Episode #222
3.222 Fall and Rise of China: Heavenly Furnace is Lit at Changsha!
Last time we spoke about the fall of singapore. After Johore fell in ruin—Anderson's men massacred at Parit Sulong, Painter's brigade nearly wiped out—the last defenders retreated into Singapore on January 31, and Churchill demanded a fight to the last man, ordering resources destroyed rather than captured. Percival split the island into defensive zones but wrongly guessed the Japanese would strike the northeast; Yamashita had actually massed his real force in the west, using a decoy landing on Ubin Island to reinforce Percival's error. Aiming to seize Singapore by February 11, a date sacred in Shinto tradition, Yamashita struck west with devastating effect, shattering Australian brigades and racing toward Bukit Timah despite his own dwindling ammunition and fuel. British units collapsed into chaos and disobeyed orders while retreating. By February 15, water supplies were failing and commanders urged surrender. Percival met Yamashita at the Ford Factory and capitulated—Britain's worst military disaster, leaving Churchill haunted for the rest of his life. #222 The Heavenly Furnace is Lit at Changsha! Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Yes folks we are back in China today. On the morning of December 8, 1941 the day Japan struck Pearl Harbor Chiang Kai-shek was already at his desk in Chongqing. He had been roused the previous morning at his Huangshan villa by a call from his office staff and had driven straight into the city. No sooner had he sat down than his aides brought in telegrams: Japan had struck Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaya, all at once. Chiang called an emergency session of the Central Standing Committee, the Kuomintang's highest decision-making body. The meeting opened half an hour later. Three hours after that, the resolution was passed: China would formally declare war on Japan, Germany, and Italy. It was a strange kind of milestone. China and Japan had already been fighting a full-scale war since 1937, four and a half years of it without either side ever bothering to make it official. Only now, with the declaration signed jointly by Chiang and four other senior Nationalist leaders — Sun Ke, Ju Zheng, Dai Jitao, and Yu Youren did China finally say the words aloud: We declare war on you. The same meeting resolved to propose an international anti-fascist alliance, and drafted three principles to put before Washington and London: first, that a Pacific Alliance and an Allied Supreme Command be formed, led by the United States, with an elected supreme commander; second, that the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union join China in declaring war on Japan; third, that no member nation make a separate peace with Japan until the Pacific War was won. That same morning, Chiang signed a telegram drafted by the Ministry of Military Operations and sent it to every war zone in China: "In order to support our allied nation's [Britain's] operations and pin down Japanese forces, all war zones are hereby ordered to attack the enemy directly opposing them. The Fourth War Zone shall attack the enemy in the Guangzhou sector in support of the British forces fighting in Hong Kong, while the 5th, 6th, and 66th Armies shall advance from Guangxi and Sichuan toward Yunnan, in preparation to enter Burma and directly assist British operations there. The 4th and 74th Armies, originally to remain under direct central command, shall be redeployed to Guangdong and Guangxi respectively…" Holding the draft of the telegram soon to go out to Washington and London, Chiang stood at his window, his mind churning. Outside, firecrackers were already going off in the distance — the city and its students had heard the news, and after years of resisting alone, the people's hearts were, for once, beating as one. The international situation had turned over in a single night. What still lay ahead of the Chinese people, though, was simply more battle. On the night of December 8, Chiang sat down with the staff of the Military Affairs Commission to study what the outbreak of the Pacific War meant for the China theater, and to plan support for the fighting already underway in Hong Kong. They worked through until dawn. After breakfast, his wife Song Meiling arrived to bring him back to Huangshan to rest. On the drive, she told him: "Darling, you haven't been this happy in a long time." Four hundred miles away, another commander was riding just as high for entirely opposite reasons. Since the end of the Second Battle of Changsha in October, Yasuji Okamura, commander of Japan's 11th Army, had been in a state of near-permanent elation. Good news kept arriving. On October 9, the forces that had pushed into northern Hunan withdrew intact to their original lines; two days later, the relief force sent to Yichang resolved the danger there as well. Okamura counted it a victory — his men had inflicted heavy losses on the Chinese and mauled two of their "crack armies." Congratulatory telegrams poured in from the home islands and the occupied territories, and Okamura could all but picture the admiring looks waiting for him back at Imperial General Headquarters. Better news followed. A week after the Hunan campaign ended, the Third Konoe Cabinet resigned en masse, and on October 18 Army Minister Hideki Tojo was sworn in as Prime Minister a representative of the army's radical young officer faction finally installed at the top. Okamura understood exactly what this meant: it was the dawn of a new era for militarist Japan, the day tens of thousands of radical officers had dreamed of, paid for in rivers of military blood. Barely a month later, the Pacific War broke out. Okamura had expected it, but the news still thrilled him as though the day the Rising Sun would fly over the entire world was no longer far off. He moved fast. On December 12, learning that several Chinese armies opposite his front were being pulled south, Okamura telegraphed General Shunroku Hata, commander-in-chief of the China Expeditionary Army in Nanjing, requesting permission to launch a new offensive into northern Hunan both to pin down the transfer of the Ninth War Zone's forces and to smooth the way for the 23rd Army's capture of Hong Kong. Hata replied the next day, agreeing to forward the request to Imperial Headquarters and telling Okamura to draw up the plan at once. There was a complication. The Pacific War had broken out before the home islands could replenish the weapons, ammunition, and manpower the 11th Army had burned through in its September–October offensive. Hata had already lent Okamura the 9th Mixed Brigade from Taiyuan, still en route. At the headquarters conference called to draft the new plan, Chief of Staff Isamu Kinoshita offered a sober assessment: "With the 11th Army's current strength and stockpile of war materiel, we can at most mount a diversionary operation involving no more than 60,000 troops and lasting no longer than ten days." Okamura disagreed. Only two months had passed since the last campaign — the battered Chinese forces couldn't have fully recovered, and the 4th and 74th Armies had just been pulled south besides. With the 11th Army's current strength, he judged, victory was well within reach. "The crux of the matter," he told his staff, "is that we must fight — and we must win!" On December 15 he submitted his plan: general offensive to launch December 25, the operation to last two weeks. If the 23rd Army took Hong Kong before then and the situation stabilized, the 11th Army could withdraw early. Tactically, it was the same formula as before: main divisions advancing side by side along the front in a single powerful thrust, breaking Chinese defenses quickly before encircling and crushing what remained. With the 4th Division transferred elsewhere, only three divisions were available for the front line. To make up the shortfall, Okamura ordered the 34th Division in central Jiangxi to stage a feint against Ninth War Zone forces there, keeping them from reinforcing northern Hunan. On December 16, Hata telegraphed his approval. Okamura stood once more before his war map, ringed by admiring staff officers, brimming with confidence. In Changsha, headquarters of the Chinese Ninth War Zone, the mood was very different, grim, focused, and haunted by recent defeat. Every seat in the war zone's conference room was filled with division commanders and above, rank insignia gleaming. Xue Yue, commander of the Ninth War Zone, stood before a huge wall map, pointer in hand, for three straight hours, and not one of the assembled generals showed a flicker of fatigue. Since the Second Battle of Changsha, the Ninth War Zone had tightened its intelligence network across Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangxi. On December 18, the Military Affairs Commission learned that Nanjing had approved Okamura's new offensive and was already shifting troops down from North China. Chiang immediately ordered the 4th and 74th Armies, the same ones just sent south, to turn around and return to the Ninth War Zone, garrisoning at Zhuzhou and Hengyang to meet the coming attack. The war zone's conference was really two things at once: an operational planning session, and a hard reckoning with the lessons, paid for in blood of the last battle. Four questions framed the discussion. How should successive delaying resistance be conducted? How should the enemy's retreat be cut off? How should the decisive battle zone be chosen? And how should the enemy be lured into it? After the generals spoke their piece, Xue Yue delivered the summary that tied the plan together. Few commanders are born geniuses; most learn war through war, growing wiser one hard lesson at a time. The revised doctrine that emerged felt to the front-line generals far more grounded than anything that had come before a real foundation to fight on: "The war zone's objective is to lure the enemy deep and then force a decisive battle. When the enemy attacks, a portion of our forces shall conduct successive resistance beginning from the first line, while the main force is kept at all times on the outer flanks. Once the enemy enters the predetermined decisive battle zone, all forces shall launch a full counteroffensive, encircling and annihilating the enemy." Before adjourning, Xue Yue made an announcement that quieted the room. With the battle nearly upon them and the newly appointed commander of the 10th Army not yet in post, the army would remain under its former commander, Li Yutang, dismissed after the disappointing Second Battle of Changsha at the Nanyue military conference in October. Fang Xianjue, commander of the army's 10th Reserve Division, dismissed alongside Li, would likewise keep his post for this campaign. Their discipline would be decided after the battle, not before. Afterward, Xue Yue lingered at the map with his chief of staff, Zhao Zili. "What is the very core of this operational doctrine?" Xue Yue asked, half to himself. "What is its key difference from previous plans?" "Withdraw and fight the decisive battle — secure the outer flanks," Zhao Zili answered, and hit it in one line. He elaborated: as the enemy advances, Chinese forces fight while retreating, leading the enemy on without letting themselves be encircled. Before reaching the decisive battle zone, they must slip to the flanks without the enemy noticing — and the enemy, in turn, must be drawn out to those same flanks without realizing it. A small force would lure the Japanese into the killing ground, while the bulk of the Chinese army closed a tight ring around them from outside. Inside the ring, the defenders had to hold their ground and not be devoured; outside it, the encircling forces had to hold the ring tight and not let it slip. It was an interlocking chain, fraught with risk at every link — one miscalculation and the whole design could collapse. Few things exposed the complexity of the battlefield as starkly as this plan did. The deployment took final shape: Yang Sen's 27th Group Army would hold the Xinqiang River line, falling back in stages toward the Miluo River as the Japanese advanced; the 37th and 99th Armies would hold the second line at the Miluo, fighting and withdrawing toward the Laodao River near Changsha before shifting east; when the Japanese encircled Changsha itself, the 10th Army would hold the city while the outer forces launched a "centripetal attack," closing a second ring around the besiegers from outside and annihilating them. Two things would decide the battle. First, whether the Chinese "lure" worked — whether the Japanese truly advanced deep into the trap. Second, whether Changsha could hold out long enough for the outer forces to close the ring. The first depended on the enemy's choices. The second depended entirely on the 10th Army. Once the shooting started, everything would turn on the ability of commanders on the ground to read the moment and adapt. The decision was made. Xue Yue paced the room, turning Zhao Zili's phrase over in his mind — withdraw and fight the decisive battle, secure the outer flanks — then stopped abruptly, swept his arm through the air, and declared: "I think we shall call this battle the 'Heavenly Furnace Tactic'!" Outside, the work of preparation had already begun. Rifles stood stacked in neat rows; cartridge pouches, jackets, and canteens piled beside them. In the winter wind, soldiers tore up road surfaces, laid great stone blocks, fitted rebar, and poured concrete — bunker after bunker taking shape, trench networks spreading across the ground. Citizens and students turned out to help. The old and the young brought bowls of hot water out to the soldiers while it was still warm. Some soldiers urged the townsfolk to leave the city before the "Japanese devils" arrived. The townsfolk answered: "With you here, we're not afraid." Li Yutang, restored to command of the 10th Army, spent every day out on the lines, inspecting the fortifications and pushing the pace. He hadn't slept the night Xue Yue told him he'd be leading the army again. A general with years of service, he understood exactly what this battle meant — his honor or his disgrace, for the rest of his life. After the war zone conference, he gathered every officer from platoon leader on up and relayed Xue Yue's orders word for word, vowing to redeem himself through service and not shame the years of honor the 10th Army had built. The officers were moved. Having shared in the last defeat, how could they not want to help their commander win back what had been lost? Division commanders Zhou Qingxiang of the 3rd Division and Zhu Yue of the 190th Division rose after Li's speech and pledged, on behalf of their men, absolute obedience and a defense of Changsha to the death. Fang Xianjue, commander of the 10th Reserve Division spoke with tears in his eyes, promising both his men and his superiors that he would not fail them this time. The meeting ended in a roar of "Defend Changsha to the death!" loud enough to nearly lift the roof. No amount of official spin could lift the atmosphere of grief and humiliation that still hung over every unit in the Ninth War Zone after the last defeat. And now Xue Yue was leading that same grief-stricken army back into battle against the same enemy, barely two months later. He gave the position that would be hardest, most dangerous, and most costly to the unit that carried the heaviest weight of shame — the 10th Army, whose commander and division commander had both been sacked. Li Yutang, in turn, assigned the direction the Japanese were most likely to choose — the southern approach to the city — to the division that had performed worst in the previous battle: the 10th Reserve Division. By December 20, the Japanese 6th Division had completed its assembly on the lower north bank of the Xinqiang River. On December 22, Okamura set up his army command post at Yueyang. On December 23, the 40th Division finished assembling on the upper Xinqiang, while the 3rd Division moved by train to Yueyang; by the 24th it had taken its place between the 6th and 40th Divisions. The 34th Division and the 14th Brigade, tasked with feints toward northern and central Jiangxi respectively, reached their jump-off positions the same day. On the morning of the 24th, Okamura synchronized watches by telephone with each division commander. The general offensive would begin at 5:00 on December 25. On December 20, Claire Chennault's American "Flying Tigers" clashed with the Japanese air force for the first time, over the skies of Kunming. The normally easygoing American pilots shot down four Japanese aircraft in five minutes without losing one of their own. To Chiang, the victory mattered less for its size than for what it represented: the first clash between American and Japanese forces on the China front, and a preview of the escalation still to come. On the 23rd, Chiang chaired a joint military conference of Chinese, American, and British representatives in Chongqing, generals from all three nations gathered around one table to plan operations against Japan. It was the clearest sign yet that China's alliance with the Western powers had moved from rhetoric into substance. The conference produced a six-point "Preliminary Plan for Joint Military Operations in the Far East." Within a week the document was quietly shelved, overtaken by something larger: China, the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and twenty-one other nations, later twenty-six in all signed the historic Declaration by United Nations in Washington. In the same stretch of days, Chiang accepted President Roosevelt's proposal and took up the post of Supreme Allied Commander of the China Theater. Even amid this whirlwind of international news, Chiang's attention never left the domestic front. On December 22, the Military Affairs Commission submitted the Ninth War Zone's operational plan. Xu Yongchang, the senior military official who brought it to him, mentioned that Xue Yue was calling it the "Heavenly Furnace Tactic." "Within the operational area, we scorch the earth so the enemy finds not a scrap of supplies to replenish itself," Xu explained, relaying Xue Yue's own words. "We set up a deep ambush zone to lure the enemy in, and firepower converges from every direction like a raging blaze, forming a great furnace in which the enemy is encircled and annihilated." Chiang smiled. Xue Yue always did have a taste for clever names. Back during the Battle of Wuhan in 1938, commanding the 1st Army Group, Xue had built a defensive system around the terrain near Mahuiling, west of Dean, and christened it the "Reverse Figure-Eight Formation" — a rat trap, he'd called it, or a closing pair of scissors: attack the right and the center and left respond, attack the left and the center and right respond, and once the invaders were drawn in there would be no escape. Chiang had teased him at the time — how did it compare to Zhuge Liang's legendary Eight Trigrams Formation? Now here was a "Heavenly Furnace." If this battle went well, there'd be no living with the man's boasting. But a willingness to think hard about a fight was, after all, the first virtue of a commander. Chiang and Xu bent over the map together for a long while, then sent back a telegram approving the plan f
