1 The Fifth Campaign
Here I could not even outline the absorbing and then only fragmentarily written history of the six years of the soviets of South China——a period that was destined to be a prelude to the epic of the Long March. Mao Tse-tung had told briefly of the organic development of the soviets and of the birth of the Red Army. He had told how the Communists built up, from a few hundred ragged and half-starved but young and determined revolutionaries, an army of several tens of thousands of workers and peasants, until by 1930 they had become such serious contenders for power that Nanking had to hurl its first large-scale offensive against them. The initial "annihilation drive, "and then a second, a third, and a fourth were net failures. In each of those campaigns the Reds destroyed many brigades and whole divisions of Kuomintang troops, replenished their supplies of arms and ammunition, enlisted new warriors, and expanded their territory.
Meanwhile, what sort of life went on beyond the impenetrable lines of the Red irregulars? It seemed to me one of the amazing facts of our age that during the entire history of the soviets in South China not a single "outside"foreign observer had entered Red territory——the only Communist-ruled nation in the world besides the U.S.S.R. Everything written about the southern soviets by foreigners was therefore secondary material. But a few salient points seemed now confirmable from accounts both friendly and inimical, and these clearly indicated the basis of the Red Army's support. Land was redistributed and taxes were lightened. Collective enterprise was established on a wide scale; by 1933 there were more than 1, 000 soviet cooperatives in Kiangsi alone. Unemployment, opium, prostitution, child slavery, and compulsory marriage were reported to be eliminated, and the living conditions of the workers and poor peasants in the peaceful areas greatly improved. Mass education made much progress in the stabilized soviets. In some counties the Reds attained a higher degree of literacy among the populace in three or four years than had been achieved anywhere else in rural China after centuries. In Hsing Ko, the Communists' model hsien, the populace was said to be nearly 80 per cent literate.
"Revolution, "observed Mao Tse-tung, "is not a tea party."That "Red"terror methods were widely used against landlords and other class enemies——who were arrested, deprived of land, condemned in "mass trials, "and often executed——was undoubtedly true, as indeed the Communists' own reports confirmed.[2] Were such activities to be regarded as atrocities or as "mass justice"executed by the armed poor in punishment of "White"terror crimes by the rich when they held the guns? Never having seen Soviet Kiangsi, I could add little, with my testimony, to an evaluation of second-hand materials about it, or to the usefulness of this book, which is largely limited to the range of an eyewitness. For that reason I decided to omit from this volume some interview material concerning Soviet Kiangsi which the reader would be entitled to regard as self-serving, in the absence of independent corroboration.[3] Speculation on the southern soviets in any case was now a matter chiefly of academic interest. For late in October, 1933, Nanking mobilized for the fifth and greatest of its anti-Red wars, and one year later the Reds were finally forced to carry out a general retreat. Nearly everyone then supposed it was the end, the Red Army's funeral march. How badly mistaken they were was not to become manifest for almost two years, when a remarkable comeback, seldom equaled in history, was to reach a climax with events that put into the hands of the Communists the life of the Generalissimo, who for a while really had believed his own boast——that he had "exterminated the menace of communism."
It was not until the seventh year of the fighting against the Reds that any notable success crowned the attempts to destroy them. The Reds then had actual administrative control over a great part of Kiangsi, and large areas of Fukien and Hunan. There were other soviet districts, not physically connected with the Kiangsi territory, located in the provinces of Hunan, Hupeh, Honan, Anhui, Szechuan, and Shensi.
Against the Reds, in the Fifth Campaign, Chiang Kai-shek mobilized about 900, 000 troops, of whom perhaps 400, 000——some 360 regiments——actively took part in the warfare in the Kiangsi-Fukien area, and against the Red Army in the Anhui-Honan-Hupeh (Oyuwan) area. But Kiangsi was the pivot of the whole campaign. Here the regular Red Army was able to mobilize a combined strength of 180, 000 men, including all reserve divisions, and it had perhaps 200, 000 partisans and Red Guards, but altogether could muster a firing power of somewhat less than 100, 000 rifles, no heavy artillery, and a very limited supply of grenades, shells, and ammunition, all of which were being made in the Red arsenal at Juichin.
Chiang adopted a new strategy to make the fullest use of his greatest assets——superior resources, technical equipment, access to supplies from the outside world (to which the Reds had no outlet), and some mechanized equipment, including an air force that had come to comprise nearly 400 navigable war planes. The Reds had captured a few of Chiang's airplanes, and they had three or four pilots, but they lacked gasoline, bombs, and mechanics. Instead of an invasion of the Red districts and an attempt to take them by storm of superior force, which had in the past proved disastrous, Chiang now used the majority of his troops to surround the "bandits"and impose on them a strict economic blockade.
And it was very costly. Chiang Kai-shek built hundreds of miles of military roads and thousands of small fortifications, which were made connectable by machine-gun or artillery fire. His defensive-offensive strategy and tactics tended to diminish the Reds' superiority in maneuvering, and emphasized the disadvantages of their smaller numbers and lack of resources.
Chiang wisely avoided exposing any large body of troops beyond the fringes of his network of roads and fortifications. They advanced only when very well covered by artillery and airplanes and rarely moved more than a few hundred yards ahead of the noose of forts, which stretched through the provinces of Kiangsi, Fukien, Hunan, Kwantung, and Kwangsi. Deprived of opportunities to decoy, ambush, or outmaneuver their enemy in open battle, the Reds began to place their main reliance on positional warfare——and the error of this decision, and the reasons for it, will be alluded to further on.
The Fifth Campaign was said to have been planned largely by Chiang Kai-shek's German advisers, notably General von Falkenhausen of the German Army, who was then the Generalissimo's chief adviser. The new tactics were thorough, but they were also very slow and expensive. Operations dragged on for months and still Nanking had not struck a decisive blow at the main forces of its enemy. The effect of the blockade, however, was seriously felt in the Red districts, and especially the total absence of salt. The little Red base was becoming inadequate to repel the combined military and economic pressure being applied against it. Considerable exploitation of the peasantry must have been necessary to maintain the astonishing year of resistance which was put up during this campaign. At the same time, it must be remembered that their fighters were peasants, owners of newly acquired land. For land alone most peasants in China would fight to the death. The Kiangsi people knew that return of the Kuomintang meant return to the landlords.
Nanking believed that its efforts at annihilation were about to succeed. The enemy was caged and could not escape. Thousands supposedly had been killed in the daily bombing and machine-gunning from the air, as well as by "purgations"
in districts reoccupied by the Kuomintang. The Red Army itself, according to Chou En-lai, suffered over 60, 000 casualties in this one siege. Whole areas were depopulated, sometimes by forced mass migrations, sometimes by the simpler expedient of mass executions. Kuomintang press releases estimated that about 1, 000, 000 people were killed or starved to death in the process of recovering Soviet Kiangsi.
Nevertheless, the Fifth Campaign proved inconclusive. It failed to destroy the "living forces"[*] of the Red Army. A Red military conference was called at Juichin, and it was decided to withdraw, transferring the main Red strength to a new base.
The retreat from Kiangsi evidently was so swiftly and secretly managed that the main forces of the Red troops, estimated at about 90, 000 men, had already been marching for several days before the enemy headquarters became aware of what was taking place. They had mobilized in southern Kiangsi, withdrawing most of their regular troops from the northern front and replacing them with partisans. Those movements occurred always at night. When practically the whole Red Army was concentrated near Yutu, in southern Kiangsi, the order was given for the Great March, which began on October 16, 1934.
For three nights the Reds pressed in two columns to the west and to the south. On the fourth they advanced, totally unexpectedly, almost simultaneously attacking the Hunan and Kwangtung lines of fortifications. They took these by assault, put their astonished enemy on the run, and never stopped until they had occupied the ribbon of blockading forts and entrenchments on the southern front. This gave them roads to the south and to the west, along which their vanguard began its sensational trek.
Besides the main strength of the army, thousands of Red peasants began this march——old and young, men, women, children, Communists and non-Communists. The arsenal was stripped, the factories were dismantled, machinery was loaded onto mules and donkeys——everything that was portable and of value went with this strange cavalcade. As the march lengthened out, much of this burden had to be discarded, and the Reds told me that thousands of rifles and machine guns, much machinery, much ammunition, even much silver, lay buried on their long trail from the South. Some day in the future, they said, Red peasants, now surrounded by thousands of policing troops, would dig it up again. They awaited only the signal——and the war with Japan might prove to be that beacon.
After the main forces of the Red Army evacuated Kiangsi, it was still many weeks before Nanking troops succeeded in occupying the chief Red bases. Thousands of peasant Red Guards continued guerrilla fighting. To lead them, the Red Army left behind some of its ablest commanders：Ch'en Yi, Su Yu, [*] T'an Chen-lin, Hsiang Ying, Fang Chih-min, Liu Hsiao, * Teng Tzu-hui, Ch'u Ch'iu-pai, Ho Shu-heng, and Chang Ting-ch'eng. They had only 6, 000 able-bodied regular troops, however——and 20, 000 wounded, sheltered among the peasants.[4] Many thousands of them were captured and executed, but they managed to fight a rear-guard action which enabled the main forces to get well under way before Chiang Kai-shek could mobilize new forces to pursue and attempt to annihilate them on the march. Even in 1937 there were regions in Kiangsi, Fukien, and Kweichow held by these fragments of the Red Army, and that spring the government announced the beginning of another anti-Red campaign for a "final clean-up"in Fukien.[5]
[*]An expression used by the Reds, meaning main combat forces.
[*]See BN.