Subject: WWII-L Digest - 25 Feb 1995 to 26 Feb 1995

From: Automatic digest processor <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 1995 00:02:56 -0500

There are 10 messages totalling 577 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Endlosung (was:Is it true that they can trace a single document)
  2. INF:?Luftwaffe in Naples 1943
  3. Bloopers
  4. Japanese Peace Offerings
  5. A word on China (since I was in the neighborhood)
  6. Wilfred Owen Association
  7. Is something wrong with the list? (3)
  8. China/Japan part 2

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Date:    Sun, 26 Feb 1995 00:53:47 EST
From:    Bill the Late-replier <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Endlosung (was:Is it true that they can trace a single document)

On Sat, 25 Feb 1995 21:30:24 -0600 Kelvin Brent Luther said:
>        From what I have read of the "Final Solution" the gassing of the
>Jews in camps was a solution to the inability of the Germans to massacre
>the Jews in large enough numbers using bullets or the mobile trucks of
>the einsatzgruppen.  The biggest problem with the einsatzgruppen was the
>fact that the mass graves required to dispose of the bodies were too
>conspicuous.  Later on many of these graves were dug up in order to
>dispose of the evidence in a more efficient manner.  As well using
>bullets was simply too much of a drain on the war effort.  Although there
>may be evidence that at one time they considered deporting the Jews it
>was only fleeting and was never pursued by Hitler.  Apparently Himmler
>had conceived of the Madagascar idea while considering the problem for
>the Fuhrer and once discussion began it was dismissed out of hand
>although Himmler may have held on to the possibility in order to keep the
>option open.  He undoubtably did this out of the same simple German
>efficiency for planning that led to the camps, not out of any tiny
>feeling of guilt or compassion.  The simple fact the holocaust wasn't
>spelled out on paper earlier doesn't mean it was not the ultimate
>objective with regards to the Jews.  The systematic pursecution the Nazis
>inflicted leads me to believe that it was.  Gradually the Jews were
>turned into non-citizens and eventually were classified as no more than
>cattle by the Nazis.  I think we can see with hindsight that they
>systematically created the holocaust from the first moves they made
>against the Jews after taking power.
>
>Kelvin Luther

     I am inclined to disagree.  I am a staunch subscriber to the functionalist
view.
   First, one reason the discontinuation of the mass shootings and even the
gas trucks was that both were too traumatic on the shooters themselves.
The mass gassing was merely the answer to many problems than an answer to
problems of efficiency.  I won't deny the problems with disposal, however.
Indeed, I believe one reason the Jews survived as much as they did was
because the extermination program was limited by the numbers of bodies
that could be disposed of.
     But that is only a side-note.  The reasons I believe that the
Endlosung was the result of opportunity than careful planning are several.
First, if you accept that one of the reasons that the Jews were exterminated
and political dissent (ie support of the Jews) was neutralized was because
of the absolute power of the police, it must be understood that the absolute
power of the police was not the result of any concrete plan.  I won't say
that it was luck that Himmler and the SS (the executors of the Endlosung)
came to power, but it was not the machinations of any one individual with
an insight into the future.  Hitler stood above the rivalries between
Goring and Frick, for example.  George Browder, author of "Foundations
of the Nazi Police State" makes this case and relates how the SD and SS
came to police power by an anarchic struggle.  At no time in 1933 or 1934
was it impossible for Goring or Frick to have been the controllers of the
police (Goring as Prussian head, Frick as Reichminister of Interior).  Or
perhaps even the SA.  My point here is that, at least until 1935, there was
no concentrated effort on the part of Hitler to focus power.  And I believe,
as Browder does, that the Endlosung could only have been carried out to
the extent it was by a concentrated, singular police force.
    Second, who would have thought that Europe would or should be Jew-free
in 1933?  A Germany Jew-free, probably, but Europe was a different story.
None of them, I am guessing, imagined that Germany would experience the
military success that it did.  I don't have any proof at the moment, but
it doesn't seem that any of the chief paladins: Himmler, Heydrich, Goebbels,
Goring, and not one of the generals, had any real thoughts of conquering
Europe - they had their hands full conquering Germany (and their counterparts,
too).
    I might accept that Hitler and the other honchos had a fantasy, if you
will, that the Jews would be exterminated.  But the "systematic" events
that expelled the Jews from society weren't all that systematic.  They
might have followed a logical course, but what other course could they
have followed?
    In the end, as I was going to say, Hitler might have thought, "it
would be nice if we could exterminate the Jews".  But to say that there
was a concrete, realistic "architecture of genocide" (to use my Professor
Breitman's term) is stretching the ablitiy of people in general to
see into the future.

William Lippert
The American University

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 26 Feb 1995 15:54:00 +0100
From:    ALBERTO PARRINI <[email-masked]>
Subject: INF:?Luftwaffe in Naples 1943

In the spring of 1943 the air defense of Naples was assigned ti the 22nd
Fighter Group of the Italian Rgia Aeronautica.
But this unit was flanked in her task by another air fighter unit of the
Luftwaffe.
We would identify this German unit based on the operations base of
Capodichino (Naples) during the same period.
Thank You.

                            Alberto e Fernando Parrini

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 26 Feb 1995 09:53:00 -0600
From:    George Bauer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Bloopers

To the person who posted the bloopers:

Somehow I managed to lose y our mail, and I would like very much
to see it again.  Would you send me a copy directly?  Thanks

[email-masked]

 * RoboBOARD/FX 1.04

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 26 Feb 1995 01:10:07 GMT+1
From:    SYSTEM OPERATOR <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Japanese Peace Offerings

Henry Sirotin <[email-masked]> writes:

> Dear Tim,
>
> This is from memory, so... My understanding is that the Japanese never
> formally contacted the US re peace offerings, but approached the Soviets,
> who, with their own agenda to enter the Pacific War, never notified
> Washington about the contacts. We learned of them because we were
> reading the Japanese diplomatic code. So we had nothing to formally
> respond to other than the broadcasts of Radio Tokyo, unless we were
> prepared to risk blowing our cryptologic successes, which would have
> been crucial in any real negotiation, or if those negotiations fell
> through.

Indeed :
"Already in February approaches had been made to Russia begging her 'as a
neutral' to act as an intermediary in arranging peace between Japan and the
Western Allies. these approaches were made, first, through the Russian
Ambassador in Tokyo, and then through the Japanese ambassador in Moscow. But
nothing developed. The Russians had not passed on any word of the approach
[to Roosevelt and Churchill] "
On June 20th Hiro-Hito summoned to a conference the six members of the
inner cabinet, the Supreme War Direction council, and told them "You will
consider the question of ending the war as soon as possible". All six members
of the council agreed, but while the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister
and the Navy Minister were prepared to make unconditional surrender, the
other three -the Army Minister and Army and Navy chiefs of Staff, argued for
continued resistance until some mitigating conditions were obtained.
Eventually it was decided that Prince Konoye should be sent on a mission to
Moscow to negociate for peace - and the Emperor privately gave him
instructions to secure peace at any price. As a preliminary, the Japanese
Foreign Office notified Moscow on July 13th that "the Emperor is desirous
for peace". The message reached Stalin just as he was setting off for the
Postdam Conference. He sent a chilly reply that the proposal was not
definite enough for him to take action."

(quoted from "History of the Second World War" by B.H.L.)
Arnaud.

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 26 Feb 1995 17:25:07 -0400
From:    Mike Yaklich <[email-masked]>
Subject: A word on China (since I was in the neighborhood)

        The central point of all Japan's military and strategic problems, at
least in the minds of their current leadership, was China.  This vast,
relatively homogenous but loosely-organized empire was home, at the time of the
war, to an estimated 800 million human beings (given the huge expanse of
territory, and the generally primitive state of most of it in 1930-40, this
could only be an estimate).  The nominal ruler of most of it before the
Japanese invaded was Chiang Kai-Shek, the Methodist leader of the Kuomintang
Party's military, who through that arm and a general yearning (at least among
that portion of the population with exposure to the west and/or some education)
for a truly independent and modern China came to be the proclaimed leader of
the new Chinese nation.  Chiang's actual degree of control was tenuous,
however.  We have seen (if anyone got through my previous posts) how, among
other things, Chiang's writ simply failed to count over large portions of his
supposed nation.  Five huge campaigns had failed to crush the Communist
rebellion under Mao Tse-Tung, which before the Long March had numbered some
300,000 fighters; Chiang's  own supposed subordinate Chang Xueh-liang had
turned on him, held him hostage, and negotiated with the Communists in the
"Sian Incident" (for the northern city where it occurred) in 1936; and aside
from the areas held by the Japanese as puppets even before full-scale war broke
out in July 1937, even Peking, the northern capital, was controlled by the
pro-Japanese (and Japanese paid) warlord Sung, who had been assisting the
Japanese Army since the Hopei-Chahar events.  Aside from the threat of Japanese
colonialism (not to mention the American, British, Italian, etc colonialism,
which was in most respects only better in that it was less prone to violence if
not directly attacked-- these countries had a more established position in
China, dating back to the Opium Wars of the 1830's-1850's (just to show how
much more "civilized" western colonialism was in its early days, these events
occurred when the British, incurring an unfavorable balance of trade with the
Chinese, who just weren't interested in their products-- and furthermore made
both trading and any contact with the country at large difficult or impossible
by restricting the westerners to a few "treaty ports"-- found a good product to
sell to the locals-- opium, which even the Manchu emporers, never considered
the friends of the population at large, had outlawed as against the public
welfare.  When the government tried to step in and stop the opium trade, which
due to its addictive nature was soon eating up a huge percent of their economy,
the British won a quick war through naval power.  They then forced an
incredibly one-sided treaty on the Chinese, opening up the country and
including clauses like extraterritoriality--i.e., British nationals, even if
committing crimes against Chinese in China, get tried by British courts.  A
Chinese attempt to recoup their losses led to the equally ruinous Second Opium
War, and the United States, BTW, which also had a portion of the opium trade,
by treaty also got all the same rights as the British.  Remember, along with
the Monroe Doctrine--"you Europeans stay out of our back yard"-- the hallmark
of American foreign policy for a hundred years or so was the "open door" policy
in China--"however, we can come play with you Europeans in China's back yard").
I just realized that I typed a long paragraph (and short history lesson) right
in the middle of a sentence.  Rather than go back and try to fix it, I'll pick
up that train of thought in a second.  Anybody, the above lengthy parenthetical
expression was just to show that I realize that Japanese colonialism in China
was not all that different from European colonialism in China, except perhaps
in the degree of violence and murder applied (and even about that you could get
an argument if you looked at the slaughter of the Taiping rebels by armies led
by the British general Gordon, or the behavior of the Germans during the Boxer
Rebellion-- remember it was there that Kaiser Wilhelm uttered his famous speech
about how the Huns of Attila had made a name for themselves through the terror
they created, and how they could thus impose the name of Germany in China,
thereby giving birth to the nasty nickname of WWI propaganda-- BTW, the same
applies to the Phillipine rebels at the hands of US troops-- led for a time by
General Pershing--early in this century.  When I say violence, I mean the usual
shooting not only of prisoners but of anyone even remotely suspect, the burning
down of villages, wholescale looting, beheadings etc, the occasional
large-scale massacre).  The big difference, and I think I
saw the same thing expressed here on the list recently, I think it was by
Edward Miller, was that WE had done it in the previous century, the Japanese
were trying to do it NOW.  This attitude on the part of the west could be
looked upon either as a commendable commitment to the growing elightenment of
human behavior, now mature enough to renounce wars of conquest, or as a simple
case of the "haves" using moral hypocrisy to hold on to what they had-- the
call seemed to depend on the view.  (BTW, if that was Edward Miller, I'm not
trying to pirate your ideas-- you could pull up from the archives a short bit
of .02 about the Japanese I threw up to the list last month that agrees almost
point-by-point with that piece you posted last week about Japanese war aims,
albeit mine was less specific, less eloquent, and probably less
well-researched.  I think we both just looked at the same subject and came to
the same conclusions.)
        Anyway, about a year or two ago, I was trying to say that although
Chiang Kai-shek in name ruled "China," there was a lot of China, even of that
part not under direct Japanese occupation, which he did not control.
Furthermore, even though he took the title of supreme warlord, Chiang was not
even sure of the loyalty of his various military commanders, who in many cases
were also the de facto rulers of their own areas or even provinces.  Thus a
very strange means of waging war grew up.  It was against Chiang's own best
interests to have one of his generals grow too strong materially, or too
well-known in the country for his victorious exploits, for anyone who acheived
one or both of those things might be a potential serious rival for the power
Chiang gripped so tenuously.  Therefore, for instance, almost all the 800
pieces of artillery possessed by the Chinese army in 1937 (these were mostly
75-mm field guns of various origin) were held under Chiang's direct control.
They rarely made their way to armies in the field, even if these were actually
fighting the Japanese and needed support.  Chiang continued to hoard them as a
guarantee of his own continued superiority and control, something he was later
to do with most of the $640+ million in US aid he received during the war.
        Time forces me to call this the end of part one.

        Regards

        Mike Yaklich

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 26 Feb 1995 15:59:10 -0800
From:    Sidney Allinson <[email-masked]>
Subject: Wilfred Owen Association

List Members who are interested in war poetry may want to follow up
on this:

        "Maureen Duffy, the well-known poet, has frequently written about
war and its effects. So it is no surprise that she has agreed to be on the
panel of judges of the Wilfred Owen Poetry Competitiuon 1995, which has a
first prize of L100 Sterling. Closing date for entries is 31 May, 1995.
        Formed in 1989 to commemorate the life and work of the renowned
poet who was so tragically killed in the final week of the First World War,
the Wilfred Owen Association is a registered charity. Its activities include
regular newsletters and readings, talks and information, and exhibitions.
        For information about WOA, contact:
                Ms. Helen Mephail
                10 College Hill
                Shrewsbury SY1 1LZ
                England
                (tel) 01743 235904

Enjoy.

Sidney.

--

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Date:    Sun, 26 Feb 1995 21:53:27 -0500
From:    John Davis <[email-masked]>
Subject: Is something wrong with the list?

I seem to be getting very few new massages lately. Is it my setup or is
something wrong with the mailing list??

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Davis                           | [email-masked]
Cary, North Carolina                 | http://www.webcom.com/~jbd/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Date:    Sun, 26 Feb 1995 20:57:32 -0600
From:    "C.K. Bryant" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Is something wrong with the list?

On Sun, 26 Feb 1995, John Davis wrote:

> I seem to be getting very few new massages lately. Is it my setup or is
> something wrong with the mailing list??

John

Good question...come to think of it, I haven't had much mail the past few
days either.

Anyone else?

C.K.
*******************************************************************
"The Riskier the road, the greater the profit."    / C.K. Bryant
        The 62nd Rule of Acquisition               / W.I.U. English
*******************************************************************

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 26 Feb 1995 19:07:06 -0800
From:    John Riegsecker <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Is something wrong with the list?

>From:         John Davis <[email-masked]>
>Subject:      Is something wrong with the list?
>To:           Multiple recipients of list WWII-L <[email-masked]>
>
>I seem to be getting very few new massages lately. Is it my setup or is
>something wrong with the mailing list??
>

Geez, I never get a massage and you're complaining because you only got
a few?  :-)  Seriously, I got your 50 Year ago column and a handful of
others today.

John Riegsecker
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
University of Puget Sound

[email-masked]

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 26 Feb 1995 23:06:53 -0400
From:    Mike Yaklich <[email-masked]>
Subject: China/Japan part 2

        Chiang Kai-shek's military, even if it was perhaps not completely his,
was certainly vast.  At the end of 1942 there were, at least on paper, some
3,800,000 men in Chiang's forces.  These comprised over 300 divisions, although
some Chinese "divisions" were about the same as other nations' regiments in
actual numerical strength, and largely deficient in weaponry heavier than
machineguns.  Nonetheless, the mere size of the opponent (to which had to be
added the growing numbers of Communist guerillas in the north) was in itself
enough to force the Japanese to retain relatively large forces of their own in
China, just to hold what they had already taken (the Japanese, realizing the
vastness of the theatre and the finite nature of their own resources, had
mainly contented themselves with seizing the major cities and ports, and the
roads, railways, and navigable rivers).  In 1943, even after a number of
top-line units had already been withdrawn for the fighting against the
Americans and their allies in the south, the Japanese still had some 620,000
men and 14,000 motor vehicles on the Chinese mainland.
        Chiang's divisions varied greatly in quality, but there were
essentially two classes.  The national leader retained for himself, as security
for his own power, the 30 German-trained divisions which constituted China's
best-prepared fighting forces.  These also had the best equipment, including
modern rifles, light and heavy machineguns purchased from the Czech firm of
Brno.  Chiang allowed a portion of this force to fight a prolonged, bloody
positional battle before the eyes of the international press outside Shanghai
in the summer of 1937 (purely for propaganda and foreign fund-raising purposes,
it has been alleged), but thereafter retained these units as essentially his
palace guard, and refused to give them up.
        The rest of the huge Chinese army was pretty dismal in terms of every
military standard.  Manpower, equipment, training, and command abilities of its
officers were all generally pretty substandard.  The all-pervasive corruption
alone was enough to undermine any potential military effectiveness to a large
degree.  The men who suffered most from this venal system were of course the
common soldiers on the bottom of the pyramid of influence-peddling,
embezzlement, graft, and outright theft.  Officers at every level stole the
funds with which they were supposed to feed their troops (weapons enhanced the
status and power of the commanders, so were less likely to be skimped on-- it
was difficult enough, given Chiang's reluctance to properly equip any troops
not under his direct control, to obtain decent weapons of any sort).  As late
as 1944 an American advisor visiting a Chinese unit found many of the men sick,
no medical facilities whatsoever, what served as the communal mess, such as it
was-- there were no cooks, the men prepared their own food-- located directly
adjacent to the latrines, and dead bodies casually lying around the premises.
Dead soldiers in camp were actually a bonus for corrupt commanders, since they
got appropriations based on the head count of their troops.  The dead were
simply kept on the rolls, and their commander pocketed their proportional share
of ration money right up front.  This was one of the reasons Chinese units
often tended to be understrength.  Even those still living often got cheated on
their rations.  In many units, the mess consisted of one huge communal pot of
rice.  In this sort of set-up the biggest, strongest, and toughest generally
pushed their way to the front, and ate as much as they wanted, while the less
fortunate soldiers often starved to death.  Virtually every Chinese unit had
its share of soldiers who were on the verge of starvation, and the diseases
that tended to ravage these formations were due not only to the abysmal
sanitary conditions most soldiers lived in, but also the widespread
malnutrition.  It is thus little wonder that (in a sight which seldom failed to
shock US training officers and advisors) new "recruits" were usually brought
into camp tied together with ropes so they wouldn't run away.  Nor is it any
wonder that the armies of this warlord system were feared and despised by the
peasants whose territory they passed through, since mere survival dictated that
these troops usually took everything they could get their hands on, especially
in terms of food.  Mao's attention to discipline in the Communist forces,
demanding that everything taken be paid for, and everything disturbed be
restored (for instance, the doors of peasant cottages that were often removed
by soldiers to be used as beds were by regulation always replaced before the
unit left the village) understandably won profound admiration and respect among
those villagers who had also had some previous experience with the armies of
Chiang or the warlords.
        It is no great mystery why soldiers of these divisions were sometimes
put to route by much smaller parties of Japanese soldiers.  It is more of a
wonder that in so many other cases they fought with great tenacity and courage.
Chiang did try to increase the combatworthiness of at least a portion of his
armed forces by the widespread use of foreign advisors.  I've already mentioned
the role of the Germans in training Chiang's best divisions, and in helping to
command them during the anti-Communist offensive that led to the Long March.
The Russians had initially been a prime source of military aid, interrupted
when Chiang used the worker's strike in Shanghai as an excuse to turn on and
attempt to exterminate the Communists (Marshal Blyukher, later a prominent
victim of the military purges of the late '30's, was chief military advisor).
A rapproachment of sorts was reached after the start of open warfare with Japan
(Soviet geopolitical considerations taking precedence over any loyalty to their
Chinese Communist brethren), and the Russians in particular were the source of
hundreds of aircraft in the late 'thirties, essentially equipping what there
was of the Chinese air force prior to Chennault's activities and the creation
of the American Volunteer Group.  They not only sent planes, particularly the
Polikarpov I-15 biplane and I-16 monoplane fighters (but also some SB-2
two-engined bombers), but they also sent a couple of hundred pilots, who did
not restrict their activities to training but clandestinely flew combat
missions.  Compared with the air resources the Japanese progressively committed
to the Chinese theatre, which became their great training-ground and tactical
laboratory, these were however unable to make much of an impression, although
they had occasional successes (such as in some of the fighter combats over
Nanking in Dec '37, and a 1938 incident described by Sakai in which some Soviet
bombers surprised a Japanese Navy airfield and destroyed a number of planes on
the ground-- Sakai got a piece of bomb shrapnel in the butt in that episode,
and this incident too was hushed up, the personnel at the airfield ordered by
their officers to tell no-one of the debacle).
        By early 1942 two important American officers had attained the roles of
chief military advisors to Chiang Kai-shek.  Claire Chennault was an extremely
astute air commander who came to be given the job of rebuilding a Chinese air
force.  He became very popular with Chiang for a number of reasons, not least
of which was that his advocacy of air power seemed not only to offer a cheaper
way of waging war, but also downplayed the role of the other US Army general,
Joseph Stilwell, the competent but contentious head of the ground forces.
Chennault's project to give the Chinese a ready-made air force of not only US
planes but trained US military pilots to fly them did not hurt his popularity
with Chiang much, either.
        Stilwell, of course, was another story.  This highly-regarded (in the
US) general was originally greeted with fine words and a seemingly incredible
honor, as Chiang came to name him supreme field commander of the Chinese army--
the first time in modern history that a foreigner had been bestowed
with that exalted rank and title.  In theory it made Stilwell answerable only
to Chiang himself.  In practice it worked out quite differently.  When Stilwell
attempted to put his newly-received authority to the acid test of actual
warfare, commanding the Chinese troops in northern Burma against the Japanese
invasion in the spring of 1942, he found that Chiang had tied some very strong
strings to his nominal command.  The Chinese forces under Stilwell amounted to
two divisions (which fought reasonably well in most cases when their commanders
actually allowed them to fight) and a Chinese tank unit equipped with American
Stuarts.  However, Chiang had made it clear to the division commanders that
they were to obey no orders of Stilwell unless approved by Chiang himself
through backdoor channels of communication.  Conversely, if Chiang issued them
orders which did not square with Stilwell's own orders and intentions, it was
clear to Stilwell's nominal subordinates on which side their bread, and
potentially even their survival, was buttered.  To make the experience
particularly bitter for Stilwell (already known as "Vinegar Joe" for his
colorful but extremely sarcastic, even acidic nature), he got to experience the
effects of his helplessness first-hand, at close range, for in order to better
control the situation Stilwell went right to the front in Burma, and acted on
the level of a corps commander.  In the end, this earned him little besides the
opportunity to make a wearying escape on foot through the jungle in the face of
the steadily advancing Japanese.
        The northern portion of Burma was particularly crucial to the strategic
situation of China (or was at least viewed that way by the US) because through
that part of the country ran the Burma Road, the chief remaining land artery
through which western aid and supplies could reach Chiang's government, the
generalissimo having, after the loss of his capital Nanking, withdrawn behind
the Yangtse river gorges to the remote southwestern city of Chungking.
Chiang's new capital was relatively safe from the Japanese, except for repeated
bombing raids which were in scale usually little more than pin-pricks.  But
with the cutting of the Burma Road, it was almost equally inaccessible to his
Allies.
        The Japanese invasion of Burma in 1942 was carried out by the 15th
Army, commanded by General Shojiro Iida.  Initially this force consisted of
little more than two divisions, the 33rd and the 55th.  In March 1942, however,
the Japanese forces in Burma were reinforced by the veteran 18th Division from
Malaya, the 56th Division from the reserve of Southern Area commander
Field-Marshal Terauchi (who made his headquarters in Saigon for most of the
war), two tank regiments, and additional Army air units.  This marked the
beginning of the main push to drive the Allies out of the country.  And this
they essentially succeeded in doing.  The crack 18th Division (at this point
still under Mutaguchi, who would replace Iida as 15th Army commander when the
latter was recalled to Japan in 1943, to be retired in '44) and the tanks came
to spearhead the push to capture Lashio and close the Burma Road (the Chinese
reported 200 Japanese tanks in the Lashio area, but this was probably something
of an exaggeration).
        I want to divert a moment to take a further look at the Japanese Army
and its "poor man's war" in the south.  An expostion of the initial
dispositions in December 1941 will perhaps make clear the relative paucity of
resources the Japanese could make available for this geographically vast
offensive push, remembering that 35 of their 51 divisions were still tied up in
China and Manchuria.  There were four Japanese armies in the great southern
offensive.  Yamashita's 25th Army, with the objective of Malaya and Singapore,
was one of the best-provided.  It had, as we have seen, the China veteran 5th
and 18th Divisions, and also the Konoye Division, which was the Imperial Palace
Guard (even though prior to this it had last actually seen combat in 1905
against the Russians).  Homma's 14th Army was to conquer the Phillipines,
initially composed of two experienced divisions, the 16th and the 48th.  I
should mention that the 16th Division was notorious for its leading role in the
taking of Chiang's capital Nanking in 12/37.  The Chinese resistance had for a
time been spirited, the leading Japanese units had taken casualties, and it was
apparently a desire to revenge their losses which induced the troops to
start shooting Chinese prisoners, followed shortly thereafter by also shooting
hundreds of Chinese civilians they had co-opted as gravediggers to bury the
bodies (soon there were so many bodies that they simply threw them in the river
or left them where they lay).  This began the rampage which lasted for days by
troops apparently completely out of the control of their commanding officers,
when those chose to try to intervene, and which has come to be known as the
Rape of Nanking.  I should also point out that 16th Division was the last
command of Kenji Ishiwara before he was forced into retirement in 1941.  I
spoke of Ishiwara as opposing the war with China (although he had helped
instigate the conquest of Manchuria).  In 1939, the year Ishiwara was "kicked
upstairs" from his influential position as chief of operations at Japanese
Imperial General HQ, he told Prince Takeda that Japan should pursue one of two
options in China.  Either make peace and an alliance with Chiang in return for
the Chinese leader's recognition of the Japanese position in Manchuria, or
mobilize for all-out war to depose Chiang and force a peace, including
recognition for Japanese control of Manchuria, on his successor.  Ishiwara
criticized the Japanese government and military for doing neither, but merely
groping along without a coherent policy.
        At any rate, both 14th and 25th Army had similar compliments of
supporting forces.  Each army had two tank regiments, two heavy artillery
regiments, and three engineer regiments (also, 14th Army had five antiaircraft
battalions, while 25th Army had a similar strength with a total of 68 AA guns).
As we have seen, 25th Army was apparently much better prepared for its campaign
in terms of how those resources were organized and prepared.  It also had extra
motor vehicles not possessed by 14th Army, and more artillery, in the form of
another three independent regiments of 75-mm field guns (14th Army had one
additional heavy artillery battalion).  I should note here another example of
Japan's relative technical backwardness due to insufficient industry for
weapons production on the scale required by global war.  Although the Japanese
had designed a 105-mm howitzer ten years before Pearl Harbor, in 1941 their
best case scenario was to have one of the three (12-gun) artillery battalions
in the artillery regiment of each division equipped with these pieces.  The
rest were still using the old 75-mm field gun which Japanese industry had been
producing in slightly different variants for most of the century, and in a
large number of Japanese divisions even this small contingent of the newer and
heavier howitzers were lacking, and the artillery was completely equipped with
the 75-mm gun.  Stripped-down examples of the older versions of the 75-mm had
their usefull lives extended by being handed down from the proper artillery to
the regimental gun companies of infantry regiments.
        Well, much more to say but I have to go pretend I have a life.  More
tomorrow.

        Regards

        Mike Yaklich

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End of WWII-L Digest - 25 Feb 1995 to 26 Feb 1995
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