ABSTRACT
On August 15, 1945, Tokyo announced its surrender. This momentous turn of events changed the political and military landscape of the Chinese mainland overnight. The elimination of Japan as a force on the continent also meant the dissolution of the various puppet governments Tokyo had established in the region. These included Wang Jingwei’s National Government of China, Pu Yi’s Manchukuo, and Prince Teh Wang’s Mongolian Federated Autonomous Government. Their simultaneous collapse created a power vacuum that the GMD and the CCP were both intensely eager to fill – even at the cost of renewing their bitter civil war on the heels of a long Japanese occupation.
