Long March


The Long March was a military retreat by the Chinese Red Army and Chinese Communist Party from advancing Kuomintang forces during the Chinese Civil War, occurring between October 1934 and October 1935. About 100,000 troops retreated from the Jiangxi Soviet and other bases to a new headquarters in Yan'an, Shaanxi, traversing some. About 8,000 troops ultimately survived the Long March.
After the defeat of the Red Army in Chiang Kai-shek's Fifth Encirclement Campaign, on 10 October 1934 the CCP decided to abandon its Jiangxi Soviet and headquarters in Ruijin, Jiangxi. The First Front Red Army of some 86,000 troops headed west, traveling over the rugged terrain of China's western provinces, including eastern Tibet. The Red Army broke several of Chiang's blockades with heavy losses, and by the time it crossed the Xiang River on 1 December had only 36,000 men left. Its leaders, including Comintern military adviser Otto Braun and Moscow-trained Bo Gu, decided to take the troops through Hunan, but Chiang set up defenses to block their way. Mao Zedong, who was not a member of the Politburo, suggested going through Guizhou instead, which was accepted. On New Year's Day 1935, the Red Army crossed the Wu River, and a week later held the Zunyi Conference, which reduced Soviet influence in the Politburo and established Mao's position as de facto leader.
Employing guerrilla warfare, Mao maneuvered to avoid direct confrontation with Chiang's forces and led the Red Army out of encirclements by local warlords. The First Front Army met the Fourth Front Army, led by Zhang Guotao, in Maogong, Sichuan; they disagreed on the route to take to Yan'an and split up. The First Front Army arrived in Yan'an on 19 October 1935 with about 8,000 survivors, ending the Long March. The Fourth Front Army was largely destroyed by Chiang and Ma clique attacks, and its remnants joined the Second Front Army led by He Long. All three armies met on 22 October 1936.
Mao's leadership during the retreat brought him immense prestige and support among many within the otherwise-shattered Communist Party. It marked the beginning of his long ascent to primacy, and would be featured heavily in his public image, through the founding of the People's Republic.

Timeline

1920s–1934

  • 23 July 1921: The Chinese Communist Party is formally founded.
  • 1928: The CCP's Red Army is founded, concentrated in Jiangxi and Fujian.
  • 7 November 1931: The Jiangxi–Fujian Soviet is founded by Mao Zedong and Zhu De in the capital of Ruijin, as the first member of the Chinese Soviet Republic.
  • December 1931: Zhou Enlai arrives in Ruijin, replacing Mao as political commissar of the Red Army.
  • October 1932: At the Ningdu Conference, the majority of Red Army leaders criticize Mao's tactics. Mao is demoted to a figurehead status.
  • 1933: Bo Gu and Otto Braun arrive from the USSR, reorganize the Red Army, and take control of Party affairs. Four successive encirclement campaigns by the Nationalists are defeated.
  • 25 September 1933: The Fifth Encirclement Campaign begins, with Bo and Braun eventually defeated in October 1934.
  • 10 October 1934: The First Red Army, consisting of 130,000 soldiers and civilians led by Bo and Braun, begins the Long March, departing from Yudu in Jiangxi.
  • 30 November–25 December 1934: The First Army fights the Nationalists at the Battle of Xiang River.

    1935

  • 15–17 January: The leadership of Bo and Braun is denounced at the Zunyi Conference. Zhou becomes the most powerful person in the Party, with Mao becoming Zhou's assistant.
  • March: The Fourth Red Army under Zhang Guotao departs from its base on the Sichuan–Shaanxi border.
  • 29 April–9 May: The First Army crosses the Jinsha River, the upper stretches of the Yangtze.
  • 22 May: The Red Army forms an alliance with the Yi people.
  • 29 May: The First Army captures Luding Bridge.
  • June–July: The First and Fourth Armies meet at Maogong. Mao and Zhang disagree on strategy, and the forces ultimately separate.
  • July: The Second Army crosses the Jade Dragon Snow Mountains.
  • August: The First Army crosses the Zoigê Marsh.
  • 16 September: The First Army crosses the Lazikou Pass.
  • 19 October: The First Army arrives in Wuqizhen, a small town 145 kilometers away from Yan'an, ending their Long March.
  • November: Mao is named the Chairman of the Military Commission.
  • 19 November: The Second Red Army under He Long begins its retreat to Yan'an, marching west from Hubei. On the same day, the Fourth Red Army is defeated by Nationalist forces at Baizhang Pass in Sichuan.

    1936

  • 9 October: The Fourth Red Army meets up with the First in Huining, Gansu.
  • 22 October: The Second Red Army meets up with elements of the First in Jiangtaibao, Gansu. This ends the Long March for all forces.

    Background

The Red Army in 1934

The divisions of the Red Army were named according to historical circumstances, not strictly according to the chronological order of their formation. Indeed, early Communist units would often form by defection from existing Kuomintang forces, and they kept their original designations. By the time of the Long March, numerous small units had been organized into three unified Armies: the First, the Second, and the Fourth. To distinguish them from earlier organizational divisions, some translations opt to refer to these same units as the "Front Red Armies", correspondingly numbered.
The First Red Army under the command of Bo Gu and Otto Braun, also known as Li De, formed from the 1st, 3rd, and 5th Army Corps in southern Jiangxi. When several units formed the Fourth Red Army under Zhang Guotao in the Sichuan–Shaanxi border area, no standard naming system yet existed, in part lending to limited central control by the CCP over separate Communist-controlled enclaves. After these first two forces were organized, the Second Red Army was formed in eastern Guizhou by unifying the 2nd Army Corps under Xiao Ke with the 6th Army Corps under He Long. A Third Red Army was briefly led by He in the area straddling the Hunan–Hubei border, but its defeat in 1932 led to its merger with the 6th Army Corps in October 1934. These three armies would maintain their historical designations until the formation of the Second United Front with the National Revolutionary Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War, which nominally integrated the Communist forces into the NRA, forming the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army.

Civil War

The Chinese Communist Party was founded in the year 1921 by Chen Duxiu with Soviet support. The CCP initially collaborated with the nationalist Kuomintang, founded by the revolutionary republican Sun Yat-sen. However, after the unexpected death of Sun in March 1925, a power struggle within the KMT led to the shift in the party's authority to General Chiang Kai-shek, whose Northern Expedition forces succeeded in wresting control of large areas of China from local warlords such as Zhang Zuolin and establishing a unified government in Nanjing in April 1927. Unlike other nationalist leaders, like Wang Jingwei, Chiang was opposed to the idea of continued collaboration with the CCP. The initial period of cooperation to unify China and end the unequal treaties broke up in April 1927 when Chiang Kai-shek struck out against the Communists. Unsuccessful urban insurrections and the suppression of the CCP in Shanghai and other cities drove many party supporters to rural strongholds such as the Jiangxi Soviet, which was organized by Mao Zedong. By 1928, deserters and defecting Kuomintang army units, supplemented by peasants from the Communist rural soviets, formed the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. The ideological confrontation between the CCP and the KMT soon evolved into the first phase of the Chinese Civil War.

The Jiangxi Soviet

By 1930, the Red Army had established the Chinese Soviet Republic in the provinces of Jiangxi and Fujian around the city of Ruijin, including industrial facilities.
After the establishment of the Jiangxi Soviet, Mao's status within the Party declined. In 1930, Mao claimed a need to eliminate alleged KMT spies and Anti-Bolsheviks operating inside the Jiangxi Soviet and began an ideological campaign featuring torture and guilt by association, in order to eliminate his enemies. The campaign continued until the end of 1931, killing approximately 70,000 people and reducing the size of the Red Army from 40,000 to less than 10,000. The de facto leader of the party at the time, Zhou Enlai, originally supported Mao's purges as necessary to eliminate KMT spies. After Zhou arrived in Jiangxi in December 1931, he criticized Mao's campaigns for being directed more against anti-Maoists than legitimate threats to the Party, for the campaign's general senselessness, and for the widespread use of torture to extract confessions. During 1932, following Zhou's efforts to end Mao's ideological persecutions, the campaigns gradually subsided.
In December, of 1931 Zhou replaced Mao Zedong as Secretary of the First Front Army and political commissar of the Red Army. Liu Bocheng, Lin Biao and Peng Dehuai all criticized Mao's tactics at the August 1932 Ningdu Conference. The most senior leaders to support Mao in 1932 were Zhou Enlai, who had become disillusioned with the strategic leadership of other senior leaders in the Party, and Mao's old comrade, Zhu De. Zhou's support was not enough, and Mao was demoted to being a figurehead in the Soviet government, until he regained his position later, during the Long March.

Chiang's Encirclement Campaigns

In early 1933, Bo Gu arrived in Jiangxi with the German Comintern adviser Otto Braun and took control of Party affairs. Zhou at this time, apparently with strong support from Party and military colleagues, reorganized and standardized the Red Army. Under Zhou, Bo, and Braun, the Red Army defeated four attacks by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist troops.
Chiang's fifth campaign was much more difficult to contain. In September 1933, the National Revolutionary Army under Chiang Kai-shek eventually completely encircled Jiangxi, with the advice and tactical assistance of his German adviser, Hans von Seeckt. A fortified perimeter was established by Chiang's forces, and Jiangxi was besieged in an attempt to destroy the Communist forces trapped within. In July 1934, the leaders of the Party, dominated by the "Twenty-Eight Bolsheviks", a militant group formed in Moscow by Wang Ming and Bo Gu, forced Mao from the Politburo of the CCP in Ruijin and placed him briefly under house arrest. Mao was replaced by Zhou Enlai as leader of the military commission.
Chiang's strategy of slowly constructing a series of interlinking blockhouses was successful, and Chiang's army was able to capture several major Communist strongholds within months. Between January and March 1934, the Nationalists advanced slowly. Bo and Braun continued to employ orthodox military tactics, resulting in a series of Kuomintang advances and heavy Communist casualties. In October 1934 KMT troops won a decisive battle and drove deep into the heart of the Central Soviet Area. When Ruijin became exposed to KMT attack, Party leaders faced the choice of either remaining and perishing or of abandoning the base area and attempting to break through the enemy encirclement.
In August 1934, with the Red Army depleted by the prolonged conflict, a spy, Mo Xiong, who had been placed by Zhou Enlai in the KMT army headquarters in Nanchang, brought news that Chiang Kai-shek was preparing a major offensive against the Communist capital, Ruijin. The Communist leadership decided on a strategic retreat to regroup with other Communist units, and to avoid annihilation. The original plan was to link up with the Second Red Army commanded by He Long, thought to be in Hubei to the west and north. Communications between divided groups of the Red Army had been disrupted by the Kuomintang campaign. During the planning to evacuate Jiangxi, the First Red Army was unaware that these other Communist forces were also retreating westward.