Transcript THE CAUSES OF THE LONG MARCH

Andrea Nam, Ayush, James Hooi, James Huang, Alessio, Vicky Lee, Sau Gwan Chan, David
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• The Long March was caused mainly because of Chiang Kai
Shek’s hatred of communism.
• After the Communist-Kuomintang split, communists retreated to
Jiangxi, and within a few years of arriving, they had gained the
support of the peasants under their rule, mainly because of the
land redistribution, which allowed millions of poor peasants
who had never owned land before become land owners and
their own masters, and also because they had reduced taxes,
set up schools and peasant councils. Also, the red army
members acted courteous and disciplined to the peasants,
which played an important part of gaining the peasant’s
support.
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• In Chiang Kai-shek's point of view, the area in which he found the
most threat in was the Jiangxi Province, where many Communists
were living. He launched four extermination campaigns, and they all
failed because they all had the same tactics.
• However, the fifth campaign was different. He used a new strategy to
attack the communists, thought up by a German military advisor,
General Hans von Seeckt. The plan was successful, and on October
1933, the blockhouse strategy began.
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Hans Von Seeckt,
KMD’s military
advisor from
Germany
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• The Communists had succeeded in surviving through the first four
extermination campaigns. Their method was to lure the Kuomintang
into a small area by retreating and then attacking them so as many
as possible would be killed in a concentrated space. However, as
Chiang launched the fifth campaign, the Communists changed their
tactics.
• Otto Braun was a soviet advisor who was
living with the Communists in the Jiangxi
province. He was convinced that Mao, part of the
Communist Central Committee, had the wrong
tactics.
Otto Braun, the
Communists’ military
advisor sent from the
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• The fifth extermination campaign was so successful mainly because
the Communists had an incompetent military advisor, Otto Braun,
who recommended new tactics: to defend their borders by fighting
head on with the KMD instead of using Mao’s cowardly tactics.
• However,Otto Braun’s tactics led to a loss of soldiers and weapons
that could not be replaced because of the blockhouses that cut them
off from the rest of China.
• Mao and Braun disagreed with each other because they each had
different ideas which they thought were the best. In Braun’s point of
view, Mao’s tactics went against the Communist belief. When they
retreated inside the province, they would leave the outer-lying
houses helpless and vulnerable. Although this action helped them
survive the campaigns, the innocent villagers would be killed or
starved to death. This tactic was also hailed as cowardly, and
eventually Mao was expelled from the Central Committee.
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• Otto Braun's tactics cost many lives. The Communists were severely
short of supplies due to the blockhouse rings that continuously cut
them off from the rest of China. By the summer of 1934, the
Communists were trapped inside the heart of Jiangxi, surrounded by
multiple layers of Kuomintang blockhouses.
• In order to survive, Mao suggested that they should break out of the
blockhouses and attack the KMD from the rear, but his voice was
ignored, and Otto Braun planned a retreat to the Communist base of
the border of Hunan and Hubei where their second red army group
was based.
• By the beginning of October 1934, around 87000 soldiers had
started the retreat planned by Otto Braun. They took all the
equipment needed to set up a new government, including printing
presses, radio equipment and gold bars etc. In addition, they also
carried with them as much weaponry as they could.
• The equipment would be greatly useful, either on the march or in
setting up a new government. However, they carried much of the
equipment on their backs, which slowed the Red Army greatly. It
took them six weeks to break through the blockhouse rings, and
they were attacked as soon as they had broken through.
THE KEY FEATURES OF THE LONG
MARCH
THE KEY FEATURES OF THE LONG
MARCH
THE KEY FEATURES OF THE LONG
MARCH
What happened in the first six weeks
of the Long march?
-It took the Red Army 6 weeks to break through the
blockhouses and when they did manage to do so,
they were met with the GMD and were forced to fight
a major battle at the Xiang River that made them lose
almost half their men.
-Half of the original 83000 communists who left Jiang
Xi died due to various reasons; majorly because of the
extermination campaign.
-The communists went through many different
provinces like Hunan, Guangxi and Guangdong.
• They blamed Otto Braun because it was his easily
counter-able tactics that led to an immense loss of
communist lives. He had led the Red Army in a
straight line that allowed the GMD to predict their
actions, and it was because he told them to take too
much useless equipment, such as printing presses and
furniture, that slowed them down when they could
have escaped.
• At the Zunyi Conference Mao Zedong was
elected chairman of the CCP and Otto
Braun was suspended.
• He turned a cowardly retreat into a
source of pride for the communists
through misdirection
(Lying/propaganda)
• Mao led the Red Army on the route that
twisted and turned so that the GMD
would not be able to predict their route.
They outsmarted the GMD,
who were busy occupying
ferries by pretending to
build a bridge while actually
they sent a small group of
soldiers to secure and
assault some of the GMD
soldiers and capture their
ferries.
• The Long March was halted by the river which was
swollen with water and harried by the GMD air force
so they tried capturing the Luding suspension bridge,
but to their dismay it was badly damaged and
inoperable and so they had to assault it.
• 22 soldiers swung across the river gorger with the
chains which were all that were left of the bridge,
whilst under enemy fire, which allowed the rest of the
red army to pass through.
• At the snowy mountains the men had to cross peaks up
to 4800m high and even in the summer many of the
southerners died of hypothermia. They were caught in
a terrible hailstorm that froze them men whenever they
rested or sat down.
• At the grasslands the army was beleaguered by the
large amount of swamps and quicksand pits causing a
large loss of life by both illness and other means. There
were large amounts of mosquitoes which made the
men’s faces black and their bodies weak. The swampy
water smelled horrible and made people vomit.
• The GMD leaders had not been swayed by the fact that
the CCP successfully crossed through the Chang Jiang
River, but in fact, the CCP had fallen into enemy
territory. Not the GMD, but in an area where a
primitive tribe, the Lolos.
• The CCP had to pass through this area, but the Lolos
were not willing to let them through. It was only after
the CCP decided to bribe them with money and
weapons, did the Lolos let the Red Army through.
• The Long march ended in October 1935 at the
Red Army base in Shaanxi province.
• Miles covered: around 8000 miles covered in
less than 370 days
• Communists Army Strength (Oct 1934):
Approximately 86,000
• Communist Army Strength (Oct 1935):
Approximately 7000
• Chinese Nationalist Party Army Strength:
Approximately over 300,000
THE CONSQUENCES OF THE LONG
MARCH
THE CONSQUENCES OF THE LONG
MARCH
THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE LONG
MARCH
The Consequences of the Long
March
• As result of the Long March, over 7700 soldiers of the Red Army
died, but the Communists were not exterminated.
• The Long March bought the CCP to a place of enough isolation that
gave them the isolation it needed to recuperate and rebuild itself in
the north of China.
CCP gained a positive reputation from the
determination and dedication of the surviving
participants, and spread communism over the
Long March through introducing land reform,
promising equality and promoting women’s
rights.
Mao's position as the undisputed leader of the
CCP solidified because of the Long March.
The Consequences of the Long March
THE GMD’s VIEW OF THE LONG MARCH
• Otto Braun sent the Red army to march in a straight line. The
GMD were able to predict where the Red Army’s would move
next.
• When they reached to Zunyi the communist party agreed to
suspended from the control of the ‘Red Army.’
• When Mao took over he wanted to separate the Red Army and
move the army in twisted movement making GMD impossible for
them to predict.
•The GMD viewed the Long March as
a victory. They described it as a ‘long
distance campaign to press and
annihilate the enemy’ and they did it
and got rid of the CCP from the southwest of China so those provinces would
be under their government’s control.
The Consequences of the Long March
MAO’S VIEW OF THE LONG MARCH
• Mao viewed the Long March as a great
success and this can be interpreted
from the speech he made in December
1935 on his views on this particular
event in history. According to Mao,
the Red Army face much difficulties in
their journey including being pursued,
intercepted, and even blocked by
KMD’s enormous army. However,
despite all this, he stated, ‘by using
our two legs we swept across an
immense distance of more that 10500
Km.’ He was also extremely proud of
their accomplishments, calling the
Red Army heroes, and the KMD was
powerless. He summarized the long
march by calling it a ‘victory for us
and defeat for the enemy.
The Consequences of the Long March
HISTORIAN’S VIEW OF THE LONG
MARCH
• Historians have stated that Mao had used the Long March
for propaganda, as unlike his claims, the Long March was
greatly exaggerated as the distance was a mere 6,000 km
compared to his declaration of it being 10, 500km.
• Two historians include, Ed Jocelyn and Andrew McEwen,
two British researchers, who personally retraced the
Long March route in order to prove the genuineness of
Mao and the CCP’s claims, quite contrastingly found that
as mentioned above, Mao had almost doubled the length
of the Long March in his story.
• In conclusion, historians believe that the Long March was
not as great as it was said to be and question it’s
authenticity.
The Consequences of the Long March
THE CCP’s VIEW OF THE LONG MARCH
• They saw it as a glorious victory march towards freedom
from oppression, an honourable retreat that did not use
cowardly tactics and let innocent peasants die.
• The red army played a large role in the retreat through
harassing the GMD and retrieving firearms from Jiangxi
province for use against opposing armies.
• The Great March also brought about the unification of the
red army, although a large portion of them died off during
the march.
• The march helped the CCP gain popularity among the
Chinese peasants, ultimately helping the party to power in
the end.
The Consequences of the Long March
THE CCP’s VIEW OF THE LONG MARCH
• In the aftermath of the long march, the Communist party
had plenty of isolation and time to recover and rebuild in
their new position.
• It also gave the CCP a great position to escape into the
communist soviet union for safety if the GMD tried
another extermination campaign.
Before the march.
• In October 1933 Chiang began a
blockade of Jiangxi stopping movement of
essential supplies
• With 700 000 men Chiang encircled
Jiangxi and waited for them to surrender.
• In 1934 the GMD controlled most of China
and the CCP controlled only four small
bases
Military facts.
• At the battle of Zunyi the red army lost 45
000 men out of the 87 000.
• After the battle the Leaders of the CCP
reviewed their policy and blamed Otto
Braun for their loss.
• Now that the army was deep into the
countryside they would be better off with a
man of their own and Mao Zedong was
elected.
Facts
• For the CCP this was a massive and
honourable retreat to escape from Chiang
army.
• Chiang tried to dislodge the CCP from
their mountain retreat with four
consecutive campaigns.
• There a lot of major key bridges and
battles along the march.
The views.
• The CCP viewed the march completely
differently from how the GMD viewed it.
• The CCP viewed this movement as a
demonstration of vitality by the red army.
• The CCP describes their army with a allconquering fighting strength.