Japan's invasion of China-2

With Japanese casualties and costs mounting, the deeply frustrated Imperial General Headquarters decided to retaliate by ordering the Imperial air force of the Navy and the Army to launch the war's first massive air raids on civilian targets in the provisional capital of Chongqing and nearly every major city in unoccupied China, leaving millions dead, injured and homeless.

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From the beginning of 1939 the war entered a new phase with the unprecedented defeat of the IJA at Changsha and Guangxi. These favorable outcomes encouraged the NRA to launch its first large-scale counter-offensive against the IJA in early 1940. However, due to her low military-industrial capacity and limited experience in modern warfare, the NRA was defeated in this offensive. Afterwards Chiang could not risk any more all-out offensive campaigns given the poorly-trained, under-equipped, and disorganized state of his armies and opposition to his leadership both within the Kuomintang and in China in general. He had lost a substantial portion of his best trained and equipped men defending Shanghai and was at times at the mercy of his generals, who maintained a high degree of autonomy from the central KMT government.

From 1940 on the Japanese encountered tremendous difficulties in administering and garrisoning the seized territories, and tried to solve its occupation problems by implementing a strategy of creating friendly puppet governments favorable to Japanese interests in the territories conquered, the most prominent being the Nanjing Nationalist Government headed by former KMT premier Wang Jingwei. However, the atrocities committed by the Japanese army, as well as Japanese refusal to delegate any real power, left them very unpopular and largely ineffective. The only success the Japanese had was the ability to recruit a large Collaborationist Chinese Army to maintain public security in the occupied areas.

By 1941 Japan held most of the eastern coastal areas of China and Vietnam, but guerrilla fighting continued in these occupied areas. Japan had suffered tremendous casualties from unexpectedly stubborn Chinese resistance, and neither side could make any swift progress in a manner resembling the fall of France and Western Europe to Nazi Germany.

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Casualties of a mass panic during a June 1941 Japanese bombing of Chongqing. More than 5000 civilians died during the first two days of air raids in 1939

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