It may be surprising that China and Germany They were allied countries during the 1930s, especially considering that the Nazi and Japanese governments had similar ideologies and were part of the same side, the Axis, during World War II. But it is that before that pact, the Germans maintained an intense relationship with the Chinese that went beyond the merely diplomatic or commercial, also fully entering the military.
Actually, it was something that came from before Hitler's rise to power; since the end of the First World War , conflict in which China had supported the allies against imperial Germany, although there never came to be a direct confrontation on the battlefield. At the end of hostilities, both nations restored their relations , the Weimar government renounced its possessions in Asian territory and in 1921 a reciprocal trade channel was established. , with the Chinese offering essential raw materials for German reconstruction (mainly tungsten and antimony) in exchange for modern weaponry and military training.
And it is that the winds were tempestuous in the East. In 1911, the Chinese Revolution had overthrown the emperor to establish a republic and a few years later, in the midst of the world war, the same thing happened in Russia. In 1927 the nationalists of Chiang Kai-Sek , grouped under the name Kuomintang, faced the communists in a civil war that would last decades and would not end until Mao's victory in 1950. This context became even more complex in 1931 with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the creation of the puppet state of Manchukuo, headed by Pu-Yi, the last emperor. Six years later, the invasion was extended to a large scale without China, technologically and logistically far inferior, being able to face the highly industrialized Japanese Empire.
Help was needed and one of the countries that offered it was Germany, which did not want to lose the raw materials it received from the Chinese and maintained good relations with the Kuomintang, considered a retaining wall against communism . The absence of Teutonic political interests in Asia (unlike Russia, Great Britain or France) was one more incentive to strengthen the mutual relationship, and so, although the Germans were prohibited from participating in military adventures by the Treaty of Versailles Some twenty soldiers of fortune arrived in China, most of them experienced officers in the First World War and furious anti-communists.
They were the main advisers to the Whampoa Military Academy, the local version of West Point or Sandhurst, and they were joined by other types of industrial personnel to promote the manufacturing of weapons on-site , since shipments from Europe had to be clandestine due to the aforementioned prohibition. In 1933, when the elections opened Hitler's access to power, the hedging came to an end:the prestigious General Hans von Seeckt traveled to China as an official adviser with the mission of organizing a modern, mobile and well-equipped army, taking the system as a model. organization of the Wehrmacht. Thus he foresaw eight divisions, totaling eighty thousand well-trained men, destined to confront the Imperial Japanese Army in the defense of Shanghai.
Another important soldier assigned to the Asian country was Alexander von Falkenhausen, director of the Dresden Infantry School, who was in charge of putting von Seeckt's plan into practice and adapting it to the harsh Chinese reality, where obsolescence was the norm. He lowered expectations and opted for a small mobile force , specialized in limited actions with individual weapons and inspired by the Sturmgruppen who infiltrated enemy lines during the last World War.
Likewise, he accelerated the modernization of weapons :Hanyang's arsenal would go on to make Maxim machine guns and the Chiang Kai-Sek Rifle (a version of the Mauser MI924), while opening new factories providing other equipment, from the iconic M35 helmets to Mauser C96 pistols to the MG34. The rest would be imported from Germany, in the case of artillery or tanks.
Falkenhausen's advice to Ching was to wage a war of attrition , establishing the line of defense in the Yellow River and sending guerrillas to hinder the advance of the enemy. The strategy was successful and the Japanese had to take their foot off the pedal for several months, allowing the Chinese to move their war industry inland to Sichuan.
Although the Japanese finally managed to conquer Shanghai and the capital Nanjing , the heroic resistance for 76 days plus the Chinese victories in Tai'erzhuang (1938) and Suixian-Zaoyang (1939) filled with moral to that newborn army.
So much so that Chiang opened an embassy in Berlin and even sent his own adopted son, Wei-Kuo, to Germany to be trained in the Wëhrmacht . Those were times when the Führer himself declared that he had never considered the Chinese inferior (nor the Japanese, of course) and, in fact, when the situation led the German government to sign the pact with Tokyo making return to military advisers , it was promised that no information would be revealed to new allies.
Germany, then, was trying tocut ties with China that, however, it was not left alone because geostrategic interests prevailed and, thus, the United States, the Soviet Union and others intervened in its favor. The attack on Pearl Harbor was the straw that broke the camel's back and the Chinese declared war on it. to the Axis powers.
Nevertheless, Von Falkenhausen kept his word and, through frequent correspondence, continued his friendship with Chiang . His son, by the way, reached the rank of lieutenant and was in command of a panzer during the Anchluss, before returning to his country.