War Overview · Fourteen-Year War of Resistance (1931–45)

From a single night in Shenyang to the warship in Tokyo Bay where surrender was received, fourteen years and 35 million military and civilian casualties: a country a generation behind in equipment and an order of magnitude behind in industry used space, human lives, and a will that would not surrender to hold down and wear out East Asia's strongest military machine. This is the main battlefield of the entire *Whence We Came* series.

Engagement Data

Belligerents (War-Level)

Historical Setting (Stage by Stage)

• 1931–37 (localized resistance): The world in the Great Depression had no attention to spare for East Asia, and the League of Nations appeased; Japan's military was driven toward expansion by gekokujo, "the lower overriding the higher"; China was torn between "internal pacification before external resistance" and a public wave of anti-Japanese feeling -- the Northeast fell, North China was eaten away (Tanggu Truce, He–Umezu Agreement, East Hebei puppet regime), and the December 9th Movement (1935) and Xi'an Incident (1936.12) turned national policy around.
• 1937–41 (holding on alone): Full-scale war broke out, and the international community offered words without real support; Soviet aid to China (aviation volunteers, loans, and arms, 1937–41) was the only substantial foreign aid, then faded after the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact of 1941.4; Wang Jingwei fled in 1938 and established a puppet government in 1940 -- the fork between surrender and fighting appeared in the darkest place.
• 1941–45 (incorporated into the world war): After Pearl Harbor, the China Theater was established (Chiang Kai-shek as commander, Stilwell as chief of staff); Lend-Lease and the Flying Tigers took shape; the Cairo Declaration (1943.11) promised the return of the Northeast, Taiwan, and Penghu; the Henan–Hunan–Guangxi collapse and the Stilwell crisis followed (1944); the Yalta secret agreement exchanged Chinese interests for Soviet entry into the war against Japan (1945.2, with China absent -- once again, "China disposed of while China was absent"); Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Soviet entry into the war, and the 8.15 Jewel Voice Broadcast followed.

Why It Was Fought

The civil war had only just stopped when the foreign war had already opened. The military remonstrance at Xi'an turned the guns of the KMT and CPC outward, but the Japanese had acted long before that turn. On the night of September 18, 1931, the Kwantung Army blew up a section of track on the South Manchuria Railway it was itself guarding, then immediately attacked Shenyang: front-line military units began the war on their own timetable, while Tokyo's civilian cabinet knew nothing beforehand and ratified it afterward. The Northeast Army was ordered not to offer frontal resistance, and all of the Northeast was lost in four months; who issued the order of "non-resistance," and in what wording, has been argued over for eighty years (source unverified), but the loss of the Northeast is fact.

The six years that followed were Japan cutting and China enduring: Rehe, the passes of the Great Wall, the Tanggu Truce, the North China Autonomy Movement, each retreat moving step by step to the Marco Polo Bridge. Why did the retreat stop here? The memory that the Northeast had been lost at no cost was still present; if North China were yielded again, no government could answer for it at home; after the Xi'an Incident, a government that continued to retreat before Japan would first lose its own footing. The gunfire outside Wanping on the night of July 7, 1937 became, ten days later, the Lushan declaration of the "last moment"; on August 13, fighting began in Shanghai. Choosing Shanghai as the decisive battlefield was meant to twist the Japanese army's main axis of attack from north-to-south into east-to-west, and also to make the war visible to the whole world inside the concessions (original telegrams and documents on the strategic intent unverified). The determination as put on paper lay in the Lushan speech of July 17 and the National Defense Conference for provincial military and political chiefs summoned to the capital in mid-August (schedule and resolution texts unverified); on the desk was the comparison of the two sides' military and industrial strength. This was not a resolve made in ignorance of the gap.

Tokyo's account book used a different arithmetic. Japan's industry and firepower stood one order of magnitude above China's, and its plan was a rapid war: hurt the Nanjing government badly enough to force it to the negotiating table, have it recognize the status quo in Manchuria and North China, and then stop the fighting. In January 1938, Konoe's statement that Japan would "no longer deal with the National Government" effectively welded the door to peace talks shut; Wuhan and Guangzhou fell, yet the Chinese government moved into Chongqing and still did not surrender. With every additional inch the Japanese forces occupied, the supply line lengthened by another inch, and the "China Incident" became a mire with no visible end. What it had not calculated was that a country that had lost all of its coastal core could still continue fighting with relocated factories, the Hump air route, and a will not to surrender.

China's material conditions fixed its method of fighting from the opening: customs, salt tax, and consolidated tax, the three major sources of revenue, were rooted along the coast and the Yangtze and shrank as those areas fell; steel output was in the tens of thousands of tons against millions, ammunition depended half on foreign purchase, and once the coast was lost only the Yunnan–Burma Road remained; troop numbers ran to the millions on paper, yet there was no general mobilization law, and recruitment was carried out through press-ganging conscripts. These accounts could be made before the war began. From the first day, the only possible method was to drag the war out.

On the CPC side, determination was set half at the negotiating table in Xi'an and half at Luochuan. In August 1937, the Red Army was reorganized as the Eighth Route Army, and three divisions with more than 40,000 men moved into North China; what the Luochuan Conference set was not positional battle against the Japanese army, but independent mountain guerrilla warfare. Given its firepower and supply at the time, frontal attrition meant being spent to nothing. The result was that war was carried into the countryside and base areas were spread behind enemy lines; it also buried in the same ground the frictions that would later emerge between the two parties.

Other roads did exist. Before the war began, there were already pro-peace voices in Nanjing -- the "Low-Key Club" of Zhou Fohai, Hu Shih, and others (membership and activities unverified); within the Japanese side, after July 7, Ishiwara Kanji's "non-expansion" faction still wanted to hold down reinforcements, but was overridden by the line of "a blow against China." In the winter of 1937, the Trautmann mediation was heard in Chongqing and not accepted (terms and course of refusal unverified); at the end of 1938, Wang Jingwei fled to Hanoi and set up another "peace movement," and surrender and resistance formally forked. The forces blocking the road on both sides failed to change their own timetables: on China's side, public opinion would not allow another retreat; on Japan's side, the structure of gekokujo would not allow the brakes to be applied. Chongqing and Yan'an each chose to continue fighting. Once made, that choice meant another seven years.

Course of the Engagement (Four Stages Across Fourteen Years)

Three Battlefields (Structural Note)

1. Front-line battlefield (National Government forces): the twenty-two major campaigns as the skeleton, bearing the pressure of the main Japanese forces and suffering the heaviest casualties. 2. Battlefields behind enemy lines (CPC Eighth Route Army and New Fourth Army): a system of guerrilla warfare and base-area governments, pinning down large numbers of Japanese and puppet forces; the Hundred Regiments Offensive was the largest active offensive. 3. Isolated battlefields: the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army (the most isolated), the Yunnan–Burma Expeditionary Force (the only one outside China), and the air and naval fronts (the most unequal). The relationship between the front-line and behind-the-lines battlefields -- cooperation, friction (Southern Anhui Incident, 1941.1 ※ cross-referenced), and each side's separate persistence -- is recorded from both sides; this is the root of the narrative divergence over the "two battlefields."

Casualties and Losses

• Military and civilian casualties exceeded 35 million (official statistical basis: about 3.8 million military casualties, with civilians making up the overwhelming majority); additional research statistical bases are placed side by side (details unrecorded).
• ※ Systematic atrocity nodes (see separate articles for each): Nanjing Massacre (300,000 figure and international tribunal findings), Bombing of Chongqing, "Three Alls" mopping-up operations, biological warfare (Unit 731 and bacterial attacks in Zhejiang–Jiangxi and Changde), chemical warfare, the "comfort women" system, and forced labor abductions -- this overview sets out this list to give the system of atrocities an overall table of contents beyond the separate articles (population figures for each item are marked in the separate articles).
• Tens of millions of refugees were displaced; universities moved west, and factories moved inland (Yichang evacuation, 1938); Yellow River flooded area ※ (Huayuankou, a self-inflicted disaster).
• Property losses by the official statistical basis were USD 60 billion (1937 values; statistical bases vary by account).
• Japanese forces: about 400,000-plus killed in China (Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare basis) to Chinese statistics of 1.33 million killed and wounded (cumulative figures from successive battle reports) -- the two bases differ sharply, with different statistical boundaries (whether wounded and sick are included, and whether the Northeast and Burma are included); the two accounts are placed side by side, with neither chosen over the other.

Aftermath

• Taiwan, Penghu, and the Northeast returned; the unequal treaty system was abolished during the war (1943 new Sino-U.S. and Sino-British treaties) -- the legal ending of a century of national humiliation was completed in this war.
• Founding permanent member of the United Nations Security Council: the name of one of the "world's four powers" was bought at the cost of 35 million casualties.
• But peace did not arrive: surrender and takeover immediately became KMT–CPC struggle (see *Chinese Civil War · Overview*) -- the endpoint of the War of Resistance Against Japan was directly the starting point of the civil war.
• Disposition of Japan: Tokyo Trial and Nanjing trials; the path of reparations was later abandoned (1972); war memory became a permanent variable in China–Japan relations thereafter.
• Military legacy: this war remade the entire backbone of the two Chinese armies that followed -- almost every commander of the Chinese Civil War and the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea carried the growth rings of the War of Resistance Against Japan.

How Each Side Records It

• Chinese side: a war of national survival and the turning point in a century of decline; the center of the narrative changed over time -- after 1949, it long took the battlefields behind enemy lines as its main thread; from the 1980s, the front-line battlefield was gradually restored to writing (the 1986 film on Tai'erzhuang as a marker); the 2015 military parade and the "Fourteen-Year War of Resistance" textbooks (2017) set the current framework -- the history of narrative change is recorded as well.
• Japanese side: called the "Second Sino-Japanese War" (formerly the "China Incident" -- because war was fought without a declaration, it was called an "incident"; the name itself is a position); a split between memories of "perpetration" and "victimhood" (the atomic-bombing narrative is strong, while the narrative of the invasion of China is equivocal), with textbook issues and Yasukuni as continuing disputes; there are also lines that face historical facts directly, such as the Ienaga Saburo lawsuits and veterans' testimony movements -- both sides are recorded.
• Third parties: The West long underestimated the China theater ("forgotten ally" -- Rana Mitter's book title says this directly), with historiography reappraising it in recent years; Soviet/Russian narratives emphasize the single episode of Soviet entry into the war in 1945.

Disputes and Sensitivities

• The dispute over the contributions of the two battlefields: behind the war of numbers (enemy losses inflicted, numbers pinned down) lies a struggle over orthodoxy, and the statistical bases of both sides are placed side by side.
• The chain of responsibility for "non-resistance" and the appeasement phase (Tanggu, He–Umezu): each case is handled in the separate articles.
• The Wang Jingwei puppet regime and the theory of "saving the nation by a roundabout path": puppet regimes appear as matters arise in each engagement.
• Yalta, the Sino-Soviet Treaty (1945.8), and Outer Mongolia: land lost within victory, also inside this stretch of history.
• Divergent statistical bases for casualties and enemy losses inflicted: this is the heaviest numerical battlefield in the entire series, with each side's statistics existing side by side.

Contents (By Area)

This article is divided into five lines: localized resistance, the front-line battlefield, battlefields behind enemy lines, the Yunnan–Burma Theater, and the air-sea and foreign-war-in-China fronts; after 1937 several fronts ran in parallel for a long time, and the articles below are arranged chronologically and may be read by line. The Defense of Nanjing, Lanfeng and Huayuankou, the Battle of Zhejiang–Jiangxi, counter-"mopping-up" operations, the Savage Mountains, and the Bombing of Chongqing are still handled under ※. The Battle of Henan–Hunan–Guangxi is expanded through Central Henan, the Fourth Battle of Changsha, Defense of Hengyang, and Battle of Guilin–Liuzhou.

〔外战在华〕青岛战役（1914）1914.08第一次世界大战打响三个月，日英联军在中国山东攻打德国租借地青岛——欧洲的战争在中国的土地上开辟了亚洲战场。中国宣布中立、划出交战区，然后眼看着日军超出区外占领整条胶济铁路：赶走一个租借者，来了一个更大的。九一八事变1931.09关东军自导的一小段铁轨爆炸，一夜丢掉沈阳，四个多月丢掉整个东北——十四年抗战从这里算起。东北义勇军与抗联（1931–1942）1931.10东北沦陷之后，先有几十万人揭竿而起又星散，后有一支孤军在零下四十度的深山里撑到只剩千余人也不肯放下枪——十四年抗战最孤绝的一线。江桥抗战1931.10九一八之后，马占山在嫩江桥头对日军说了第一个"不"字，打了半个月——"有组织武装抗日第一枪"就从这里说起。一二八淞沪抗战1932.01东北丢了不到半年，日军又在淞沪挑事；十九路军就地迎战，第五军赶来并肩，三十四天打成拉锯——最后以一份捆住中国驻军手脚的停战协定收场，给五年后的淞沪会战埋了伏笔。长城抗战1933.011933 年头五个月，从榆关到热河再到长城各口，中国军队对日军打了一连串局部抵抗——几个口子上打出的血，最后被一纸《塘沽协定》放掉。察哈尔抗战1933.051933 年夏，冯玉祥、吉鸿昌、方振武在张家口拉起一支同盟军，收复多伦——九一八以来中国军队第一次收复失地；随后，这支军队被自己的政府断饷围压，解散。绥远抗战1936.111936 年冬，日本策动伪蒙军西犯绥远，傅作义部先在红格尔图顶住正面，随即雪夜奇袭百灵庙端其老巢——九一八以来少见的干净胜仗；一个月后，西安事变。平津作战1937.071937 年 7 月，从卢沟桥一夜枪声到弃守北平，只隔二十二天——全面抗战以一场仓促混乱的失守开局，而"卢沟桥"三个字，成了动员整个民族的号角。淞沪会战（1937）1937.08中国把全国能打的部队一批批填进上海——七十万对三十万，三个月，伤亡二十五万以上——没守住城，守住了两个更大的东西：日本"三个月解决中国"的时间表作废了，一盘散沙的各省军队第一次在同一条战壕里流血。空战与海军（1937–45 合写）1937.08中国海军以自沉四十几艘船开始它的抗战，中国空军以一代飞行员的性命撑过制空权全失的八年——本篇记的是天上和江上：制空权从全失到反夺的曲线，以及为这条曲线死去的中国、苏联、美国三国飞行员。宝山与罗店1937.09.01宝山，六百人守一座小城三天，全营殉没，营长姚子青的名字连对手的战报都记下了；罗店，一个几条街的小镇反复易手十几次，双方每天往里填上千条命——"血肉磨坊"四个字，就是从这里叫出来的。太原会战（1937）1937.09.11华北最大的一场会战——阎锡山的晋绥军、南下的中央军、改编未久的八路军，三个系统在山西同一张地图上作战：正面忻口顶了二十多天没让日军过去，侧面娘子关一破全线皆溃，11.9 太原陷落；正面会战的硝烟未散，八路军三个师已经留在山西的山里——这一仗的结束，是敌后战场的开幕。平型关大捷1937.09.25八路军出师第一仗——115 师在平型关乔沟的山沟里设伏，把板垣师团的辎重队和汽车队一千余人包了饺子，自身伤亡六百余；仗不大，声浪极大——"皇军不可战胜"的神话在这一天第一次公开破产，这个不对称本身就是档案要记的东西。忻口与娘子关（1937）1937.10.13忻口二十余日，八万守军把板垣师团顶在正面一步未进——华北战场上中国军队最硬的一次阵地战；东线娘子关一破，忻口守得再好也得撤——**"忻口不败，败于娘子关"**：正面顶住、侧翼崩盘，太原的命运不是在忻口前线决定的。阳明堡夜袭1937.10.19忻口正面被日军飞机压得抬不起头的时候，八路军一个团摸进代县阳明堡机场，一夜烧毁飞机二十余架——用步兵打掉一座机场，代价是一位团长和几十名战士。四行仓库1937.10.26四百一十一个人守一座仓库六天，对外号称八百——对岸租界的百万市民和全世界的记者隔苏州河围观。这是一场自觉打给世界看的战斗，台上的士兵却是真的在死；戏散之后，他们被囚四年，团长死在自己人刀下。敌后战场（1937–45）1937.11太原失守之后，八路军三个师化整为零钻进日军占领区的背后，用八年时间把"沦陷区"变成了一张对方啃不动的网——这一线没有大会战，只有几万次小仗、五次"治安强化"、无数被烧掉的村庄，和一亿人口的根据地。南京保卫战（※ 南京大屠杀）1937.12淞沪溃军还没收拢，首都保卫战就开始了——守了八天，撤退令下得仓促，江边没有船；城陷之后的六个星期，三十万人的死难让"南京"这两个字从一座城名变成一个世界性的伤口。徐州会战（1938）1938.01一群被中央长期看不起的"杂牌军"——川军、桂军、西北军、东北军——在李宗仁手里拧成一股，六十万对二十四万，在津浦线枢纽徐州打出了全面抗战的第一场大捷；末了又六十万人整建制跳出合围圈，把一场败退打成了"胜利的撤退"。"杂牌"这两个字，在这一仗里被血洗白了。重庆大轰炸 ※1938.021938 到 1943 年，日军对重庆及大后方城市实施五年战略轰炸，空袭重庆两百余次、投弹两万余枚——第一座被长期无差别轰炸的中国城市，"无差别轰炸"作为暴行形态在此写明。滕县保卫战1938.03.14一支装备最差、没人肯要的川军——第 122 师三千守城之众——在滕县硬顶日军矶谷第 10 师团三天，师长王铭章殉城，全师打光，换来台儿庄布防的时间。神头岭与响堂铺（1938）1938.03.16一个月里两场教科书伏击——神头岭在"不适合设伏"的光秃岭上贴着公路埋了一夜，响堂铺半日烧掉日军汽车一百八十辆；刘伯承的"吸打敌援"，从此成了敌后战争的标准语法。台儿庄大捷1938.03.23孙连仲的西北军在运河边一座寨城里逐屋死顶两周，汤恩伯军团外线兜回来内外夹击，把日军矶谷第 10 师团濑谷支队打退——全面抗战以来正面战场的第一次大捷，举国若狂。兰封会战与花园口（1938）※1938.05徐州突围之后，日军一个师团孤军插到郑州门口，中方十余个师围上去没吃掉，两位军长临阵弃城、一位师长被枪决——围歼战崩盘，最后是用炸开自家黄河大堤的办法把日军挡住的：八十九万人（战后官方口径）死于黄水与随后的饥疫，豫皖苏四十四县赤地十年。这是抗战中"自己人对自己人"的最大单案。武汉会战（1938）1938.06一百一十个师沿长江两岸和大别山麓摆开，挡二十五万溯江而上的日军——打了四个半月，武汉最后还是弃守了，但城是完整交出去的，人是唱着歌退的；从这一仗起，日本"速战速决"四个字彻底作废，战争拖进了它最怕的相持。张鼓峰与诺门罕〔外战在华〕1938.071938 年图们江口的张鼓峰、1939 年哈拉哈河的诺门罕，日苏两国在中国东北的边界上打了两仗——战场在中国主权地图上，中国完全缺席；而诺门罕的炮声改变了太平洋战争的方向，也间接决定了中国战场此后的形态。万家岭大捷（1938）1938.09日军一个师团孤军钻进赣北山地，被薛岳十几万人四面围住打了十几天，空投军官下来接指挥也没能突围——抗战十四年，这是唯一一次**接近**全歼日军一个师团的仗。南昌会战1939.03相持阶段开场的第一场大会战——日军以毒气弹掩护强渡修水、战车集群开路，十天拿下南昌；中方随后反攻月余、攻入城郊而功败垂成，第 29 军军长陈安宝殉国。随枣会战1939.05日军第 11 军扫荡鄂北想抓第五战区主力，李宗仁避实击虚、张自忠率右翼兵团东渡襄河侧击，日军击溃即退——相持阶段会战的标准形态第一次完整亮相：中方说"随枣大捷"，日方说"作战目的完遂"，两边都赢。第一次长沙会战1939.09日军约十万三路扑长沙，薛岳以新墙河—汨罗江—捞刀河逐水线抵抗、破路坚壁清野，日军进至长沙外围吃不下又站不住，自己撤了——中方宣"湘北大捷"，日方称"目的达成"，又一场双方都赢的会战；长沙三守之始。黄土岭之战1939.11.03一发迫击炮弹落在太行山沟的独立小院里，炸死了日军"名将之花"阿部规秀中将——八路军击毙的日军最高将领；东京广播为他哀悼，太行山里打炮的那个班长后来才知道自己打中了谁。桂南会战与昆仑关1939.11.15日军从钦州湾登陆直取南宁，要掐断桂越国际交通线；杜聿明第 5 军——中国唯一的机械化军——硬攻坚三夺昆仑关、击毙敌旅团长中村正雄，惨胜；转过年宾阳一败，昆仑关得而复失，全局仍输——局部大捷、全局失败。冬季攻势1939.121939 年冬，正面战场全线一百多个师同时向日军据点扑过去，从绥远打到桂南——这是十四年抗战里中国军队唯一一次全战线的主动总攻，也是对正面战场进攻能力的一次总测量：测出了决心还在，也测出了攻坚火力的天花板。枣宜会战1940.05日军第 11 军再击鄂北、首陷宜昌——一位集团军总司令战死在自己要求的火线上，长江入川的门户丢了；上将的死与门户的失，是同一场会战。百团大战1940.08一百零五个团在一个夜晚同时扒掉华北的铁路——敌后战场最大的主动进攻，战果辉煌，代价沉重；此后四十年，这场战役自己又打了一场更长的仗：从功勋到罪状再到平反，一场战役的政治生命史比它的军事史还长。反"扫荡"作战（1941–42，含 ※"三光"）1941.01百团大战之后，日军把华北的战争对象从军队改成了社会本身——"三光"扫荡、无人区、囚笼收紧，根据地两年里人口面积近半折损；反"扫荡"不是一场战役，是根据地全体军民在绞杀下活下来的方式。上高会战1941.03相持阶段正面战场罕见的干净胜仗——罗卓英第 19 集团军以王耀武第 74 军为核心预设口袋，把孤军冒进的日军第 34 师团合围在赣北上高外围锦江两岸，重创之，虽未聚歼，但始终掌握战场主动。中条山会战1941.05十八万人守了三年的一座"华北敌后大堡垒"，日军四面一合围，十余日就蒸发了——不是败于敌强，是败于自朽，正面战场的机制病在这里烂出了最全的一份标本。第二次长沙会战1941.091941 年秋，日军第 11 军十万之众再攻长沙，第九战区因指挥电讯被破译、各军逐次投入被各个击破，长沙一度失守数日——事后双方却各自宣布"胜利"，中方叫"第二次长沙大捷"，日方叫"加号作战目的完遂"。第三次长沙会战1941.12太平洋战争爆发后，日军为策应香港作战第三次进攻长沙，薛岳以"天炉战法"诱敌顿兵城下、四面合围，日军弹尽粮竭溃退——珍珠港之后盟军全线惨败中，长沙是第一个胜仗。滇缅战场（1942–45）1942.02为保住最后一条国际输血管，十万中国军队第一次出国作战——首战崩盘，几万人死在野人山的雨林里；两年后卷土重来，在松山、腾冲用尸体换尺土，把公路重新打通。这是抗战唯一的境外战场，也是中国军队第一次以盟军身份打赢的反攻。同古保卫战1942.03中国军队出国后的第一仗——200 师九千人在缅甸平原的一座小城里，顶住日军一个师团十二天，掩护了英军撤退和主力展开，然后在包围圈合拢前夜整建制撤出。首战即示范：这支军队能在异国打出章法。仁安羌大捷1942.04一个团的中国兵，把被围在缅甸油田里的七千多英军连人带车救了出来——中国军队第一次在境外救援盟军成功。被救的英国人里，有人记了一辈子；正史里，这一仗的大小两边吵了几十年。野人山撤退（※）1942.05.01腊戍一丢，十万远征军的归路没了——杜聿明部数万人奉命翻越胡康河谷原始雨林回国，雨季、蚂蟥、瘴气、饥饿，两三个月里死在林子里的人比整个缅甸战役打死的还多。这是"来时之路"上最安静也最惨的一段：敌人几乎没开枪。浙赣会战1942.05.15杜立特空袭东京的 B-25 机组迫降浙江、被中国民众救起——日军为此发动浙赣作战，拔机场、打浙赣线，撤退时沿线投放细菌武器、报复屠村；空袭东京的账单，寄到了浙江平民头上。沁源围困战1942.11日军占了沁源县城，全县八万人在党组织带领下集体搬空——两年半里，占领军守着一座没有人、没有粮、没有水源安全的空城，最后自己撤走了。不放一场大仗而赢的战役，"人民战争"四个字最完整的一次演示。鄂西会战1943.051943 年初夏，日军第 11 军西犯清江流域、兵抵三峡口石牌要塞——拱卫重庆的最后江防门户；胡琏第 11 师守住石牌，日军攻势顿挫后全线回撤，中方称"鄂西大捷"，日方称目的达成后的反转——两种记法并存。缅北反攻（含密支那）1943.10两年前从野人山爬出去的败兵，换上美械、练满一年半，沿着埋过战友的河谷一路打回来——胡康、孟拱、密支那，中国驻印军第一次在火力上压着日军打。从埋骨之地出发的复仇，打成了教科书。常德会战1943.11八千"虎贲"在一座被炸平焚毁的城里守了十六天，城破时只剩两百多人——活着突围出来的师长，回来后被送上了军事法庭。车桥战役1944.031944 年春，新四军第 1 师攻坚车桥、连续打援，一仗俘日军二十四人——敌后战场单役生俘日军的最高纪录；华中敌后从"熬"转入"打"，反攻的春天从苏北这座水乡集镇开始。豫湘桂会战（日方"一号作战"）1944.04日本陆军史上最大规模的进攻，中国正面战场 1938 年以来最大的溃退——全世界都在反攻的那一年，中国在大踏步后退。豫中会战1944.04.17三十七天丢了河南——有些地方的百姓没有帮国军，反而缴了溃兵的枪。民心的账，在军事崩溃之前就已经记满了。腾冲战役1944.05.11翻过四千米的高黎贡山，第 20 集团军把腾冲城打成了逐屋清除的焦土——四十二天巷战，守军全灭，中国收复的第一座有城墙的县城，是一座没剩下几间完整房子的城。城光复三个月，国殇墓园就立起来了：中国人给这场战争建的第一座阵亡将士陵园。第四次长沙会战1944.05.27同一座城，同一位战区司令，同一座"天炉"——前三次炼出了神话，第四次把城烧了进去。松山战役1944.06.04怒江西岸一座山，日军修了两年地下要塞，一千三百守军；中国远征军打了九十五天、伤亡七千七百，最后用三吨炸药把主峰连人带工事掀上了天——十战松山，全歼守敌。中国军队第一次把日军一个据点打到"玉碎"，也第一次见识了什么叫用命换米的攻坚。龙陵战役1944.06.05滇西反攻打得最久的一仗——五个月、三进三出，龙陵是松山和腾冲之间的十字路口，日军援兵一波波从芒市顶上来，远征军一次次攻进城又被顶出去；松山一通、腾冲一落，龙陵才最终易手。会战的胜负，最后是由另外两座山决定的。衡阳保卫战1944.06.23一支没补齐员额的残军一万七千人，在一座疏散一空的城里，把日军先后五个师团挡了四十七天——中国战场历时最长的城市防御战。桂柳会战1944.08一号作战的最后一程——桂林、柳州同日陷落，日军兵锋一度插进贵州独山，离重庆只剩几百公里；交通线"打通"了，战争却已经快输完了。湘西会战（雪峰山会战）1945.041945 年春夏，日军最后一次大规模进攻扑向芷江机场，在雪峰山被中国军队逐点顶住、合围打回——正面战场的最后一次会战，以完胜收官。〔外战在华〕苏军八月风暴（1945）1945.08广岛原爆三天后，一百五十万苏军从三面涌进中国东北，十几天碾碎了关东军——这是在中国土地上进行的最后一场外国间大战役，它结束了十四年占领，也搬空了东北的工厂、决定了内战的第一个棋盘。解放与新麻烦，同一支军队送来。

Sources and Open Questions

Main sources: *Operational History of the Front-Line Battlefield in China's War of Resistance Against Japan* (edited by Guo Rugui and Huang Yuzhang); *History of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japan* (Academy of Military Sciences); the relevant volumes of the Japanese Defense Agency War History Office's *Senshi Sosho*; Rana Mitter, *China's War with Japan, 1937–1945: The Struggle for Survival*; Hans van de Ven, *China at War: Triumph and Tragedy in the Emergence of the New China*; Documentation Platform for the War of Resistance Against Japan and Modern Sino-Japanese Relations (modernhistory.org.cn, the first entry point for this project); JACAR Japanese archives.

Open questions: statistical bases for conscript recruitment and peak troop strength; the composition basis for the 35 million casualties; basis for property-loss figures; the boundaries of the two bases for Japanese losses in China; amounts of Soviet aid and Lend-Lease; documents for the "fourteen-year" counting method; population figures for each atrocity node (to be summarized after the separate articles); the source and wording of the "non-resistance" order; telegrams and documents on the strategic intent of opening the Shanghai battlefield on August 13; original text of Konoe's statement that Japan would "no longer deal with the National Government"; terms of the Trautmann mediation and the course of Chongqing's refusal; resolution text of the Luochuan Conference; schedule and resolution texts of the 1937 Nanjing National Defense Conference; prewar Chinese assessment documents comparing Chinese and Japanese strength; membership and activities of the "Low-Key Club"; materials on Ishiwara Kanji's "non-expansion" argument and military debates.