The war with Japan was surely the most momentous event in the history of the Republican era in China. During the Nanking decade, Chiang had particularly stressed modernization of the armed forces. Most dramatic of Nationalist China's several acts of wartime mobilization was the removal of population, government, schools and factories from the coastal areas to the interior. General Wedemeyer similarly insisted that ' the Nationalist Government of China, far from being reluctant to fight as pictured by Stilwell and some of his friends among the American correspondents, had shown amazing tenacity and endurance in resisting Japan', whereas 'no communist Chinese forces fought in any of the major engagements of the Sino-Japanese war'. The Ichigo offensive had inflicted terrible losses upon Nationalist China. The demoralization of Nationalist China was largely due to the corrosive effects of inflation and the changing political and military aims of the government.