What happened at the Second Battle of Changsha?
In September 1941 the Japanese 11th Army under Anami Korechika attacked the Chinese 9th War Area of Xue Yue in northern Hunan, aiming to destroy its main forces north of Changsha. The Japanese broke the Chinese river lines and on 27 September entered Changsha, the provincial capital, but they soon withdrew, and by early October both sides were back where they had started. China celebrated a victory; Japan counted the city taken.1
Changsha was attacked four times during the war. Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense counts four battles for the city, and Britannica three major ones before the Japanese finally took it in 1944. The second, in the autumn of 1941, was the strangest: an attacker who reached his objective and walked away, and a defender who lost the city and was hailed as the victor.2
Background: a war of stalemate
By 1941 the war between Japan and China had settled into a long stalemate. Britannica divides the war into a period of rapid Japanese advance to the end of 1938, a stalemate until 1944 and a final phase; the Academy of Chinese Studies places both early battles of Changsha in that middle period. In Hunan the Chinese 9th War Area held the line of the Xinqiang River north of Changsha, facing the Japanese 11th Army based on Yueyang and Wuhan.3
The city had already suffered terribly. In the early hours of 13 November 1938, the Academy of Chinese Studies writes, the provincial government carried out a scorched-earth plan and set Changsha ablaze without warning, at a cost of some 30,000 lives; Britannica notes that the city was virtually destroyed by fire in 1938 and 1939. In September and October 1939 the Japanese made their first attempt on Changsha, under Okamura Yasuji, and were driven back.4
That first battle shaped the second. Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense describes the Japanese attacking from three directions, from northern Jiangxi, southern Hubei and northern Hunan, with about 160,000 men against some 240,000 Chinese, and Xue Yue answering with a doctrine of falling back to fight the decisive battle on ground of his choosing. The Academy of Chinese Studies dates the battle from 13 September to 9 October 1939 and calls Changsha the first major Chinese city that did not fall at the first Japanese attack. Both sides drew lessons from it for 1941.5
The 11th Army's new commander, Lieutenant General Anami Korechika, prepared a second attempt. The Yuelu District Archives' historian Gong Junhui quotes the Japanese high command's guidance: keep up the pressure on China without letup and use the international situation to settle the China Incident. Anami concentrated his strength on a narrow front for a deep breakthrough. The Japanese called it the First Changsha Operation, or Operation Ka.6
Armies and commanders
Xue Yue, born in 1896, a Hakka from Lechang in Guangdong, commanded the 9th War Area. He had defended Changsha in 1939, and Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense calls him the Nationalist general credited with destroying more Japanese troops than any other. The Academy of Chinese Studies reminds its readers that the same man had fought the Communists during the Long March and again in the civil war after 1945.7
Anami had taken over the 11th Army in the spring of 1941. The account published by the Changsha Anti-Japanese War Culture Research Society says he blamed the failure of 1939 on dispersed forces and resolved to concentrate this time, and Gong Junhui describes the same tactic of a concentrated, deep breakthrough.8
The numbers vary by source. The Academy of Chinese Studies in Hong Kong gives about 120,000 Japanese troops against some 300,000 Chinese; Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense agrees on 120,000 Japanese but puts the Chinese at about 200,000; Gong Junhui counts the Japanese at about 100,000, with engineers, artillery, tanks, naval craft and aircraft. The Research Society's account lists four divisions and four detachments, a tank regiment, heavy artillery and some 180 aircraft on the Japanese side, and twelve armies on the Chinese.9
Xue Yue's plan followed the pattern of 1939. The Ministry of National Defense describes the 9th War Area resisting step by step at the front to draw the Japanese main body onto prepared positions northeast of Changsha, and the Research Society's account has him holding the river lines of the Xinqiang, the Miluo and the Laodao in turn, hoping to destroy the attackers south of the Miluo. Guerrilla units and trained villagers were to cut the Japanese roads behind them.10
The battle in phases
The Dayunshan diversion. Chinese accounts date the battle from early September. The Academy of Chinese Studies gives 6 September as its start, and the Research Society's account describes Japanese attacks on the Chinese guerrilla base in the Dayunshan hills from 7 September, which drew Chinese troops away from the main line. The main offensive began on 18 September. The Research Society's account notes that the date was chosen as the tenth anniversary of the Mukden Incident; JACAR confirms the start of the operation on that day.11
Across the rivers. The attack broke through quickly. Gong Junhui writes that by 22 September the Japanese had surrounded the Chinese 37th and 26th Armies and that the whole Miluo River line collapsed. In the Research Society's account the Japanese had broken the Chinese codes and could read Xue Yue's orders, seizing positions before the Chinese reached them, and the 74th Army, one of the best in the war area, had to fight its way out of a trap near Chunhuashan.12
Changsha. On 27 September the Japanese crossed the Liuyang River and broke into Changsha from the northeast. The Japanese record of the operation, as JACAR presents it, notes the occupation of the city on 27 September. Gong Junhui adds that the citizens of Changsha helped the soldiers resist. The Academy of Chinese Studies describes bitter fighting in the streets, and its photographs show Chinese troops advancing toward the Tianxin Pavilion in the southeast of the city. To relieve the pressure, the Research Society's account says, Chiang Kai-shek ordered other war areas to attack the Japanese in front of them and placed four more armies under Xue Yue's command.13 › 27 September in military history
Turning point: the withdrawal
The Japanese did not stay. Their supply lines had been cut by Chinese troops and villagers, and Chinese offensives elsewhere, above all against Yichang on the Yangtze, threatened Japanese garrisons, so Anami ordered his army north on 1 October, according to the Research Society's account. Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense likewise describes the 5th and 6th War Areas attacking west of Hankou while the Japanese were drawn into Hunan, and the 9th War Area turning to pursuit. JACAR gives 6 October as the end of the operation; Chinese accounts end the battle on 8 or 9 October, when the last Japanese troops recrossed the Xinqiang River. The Academy of Chinese Studies publishes a photograph of Chinese troops pursuing the retreating Japanese across the Miluo.14
The attacker took the city and walked away; the defender lost it and was hailed as the victor.
Aftermath
Both sides found reasons for satisfaction and for regret. China claimed a victory: the Academy of Chinese Studies cites the 9th War Area's report of 48,000 Japanese casualties, three aircraft shot down and seven motorboats sunk, and the Research Society's account describes torchlight parades in Chongqing. Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense gives much lower Japanese losses, more than 20,000, against more than 50,000 Chinese. Gong Junhui writes that Xue Yue felt the fall of the city as a disgrace, while the Japanese were not satisfied either, because the 9th War Area had not been destroyed.15
The two armies met again in December 1941, when the 11th Army attacked to tie down Chinese forces during the Japanese assault on Hong Kong. Both Gong Junhui and the Ministry of National Defense describe how Xue Yue drew on the lessons of September for what he called the heavenly furnace tactic: a deep belt of strongpoints in which the attackers were worn down by ambushes and flank attacks before a counterblow on chosen ground. That third battle of Changsha, from late December 1941 to mid-January 1942, ended in a heavy Japanese defeat.16 › Battle of Hong Kong, 1941
Legacy and memory
In China the September battle was remembered as one of a series of successful defenses. The Academy of Chinese Studies calls the battles of Changsha among Xue Yue's greatest achievements. The run ended in 1944, when, as Britannica records, the Japanese captured the city.17
Japan, too, kept coming back. The defeat of the third battle did not end its designs on Hunan, and the Ministry of National Defense, writing for Taiwanese army officers, still studies Xue Yue's methods as a model of defense in depth. The Academy of Chinese Studies asks its readers to judge the man whole: the defender of Changsha who was also a commander in the civil war against the Communists.18
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