, from the Wujing Zongyao of 1044 CE

Huawei headquarters in Shenzhen. Huawei is the world's largest telecoms-equipment-maker and the second-largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world.

Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, one of the first Chinese spaceports

Internet penetration rates in China in the context of East Asia and Southeast Asia, 1995–2012

The Duge Bridge is the highest bridge in the world.

The Beijing Daxing International Airport features the world's largest single-building airport terminal.

The Port of Shanghai's deep water harbor on Yangshan Island in the Hangzhou Bay is the world's busiest container port since 2010.

A 2009 population density map of the People's Republic of China and Taiwan. The eastern coastal provinces are much more densely populated than the western interior.

A trilingual sign in Sibsongbanna, with Tai Lü language on the top

Map of the ten largest cities in China (2010)

Beijing's Peking University, one of the top-ranked universities in China

Chart showing the rise of China's Human Development Index from 1970 to 2010

Geographic distribution of religions in China.
Chinese folk religion (including Confucianism, Taoism, and groups of Chinese Buddhism)
Buddhism tout court
Islam
Ethnic minorities' indigenous religions
Mongolian folk religion
Northeast China folk religion influenced by Tungus and Manchu shamanism; widespread Shanrendao

Fenghuang County, an ancient town that harbors many architectural remains of Ming and Qing styles.

The stories in Journey to the West are common themes in Peking opera.

Map showing major regional cuisines of China

Go is an abstract strategy board game for two players, in which the aim is to surround more territory than the opponent and was invented in China more than 2,500 years ago.

Long March 2F launching Shenzhou spacecraft. China is one of the only three countries with independent human spaceflight capability.

The Tang dynasty at its greatest extent and Tang's protectorates

Lihaozhai High School in Jianshui, Yunnan. The sign is in Hani (Latin alphabet), Nisu (Yi script), and Chinese.

China topographic map with East Asia countries

In the late 1920s, the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek, the then Principal of the Republic of China Military Academy, was able to reunify the country under its own control with a series of deft military and political maneuverings, known collectively as the Northern Expedition.

The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), a theater of World War II, forced an uneasy alliance between the Kuomintang and the Communists.

The global COVID-19 pandemic originated in Wuhan and was first identified from an outbreak in December 2019.

Chongqing

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Municipality in southwest China.

A sunset view of Jiefangbei CBD and Hongya Cave, taken in 2017

Map including Chongqing (labeled as 重慶 CH'UNG-CH'ING (CHUNGKING)) (AMS, 1954)

In the spring and fall, downtown Chongqing is often enshrouded in fog.

The Great Hall of the People serves as the venue for major political conferences in Chongqing

Jiefangbei CBD, Yuzhong Peninsula of Chongqing at night

Jiefangbei (People's Liberation Monument), the landmark and center of Chongqing

Entrance to the Chongqing Nankai Secondary School

A train of Chongqing Rail Transit Line 2 coming through a residential building at Liziba station.

An aerial tramway across the Yangtse river in Chongqing CBD Photo by Chen Hualin

Hydrofoil on the Yangtze in the outer reaches of the municipality

View of Chaotianmen Bridge across the Yangtze River in Chongqing

Zhongshan Ancient Town, Jiangjin, Chongqing

The Hongya Cave (Hongya-dong) traditional Bayu-style stilted houses at Jiefangbei CBD

The steep path up to the front gate of Fishing Town

Ciqikou ancient road in Shapingba District

Typical Chongqing hot pot served with minced shrimp, tripes, pork aorta, goose intestine, and kidney slices.

Chongqing Xiao mian with peas and spicy bean paste

Jiangbeizui CBD from above, taken in 2018

Chaotianmen Bridge connects Jiangbei District with Nan'an District of Chongqing, taken in 2018

Jiefangbei ({{zh|c=解放碑|l=People's Liberation Monument|labels=no}}) is a World War II victory monument

Raffles City Chongqing, sitting in the confluence of Yangtze and Jialing River

During and after the Second Sino-Japanese War, from Nov 1937 to May 1946, it was Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's provisional capital.

After the General and remaining army had lived there for a time following their retreat in 1938 from the previous capital of Wuhan, it was formally declared the second capital city (陪都, pèi dū) on 6 September 1940.

Chongqing was acclaimed to be the "City of Heroes" due to the indomitable spirits of its people as well as their contributions and sacrifices during the War of Resistance-World War II.