Most of these puppet army soldiers were just pitiful people. KMT conscripts were mostly seized from villages by local landlords by force. Mortality during transport was extremely high; to prevent escapes, captives’ shoulder blades were even pierced with wire.
The KMT army was deeply corrupt. Officers embezzled pay and rations on every level, leaving soldiers chronically malnourished and diseased. Millions died annually from non-combat causes, which explains why morale collapsed and so many troops defected to the enemy.
The CCP took a practical approach with captured puppet troops:
those who wanted to go home were given travel money and freed; those who wished to stay were accepted.
After political education and struggle meetings, their combat effectiveness often became even stronger than the KMT’s. Only die-hard reactionaries were eliminated or replaced.
Of course, a small number of puppet officers had formal military training. Once they turned traitor, they were often extremely brutal in combat — even crueler than the Japanese.
The KMT’s behavior was deeply ironic:
they acted tough against traitorous collaborators like Wang Jingwei, even blowing up his tomb;
yet to fight the CCP, they secretly shielded and released Class-A Japanese war criminals condemned at the Tokyo Trials, using them to fight the civil war. This was exactly the same logic as Western countries reusing former Nazi officials in the early Cold War.
It doesn’t have a magazine blocking the vision, and the MG 13 performs really well.
The ZB-26 has too fast a fire rate and the recoil is somewhat hard to control.
If there’s a 30-round or 40-round ZB-26 in the future, I think it would at least feel less underpowered and be more comfortable to use, but balancing it would be pretty difficult.
Thank you for sharing.
This is the type of information that is not typically shared towards the west to protect the nation´s image but is fundamental to understand the historical events.
I started researching Chinese history during the anti-japanese war after I have gained interest from firearms research and I must say that its not easy to find good books or documentaries that are in languages I understand or its not too brief, down plays events too much or glorifies certain aspects too much.
Again, thank you, I have learned something myself today.
No worries. I really enjoy sharing knowledge and history with others.
Feel free to ask me about any obscure Chinese history or facts that you can’t find easily.
With AI available online these days, it’s much more convenient to look things up now.
Why vote Japan, cmon, there are already 3 BR3 MGs there so you can choose between excellent recoil control and lower damage (Type 96), normal damage (Type 99) and normal magazine placement (KE7).
While USSR could use an event or even a premium (due to lack of such squad) Chinese MG squad which would greatly improve MG options since there’s only a couple TKB-336 in the options of “faster sprint MG” there.
May have been noted already but, this is also a reason for Japan to get some version of the ZH weapons in the TT. Could be a good choice for a br4, just with the Japanese twist. In addition to this submission, a few good pieces of equipment that can add non prototype gear higher up then we currently can go. Japan still lacked a br4 semi auto and last I seen the community already found the American counter, both of these could do wonders for Japan.