Chapter 51 political training

He Zhonghan has no shortage of opponents in this regard.Feng Ti, who is considered to be the leader of the small group of the Blue Shirts to stay in Europe, believes that propaganda work among young people is the key to military victory, and it is also his personal success.When Chiang Kai-shek considered Teng Jie weak and incompetent, Feng Ti replaced him as general secretary of the Fuxing Society.When Feng Ti was the general secretary, a summer military training program for students was set up under the "Training Director Department".As a result, "columns" were formed in important provinces and cities across the country, and they were commanded by senior garrison officers or specialized backbones sent from Nanjing Lixingshe.

After Teng Jie stepped down, the Blue Shirts Club's Japanese-student faction joined forces with Deng Wenyi and He Zhonghan to nominate He Zhonghan as the general secretary of the Fuxing Society. At this time, the focus of the issue turned to the Political Training Department.Since He Zhonghan was transferred from Hubei to Nanjing in 1935, the Political Training Department has been under his leadership, and the Political Training Department has become the stronghold of the Blue Shirts in the army. The military political training system occupies a key position in the secret activities of the Military Commission.Every level of the government's military forces, every military school, and every military unit has a political training office.Through the dual organizational status of being a member of the Fuxing Society, He Zhonghan and his key members were able to link the training system with the "military party affairs" department responsible for leading local anti-communist propaganda.Although the Party Affairs Office should be under the leadership of the Central Organization Department of the Kuomintang, it was controlled by the backbone members of the Fuxing Society.

Members of the Lixingshe also controlled the unit that trained the cadres of the Political Training Department.The most critical of these is the "cadre training class" led by Sun Changjun under the Affiliated Military Commission.Sun is not only a student in the first class of Whampoa, but also a member of Lishe.The cadre training class was established in April 1932. At that time, there were 5 teams and more than 1,800 students.One-fifth of them were graduates of the Central Military School, and the rest were either trained at the former Imperial Military School or had surrendered from the warlords and been assigned to the "Temporary Officers' Training Class".After half a year of training, graduates are assigned to various provinces and become "National Military Training Instructors" in private schools in local cities and towns.A few were left behind to serve as "officials" for other training programs of the Lixingshe.

Although He Zhonghan's main personnel are all the backbone members of the Fuxing Society, and the political workers above the middle level are all members of the Fuxing Society, the political training department system is still quite independent from the Fuxing Society.He Zhonghan and his comrades received orders directly from Chiang Kai-shek, and most of the directors of the political training department were not members of the Fuxing Society.In addition to carrying out anti-communist propaganda, their main task was to investigate and monitor the captains of the teams.In this way, as a whole, these captains can ensure that they can play the role of instructors not only in the troops directly controlled by Chiang Kai-shek, but also in the troops not directly commanded by him.

They also monitor the thoughts and activities of officers and students at all levels of the military.If a military cadet was suspected of being a member of the Communist Party, the political instructor of the Political Training Department had the power to order his arrest and have him dealt with by the military police.The gendarmerie has its secret service in all the major cities of China.In addition, a political instructor was ordered to investigate the Communist Party within his military unit.Moreover, his own orders must be obeyed, since this is military law, which can compel the full cooperation of local legal institutions.

At that time and later, in principle, Chiang Kai-shek did not allow army commanders, especially officers above the division commander, to join the Fuxing Society or the Blue Shirts Society, even if they were graduates of the first class of Huangpu.Of course there are exceptions, such as Hu Zongnan, Teng Jie and Gui Yongqing.There was also a small group of regimental leaders who joined the Fuxing Society, but either Chiang Kai-shek knew nothing about it, or they were sent to command troops not directly related to Chiang Kai-shek.But on the whole, Chiang always made a very clear distinction between surveillance and command.In this respect, his system of military instructors was very different from that of the Red Army, whose instructors were both political training officials and members of collective leadership, enjoying status and power.

Usually power is linked to status, but Chiang's political instructors were looked down upon by regular army officers because they lacked command power in the usual sense. He (Chiang Kai-shek) forbade the powerful army commanders to participate in political espionage, and made the political spies play a supervisory role on the powerful army commanders, thinking that they would contain them. The Fuxing Society despises political training work and its personnel; most of the political training staff are unwilling to do this job, calling political training work "selling plaster" and thinking it is worthless, especially the Whampoa students among them , I think it's bad luck.They just use the political training work as a bridge, hoping to use this to build relationships with the commanders of the various troops and transfer to leading troops.

As a result, instead of effectively monitoring the officers in their units, they tried to curry favor with them so that they could one day become military commanders themselves.Officers, especially those in the "non-direct line" troops, in turn bought these political trainees with promotions and even money.Over time, for political trainers, these two stimuli make assignments to "non-direct line" troops much more attractive than "direct line" troops.Another reason why political trainers are willing to work in the "non-direct line" army is that the life of officers there is more relaxed and pleasant than in the "direct line" army. For example, in the "direct line" army, gambling and prostitution are restricted and scorned.

Both the Political Training Department and the Fuxing Society have many cadres in their units, because these two organizations were organized by Chiang Kai-shek after the Japanese invaded Rehe in January 1933 and attempted to break through the defense line of the Great Wall coordinated by the "Young Marshal" Zhang Xueliang. A key bargaining chip in planning to expand its control to the northeast.The military situation at the time was complicated by Zhang Xueliang's confrontation with two other Northeast warlords, Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan: the latter two were trying to cash in on the rising patriotic sentiment against Chiang Kai-shek's policy of "suppressing the outside world first."Feng was in Zhangjiakou at the time. After he resigned from the position of Minister of the Interior of the Nationalist Government, he waited for an opportunity to make a comeback.Yan Xishan was in Taiyuan, serving as the security commander of Shanxi and Suiyang.Both of them ignored Zhang Xueliang's order.At the same time, although General Song Zheyuan was sent to Changchun, the Northeast soldiers of the "Young Marshal" had been scattered in the Central Plains and easily became captives of the puppet government and traitors.