In September 1954, the First Session of the First National People's Congress adopted the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, which adjusted the national defense leadership system, and in addition to deciding to establish the National Defense Commission and the Ministry of National Defense, it abolished a very important post - commander-in-chief of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
This means that the post of commander-in-chief of the People's Liberation Army has officially entered history, and Mr. Zhu, as the only commander-in-chief of the whole army, has also officially bid farewell to the post of commander-in-chief of the three armed services.
Seeing this, it is inevitable that some people will wonder, how many years has Mr. Zhu been the commander-in-chief in his entire military career?
We can divide it into three stages: the period of the Agrarian Revolutionary War, the period of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and the period of the War of Liberation.
On April 28, 1928, the Nanchang uprising led by the first and the autumn harvest uprising led by the first leader met in Jinggangshan, and the two uprising troops were combined into the 4th Army of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, and on May 25, the troops were renamed the 4th Army of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, referred to as the "Red 4th Army", which became the first unit of our party to play the banner of the "Red Army", and it was also the beginning of the "Vermilion Red Army".
At this time, due to the small size of the ranks of the Red Army, it can be seen from the name of the establishment that it is only the establishment of the "army", and naturally there will be no title of "commander-in-chief".
So when exactly did ** begin to be called the commander-in-chief of the Red Army?
This also requires two transitions, one is "Commander Zhu" and the other is "Commander-in-Chief Zhu".
After the rebel troops were reorganized into the Red 4th Army, **, as the head of the Nanchang Uprising Force, served as the first commander of the Red 4th Army, ** as the head of the Autumn Harvest Uprising Force, and served as the first political commissar of the Red 4th Army.
After two or three years of operations, the Red Army units successively smashed the encirclement and suppression of Jiangxi, Guangdong, and Fujian provinces, and changes took place in both the scale of the force and the form of organizational operations, and the most distinctive feature was that in addition to the Red Fourth Army, the Red Fifth Army, the Red Eighth Army, the Red Sixth Army, and the Red 12th Army were formed one after another.
It is against this background that the Red Army, in accordance with the party's decision, combined the Red 4th Army, the Red 6th Army, and the Red 12th Army into the 1st Route Army of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in Changting, Fujian Province, in June 1930, and soon changed its name to the 1st Army of the Red Army, with ** as the commander-in-chief and ** as the political commissar.
At this time, ** officially changed from "Commander Zhu" to "Commander-in-Chief Zhu".
At the same time, the Red 5th Army and the Red 8th Army operating in the Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi region were combined into the Red 3rd Army Corps, with *** as the commander. After two months, according to the military deployment and changes in the battle situation, the Red 1st Army Corps and the Red 3rd Army Corps met in Liuyang, Hunan Province on August 23, and the troops of the two army corps immediately formed the 1st Front Army of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, with ** as the commander-in-chief of the front army, ** as the general political commissar of the front army, and ** as the deputy commander-in-chief.
At this point, the commander-in-chief of the Red 1st Front Army became the first "commander-in-chief" position in his military career, and it also opened the prelude to his tenure as commander-in-chief of the people's army.
However, the commander-in-chief of the front army was not the highest post during the Red Army, and the commander-in-chief of the Red Army was the pinnacle of his tenure during the Red Army.
It has only been 5 days since he served as the commander-in-chief of the Red 1st Front, and on August 28, he was promoted to another level, and was appointed by the party as the commander-in-chief of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, and still served as the commander-in-chief of the Red 1st Front.
Although there have been multiple changes in his position in the army, such as being elected chairman of the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Chinese Soviet Republic (CMC) in November 1931, serving as commander-in-chief in the organization of the General Headquarters of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army and the First Front Army Command established in May 1933, and rebuilding the headquarters of the Red 1st Front Army after the Red Army arrived in northern Shaanxi in November 1935, and no longer concurrently serving as the commander of the Front Army, but ** was the "Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army" The title remained unchanged until the outbreak of the full-scale war of resistance in 1937.
From this, it can be seen that ** served as commander-in-chief during the Red Army for 7 years.
On July 7, 1937, the Lugou Bridge Incident broke out, and the all-out War of Resistance began. According to the agreement reached between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the main forces of the three major fronts of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army were officially incorporated into the National Revolutionary Army on August 25 and were reorganized into the Eighth Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army.
At this time, ** does not have the title of commander-in-chief. Unexpectedly, only half a month later, on September 11, the National Military Committee led by Chiang Kai-shek reorganized the "Route Army" into a "Group Army" according to the battle sequence of the national army, navy and air force, and the Eighth Route Army was naturally also in the process of reform and was renamed the 18th Group Army.
As soon as the number was changed, not only the name changed, but also the title of the chief officer changed, ** from the commander-in-chief of the "Eighth Route Army" to the commander-in-chief of the "18th Group Army", which was the second time he served as the commander-in-chief of the army. In view of the fact that when the Red Army was first reorganized into the Eighth Route Army, the new name was already deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and the shouting was smooth, but the 18th Group Army, which was later changed, felt unfamiliar.
Therefore, in the entire Anti-Japanese War, the number of the Eighth Route Army and the number of the 18th Group Army will be used, in contrast, the number of the Eighth Route Army is more commonly used, and the soldiers are more willing to "make mistakes" to call Mr. Zhu the commander-in-chief of the Eighth Route Army, rather than the "commander-in-chief" of the Eighth Route Army.
In addition, ** also publicly used the identity of "Commander-in-Chief of the Anti-Japanese Army in the Liberated Areas of China", that is, on the day of Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945, Commander-in-Chief Zhu sent a telegram to General Okamura Ninji, Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese Dispatch Army in Japan, in the name of "Commander-in-Chief of the Anti-Japanese Army in the Liberated Areas of China", demanding that the Japanese troops in China immediately surrender to our army.
As soon as the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression ends, does it mean that the post of commander-in-chief of the 18th Army of the National Revolutionary Army held by ** will also come to an end?
This is not the case.
After the war, the two major armed forces led by our party in North China and East China continued to use the names of the 18th Group Army of the National Revolutionary Army and the newly formed 4th Army of the National Revolutionary Army, and the 18th Group Army still served as the headquarters of the whole army, and the commander-in-chief of the 18th Group Army symbolized the significance of the commander-in-chief of the whole army.
Including in March 1946, when General Marshall of the United States led a three-person military team to visit Yan'an, he was received as the commander-in-chief of the 18th Army, and the commander-in-chief of the 18th Army lasted until the beginning of the civil war, a total of nine and a half years.
At the end of June 1946, Chiang Kai-shek ordered a large-scale attack on the liberated areas, and the Liberation War broke out. Three months later, on September 12, "Liberation **" first used the title of "People's Liberation Army", and since then, the name "People's Liberation Army" or "Chinese People's Liberation Army" has appeared in some reports, including on November 28 of that year, when President Zhu was about to celebrate his 60th birthday, our party rarely publicly called ** the commander-in-chief of the People's Liberation Army in his congratulatory speech.
Could it be that at this time, ** has changed from the commander-in-chief of the 18th Group Army of the National Revolutionary Army to the commander-in-chief of the People's Liberation Army?
This is not the case. Because on February 10, 1947 of the following year, when the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Border Region Field Army was established, although ** in the name of the commander-in-chief of the People's Liberation Army, he and the chairman of the Central Revolutionary Military Commission, ***, and the director of the General Political Department of the People's Liberation Army, jointly issued an order, but the document still used the official paper of the "General Headquarters of the Eighteenth Group Army".
This shows that the organization of the "General Headquarters of the Eighteenth Army" still exists, but it is not so important, on the contrary, the name of the People's Liberation Army has gradually become mainstream.
The real abolition of the 18th Group Army of the National Revolutionary Army began on March 24, when the Xinhua News Agency officially used the name "People's Liberation Army Headquarters" for the first time in the form of reporting on the spokesperson of the People's Liberation Army Headquarters, and since then the name of the Headquarters of the 18th Group Army of the National Revolutionary Army has never appeared again.
* From that moment on, he smoothly changed from commander-in-chief of the 18th Group Army of the National Revolutionary Army to commander-in-chief of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, and lasted until the first National People's Congress adopted the first constitution of the Republic in September 1954 and removed the post of commander-in-chief of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
Therefore, the post of commander-in-chief of ** began as commander-in-chief of the Red 1st Front Army in 1930 and ended as commander-in-chief of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in 1954, and he served as commander-in-chief for 24 years.