Battle of Changsha (1939)

Battle of Changsha
Part of the Second Sino-Japanese war
Japanese soldiers during the battle of Changsha
Date 17 September – 6 October 1939 14 September - 13 October 1939 Location Changsha and proximity Result Chinese victory
Belligerents
National Revolutionary Army, Military region 9	Imperial Japanese Army
Commanders and leaders
Chen Cheng Xue Yue Guan Linzheng Yang Sen	Yasuji Okamura Masatoshi Saito Ryotaro Nakai Shinichi Fujita Shiro Inaba Shizuichi Tanaka Shigetaro Amakasu
Strength
~240,000 troops in 5 Army Groups, 1 Army, and 7 Corps divided between 30 Divisions in total.	~100,000 troops in the 11th Army split between 6 Divisions, 12 military navy vessels, over 100 aircraft, and more than 100 motor boats.
Casualties and losses
~40,000	40,000+

Battle of Changsha (17 September 1939 – 6 October 1939) was the first of four attempts by Japan to take the city of Changsha (), Hunan (), during the second Sino-Japanese War. It was the first major battle of the war to fall within the time frame of what is widely considered World War II.

The war had reached a stalemate after two years of fighting. Professor Fu Sinian () noted in July 1939 that while the Chinese army had become stronger, the Japanese army had weakened.

On 15 August, the 11th Army came up with the general plans for a campaign south of the Yangtze, ranging 250 kilometers (160 mi) from the Xinjiang River to the Gan River (). In early September, Japanese General Toshizō Nishio of the "Japanese Expeditionary Forces to China" and Lieutenant-General Seishirō Itagaki set out to capture Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan. The Japanese 101st and 106th Divisions were deployed on the western bank of the Gan River in northern Jiangxi (), and the 6th, 3rd, 13th, and 33rd Divisions marched southward from southern Hubei () to northern Hunan.

Two of the primary motivating factors for the Japanese in launching the attack were the signing of a non-aggression pact by their German ally with their Soviet enemy, and their defeat by Soviet forces at Nomonhan. A large attack on the Chinese would therefore restore morale. In addition, Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September gave the Japanese further motivation to crush China's will to fight in order to pave the way for the establishment of Wang Jingwei's () puppet government in Central China ().

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