re: #268 Guanxi88

One other thing to consider is that a strong mountain range is a great fortress provided you can stay well supplied. Red supply lines were always weak; wait them out if need be. And again, Chiang was a guerrilla fighter of some experience; he knew when and where to strike.

If you’re freezing to death on a mountain while your enemy continues his preparations down below, at some point, you have to come down to fight him, or be destroyed when operations are complete. If anything, he’d either lure them down, or, alternately, encourage them to build their defenses there and land a force elsewhere on the mainland.

Well, as you said, if the UN forces decided to let Chiang and his Nationalists come and try to re-take the mainland through Korea, the Soviet Union would have probably stepped in. So I don’t think that supplies would have been a problem.

And I believe the second point only applies with the first. If you build up your fortifications as much as the enemy builds up his attacking force, his force would still be inferior. I mean, look at the Austrians in the Alps druing WW1. Mountain ranges are where armies throw themselves onto swords.