Japan is an island country, and China basically has no more natural resources except water conservancy and forests. At that time, Japan's main market was China, and its main source of foreign exchange was China. After the war with China, they ran out of foreign exchange. With the expansion of the war, the burden of their domestic production and life is getting heavier and heavier. Before the war 1936, Japan's military production only accounted for 2% of national income. In the whole industrial system, the proportion of military production is 9%. After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, the proportion increased continuously, reaching 12% in 1939, 16% in 1940 and 26% in194/kloc. As more and more industrial capacity is put into military production, the production and export of foreign exchange is getting less and less. Moreover, unlike today, Japan can buy products from all over the world, but it was mainly in Southeast Asia. Before the end of 1939, Japan's foreign exchange was upside down and gone. All the strategic resources needed for the war must be imported. At that time, copper, tin, lead, zinc and antimony were all essential resources for military production. Thank God, these strategic resources of China are basically located in the southwest, north and east of China.
1939, the Japanese army spent 2 billion yen on personnel, not counting the expenditure on weapons and ammunition. In Japan at that time, the per capita burden was 20 yen. What kind of concept is this? According to tanaka kakuei's autobiography, his salary before the war was 5 yen a month. There are 5 yen, so as long as you are frugal, your life will be more comfortable. 1939 the price will go up a little, but we can also imagine that 20 yen is not a small sum, not to mention everyone's burden. Due to the overwhelming national strength, Japan's base camp demanded disarmament, with a reduction of150,000 by the end of 1939 and a reduction of 300,000 in 40 years, and finally reached the goal of reducing 400,000 to 500,000. The generals who fought at the front in China believed that at least 800,000 troops should be sent to solve the China problem. Obviously, it is impossible for Japan to solve the China issue. On the contrary, the number of troops in China has always been within the scope of national strength. Chen Cheng and many other people repeatedly asked for more troops, but they all refused, because he knew that once the national strength was exceeded, the economic collapse would be all over.
In addition, the morale of the people is also fading. When the Japanese army occupied Wuhan, the Japanese thought that the war could be over, and they could live in peace in the future and spontaneously took to the streets to celebrate. As a result, more and more people died, and life became more and more difficult. The market was so depressed that even the brothel business could not work. Therefore, people are not so enthusiastic about the news of victory.
1939, Japan also suffered a severe drought. The grain output has been greatly reduced. And foreign exchange is running out. The military wants to use it to import war materials and the cabinet wants to use it to import food. The lawsuit went to the emperor, who said he couldn't bear to watch his subjects starve to death. So hundreds of thousands of tons of flour were imported to tide over the famine. 1939, Japan faces the problem of hunger. Can it fight this battle?
At this time, compared with the situation in China, the stronger the Vietnam War, the more brave it was. China has its own weaknesses. First, the industrial capacity is insufficient, in other words, the equipment is backward, the self-sufficiency rate is low and the national education level is low. Moreover, the quality of military soldiers is poor. Two years before the Anti-Japanese War, for these reasons, the military orders were not unified, and the local strength factions did not listen to the orders to preserve their strength. It is also because they did not learn how to fight against powerful enemies, which led to the fall of a large territory. Due to the loss of relatively rich areas in the east and the obstruction of local power groups in the west, the central government lacks effective control and fiscal and taxation systems. The government has a financial crisis. However, after the National Government retreated to Sichuan, these things were slowly established, and factories retreating from the east slowly resumed production. The government's finances have gradually stabilized.
In the past, when we talked about the economic situation in China during that period, we often used the general language of soaring prices and soaring prices to give people the feeling that the economy was about to collapse. In fact, a careful description is not the case. Before the war, the legal tender in China was about seven or eight yuan a dollar, and 1939 was more than 20 yuan a dollar. After the Yunnan-Myanmar highway was cut off, the French franc fell even faster, and 1940 was still more than 40 yuan a dollar. Even in the most difficult time of the war, China did not stop exporting mineral resources abroad in exchange for foreign exchange to buy war materials that we urgently needed. 194 1 year, we can buy 100 new American fighters at one time, and pay the salaries and bonuses of pilots coming to China in US dollars. Strictly speaking, this level of inflation is not hyperinflation. Compared with the financial collapse of the Soviet Union and South America, it is nothing.
Ground warfare is the strong point of Japanese devils, but after 1939, I repelled many attacks, and there was basically no successful record strategically. China's army also seized the favorable opportunity to launch attacks many times, leaving the Japanese army passive everywhere. Because there are few Japanese people, Japan's occupation of China is limited to a few central cities and transportation lines. Even the safety of traffic lines cannot be guaranteed. Outside these central areas, it is basically China people's world. The Japanese occupied Guangzhou and Fuzhou, while the devils in the city swaggered, while the farmers outside the city paid taxes to the China government. What the Japanese devils can do is to grab something from time to time and sweep it, but they can't achieve long-term effective occupation.
It used to be said that Japan went to war with the United States because the United States imposed an economic blockade on it and banned oil. In fact, even the United States can't help it, and there is no money to buy it. After the Nomenham incident, Japan and the Soviet Union signed the Treaty of Neutrality between Japan and the Soviet Union, and also signed a secret trade treaty. In the treaty, Japan provided rubber and wood to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union provided strategic metals with oil, copper, aluminum and antimony.
This treaty was discovered by China. At that time, China people analyzed that wood was available in Japan, but without rubber, how could Japan provide rubber to the Soviet Union in exchange for strategic metals? The conclusion is simple. The Japanese want to go south to Southeast Asia and seize the strategic resources there. China informed the United States of this information, and the United States paid attention to it.
If 1939 passed, the Japanese were only disappointed in solving the China issue, then 1940 passed, and they felt desperate. At this time, they only have three choices. One is to negotiate with the national government to make a small profit and go home with dignity. This is the language of Chinese mainland now, and Jiang Zhongzheng has not completely ignored it. It is untrue to say that he ignored it. But he never sent official representatives or government officials to contact the Japanese. Moreover, his asking price has never been low, and the lowest asking price is the situation before the Tanggu agreement. Of course, the Japanese refused. The highest asking price was to return to the situation before treaty of shimonoseki, and even North Korea had to quit. The Japanese can't agree. Second, stick to all the strategic resources and let China throw them out like a dead mouse. In this way, they may be defeated before 1945. Another is to capture Nanyang, seize the strategic resources there, and live for two more days before being completely defeated. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, not only was there not much oil, but other strategic metals was running out. They have faced the problem of failure. None of these three roads leads to victory. They chose to fail completely. After occupying Nanyang, they used the resources there to expand their troops crazily. By the end of 1944, the number of army and navy had reached 6.5 million. Almost all the men in this country have joined the army. At this time of China, with the support of the United States, only trained more than five million troops, plus one million troops, only six million.
The arrival of 1942 just put this doomed victory into the timetable. Now I heard that some Japanese extreme right-wingers clamored for a one-on-one fight with China, saying that it was easy to defeat China, but they were not convinced of the defeat that year. It's really stupid