Mao: The Unknown Story

At dawn that day Lo Fu called some twenty people to a council of war, with the field commanders present. Mao found himself completely isolated on the issue of attacking Chiang’s crack forces. Even his ally Lo Fu disagreed. When Mao misplayed his hand and threatened to resign as Front Commander, the majority jumped at the offer. Peng De-huai was appointed in his place, and the council voted to steer clear of Chiang’s forces.

This time it seemed that Mao was really out. But he lost no time in plotting to reverse the decisions. That night, kerosene lamp in hand, he walked over to see Chou En-lai, who theoretically still had the final say in military matters, and talked him into holding another meeting in the morning — crucially, without the field commanders, who had returned to their units.

Mao offered Chou an inducement. With the creation of the post of General Front Commander, Chou had become somewhat redundant. Mao now suggested scrapping the post of Front Commander and setting up a new body to be called the Triumvirate, consisting of Chou, himself and the Red Prof.

With the field commanders absent, Mao was able to manipulate the second meeting. The decisions to appoint Peng in Mao’s place and to avoid Chiang’s forces were both annulled. A clear ruling by a quorum was thus overturned by a rump, with the crucial complicity of Chou. Moreover, as a result of these underhand changes, from 11 March 1935 on, the top army command did not contain a single genuine officer.

The new Triumvirate immediately ordered an attack on Chiang’s forces near Maotai, the home of the most famous Chinese liquor, where the enemy was well dug in. “Disengage fast,” Peng pleaded. “Enemy fortifications are solid, and geography is bad for us. There is no possibility of breaking [this Chiang unit].” But the Triumvirs insisted: “Throw in all our forces tomorrow … absolutely no wavering.”

When the Reds launched a frontal offensive, Chiang’s army was ready with heavy machine-guns, and routed the attackers, who suffered well over a thousand casualties. The routed Communists crossed the Red River once again and were forced into Sichuan.

Having got them where he wanted, Chiang blocked their way back into Guizhou. But Mao still spurned the obvious best option — to go on north — and ordered the Red Army to turn around and cross the river again and force its way back into Guizhou. This was so unreasonable and so unpopular that an unusual order was issued, for the eyes of the top commanders only, specially enjoining: “This crossing to the east must not be announced and must be kept secret.”

For two months, the Red Army had been “circling in an ever-contracting area, so that it passed through some districts two or three times,” in “exhausting and fruitless wandering,” a perplexed Braun observed, taking the whole thing to be “erratic.” It had fought seemingly gratuitous battles, at horrendous cost. Moreover, Mao had not just brought disasters on the army under him, he was also placing Chang Kuo-tao’s army in jeopardy, by obliging it to hang around and wait for him. Mao later shamelessly called this fiasco his “tour de force.” The fact that these huge losses were due to his jockeying for personal power remains unknown to this day.

CHIANG KAI-SHEK, TOO, was baffled to see the enemy “wandering in circles in this utterly futile place.” Unaware of Mao’s private agenda, Chiang had expected the Reds to go to Sichuan. Assuming that his own army would be following them in, on 2 March he had flown to Chongqing, the largest city in the province, to enforce central government rule. Chiang tried to terminate the quasi-independent fiefs, but the warlords put up dogged, though non-martial, resistance. He found himself powerless to subdue them, as his army was not on hand.

Chiang now redoubled his efforts to drive the Reds into Sichuan, subjecting them to heavy aerial bombardment, making it impossible for Mao to establish a foothold in Guizhou. At the same time Chiang very publicly transferred army units away from the Sichuan border as a way of signaling: There are no troops on that border. Go to Sichuan! But Mao determinedly led the exhausted Red Army in the opposite direction, southward.

Under non-stop aerial attack, “forced marches of 40 to 50 km were the rule,” Braun wrote.

The troops were showing increasing symptoms of fatigue … When planes buzzed over us, we simply threw ourselves down on the side of the road without looking for cover as we used to do. If bombs began falling in a village or farm where we slept, I no longer woke up. If one landed close to me, I just turned over …

The number of deaths, more from disease and exhaustion than battle wounds, increased daily. Although several thousand volunteers had been enlisted since the beginning of the year,^† the ranks had visibly dwindled.