Well for those of you who know only a little about this not so well know war. it was fought between the Imperial Japanese and both the Nationalist and Communist Chinese.

Before I get started I have to refute a few myths:

1. The Japanese were not better equipped than the Chinese. At the wars onset, the Nationalist forces were equipped mostly with German weaponry and equipment including armored vehicles. 3 divisions were trained entirely by German officers. On paper is was the best and biggest army in the Far East. When the British and the Americans entered the war, the Nationalists were constantly supplied with Allied weaponry and equipment.

2. The Japanese never intended to conquer all of China. They knew that such a plan was impossible to achieve and even more so to maintain. Indefinite occupation was out of the question entirely.

So why did the Chinese lose so badly? Despite all their on paper advantages: equipment, manpower, terrain, and the preoccupation of the enemy in the Pacific, the Chinese were never able to take a single city back from the Japanese on any occasion.

I mention this because such a war is uncommon to say the least.

One cannot simply brush it off by saying the Chinese are naturally bad at war because only 5 years later the Communist Chinese would drive the most advanced army in the world on the longest land retreat in American military.