After WWI, both Germany and China were in the same boat under the exclusion of the Allied Powers. So there was considerable economic, military and political cooperation after the war. (Germany was more concerned about obtaining resources from China), so when Japan attacked China strongly, it acquiesced to Japan's move because he didn't care who controlled China as long as its interests were not lost (both China and Japan were its allies) This also led to China's inclination towards the USSR, and fought against Japan with the support of the USSR. Germany also began to support Japan because both Germany and Japan hated the Soviet Union.
The specific information is as follows: Hitler's rise to power slowly dissolved the last ties between China and Germany.
I. Sino-German Relations in the Early Weimar*** and State Era
The defeat of the First World War from 1914 to 1918 caused Germany to fall from its position as one of the world's leading powers, with its overseas markets and colonies stripped away by the victorious powers led by Britain and France, and its international standing in tatters. The Chinese representatives did not sign the Peace of Versailles because the Paris Peace Conference transferred all German rights and interests in Shandong, China, to Japan despite the strong opposition of the Chinese representatives. Dissatisfaction with the Paris Peace Conference and the Versailles Peace Treaty led Germany to actively seek proximity with China, the United States and other non-Versailles Peace Treaty countries in an attempt to rebuild its former status as a great power. in July 1920, the former German Consul General in China, von Borch, as a representative of the government, came to China to negotiate with the Chinese government on the resumption of diplomatic relations and the re-establishment of trade relations between the two countries. On May 20, 1921, the two countries formally signed the Sino-German Entente, announcing the resumption of friendly and commercial relations on the basis of equality and mutual benefit; Germany gave up its consular jurisdiction in China and recognized China's tariff autonomy. principle.
Driven by the improvement of political relations, Sino-German economic and trade relations soon recovered and developed considerably. By 1925, German imports from China amounted to 229 million marks, far exceeding the pre-war level, while exports amounted to 118 million marks, restoring them to 90% of the pre-war level, with the arms trade being the most prosperous. According to Chinese customs statistics, in 1925 alone, the total value of arms shipped to China by German ships amounted to 13 million marks, more than half of the value of all foreign arms imports, and this does not include smuggling and re-exports through third countries. German companies were also awarded contracts for the construction of a number of arsenals; the Kunming Arsenal in Yunnan and the Shenyang Chemical Arsenal were both designed and built by the Germans.
In September 1921, Germany proposed to reopen its consulate in Guangzhou. Vice Consul Wilhelm Wagner paid a courtesy call on Sun Yat-sen on Sept. 25. During the conversation, Sun raised the issue of cooperation with Germany in the hope of gaining German recognition and support. Although Wagner held a favorable view of Sun Yat-sen and was very interested in his idea of alliance with Germany, he argued, "In view of the whole, and especially in view of the relations with the Peking government, this we have to deal with appropriately." Bursi also believed that only unofficial relations could be maintained with Sun Yat-sen's southern regime. Germany also said it would not give "official support" to Sun's recruitment of advisers and lobbying of German entrepreneurs in Germany so as not to cause "misunderstandings with the government in Peking, which we have already recognized".
Between 1921 and 1924, Dr. Sun actively joined forces with the Germans, sending three representatives to Germany to lobby, and repeatedly negotiating with the three German consuls in Guangdong, but with little success. The German government never accepted Sun's initiative, but only provided limited support for his economic vision within an unofficial framework. Although Dr. Sun's idea of alliance with Germany was not realized, his idea "set the tone for the development of relations with Germany by the national government under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, and had a far-reaching historical impact".
Second, Sino-German relations in the 1930s
On February 28, 1925, the first president of Weimar Germany, Albert died of an illness. on April 26, Hindenburg was elected the second president of the Weimar ****** State. on August 17, 1928, Weimar Germany announced that it would recognize the Nanjing National Government. The relationship between China and Germany also entered a new period.
In November 1928, Max Bauer, a former colonel in the German army, led a group of 25 advisers he had organized to Nanking, where he was privately employed by Chiang Kai-shek's government to assist in China's military modernization. The 25-member group included 10 military training officers, 6 ordnance logistics officers, 4 police experts, and 5 specialists in economics, municipal administration, railroad management, medicine, and chemicals to "help Chiang Kai-shek eliminate the warlords and turn China into a German market".
From 1928, when Bauer came to China to 1938, when Hitler's Germany withdrew all of its advisers in China, a total of 135 German military advisers were officially recognized and sent to serve in the Nanking National Government, not including eight civilian advisers and many provincial military and technical experts. Most of these German military advisers were officers of the Prussian Imperial Army and later of the Wehrmacht Staff Headquarters, and their activities in China were closely connected with the interests of the German economic and political leading groups, and played a very important role in the process of regaining the economic and political influence in China which Germany had lost since the Versailles Peace Treaty.
Before Hitler came to power in January 1933, Germany's policy toward China lacked a clear guiding ideology and strategic objectives, and thus the activities of the Military Advisory Group at that time were not fully integrated with the Wehrmacht or the official policy of the German government. The first military adviser, Colonel Bauer, played a great role in the modernization of the army of the Nationalist Government. At his suggestion, the Nanjing Government set up an Instructional Corps with an infantry unit, a heavy weapons unit, an artillery unit and a communications unit, equipped with German weapons and trained under the guidance of German advisers, which was the embryo of a multi-service modernized unit in the Nationalist Army. The instructional unit was initially established as a regiment, expanded into an instructional division in 1930, and then expanded into the 87th, 88th and 36th divisions. Not only the weapons, but even the drums and bugles of the military band were provided by Germany, making it the backbone of Chiang Kai-shek's direct troops.
Bauer not only contributed to the modernization of the Kuomintang army, but also played an important role in the growth of trade in the German steel and chemical industries with China. Economic and technical experts occupied a central position in the advisory group led by Bauer. In his "Proposal for the Organization of the Chinese Army" to Chiang Kai-shek, he affirmed that China "must first have a complete arms industry, transportation, telecommunications, postal services, and even municipal and sanitary facilities, and that in the absence of any of these, the building of a modernized national army will be hampered". Bauer used his consultant status to hold direct talks with representatives of famous companies in China, such as the German Farben Chemical Company and the Steve Stauff Syndicate, to discuss the expansion of trade between the two countries and to make the German monopoly consortiums contact Chiang Kai-shek directly In March 1929, Duisberg, chairman of the Association of German Industrialists and president of the Farben Company, came to visit China to hold talks with Chiang Kai-shek and indicated that the German industrialists would be happy to have direct contact with the Nanking Government. industry was happy to deal directly with the Nanking government and *** with the development of trade between the two countries. At Bauer's suggestion and accompanied by Chiang Kai-shek sent a Chinese delegation headed by Chen Yi, specializing in political, military and military-industrial technology in Germany, and with Krupp, Siemens and other large companies signed a contract of intent to buy nearly 1 million deutsche marks worth of weapons and munitions.
The economic crisis that began in October 1929 broke out first in the United States. The United States became the world's largest creditor by lending large sums of money to the cash-strapped European countries, which were in desperate need of economic revitalization after the war. In order to cope with the economic crisis, the United States began to withdraw funds from Europe, thus shaking the economic foundation of Europe. The economic crisis in Europe broke out in May 1931 in Austria and Germany, which relied heavily on American funds. Before that, Germany and Austria had proposed to build a German-Austrian customs union to **** cope with the economic crisis, but was firmly opposed by France. on May 11, the Austrian Credit Bank, which accounted for nearly 2/3 of the Austrian banking business, declared bankruptcy; on July 13, one of the three major banks in Germany, the Darmstadt Bank, declared its closure, and by August 5, all the banks in Germany were closed down. Germany's domestic workers' movement, the Weimar regime was shaky, extreme political forces have come on the scene, Brüning's government by inflation, financial collapse and large-scale unemployment and other social problems stirred up a lot of anxiety, this period of Germany's foreign policy with a more obvious "conservative cooperation, low-profile participation," the color, in the Japanese launched the On October 10, Bernhard Wilhelm von Bülow, the German Foreign Minister, told Gerhard von Mutius, the German Minister to the League of Nations, in Geneva that "Germany's attitude towards the Manchurian Incident should in principle be within the framework of the Washington Convention of the Nine Powers, and should be kept to a minimum. Convention and should be involved as little as possible."
From the time of President Albert, Weimar Germany had been adopting a policy of equidistant diplomacy toward China and Japan, unwilling to offend either of them in order to ensure that its own interests were maximized. Although the German government was careful to maintain neutrality in international public opinion after the September 18th Incident, and even oriented public support for China towards neutrality through public opinion, at the beginning of 1932, major Japanese newspapers fiercely attacked the German military advisers in China for taking part in the Chinese side's military operations against the January 28th War, which made it necessary for the German government to curry favor with Japan diplomatically.
March 1, 1932, by the Japanese Kwantung Army fostered the establishment of the pseudo-Manchukuo, the Japanese ambassador to Germany, Kohata Youyoshi visited the German Foreign Ministry several times, on different occasions proposed the establishment of the two countries in Manchuria and the establishment of memorials and cooperative relations. The German side said that it accepted the proposal, but "would never take any special initiative". Obviously, Germany did not want to offend China, a more economically advantageous Asian partner, by recognizing the issue of pseudo-Manchu. In 1930, Germany's trade with China and Japan totaled 347.5 million Reichsmarks and 234 million Reichsmarks, respectively, and Germany's oil and fat industry depended almost entirely on soybean exports from Manchuria, China. recognize pseudo-manchu, and Neurath pushed for a reply only after the Foreign Ministry had conferred, but the matter was dropped with the fall of the Baben Cabinet.
In January 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as chancellor and Baben as vice-chancellor to form a new cabinet. With Hitler's rise to power, Germany's domestic and foreign affairs took a new turn. In his autobiographical work Mein Kampf, Hitler proposed that in order to fight for the "living space", land and resources for the Aryan nation, Germany had to expand outwardly, and the means of expansion was foreign wars. Undoubtedly, a war of attrition without strategic concepts as in World War I was quite unfavorable to Germany, and Hitler devised a new and different type of war - the Blitzkrieg. Such a war entailed two things: rapid rearmament and isolation of potential enemy countries one by one, using temporary military superiority to conduct a short-term war against the enemy on a case-by-case basis. Such a war would expand Germany's population and industrial base, allow the German military to gain useful experience, and scare potential enemy nations into submission, thereby strengthening Germany for the next such war.
Both China and Japan had a place in Hitler's strategic vision. China, as Germany's largest trading partner and supplier of raw materials in the Far East, was the source of many of Germany's important strategic resources such as tungsten, antimony, manganese, lead, soybeans, and cotton, and was also an important market for German industrial products, while Germany could derive from its trade with China the large amount of foreign exchange it lacked. Japan, on the other hand, was an important bargaining chip for Germany to hold back the Soviet Union and attract Britain's attention in the Far East, and the dissatisfaction of both Germany and Japan with the Versailles-Washington system **** made Japan a potential ally of Germany. In addition, Hitler's diplomatic center of gravity was mainly in Europe, so as long as China and Japan maintained peaceful relations, Germany's relations with these two countries did not pose a problem. Therefore, in the early days of Hitler's power, Germany still practiced the Weimar government's principle of "equidistant diplomacy" towards China and Japan.
In the summer of 1933, Hans von Seeckt, a former German army general, visited China, and then in April of the following year, he was employed by the national government in Nanjing as the general adviser on the situation in Chiang Kai-shek's government. Seeckt was the Chief of Staff and Commander-in-Chief of the German Wehrmacht, which he blessed and reorganized when the Peace of Versailles stipulated that Germany could only keep 100,000 troops, earning him the title "Father of the Wehrmacht". Many people, including Churchill, believed that post-war German disarmament was in fact a danger to European security because it largely contributed to the elitism of the German army, and Sackett's role in this was not to be underestimated.
Seckert, who was close to the upper echelons of Germany's military, political and economic circles, left the reorganization of the Chinese army to his own deputy, Alexander von Falkenhausen, and personally devoted himself to the military industry and the arms trade, trumpeting the role of weapons in the Army Reform Proposal that he delivered to Chiang Kai-shek on June 30, 1933 In May 1934, Chiang Kai-shek made the decision to purchase only German arms in the future, and authorized Sekert to consult with Yu Dawei, the director of the Ministry of Military Administration's Department of Engineers, to decide on the type and quantity of arms to be purchased. He authorized Sekert to consult with Yu Dawei, Director of the Ministry of Military Affairs, to determine the types and quantities of arms to be purchased. Soon after, Sackett introduced Hans Klein, a German arms dealer in China, to Chiang Kai-shek, intending to make him the executor of the plan to build up an army in China.
On January 24, 1934, Klein founded the private limited company Hapro (Hapro, the German abbreviation for Handelsgesellschaft Für Industrielle Produkte) in Berlin with a total capital of 200,000 marks. With a total capital of DM 200,000 and a sole proprietorship of DM 190,000, Hapro's main trade objective was to develop the arms and strategic raw materials trade with China. Before negotiating with Chiang Kai-shek's government on the issue of cooperation, Crane had already signed the "Sino-German Contract for the Exchange of Goods" and the "Contract for the Construction of the Buildings of the Arsenal at Yi Jiangkou" with Chen Jitang, the warlord of the Yue faction, on the issue of arms trade, which were valued at 5,490,800 Hong Kong Dollars and 657,000 Hong Kong Dollars, respectively. As a matter of fact, the establishment of the Hapu Building Company was secretly supported by the German Ministry of War and Politics (later renamed the Ministry of Defense). An indirect evidence of this is that with the signing of the German-Chinese Credit and Loan Contract, Crane and his partners transferred all the shares of Hapu Lou to the Ministry of Military Affairs, and in the same year, Germany surpassed Britain, France and Japan to become China's second largest trading partner.
August 23, after four weeks of negotiations, Crane and the national government representative Kong Xiangxi in Nanjing secretly signed the "Chinese agricultural and mineral products and German industrial products swap implementation contract", began to Germany's industrial products, weapons and equipment, machinery and equipment, technology, personnel, etc. in exchange for China's agricultural and mineral products and raw materials barter trade. However, as the secret agreement between Crane and Chen Jitang aroused Chiang Kai-shek's dissatisfaction, at the end of March 1936, after the German Military Department stopped the delivery of armaments to the Guangdong authorities, the Chinese and German sides signed the "German-Chinese Credit Loan Contract" in Berlin on April 8, in which the German government gave the Chinese government a loan of 100 million marks on credit of goods, and it was stipulated that the German government would hand over the 100 million loan to the Deutsche Bank and the Central Bank of China to carry out the payment operations of the goods swap between the two sides. The German government gave the Chinese government a loan of 100 million marks on credit of goods and stipulated that the German government would assign the 100 million loan to the Deutsche Bank and the Central Bank of China to carry out the payment operations of the exchange of goods between the two sides. From then on, the Nanjing national government by the resource committee to raise tungsten, antimony and other minerals, the central trust bureau to raise tung oil, raw silk and other agricultural products, in exchange for a large number of German arms, arsenals and heavy industrial equipment.
The significance of the Sino-German barter trade for Germany was far-reaching. Within the post-World War I borders, coal was the only raw material for war that Germany could be self-sufficient in, and 85 percent of the oil, 80 percent of the iron ore, 70 percent of the copper, 90 percent of the tin, 95 percent of the nickel, 98~99 percent of the tungsten and antimony, and 20 percent of the grain came from abroad. With Germany's successive launch of the International Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations in October 1933, Hitler's intention to expand his army in preparation for war became increasingly urgent, and in order to give Germany the kind of economic endurance it lacked in World War I, it was necessary to carry out a planned, long-term mobilization of the country's productive capacity and to cope with a sudden, protracted, and "total "The formalization of the Contract for the Implementation of the Exchange of Chinese Agricultural and Mineral Products for German Industrial Products served this strategic purpose for Germany. After the signing of the contract, Hitler sent a letter to Chiang Kai-shek through Sekert to convey his thanks, the German Minister of Economics Schacht, Minister of Defense Blomberg also wrote to Chiang Kai-shek and others to express congratulations. Since then, Sino-German relations entered the so-called "honeymoon period". The British newspaper commented: "Compared with the relations between the other powers, China and Germany are closer, and the Germans dominate both economically and politically, as well as militarily." In the late 1930s, an official of the British Foreign Office commented on Germany's foreign trade:
Germany bought a thousand tons of iron sand from Sweden on a billing basis to refine five hundred tons of iron. Germany bought ten tons of tungsten from China on barter and twenty tons of chromium sand from Turkey on account. Germany used these materials, bought without spending a cent of cash, to make 500 tons of high-quality steel. Germany built (say) ten tanks, two turbines, and a hundred typewriters from its own auxiliary raw materials, fuel, electricity, labor, and skill. The tanks were put into active service; and Germany (for it had almost enough of them) turned out four tanks of last year's model for export. Two of them were sold to China and two to Turkey; the Germans not only paid off the price of tungsten and chromium, but also received in exchange ten large bales of cotton and one hundred tons of soybeans. The turbines were sold to Sweden, and after offsetting the price of the iron sands there was a surplus. Ninety-nine typewriters were sold in England for two hundred pounds sterling, which was used to purchase smaller quantities of raw materials, such as coconuts, which could not be purchased by book-entry settlement. Thus the German Army obtained ten brand-new tanks to replace four old and obsolete ones, and German industry obtained ten large bales of cotton, one hundred tons of soybeans, one typewriter (in hard times, trying to be economical), and two hundred pounds sterling of coconuts, and bought it all without losing any foreign exchange. True, Germany would not need to enjoy Turkish fudge and Chinese bird's-nest soup, for Turkish cotton and Chinese tungsten are more important to Germany. But it added six tanks that would give a thousand workers two months' work; and since Sweden had to charge for the iron sands, it had to buy German turbines, when Sweden might have preferred to buy British ones.
On the other hand, the close cooperation and dealings between the Chinese and German governments during this period also contributed to China's preparations for the war. The German military advisory missions helped the national government to consolidate and build up its army, accelerated the pace of its military modernization, enhanced the military quality of the nationalist army, and improved its comprehensive combat capability. By the eve of the outbreak of the War of Resistance, about 300,000 troops had been trained and rearmed by the German advisers - the vast majority of them were Chiang Kai-shek's direct subordinate troops, among which the "Germantrained Chinese Central Army" (《德式中央军》) organized under the advice of Sackett was the most important. The remaining 176 divisions and regiments were mostly composed of light infantry and armed only with rifles, light machine guns and mortars. In the War of Resistance against Japan, these new-style troops formed the main force and backbone of the front battlefield of the War of Resistance against Japan.
In addition, the German military advisers directly put forward a lot of useful strategic and tactical proposals for China's resistance to Japan, and partially participated in China's war against Japan. In particular, Admiral Alexander von Falkenhausen made an outstanding contribution to the war against Japan. on August 20, 1935, despite the opposition of the German Foreign Ministry, he specially wrote "Falkenhausen's proposals on the countermeasures to cope with the current situation" to Chiang Kai-shek, and made a number of proposals for China's resistance to Japan. Even when the German government ordered all German advisers in China to return home in May 1938, he refused to obey until Hitler's government held the safety of his family in Germany hostage before leaving China in July of the same year.
Finally, Germany exported a large number of arms to China, to a certain extent, to improve the backwardness of China's weapons and equipment, and enhance China's strength in the war; Germany also for the construction of China's heavy industry and national defense industry to provide machinery and equipment, technology, capital and other aspects of support for China's protracted war of resistance to lay a certain material foundation.
Three, the transformation of Sino-German relations after the July 7 Incident
November 1936, Germany and Japan signed the "International Agreement on Anti-***production," which once caused the Chinese government's strong concern and uneasiness, Chiang Kai-shek in a variety of ways and channels repeatedly to Germany to ask the German-Japanese agreement on the relationship between the secret terms of China and the German side of the German side of the guarantee that the German-Japanese agreement is only anti-***production, will not affect the Sino-German war, and the German side of the German agreement on the anti-Soviet nature of the anti-Soviet nature of the German-Japanese agreement. anti-Soviet nature and would not affect Sino-German trade and cooperative relations.On December 28, 1936, German Defense Minister Blomberg also sent a special telegram to Chiang Kai-shek congratulating him on the peaceful settlement of the Xi'an Incident.When Kung, during his visit to Germany in June 1937, denied the existence of a ****productivist menace in China to Hitler, Hitler indicated to the former that there were only commercial relations between Germany and China, and that Germany had no political-territorial purposes, and that Germany's only desire was to conduct commercial activities.
On July 7, 1937, the Japanese created the Lugou Bridge Incident and launched a full-scale war of aggression against China. In this major event, Germany did not get any news from Japan beforehand, and thus felt very confused and shocked, and could not reach agreement on foreign policy for a while. Initially, Germany agreed with Britain and the United States, issued a statement accusing Japan of violating the Non-War Convention, and hoped that China and Japan would negotiate as soon as possible to settle the dispute. 20 July, the German Foreign Ministry publicly declared that it would take a neutral attitude towards the Sino-Japanese war, and privately told Japan that "Germany should not expect to approve of Japan's actions". The German government was also divided on this issue. Broadly speaking, Defense Minister Blomberg, Foreign Minister Nieuwreiter and Economics Minister Schacht were pro-Chinese, Ribbentrop and his "Ribbentrop Office" were warmly pro-Japanese, the Foreign Policy Department's interest was focused only on Afghanistan, the Nazi Party's Foreign Organization Department did not even have a clear inclination or policy on the issue, and Goering was sympathetic to Japan, but had no clear opinion on the issue. G?ring himself was sympathetic to Japan, but interested in the huge profits of trade in China, and therefore indecisive. For his part, Hitler was annoyed that Japan had gone to war with China without warning. Germany was reluctant to support Japan, especially after Chiang Kai-shek had expressed to Germany his firm determination to fight against Japan. Hitler feared that favoring Japan would push China into the arms of the Soviet Union and thus increase the latter's power; and if the Sino-Japanese war turned out to be a protracted one, it would undoubtedly reduce Japan's value to Germany, and it would be possible for the Western Powers and the Soviet Union to act freely in Europe. Moreover, Germany was unwilling to enter into premature conflict with Britain and the United States by supporting Japan, and therefore still hoped that the conflict would be settled by negotiation between the two sides.
On July 22, Japan again proposed to Germany to stop the shipment of arms to China and to withdraw its military advisers there, while the German government said that these trade and employment relationships were in a private capacity and that the government could not stop them. German officials told China that the German-Japanese International Agreement Against * * * Production had nothing to do with the Sino-Japanese conflict.On August 10, Schacht told Kung, who was visiting again, in Berlin that "as long as the Chinese and Japanese ministries formally declare war, all contracts between China and Germany continue to be valid."
August 13, Japan attacked Shanghai, a full-scale conflict between China and Japan is inevitable, Germany began to realize that the policy of reconciliation will not help. But at this time, the German cabinet, Niu Wright, Blomberg and Schacht think that the time is not yet ripe for Germany to start a world war, and it would be premature to openly unite with Japan and Italy to fight against Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union and France. Therefore, Hitler's policy towards China was adjusted, but in the Far East still continued to implement the policy of neutrality. 16 August, Hitler met with Nieuwright and Blomberg, he said that he "insisted in principle on the viewpoint of cooperation with Japan", but will continue to provide weapons to China, by China with the raw materials and foreign exchange Germany urgently needed to pay. According to statistics, about 80 percent of China's arms for the war against Japan at the beginning of the war came from Germany.
August 21, 1927, the Soviet Union took the initiative to conclude the Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact with China, becoming the only country that openly aided China in the early stages of the war against Japan, it gave Chiang Kai-shek's government with materials, technology, manpower and other aspects of anti-Japanese assistance, Chiang Kai-shek expressed a warm welcome and praise for the Soviet government. The proximity of China and the Soviet Union made Hitler extremely annoyed, but also with Japan's view of cooperation more firmly, because "the Far East is not the primary issue, and Germany does not need to risk supporting China and offending Japan". September 3, Kong Xiangxi wrote directly to Hitler, for the conclusion of the Soviet Union and the non-aggression pact for the explanation of the move is only China's anti-Japanese strategy needs, China will never fall to the anti-Japanese strategy, and China will never fall to the anti-Japanese strategy. The need for this move is only China's anti-Japanese strategy, China will never fall to ****anism. However, this explanation failed to impress Hitler.
With the protracted war, Japan was forced by the situation and the pressure of international public opinion, attempted to use diplomatic means to bet on China. 21 October, Japan's Foreign Minister Hiroki Hirota met with Germany's ambassador to Japan, Dixon, and expressed his willingness to negotiate with China, and hoped that Germany could use its good offices. Thus, from late October 1937 to mid-January 1938, the German ambassador to China, Toddmann, traveled between China and Japan, acting as a "messenger". During the mediation period, Japan put forward the so-called peace conditions three times, but at the same time did not relax its military aggression against China. Moreover, the peace conditions put forward by the Japanese Government, such as the autonomy of Inner Mongolia, the specialization of North China, and the transfer of Shanghai to the control of the International Committee of the Red Cross, seriously undermined China's sovereignty. The German government not only did not express any objection, but also persuaded China to accept them; on November 26-29, 1937, Toddmann met with Kung Hsiang-hsi three times in a row to persuade China to accept Japan's conditions, and on December 2, he met with Chiang Kai-shek in person to persuade him to surrender. On the other hand, Germany also sent an envoy to Japan to remind Japan not to take too hasty action, in order to cooperate with Toddman's persuasion.
But Japan's attitude changed accordingly with its victory on the battlefield. Their initial offer was unexpectedly agreed to by Chiang Kai-shek on December 3 as a basis for negotiation after the fall of Shanghai, but further victories at Nanking prompted Japan to go even further and offer terms unacceptable to China. The specific terms were as follows:
The first was that China should give up its policy of tolerance*** and resistance to the Japanese "Manchus", cooperate with the Japanese "Manchus", and ***share the policy of preventing ****.
The second one is the establishment of unarmed zones and the setting up of special regimes in the necessary areas.
Third, close economic agreements between Japan, Manchuria and China.
Article 4: China to pay necessary compensation to Japan.
Without waiting for any substantive results from further discussions between Toddman and Chiang, the Japanese issued an official statement on Dec. 16 that the negotiations were over. Tokyo formally thanked Germany for its "good offices" and withdrew its recognition of the National Government because Japan had already established a "Provisional Government" in North China and fostered a "New Government" in Nanking. The Japanese had already established a "Provisional Government" in North China and a "Restoration Government" in Nanjing. Since then, Toddman's efforts to mediate in the Sino-Japanese war have virtually failed, although the Japanese side made a pretense of offering a third peace offer in January of the following year.
During the period of Toddman's mediation, Germany's policy had been clearly reversed to Japan, and Hitler hoped to partially satisfy Japan's demands for aggression by suppressing China's great sacrifices, end the Sino-Japanese war, and realize reconciliation between the two countries in order to maintain Germany's Far Eastern interests. During the mediation period, Japan repeatedly put forward to the German side to recognize the pseudo-Manchu, withdrawal of military advisers in China, stop providing military supplies to China and other requirements, the German government did not put into practice.
After the failure of the Toddman mediation, the German government had to make a choice between China and Japan, and this choice was actually not difficult to make. At this time, the situation in the East and West had changed markedly. On the one hand, in the Far East, the Sino-Japanese war would continue. With the expanding war of Japan's invasion of China and the fall of most of China's territory, Germany believed that China's position in the Far East strategy and Germany's economic interests in China had become insignificant, but on the contrary, the further development of economic and political relations with Japan has become more and more important.
On the other hand, in Europe, Hitler convened a "Leaders' Conference" on November 5, 1937, and demanded that the generals of the three armies quickly prepare for war. Since September 1936, when a four-year program of military expansion was introduced, Germany's armaments had grown stronger. Churchill had long noticed this, and in his Memoirs of the Second World War he wrote:
According to figures published in official German material, the main accounts of expenditure from the end of March 1933 to the end of June 1935 were: in 1933, nearly 5 billion marks; in 1934, nearly 8 billion marks; in 1935, nearly 11 billion marks --Total * * * 24 billion marks, or about 2 billion pounds. Look at these figures, the ratio over the three years is 5:8:11. these figures give you quite accurately the progressive picture of expenditure that is often associated with the full development of arms production.
Meanwhile, "friendly relations" with the Franco regime in Spain allowed Hitler to get the strategic raw materials he needed, such as copper, tungsten, lead and manganese, from Spain. Hitler was ready to expand eastward and start a world war, and at this time, the value of Japan was especially important. On February 5, 1938, Hirota, the Japanese Foreign Minister, summoned Dixon and demanded Germany to stop all military cooperation with China or Japan would consider abrogating the International Agreement for the Suppression of **** Production. In response, Hitler made a series of adjustments to the German government in February 1938 - former Defense Minister Blomberg was removed from his post due to his marriage to a woman of "dubious parentage", Hitler became his own Minister of Defense, Brauchitsch became Commander-in-Chief of the Army, and Ribbentrop replaced Nieuwright as Minister of Defense. Ribbentrop replaced Nieuwreiter as Foreign Minister. Thus, the pro-Chinese faction of the German government, led by Blomberg and Nieuwright, were all replaced or sidelined, and Hitler removed all obstacles to his new Far East policy.
On February 23, Germany recognized pseudo-Manchu. on April 22, the German ambassador to China, Toddmann, received instructions from Berlin that he must terminate his work in China and return to Germany at once. on May 3, the German government ordered the imposition of an arms embargo on China. on the 21st, the German government formally ordered all German advisers employed in China to return to the country, or else they would be dealt with as guilty of treason. on July 5, all the German On July 5, all German military advisers left China and returned home. Sino-German cooperation thus declared the end of the basic rupture of relations between the two countries.