In October 1934, the Red Army was forced to abandon the Soviet area and began an unprecedented 25,000-mile Long March, but when the Red Army finally came to northern Shaanxi after a year-long arduous journey, it soon fell into a serious existential crisis under the siege of the enemy.
At such a life-and-death juncture, ** successfully took advantage of the contradictions between the enemy, took the initiative to break the blockade, and broke the dilemma by winning foreign aid and forcing the people ** to recognize the status of the Red Army, so that the Chinese revolution finally began a new journey.
In October 1934, the fifth anti-"encirclement and suppression" failure of the Red Army had to be strategically transferred, and Bo Gu and Li De, who held the power of the Red Army at that time, insisted on going to Xiangxi to join the Red 26th Army Corps of ** and Xiao Ke, and as a result, the Red Army lost more than half of its losses in the Battle of Xiangjiang and exposed its intentions.
At the moment of crisis, ** stepped forward and persuaded everyone to march to Guizhou, re-established the leading body at the Zunyi Conference, and restored the command of ***.
However, the Red Army's idea of establishing a base in northern Qianbei soon proved unrealizable, and it could only go north to Sichuan, and when the Red Fourth Front Army met in June 1935, the leaders of the two sides had disagreements over the next goal.
** I had to lead more than 9,000 people of the Red 1st Army to cross the grassland to the north alone, but fortunately, as soon as I walked out of the grassland, the Red Army fought a big victory in Hadapu. Through the capture of the enemy's newspapers, ** learned that there were Red Army troops in northern Shaanxi, so it was decided to lead the Red Army to continue north to settle in northern Shaanxi.
On October 19, 1935, the **Red Army, which had been traveling for 367 days, came to Wuqi Town in northern Shaanxi and established contact with the local Red Army and the local **. At this time, he learned that the Red 25th Army, which originally belonged to the Red Fourth Front Army led by Xu Haidong, arrived in northern Shaanxi before them, and was combined with the local Red Army in northern Shaanxi to form the Red 15th Army.
Immediately, he ordered the release of the wrongfully detained comrades in the name of **, and finally realized the integration of the military and political systems of the **Red Army, the Red Army of Northern Shaanxi and the Red 25th Army through a series of meetings.
However, when the Red Army arrived in northern Shaanxi, it was not only short of food and ammunition, exhausted, but also carried only more than 1,000 silver dollars in gold and silver when the Long March set off. Yang Zhicheng, the Minister of Logistics, reported to *** that at least 2,000 oceans were needed to survive the winter, so he personally wrote to Xu Haidong to borrow 2,500 silver dollars to solve the current problem of eating and dressing.
At that time, the Red 15th Army only had a total of 7,000 silver dollars in military spending, but Xu Haidong did not hesitate to order the Minister of Supply Zha Guozhen to take out 5,000 silver dollars to give to the Red Army.
In addition, although the Red Army established 20 county-level regimes at that time, it actually controlled only 400,000 people, most of the land in northern Shaanxi was very poor, and a few county towns were basically controlled by the enemy.
In December, urgent telegrams from various units were sent to ***'s desk, ** repeatedly saying that the troops had reached the point of eating black beans to satisfy their hunger, and ** also sent a telegram saying that the first army was still short of 2,000 cotton clothes. The Kuomintang authorities stepped up their efforts to impose a tight economic blockade on northern Shaanxi, and the newspapers under their control trumpeted the idea of trapping the Red Army in northern Shaanxi.
Fortunately, at this time, the main force of the Red Fourth Front Army tried to move south to the Chengdu Plain, which diluted Chiang Kai-shek's attention, which gave the Red Army precious time to break the enemy's siege.
When he learned that Xu Haidong had generously sent 5,000 oceans and a batch of newer light machine guns, he was grateful and couldn't help but wonder how the Red 25th Army was still so rich after arriving in northern Shaanxi.
It turned out that the situation of the Red 25th Army from Hubei, Henan and Anhui to northern Shaanxi was also not optimistic, and in the face of the main force of the Northeast Army chasing after them, everyone was ready to fight to the death, but they did not expect that the Northeast Army was defeated outside, and the Red Army seized a large number of ** ammunition from the 109th Division.
In September 1935, the Red 25th Army first defeated two regiments of the 110th Division and one battalion of the 107th Division of the Northeast Army at Laoshan, and then eliminated the 619th Regiment of the 107th Division at Yulin Bridge and captured the regiment commander Gao Fuyuan.
The Red 25th Army, which had won successive battles, not only captured a large number of silver dollars and supplies, but also had more machine guns than the required six machine guns per combat company.
After learning in detail about the experience of the Red 25th Army in fighting with the Northeast Army, he quickly chose the breakthrough point for breaking through the enemy's blockade to improve relations with the Northeast Army. As we all know, the Northeast Army was originally a Feng army created by the Beiyang warlord Zhang Zuolin, and in 1928, Zhang Xueliang's son inherited his father's business and announced that he would be loyal to Nanjing.
However, Chiang Kai-shek only wanted to use Zhang Xueliang and take the opportunity to weaken the Northeast Army, so he was in 9After 18, Zhang Xueliang was deliberately asked to give up the whole army in the Northeast to enter the customs.
After that, Chiang Kai-shek, in disregard of the strong desire of the officers and men of the Northeast Army to return to his hometown, forced him to go to Hubei, Henan, and Anhui to fight the Red Fourth Front Army first, and then entered northern Shaanxi to "encircle and suppress" the Red Army.
** When arguing with the generals of the Red Fourth Front Army about whether it should go north or south, it was clearly pointed out that the Red Army going south would only continue to engage in a senseless civil war with the Kuomintang clique, and only by going north could it take advantage of the mentality of some local warlords who wanted to resist Japan and save the Red Army through political means.
In the face of another offensive launched by Chiang Kai-shek's Northeast Army, ** ordered the Red 1st Army Corps and the Red 15th Army Corps to be combined to restore the name of the Red First Army, and in November the two corps joined forces to annihilate the 109th Division and the 617th Regiment of the 106th Division of the Northeast Army at Zhiluo Town[1].
Zhang Xueliang went to Nanjing in the hope that Chiang Kai-shek could allocate funds to compensate the first soldiers, but learned that Chiang Kai-shek had revoked the numbers of the three divisions of the Northeast Army in the name of reorganizing the army. At the same time that he finally saw Chiang Kai-shek's face only for personal gain, Zhang Xueliang learned that the Communist Party was willing to support the Northeast Army to fight back to his hometown.
So he had to accept the proposal of Gao Fuyuan and others, and decided to contact the Red Army. At the beginning of 1935, the Red 25th Army completely annihilated the 3rd Garrison Brigade of the 17th Route Army in the first battle in southern Shaanxi, so Yang Hucheng, the commander-in-chief of the 17th Route Army, did not want to be an enemy of the increasingly powerful Red Army.
In January 1936, under the coordination of Gao Fuyuan, Zhang Xueliang personally went to Luochuan to meet with Li Kenong, the representative of our party, and the two sides reached an agreement on mutual non-aggression and mutual trade. In order to show his sincerity, Zhang Xueliang gave our army 10,000 silver dollars on the spot, which was a relief to the Red Army, which was extremely difficult at that time.
On the night of April 9, Zhang Xueliang met for the first time in Luochuan After a long night of talking, he was completely impressed by all the propositions of our party for the people.
In the following year, Zhang Xueliang directly lent or gave the Red Army 150,000 oceans and 250,000 legal currency, and also supported the Red Army with 40,000 sets of cotton clothes, bullets and other materials.
In addition, Wang Yizhe, commander of the 67th Army of the Northeast Army, with the acquiescence of Zhang Xueliang, also sent more than 2,000 rifles, nearly 700,000 rounds of ammunition to the Red Army with "surplus materials" and 100,000 yuan of legal currency.
It can be said that Chiang Kai-shek tried in vain to let the Red Army, the Northeast Army, and the 17th Route Army kill each other to achieve his "killing two birds with one stone" arrangement, but because of his eloquence, he made him lift a stone and shoot himself in the foot.
However, contact with the Northeast Army could only be carried out gradually, and the sparse land in northern Shaanxi made it fundamentally difficult for the Red Army to expand its army.
After careful consideration, ** proposed to launch a military campaign to the east to Shanxi, preferably to establish new Soviet districts in five counties in the Luliang Mountains.
At that time, Shanxi was the territory of the warlord Yan Xishan, and the other party had been cultivating the local area for more than ten years to establish a single-handed rule. However, *** pointed out that no matter how Yan Xishan put on a show, he could not hide the fact that he brutally exploited the poor masses as a feudal warlord, and Yan Xishan's Jin army was as large in number as the Northeast Army but weak-willed.
Therefore, if the Eastern Expedition to Shanxi achieves a complete victory, it will be able to open up new rich base areas, and even if it cannot gain a foothold in Shanxi, it will be possible to raise food and money, which will be beneficial to the development of the Red Army.
On January 27, 1936, a military conference was held in the northwest and it was decided to form the Red Army's anti-Japanese vanguard army, with *** as the commander-in-chief.
At 8 p.m. on February 20, the Red Army kicked off its crusade and achieved a complete crossing of the river in only two days.
Although Yan Xishan had taken precautions and built hundreds of miles of river defense positions, the Jin army, which was an expert in the civil war, was completely vulnerable to the Red Army soldiers who had survived a hundred battles.
The Red Army's easy breakthrough of the river defense made Yan Xishan feel a sense of crisis in Taiyuan, and he immediately ordered the four brigades originally stationed in northern Shaanxi to be transferred back to the western Shanxi area, plus one brigade in the western Shanxi area, and marched quickly to encircle and annihilate the Red Army that was encircling Shilou and Zhongyang.
However, due to backward communications and the inability of all departments to unite sincerely, on the 25th, Xu Haidong commanded the Red 15th Army Corps to first severely damage the 203rd Brigade of the Jin Sui Army in Yangyang, and on the 27th, he commanded the Red 1st Army to annihilate most of the Independent Second Brigade of the Jin Sui Army's ace troops.
In early March, after the main force of the Red Army inflicted heavy losses on the three brigades of the Jin Army at Duijiuyu, the main force divided its troops to the south and north to raise funds, and ** commanded a small force to lead the main force of the enemy army in circles in the mountains of western Shanxi.
In late March, the Red 1st Army had occupied Jixian and approached Yuncheng, and the Red 15 Army even reached the Jin Temple on the outskirts of Taiyuan.
For the Red Army's invasion of Shanxi, the happiest person was Chiang Kai-shek, who had been playing political conspiracy, and he quickly ordered Chen Cheng to lead 10 divisions of the ** army to be ready to enter Shanxi at any time.
But when the Red Army's Eastern Crusade began, Yan Xishan really couldn't believe that his nearly 100,000 troops could not help the Red Army, which had only more than 10,000 people, and Chiang Kai-shek was not in a hurry to march, but hoped that when the Jin Army and the Red Army were defeated, he would reap the benefits of the fisherman.
It wasn't until the Red Army successively eliminated or defeated 8 regiments of the Jin Army that Yan Xishan completely panicked, and he didn't care about the previous grievances with Chiang Kai-shek, so he personally ran to Chen Cheng's headquarters and asked the ** army to enter Shanxi immediately to put out the fire.
At this time, Chiang Kai-shek also believed that the time was ripe for the "** of Shanxi", so the ** army and air force first began to bomb the Red Army positions indiscriminately, and then the well-equipped ** army began to enter Shanxi, and ordered Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng's troops to go north to block the Yellow River.
At this time, *** realized that once Yan Xishan and Chiang Kai-shek joined forces, the Red Army would completely fall into passivity, after all, the previous defeat of the ** Red Army in Tucheng and the Red Fourth Front Army in Baizhang Pass were all related to the support of the ** Army Air Force warlord troops.
Seeing that the time was not yet ripe for the establishment of the Red regime in Shanxi, the ** Military Commission officially ordered the Red Army to assemble in the northwest region of Shanxi Province on April 28 to prepare for the return of the division.
By May 5, the Red Army had all crossed the Yellow River and returned to northern Shaanxi, and Yan Xishan immediately began to force the ** army to withdraw from Shanxi, so there was no pursuit.
In this Eastern Crusade, the Red Army captured about 4,000 guns and more than 20 artillery pieces, raised 300,000 silver dollars and expanded more than 8,000 people. Ironically, the Red Army's Eastern Crusade also made Yan Xishan see the strong combat effectiveness of the Red Army, so when the Japanese army approached Shanxi in the second year, he took the initiative to invite the Eighth Route Army to fight in Jin, regardless of his old hatred.
After the end of the Eastern Crusade, on May 19, the Red Army launched another small-scale westward expedition, eliminating more than 2,000 people under Ma Hongkui's army entrenched in Ningxia in more than two months, controlling Huanxian in Gansu and Yanchi in Ningxia, doubling the area of the northern Shaanxi Soviet region to the west and formally forming the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Soviet Region.
However, it is a pity that the Red Army's newly added territory has fewer people and more barren land, which will do nothing to improve the Red Army's economic difficulties, but the objectively expanded area of the Soviet area still lays the foundation for the Red Army to smash the enemy's possible "encirclement and suppression" through mobile operations.
And according to previous experience, as long as the Red Army is commanded by *** in mobile operations, it can repel superior enemy forces.
Of course, the Red Army was still in an extremely weak position, so in addition to fighting and capturing the enemy, ** also advocated actively seeking foreign aid through political means.
In fact, the establishment of the Communist Party of China itself was inseparable from the strong support of the Comintern led by the Soviet Union, and from 1921 to 1932, Shanghai's main activity funds were transferred to the Comintern.
Soon after the Red Army's Long March in 1934, it severed ties with the Comintern until 1936, when Zhang Hao returned to China with a codebook. With the help of Soong Ching-ling and other democrats, our party was able to regain ties with Moscow.
Soviet leader Stalin recognized *** as the core of the CCP's leadership, and twice supported the Red Army with 200,000 silver dollars through democrats in Shanghai. And Song Qingling and others also tried their best to break through the enemy's blockade of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia, and sent a batch of medicines and urgently needed materials to the hands of northern Shaanxi.
October 1936. The Red Second Front, which began the Long March from Xiangxi, arrived in Huining, Gansu Province together with the Red Fourth Front Army, which failed to move south. Realized the division with the General Assembly of the Red Army.
However, the arrival of the two main forces of the Red Army also increased the number of Red Army troops to be supported in northern Shaanxi by nearly two times, and the problem of food shortage became more prominent.
**Had to call Moscow. Hoping that the Comintern would provide more material support, Stalin quickly replied that the Red Army would launch the Ningxia Campaign so that the Soviet Union could supply the Red Army through Outer Mongolia.
However, after studying the matter, the Military Commission decided that it was too risky for the Red Army to go directly north, and Stalin later changed his tune and hoped that the Red Army would send troops to Xinjiang in order to obtain assistance from the Comintern from the pro-Soviet warlord Sheng Shicai.
In November 1936, the Red 5th Army of the Red Front Army and the Red 9th Army and the Red 30th Army of the Red Fourth Front Army embarked on a long road to the west, but they fell into the siege of the Green Horse Cavalry in the Hexi Corridor. In the end, only about 300 people arrived in Xinjiang in March 1937.
Fortunately, at the same time, Chiang Kai-shek arrived in Xi'an and wanted to force Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng to launch the sixth "encirclement and suppression" against the Red Army, but Zhang and Yang, who were bent on persuading Chiang Kai-shek to resist the Japanese, were forced to launch a military attack on December 12.
After learning of the Xi'an incident, the CCP reacted quickly and sent *** to Xi'an to persuade Chiang Kai-shek to resolve the incident peacefully with Zhang and Yang.
Forced by the domestic and international situation, Chiang Kai-shek had to make a commitment to stop suppressing the Communists, and successfully avoided a new round of civil war caused by the "armed rebellion" of the pro-Japanese faction in the Kuomintang.
In February 1937, the national army first allocated 300,000 silver dollars to the Red Army in order to fulfill its promise, and began to give the Red Army food and clothing according to the establishment in April, and the Northeast Army also took the initiative to hand over several county towns to the Red Army, and also moved the garrison from Baoan to Yan'an in January 1937.
In this way, in more than a year, he used his extraordinary wisdom to successfully prevent the Red Army from being trapped and dying in northern Shaanxi, and let the Chinese revolution enter a new stage of all-out resistance against Japan.
1] Edited by the Chinese History Society, Dictionary of the History of the Communist Party of China, China History Publishing House, Party Building Readers Publishing House, 2019
2] Flying across the Yellow River to fight the Yan Army - the Red Army's Eastern Expedition Campaign, the first stop of Shanxi regional culture: Taiyuan Road, Shanxi Literature and History, 2014-12-10
3] The origin of the Xi'an Incident--China United Front News Network--People's Daily Online·2020-12-12