On the night of September 18, 1931, Zhang Xueliang, the head of the Northeast Supreme Military and Political Department who was in Tianjin, received a phone call from the old lair of the Northeast Army in Shenyang, reporting to him that the Japanese army had suddenly attacked the North Camp and attacked the Northeast Army. Zhang said, wait a minute, I will first ask the chairman of the Nanjing Committee.
The Northeast Army was attacked, so why should we first ask Young Marshal Zhang, who was in Guannei? On the one hand, because he was the supreme person in charge of military and political affairs, he had to report to him; on the other hand, it was also because the headquarters of the Northeast Army did not understand the intentions of the Japanese army, so it was to fight while retreating, and if it was to fight next, it would be a counterattack, and at that time, the main forces of the Northeast Army were following the young marshal in Guannei, helping the chairman of the Nanjing Committee to suppress the warlords of the North China Feng Yuxiang family.
Zhang urgently called Chairman Jiang in Nanjing, reported the general situation, and then began to discuss what to do next. At this time, Chairman Chiang Kai-shek's first consideration was not what to do, but to first judge what the intention of the Japanese army was, whether it was to create friction, or to really drive out the Northeast Army and occupy the entire Northeast. However, for the chairman of the committee, no matter from any aspect, this is not a good opportunity to start an all-out war with the Japanese army.
Because at this time, the chairman of the COMMITTEE had just won the Central Plains War, but there were still warlord forces in Sichuan, Yunnan, Guangxi, Guangdong, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Hebei, Shandong, and other places, and they did not obey the orders of the central authorities. If it were not for the fact that the more than 200,000 Northeast Troops in North China were well-equipped and well-trained, they would have started a long time ago.
Therefore, the chairman's first choice is not to start fighting immediately, but to seek international mediation first. According to the provisions of the Washington Convention after World War I, the great powers in China uphold the principle of balance of power, open doors, and shared benefits, and no one can lift the table. More importantly, if the Northeast Army returns to the northeast at this time, counterattacks the Japanese army, and recovers the northeast, then the situation in north China will not be easy to clean up. At this time, most of chiang kai-shek's central army was used to encircle and suppress the Red Army in Jiangxi, and it could not spare its hands to fight in north China.
In this sense, Zhang Shaoshuai asked Chairman Jiang about his attitude at this time for two purposes. The first layer means, if I come back to the northeast now, do you agree? Because this will involve changes and turbulence in the situation in North China. The second level means that if the Northeast Army returns to the northeast and turns into an all-out war, what kind of support can the chairman of the committee give him, and can it be supported? Because at this time, the gap in strength between China and Japan was obvious, and the Northeast Army did not have the confidence to win the battle.
After pondering, the chairman of the committee weighed the pros and cons, and finally advised Young Marshal Zhang to be patient and to be inside if he wanted to take care of the outside. At least on the surface, the current situation is more favorable to the chairman of the committee; to maintain the current situation at home, as long as the Red Army in Jiangxi can be suppressed, then the chairman's rule in the southeast region will be relatively stable, and then gradually the warlords in various places will be cleaned up, the reunification of the whole country will be completed, and foreign affairs will be discussed again.
Moreover, from the perspective of the chairman of the committee, the northeast actually did not mean much to him. Although the northeast has long been changed to a banner, the northeast has always been completely controlled by Zhang Shaoshuai, and the northeast army has not allowed the central army and the Nanjing government to get involved in the affairs of the northeast. Therefore, whether the northeast is lost or not is actually not a very important matter for the chairman of the committee. Even in the later all-out War of Resistance, the chairman of the committee said that the end of the War of Resistance was to require the Japanese army to return to the state before the July 7 Incident, not before 9/18.
This can also be explained from another angle, although the Nanjing government has been internationally recognized by this time as the only legitimate government in China, ideologically, the Nanjing government does not regard the defense of the whole territory as its responsibility and obligation, at least in those places where there are still warlords who continue to divide, the Nanjing government does not particularly care about its gains and losses. In contrast, the Nanjing government is more concerned about the gains and losses of core interests in the Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai areas.
Politically speaking, even if a certain amount of political pressure is borne because of the loss of the entire northeast territory, this pressure is mainly borne by the Northeast Army and Zhang Shaoshuai, and there will be no excessive blame for the Nanjing government and Chairman Chiang Kai-shek. If Zhang leads the Northeast Army in Guannei to counterattack the northeast, then it may affect the turmoil of the entire domestic situation, and it will directly affect the interests of the Nanjing government. In other words, at this time, Jiang and Zhang were closely related to each other in terms of internal interests, but outside the Guan, they were completely different, and Jiang could not get benefits and did not take responsibility.
Therefore, after the September 18 Incident, the whole territory of northeast China was lost and occupied by the Japanese, although the Nanjing government was also vigorously seeking international arbitration in the international arena, and even applied to the League of Nations for investigation, but this was only one aspect, and Nanjing did not consider military recovery of northeast China. Even at the time of the North China Incident in 1935, Japan instigated the so-called autonomy of North China, because this area was the territory of the Song Zheyuan Department of the Northwest Army, and the Nanjing government only compromised with the Japanese army and did not advocate resolute resistance.
At that time, domestic public opinion did cause relatively great pressure on Jiang Zhang and the two, in order to alleviate the pressure of public opinion, the two finally had to resign at the same time, Jiang immediately returned after a few months, and Zhang traveled to Europe, more than two years later, and returned to China, looking for a place to stay for more than 200,000 northeast troops, and finally entered Shaanxi. Since then, warlords in various places have also sent telegrams to demand resistance against Japan, and even the Gui clan in the southwest corner has demanded that the pro-central Hunan and Hubei provinces give way to the road, and they will go to North China and Northeast China to resist Japan. In fact, this is just talk, not really.