The German Empire established diplomatic relations with the Republic of China in October 1913. After World War I and the creation of the Weimar Republic, Germany followed a policy of friendship towards China. Nazi Germany and the Nationalist government of the Republic of China maintained bilateral relations between 1933 and 1941. The Chinese Nationalists sought German military and economic support to help them consolidate control over factional warlords and resist Japanese imperialism. Germany sought raw materials such as tungsten and antimony from China.
During the mid-1930s, thousands of Chinese soldiers were trained by German officers and German economic investment made its way into China; however, Joachim von Ribbentrop strongly favored an alliance with Japan over one with China, and starting with the 1936 Anti-Comintern Pact, Germany began to realign its East Asia policy. After Japan invaded China in 1937 and Ribbentrop became Foreign Minister the following year, German aid to China was cut off. In July 1941, Nazi Germany severed relations with Nationalist China and transferred their recognition to the Japanese-controlled Wang Jingwei regime. However, after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, China declared war on Germany.Jewish Virtusl Library - World War II: China's Declaration of War Against Japan, Germany and Italy (December 9, 1941) It was the second Chinese declaration of war against Germany in the 20th century.HISTORY.com - 1917 - China declares war on Germany - "On August 14, 1917, as World War I enters its fourth year, China abandons its neutrality and declares war on Germany"
German Empire and China
Like the other major European powers, the German Empire was initially reluctant to grant recognition to the newly established Republic of China. It eventually did extend recognition in October 1913, after the inauguration of Yuan Shikai as the Republic's first president.
Weimar Republic and China
Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the German Army had been restricted to 100,000 men, and its military-industrial production was greatly reduced. To circumvent the treaty's restrictions, German industrial firms formed partnerships with nations such as the Soviet Union and Argentina to produce weapons and sell them legally. After the death of Yuan Shikai, the Republic of China had descended into a civil war between various warlords. German arms producers began looking to re-establish commercial links with China to tap into its vast market for weapons and military assistance.China Year Book, 1929–1930 pp. 751–753.
The Weimar Republic's Foreign Office favoured a policy of friendship with the Republic of China. In 1921, Germany became the first major European power to sign an equal treaty with China, ending its previous unequal treaty rights. In 1924, the Kuomintang (Nationalists or KMT) party was founded by Sun Yat-sen in Guangzhou. With the support of the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communists, the KMT planned to launch a Northern Expedition to defeat the warlords and unify the Republic. The Nationalists also sought German assistance, and turned to the German-educated Zhu Jiahua. Zhu would go on to arrange almost all of the Sino-German contacts from 1926 to 1944.Sun Yat-sen 1953, p. 298. In 1926, he invited Max Bauer to survey investment possibilities in China, and the next year, Bauer arrived in Guangzhou and was offered a post as Chiang Kai-shek's advisor. Soon, he managed to recruit 46 other German officers to advise and train the National Revolutionary Army while he helped devise a strategy for the Northern Expedition.China's nation building effort, AN Young
In 1928, Bauer returned to Germany to recruit a permanent advisory mission for China's industrialization efforts. However, Bauer was not entirely successful, as many firms hesitated because of China's political instability and because Bauer was a persona non grata for his participation in the 1920 Kapp Putsch. In addition, Germany was still constrained by the Treaty of Versailles, which made direct military investment impossible. The Weimar Foreign Ministry urged neutrality and discouraged the Reichswehr from becoming directly involved with the Chinese government. The same feeling was shared by the German import-export houses for fear that direct government ties would exclude them from profiting as the middleman. After he returned to China, Bauer contracted smallpox, died, and was buried in Shanghai. Sino-German trade slowed between 1930 and 1932 because of the Great Depression.L'Allemagne et la Chine, Journée Industrielle, December 1931, Paris, 1931.
In 1929, Colonel Hermann Kriebel, a Nazi fanatic, became Bauer's deputy. He was a member of the paramilitary Freikorps and had a long history of putschism alongside Hitler in Bavaria. Kriebel was arrogant, contemptuous of the Chinese, and quarreled with Bauer's hand-picked officers. His attitude almost doomed the mission, and Chiang demanded his removal.Kevin Knodell - That One Time the Nazis Helped China Fight Japan - Jan 3, 2014
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, German arms dealer Hans Klein (often rendered “Klein” / 克蘭) became intimately involved in the Sino-German arms-industrial relationship. Klein had emerged in the 1920s as a prominent arms trader during the period when Hans von Seeckt led Germany's post-Versailles secret rearmament efforts, including support for the so-called “Schwarze Reichswehr” (Black Reichswehr). When Germany's strategic investments in the Soviet Union diminished, Klein turned his attention to China's emerging arms market. In autumn 1930, under the patronage of Guangdong warlord Chen Jitang, Klein was introduced to Guangdong authorities via German intermediary Andreas Mayer-Mader, at Seeckt's recommendation. Klein subsequently negotiated contracts for munitions-factory construction in Guangdong, advancing Germany's entry into the Chinese arms-industry sector.
Nazi Germany and China
Economic and military cooperation
In 1933, the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. The Nazis sought to increase cooperation with the Nationalists in order to gain access to Chinese raw materials. Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath very much believed in maintaining Germany's good relations with China and mistrusted the Empire of Japan. The 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria had shown the Chinese leadership the need for military and industrial modernization and they wanted German investment. Moreover, the rapid rise of Nazi Germany's military strength led some Chinese elites to explore fascist ideas. In the 1930s, the Nationalist government sought to adopt some aspects of Nazi Germany mode of governance.
In October 1933, Hans von Seeckt arrived in China to head the German military mission.Liang, Hsi-Huey "China, the Sino-Japanese Conflict and the Munich Crisis" pages 342-369 from The Munich Crisis edited by Erik Goldstein and Igor Lukes, Frank Cass: London, 1999 page 346. At the time of his arrival, Sino-German relations were in a bad state owing to the racial arrogance of the Germans, and Chiang Kai-shek was considering firing the Germans and bringing in a French military mission. In order to save the military mission, Seeckt ordered the German officers to behave with more tact towards the Chinese and to start showing some respect for Chinese sensibilities. In this way, Seeckt saved Germany's position in China. In May 1933, Seeckt arrived in Shanghai to oversee German economic and military involvement in China. He submitted the Denkschrift für Marschall Chiang Kai-shek memorandum outlining his programme for industrialising and militarising China. He called for a small, mobile, and well-equipped force to replace the massive but under-trained army. In addition, he advocated for the army to be the "foundation of ruling power" and for military power to rest in qualitative superiority derived from qualified officers. Von Seeckt suggested that the first step toward achieving this framework was the uniform training and consolidation of the Chinese military under Chiang's command and that the entire military system must be subordinated into a centralised hierarchy. Toward that goal, von Seeckt proposed the formation of a "training brigade" to replace the German eliteheer, which would train other units, with its officer corps selected from strict military placements.
Since 1932, the Chinese Ministry of Transportation and Communications further advanced pro-German initiatives by purchasing aircraft from Germany and sending Chinese technicians for training there. Coordination with the German side was largely conducted through Minister Zhu Jiahua, who invited General Hans von Seeckt to visit China and personally served as interpreter during Seeckt's meetings with Chiang Kai-shek. In the mid-1930s, a number of Sino-German cultural exchange institutions, such as the Chinese Academic Friendship Association (中國學院聯誼會) and the Sino-German Cultural and Economic Association, were established under Zhu's direction to strengthen bilateral academic and industrial cooperation.
In January 1934, the Handelsgesellschaft für industrielle Produkte, or Hapro, was created to unify all German industrial interests in China. The most important industrial project from the Sino-German cooperation was the 1936 Three-Year Plan, which was administered by the Chinese government's National Resources Commission and the Hapro corporation. It had several basic components, such as the monopolisation of all operations of tungsten and antimony, the construction of the central steel and machine works in Hubei, Hunan, and Sichuan, and the development of power plants and chemical factories. Cost overruns for the projects were partly offset by the fact that the price of tungsten had more than doubled between 1932 and 1936.Chu 1943, p. 145. Germany also extended a 100-million Reichsmark line of credit to the Kuomintang. The Three-Year Plan introduced a class of technocrats to run the state-owned projects.
The Chinese military was an important customer for German arms manufacturers and heavy industry. Chinese exports to Germany, including deliveries of tin and tungsten, were also seen as vital. At its height, Germany accounted for 17% of China's foreign trade and China was the largest trade partner for German businesses in Asia.
Germany sent military advisers such as Alexander von Falkenhausen to China to help the KMT government reform its armed forces. Von Seeckt's original plans called for a drastic reduction of the military to 60 elite divisions, which would be modeled on the Wehrmacht, but the factions that would be axed remained an open question. As a whole, the officer corps trained by the Whampoa Academy until 1927 had been only marginally better in quality than the warlord armies, but remained loyal to Chiang. Von Falkenhausen believed that it was too optimistic to expect the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) to be supported by armor and heavy artillery because the industry lacked the necessary capacity. Thus, he emphasized the creation of a mobile force that relied on small arms and would be adept with infiltration tactics, like those of the German stormtroopers around the end of World War I.