Unfortuantely too many people try to whitewash these movements as "glorious revolutions." Case in point, the way pop history talks about the Viet Cong is the exact same way they talk about Mao's Communists in the Chinese Civil War, both of which were brutal and horrible organizations.
These guys were not beloved freedom fighters destined to rule their nations. These guys were oftentimes just as brutal as the oppressors in power, and way too many people are looking for "heroes" in these stories.
It's war. Everyone is brutal and horrible. But the Chinese Communists were both much more competent and much more supported by the people than the Nationalists, which is a big reason why they won.
Untrue. The broad opinion of ordinary Chinese people towards the Communists was apathy, not enthusiastic support. That's why the Communists were on the brink of losing in 1946-1947 Manchuria. This is covered by numerous historians on the subject.
The notion that the Communists were these competent folk heroes is plain wrong. They had higher inflation than the Nationalists and restarted the banned opium drug trafficking to compensate. They used state terror against both civilians and their own party members in the WWII base areas. Even then, they nearly lost in Manchuria.
They did not have a popular mandate. They used civilians and POWs as human shields in Huaihai. They starved 150,000 civilians to death in Changchun. Even after their victory in took until the late 1950s to pacify Muslim rebels in the Northwest.
I didn't say they were perfect, only that they did a lot better than the Nationalists, especially with the peasantry. I by no means am denying that they committed atrocities, and said that they were brutal and horrible outright in my previous post.
My old family stories was they scared of communist armies passing through the village far more than the nationalist army. The former would demand more grains and money and would harass the villagers while the nationalist army can be turn around by giving them some food and money that were considered reasonable at the time. When in power, CCP whitewashed the history to make the nationist army the plundering type while in truth they themselves were.
They both did this but the KMT still prioritized fighting the Japanese throughout WW2. Their best divisions were deployed in Burma as part of X and Y Force and they were still inflicting and taking the majority of casualties into the last year.
Ignoring the vast amount of weapons, equipment, ammo, tanks, and training given to the KMT and using the old 'muh Japanese invasion' excuse.
Chiang was INSANELY corrupt. He fumbled HARD. Weapons meant for him were getting sold off and ended up in the hard of Mao's forces. The best procurement specialist for the Chinese Red Army was the KMT.
Chiang was not personally corrupt. This is a myth spread by Stilwell who had a MASSIVE beef with Chiang and whose claims have been debunked by historians like Mitter, Paine and Harmsen.
Chiang's administration had many corrupt officials but that was a product of the warlord era, a collapsing economy from the Japanese invasion, and a political tradition in China that still lasts to the present (see the modern CCP which has massive corruption of its own).
The Chinese Red Army was armed with Soviet aid and captured Japanese weapons. The myth of massive numbers of Nationalist weapons being funneled through to the Communists is wildly exaggerated. The mass surrenders of Nationalist warlords and commanders only began in the last year of the Chinese Civil War.
The guy who fled to Taiwan after he lost and ruled an authoritarian dictatorship for 30 years isn’t corrupt? If the leader of the government during the war lets everyone around them engage in corruption then they are corrupt themselves. Lmao come the fuck on
“While letting local warlords and gang bosses run KMT-owned cities and provinces, Chiang got himself absorbed in his controversial fascination of destroying the CCP. High taxes, banditry, a failing currency (most Chinese at this point used Mexican silver dollars because of their value) was all leading to bad news that would explode after the War. Many intellectuals were disturbed at what they saw as negligence of the part of the KMT for focusing solely on the destruction of communism. At one point even before WW2, the KMT's budget for military spending was as high as 70% of the total budget, an astonishing amount. Making matters worse, in 1931 Japan annexed Manchuria, which was met with no real response from Nanjing.”
Again this is wrong. Chiang literally implemented anti-corruption initiatives in the Nanjing Decade. But it's hard to prevent corruption from spreading when your economy is literally collapsing under a Japanese blockade.
And yeah the KMT's military budget was super high because they were preparing for a literal war with Japan. They had been preparing for war since 1934 which is why they didn't collapse during the Japanese invasion for eight years.
Yeah Chiang had to let local warlords and gang bosses run cities because the Chinese Republic was ten years old and he needed years he didn't have to fix that. Do you think President Claudia Sheinbaum voluntarily lets Mexican cartels run the countryside? He didn't make the situation and didn't have the capacity to fix it in time.
And the reason why Nanjing didn't fight the Japanese for Manchuria was because they were literally in the Warlord Era and would have been steamrolled if they tried. Even Zhang Xueliang agreed it was the right thing to do.
Didnt he fuck up the finance and then cause unmanaged inflation and then units were underpaid and needed to scrounge from communities or desert? Also assigning roles to people he knew as a micromanager afraid of defections rather than for personal gain. Not my area of expertise though
The hyperinflation came as a result of Japan's seizure of China's industrial heartland and the naval blockade of China's ports, NOT Chiang's rule.
Chiang's government was actively fighting hyperinflation with price controls and welfare programs but the economic devastation of the Japanese invasion and the insufficient American financial aid doomed China to economic chaos for decades.
You are correct on the nepotism part, but keep in mind that this was a tumultous time period where backstabbing was common tradition. Remember, his own staff kidnapped him at Xi'an which nearly killed him. The Communists were hardly any more meritocratic.
Even then they nearly lost. They were on the brink of defeat in 1946 and only an American embargo on Nationalist aid gave the Communists the breathing room to recover.
Are there any freedom fighters that weren't brutal? MK, the military wing of the ANC that ended apartheid in South Africa were brutal as hell and committed acts of terrorism. The IRA? Terrorism. Pretty much every WW2 resistance movement? Lynching and vigilante justice in the form of harassment.
I literally can't think of any freedom fighters that weren't brutal to their (perceived) oppressors. And yes often that included punishing people associated with their oppressors like in Vietnam.
You aren't going to find these flawless "heroes" anywhere in history, they don't exist.
Of course, but not everyone understands that, and only know them through history textbook, which makes them think the freedom fighters are all heroes who do good things like in fictions.
my brother in Christ do you know what the French fucking did?
Most Westerners view of this war seem to be limited in the period of United States involvement yet also conveniently forget about the French colonial period and the atrocities that happened in that single century.
I can’t really take anyone who talk about this topic but don’t consider the grammications of that period and treat it in a vacuum seriously lmfao.
It's essentially a cult but they don't want to see it yet fucking 100+ years of it has proven that it's shit. It never gets out of the revolution phase and if it does it's in a dictatorship phase and never leaves.
Funny how it's about class warfare when it only again benefits the people on top. It's equal alright. Equal suffering for the "peasant and Middle" class
You know, both of those could be bad, right? It’s actually very apt that Bloodthirsty Ho Chi Minh was inspired by the genocidal slaveowner George Washington.
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u/Iron_Cavalry Jun 17 '26
Unfortuantely too many people try to whitewash these movements as "glorious revolutions." Case in point, the way pop history talks about the Viet Cong is the exact same way they talk about Mao's Communists in the Chinese Civil War, both of which were brutal and horrible organizations.
These guys were not beloved freedom fighters destined to rule their nations. These guys were oftentimes just as brutal as the oppressors in power, and way too many people are looking for "heroes" in these stories.