I only know the official story: Mao was outnumbered, went on long march, then miraculously triumphed over the Nationalists, who had more men, supplies, and territory.
Ok, but how exactly did he pull it off? Didn’t Chiang have more troops, money, and the advantage of defense?
War isn’t just about numbers. Ask the Viet Cong.
In a nutshell, the Nationalists may have had superior numbers and supplies, but their organization was corrupt and weak. They were surprisingly unpopular with the masses, tired, and demoralized. WWII and the Second Sino-Japanese war had severely weakened them and Mao had the support of the peasants. The Kuomintang’s economic policies were utter failures and there were mass defections to the Communists after the US suspended aid. The Nationalists were never able to solidify power and the Communists defeated them fairly easily.
this Solomon Adler - Wikipedia sort of State Department officials in charge of carrying out American policy of assisting the Nationalists may have had something to do with it. I also recall reading about another guy who actually leaked photocopies of American documents containing details of upcoming Nationalist military operations, but unfortunately don’t remember the name and cannot locate it now.
As Mao himself often mentioned, if you’re alienated from the people then you don’t have a prayer. The KMT wasn’t popular by any stretch of the imagination and, in that case, it was only a matter of time. No matter how many guns you have, if you have no support from the people you govern you don’t have a leg to stand on.
AFAIK, one reason was that Chiang was so concentrated on defeating the communists that most of the Chinese came to think that he was helping the Japanese. It may be unfair, but people saw an example in 1932. Chiang was concentrating on attacking the Communists when Japan then launched an advance on Shanghai and bombarded Nanjing. Items like that made Chiang and the Nationalists unpopular. It seemed that no matter how bad the situation against Japan got, Chiang concentrated more on the communists.
Still, fighting on 2 fronts was not appreciated by the Nationalist Army. In 1936 Chiang wanted to continue attacking the communists ignoring once again the main threat, and so his own generals captured him and forced Chiang to make a truce with the communists so all Chinese would fight the Japanese.
By the time WWII was over Chiang had lost many of of his trusted officers and he was not well equipped to fight the reds. The reported corruption in his government after the war also did not help. Add defections from the Nationalist army to the Red army after the US stopped aid and you are beginning to get an idea on how Mao pulled it off.
I’d simply add from the stories I’ve heard of those times from family and their colleagues who were there as missionaries, the Koumintang was more a collection of warlords than a unified movement. But corruption was probably key.
In addition to all of the above, the key failure was Chiang Kai-Shek’s precipitate decision in the wake of WW II to commit his best troops to an attempted re-occupation of northern China/Manchuria, far from his power-base, such as it was. This turned out to be the decisive moment - said armies were very badly outfought in the ensuing battles and many of these relatively elite units were destroyed. In the aftermath, the KMT’s internal corruption and poor standing in the countryside led to the surprisingly rapid dissolution of the Nationalist position.
Chiang had had some real success as a younger military commander when battling regional warlords, but by 1938 he was aloof and out of touch with military realities on the ground. Especially vis-a-vis the reconstructed Communist forces and the far more professional Japanese Imperial Army. He directed the wars remotely and mostly very poorly and in hindsight his race to grab the north, risking his best troops ( who turned out to be very poorly led ) was a foolishly reckless, overconfident move.
A good book on this topic is China at War, 1901-1949 by Edward L. Dreyer ( 1995, Longman Group Limited ).
Couple of key things to keep in mind.
First, NOTASSMART nailed it. Chiang Kai-shek did not rule a unified China. He was the first among thugs in a loose coalition of warlords wrapped around Sun Yat-sen’s 3 peoples principles. Actually, if you look at a map of the core China controlled by the various KMT factions, allies and warlords, it’s not that big and was constantly shifting.
Take a look at this map and you can see what little that the KMT/Chiang actually controlled directly. File:Chinese civil war map 02.jpg - Wikipedia
If you believe Jung Chang/John Holiwell and Mao, the Untold Story, they posit that Joseph Stalin controlled Chiang Kai-shek on an almost daily basis and allowed the Long March breakout from the Jiangxi Soviet. It involved a convoluted logic around his son Chiang Ching-kuo being a hostage in Russia. IMHO, you have to be crack addled illiterate ignoramus to believe any of the assertations in their book as it is so biased.
GIGObuster, to be more accurate, Chiang Kai-shek was kidnapped by ZHANG Xueliang (The Young Marshall and heir to the assassinate warlord of Manchuria) and YANG Hucheng (warlord of Shaanxi Province) and not by his own generals. The Young Marshall then spent the rest of his life in prison or under house arrest, and died in 2001 in Taiwan. YANG and his family was executed prior to the retreat to Taiwan. Look up the Xi’an Incident and here is a wikipedia link: Xi'an Incident - Wikipedia
Stillwell and the American Experience in China is a great read. Stillwell was constantly frustrated at the lack of KMT engagement with the Japanese. He also penned and ode to Chiang “I layed the peanut low.” No love lost between Stillwell and Chiang.
When Missimo Song Mei-ling and Gererallisimo Cash My Check pleaded to Truman for post WW2 aid, Truman reportedly said to sell off their Manhattan holdings and use that.
NOTASSMART - I’d love to hear more from your relatives. I knew some missionaries but that was when I was a kid before learning Chinese.
This is extremely important I recall a book called something like How We Lost China and in it, it explains this point exactly. The Japanese had taken Manchuria and set up a puppet state Manchukuo
This was a great humiliation to the Chinese. It had to be recovered to “save face,” so to speak.
Had Chiang just accepted the loss of Manchuria, which after the war certainly would’ve fell into the sphere of the Soviet Union and Manchuria most likely would’ve been set up as a Soviet puppet state instead.
But Chiang wouldn’t accept a tactical retreat. After all he had effectively neutralized the Communists before in the 30s (He didn’t come close to defeating them but he threat to a minor annoyance).
Big mistake, as the above poster said. If he had not tried to retake Manchuria he had an excellent chance of holding the rest of China. And Stalin certainly would’ve accepted a Soviet client state of Manchuria.
Of course this leads to other wonderful “what ifs,” such as, no Korean War and a Vietnam War that would’ve been much less agressive.
Kai-Shek was seen by many of the people as being in the thrall of western powers. China was very touchy about foreigners influence and very nationalistic. The communists were seen as being nationalistic and untainted by ties to the West. Thus Kai-Shek was not supported by most Chinese and had many Communists spies working in his government. The irony was that the communists were controlled by foreigners to a much greater extent than Kai-Shek was.
Manchuria was a great prize actually. Strong industrial base and good agriculture. Of course, the Soviets looted every factory before they pulled out.
Manchuria was not historically part of China nor ever part of “Core China” Eg, the Yellow and Yangzi River areas. Manchuria was always part of the barbarian north until of course they conquered Core China and established the Qing Dynasty.
I would disagree that humiliation to the Chinese was a significant factor in Chiang’s decision. I think it would have been much more likely that the communists would have taken Manchuria, solidified their base for a year, and then pushed Chiang into the sea. Remember that the communists controlled northern China.
Puddleglum - again I think you read waaaay too much into xenophobia. It’s true the communists were seen as nationalist, uncorrupt and untainted by the West. However, Chiang never had broad popular support. Incidents like when he flooded the Yellow river to slow the Japanese advance. According to wikipedia: As a result, the course of the Yellow River was diverted southwards for nine years afterward, inundating 54,000 km² (21,000 square miles) of land in Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu provinces. All in all, the flood waters took an estimated 500,000 lives.
Incidents like the above did not endear Chiang to the masses. And much more relevant than the fact that he had ties with the US.
Often true but perhaps not always; Not to hijack, but Hussein led a minority culture in Iraq that was able to hold on to power until other, much larger, nations intervened.
Maybe not dissimilar to the mindset that later led Mao to boast that he was willing to lose half of China’s population in order to win a nuclear war with the West. China’s leaders on both sides had a rather different than ours regarding the utility of sacrificing their populations.
Yes, well, CKS did it *before *he unified China and took on the Japanese. Mao waited until *after *unifying China (except for Taiwan :))
