Chapter 18 17. The supervisor who gave up halfway "suppresses the Communist Party"

Tensions in the Northeast did not tie Chiang Kai-shek's hands.After arranging some affairs of the national government, he left Ning for the second time to go to Jiangxi, and went to the "front line" to supervise the "suppression of the communists" - how the war there was, was the leader of the policy of "suppressing the outside world first" Formulators are most concerned about. Chiang Kai-shek left Nanjing on the Yongsui ship.This gunboat named Yongsui was an inland river armored troop carrier. Chiang Kai-shek almost always took it whenever he traveled along the waterway around 1931, making it the "Air Force One" of China's waters in that era.Because of the flood that year, the river course of the Yangtze River became deeper and wider, and the Yongsui ship ran even more vigorously in such a river course.

Accompanied by Zhou Fohai, he was 34 years old. Zhou Fohai was a very interesting figure in China in the 1920s and 1930s. In May 1897, Zhou Fohai was born in a remote mountain village in Yuanling County, Hunan Province.During his 51-year life journey, which can not be considered long, he has experienced three changes: first, he became a member of the Communist Party of China and a representative, second, he became a member of the Kuomintang, and held an important position in the national government. The sinner of the Chinese nation.Zhou Fohai's "Three Changes in Life" are all indistinctly and inextricably linked with Japan.

In 1917, 20-year-old Zhou Fohai traveled east to Japan to study with the help of his friends and his school.Like many of the earliest Marxists in China, it was precisely in Japan that he received some books promoting Marxism and began to believe in communism. In the summer of 1921, Zhou Fohai used his summer vacation to go to Shanghai to attend the First Congress of the Communist Party of China, thus becoming one of the oldest members of the Communist Party of China. In early November 1921, he left Shanghai with his lover Yang Shuhui and returned to study in Japan.Many young people who are passionate about politics have the following characteristics—fiery political passion is accompanied by the variability of political beliefs, and Zhou Fohai is no exception.The second trip to Japan not only failed to shape him as a true communist, on the contrary, his belief in communism gradually wavered.Soon after, he effectively disassociated himself from the party organization and ceased any party work. In the autumn of 1924, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China saw that Zhou Fohai had made up his mind to leave the party and allowed him to leave the party.Almost at the same time when he was drifting away from communism, he made friends with another Kuomintang member Dai Jitao who also had a deep "Japanese complex". role model.Under Dai's strong recommendation, he joined the Kuomintang camp, and after several twists and turns, he became the "literary gall" beside Chiang Kai-shek. In the early 1930s, Zhou Fohai was like a rising political star. In 1931, at the National Congress of the Kuomintang, he was elected as a member of the Central Committee because of Chiang Kai-shek's support, and received the most votes, known as the "No. 1 Central Committee".

On the Yongsui ship on September 18, 1930, Zhou Fohai and Chiang Kai-shek were together. The two stood side by side, almost shoulder to shoulder. It was impossible for people to see any gap between them.But when the incident was settled into history by time, there was a strong sense of irony in this picture: more than 10 hours later, there was an explosion in Liutiao Lake, and China and Japan were inevitably on the road to war. Road; six years later, Chiang Kai-shek recognized the legal status of the Communist Party of China and the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army who had been "encircled and suppressed" five times by him, and started the second cooperation between the KMT and the Communist Party; seven years later, the man in the tunic suit beside Chiang Kai-shek betrayed the people The government, together with Wang Jingwei, threw itself into the arms of the Japanese invaders: the separation and reunion of history, the friend and foe among people, really has a special feeling in my heart.

Chiang Kai-shek regards the Communist Party and the Red Army as his confidant's serious troubles, and it has its own reasons.By 1930, the Communist Party of China led armed riots, established bases in remote rural mountainous areas, and embarked on a road of encircling the cities from the countryside.The National Red Army of Workers and Peasants has grown to more than 100,000 people, and has established bases in some places in Jiangxi, Fujian, Hunan, Hubei, and Guangxi. Among them, the central bases in southwestern Jiangxi and western Fujian are the largest and most important.Most of these base areas were established at the borders of several provinces, out of the reach of the Central Army of the Nationalist Government, while the local power faction lacked a mechanism for coordination between several parties and the urgent need for "encirclement and suppression" of the base areas, and was unable to expand the base areas, The development of the Red Army has been effectively curbed.

But Chiang Kai-shek could not sit idly by and watch the development of the Red Army's strength. In November 1930, just two months after the end of the Central Plains War, Chiang identified "suppressing the Communists" as an urgent task at the Fourth Plenary Session of the Third Central Committee of the Kuomintang. Elimination" will "bring the whole country into a serious disaster that cannot be dealt with", and claims that "the period will be three months, at most half a year, and all restrictions will be eliminated."Chiang Kai-shek's "communist suppression" action was earlier than his "communist suppression" declaration. In October of the same year, the first "encirclement and suppression" began.But in less than three months, the "encirclement and suppression" failed. At that time, Chiang's "rhetoric words" at the Fourth Plenary Session of the Third Central Committee of the Kuomintang may have just been conveyed to some remote places.Seeing that the local army was useless, Chiang Kai-shek mobilized another 200,000 troops, sent General He Yingqin of the Whampoa Faction to command the entire army, and even went to Nanchang to supervise the division.However, during the half-month period from May 16th to 31st, all five battles with the Red Army were defeated, and more than 30,000 people were lost.The second "encirclement and suppression" campaign failed again.

Chiang Kai-shek soon launched the third "encirclement and suppression" campaign less than a month after the second "encirclement and suppression campaign" failed. This was because Chiang Kai-shek followed the advice of the German military adviser George Weitzer. The military cooperation between China and Germany entered the "honeymoon period" in the 1920s and 1930s: China is a huge market for industrial products and arms, and she possesses rich strategic materials such as tungsten, antimony, manganese, etc. It is indispensable for Germany to dominate the world; Chiang Kai-shek is obsessed with Germany's militarization, industrialization, and centralization system. The "German spirit" was instilled in the spinal cord of his army, and a powerful army was built.So the German military adviser came into play.During the ten years, a total of 135 German consultants worked in China.They actively participated in China's "safety inside" and "fight against foreign countries", helping the Kuomintang government train troops, purchase arms, and make suggestions.These also had a huge impact on the subsequent War of Resistance. For example, General Counselor Falkenhausen drew up a general blueprint for the War of Resistance.During the 128th Anti-Japanese War, the 87th and 88th divisions trained by German consultants fought in all directions.The August 13th War of Resistance was even called "German-style war" by the Japanese army.

Weitzer was Chiang Kai-shek's third German military general adviser. Before coming to China, he was the chief of the Operations Department of the General Staff of the German Wehrmacht.As a famous general who participated in World War I, he was very capable of formulating operational plans and implementing operational command, and he was also the advisor who helped Jiang the most in combat.Wei Zeer believes that compared with the Red Army, the National Army's advantage lies in equipment, strength and supplies, so it should take advantage of the superior strength of the Red Army when the Red Army has just finished a big battle and is still resting in various places without completing the assembly. Drive the troops in, penetrate the hinterland of the Soviet area from all directions, and occupy the heart of the central base areas such as Guangchang and Ningdu, thereby winning the military and political initiative.Chiang Kai-shek believed that what the German experts said was reasonable, so he mobilized 300,000 troops. The main force was composed of 100,000 people from 5 divisions of Chiang's direct line. He personally served as the commander-in-chief of the army, navy and air force. .

At the beginning, the third "encirclement and suppression" did put a lot of pressure on the Central Soviet Area. Mao Zedong later commented that this was "the most difficult season among the three wars in the past year."At that time, Mao Zedong and Zhu De held a compass in their hands and personally led the troops forward. This tense and cautious situation was rarely seen in previous and subsequent Red Army combat operations. However, the third "encirclement and suppression" campaign did not put pressure on the Red Army for too long.The greatest victory of the Red Army against the Kuomintang troops occurred in September.During this period, the Guangzhou Nationalist Government took advantage of the fact that the main force of the Jiang army was deeply trapped in Jiangxi, and was marching towards Hengyang, Hunan.The Red Army seized the opportunity to wipe out a division of Jiang Dingwen's department and a brigade of Han Deqin's department.

It was in this unfavorable situation of "communist suppression" that Chiang Kai-shek decided to go to Nanchang to supervise the division again.When the Yongsui ship sailed to the waters of Poyang Lake, he received a telegram of the September 18th Incident. Before arriving in Nanchang, he had to turn the bow and hurried back to Nanjing. At this point in history, "communist suppression" and anti-Japanese inevitably met unexpectedly. After the Great War in the Central Plains, Chiang Kai-shek settled down the local power faction, and the main targets of "repulsing the internal forces" naturally became the Communist Party and the Red Army.At that time, not only Chiang Kai-shek, but many senior members of the national government thought so.Zhang Xueliang said: "If you are uneasy at home, you can't fight outside. If you want to be safe inside, you must first wipe out the red bandits. Only after the red bandits are wiped out can the whole country form a consistent external front and regain lost ground." Liu Jianqun, a cadre of Kuomintang propaganda, also believes that : "It is a fact that 'to fight against foreign aggression, we must first settle down at home'. The domestic society is unstable, politics is not on track, and of course there is no strength to resist foreign aggression."

However, in the face of national peril, how to resolve domestic political conflicts and form a unified external force, the national government, as the representative of the highest power in the country, has the responsibility to consider, and must also consider. In January 1933, Ding Wenjiang proposed in the article "If I Were Chiang Kai-shek" that the unity within the Kuomintang should be completed immediately, the cooperation of military leaders should be sought immediately, and a truce should be discussed with the Communist Party immediately.This article aroused great repercussions across the country at the time. To put it bluntly, it was "only when you are in harmony with the inside can you fight against the outside."Some intellectuals at the time believed that only by abolishing the one-party dictatorship, implementing democratic politics, and giving full play to the power of all parties and factions as well as the entire people, could China have a way out.Otherwise, "the government doubts the people, and the people also doubt the government; the central government does not trust the localities, and the localities do not trust the central government; the Kuomintang is afraid of being used by the Communist Party, and the Communist Party is also afraid of being used by the Kuomintang."Of course, both Ding Wenjiang and Hu Shi were liberal intellectuals, but for more revolutionary intellectuals such as Tao Xingzhi, they bluntly criticized Chiang Kai-shek and said: "Jiang Jieshi said that to fight against the outside world, one must first settle the inside, and Sun Jun Zhesheng (Sun Ke) said that to save the country, one must first save the party. My opinion is exactly the opposite of that of Jiang and Sun: to protect the inside, one must first defend the outside, and to save the party, one must first save the country.” But Chiang Kai-shek doesn't think so, although he is also a person with a nationalist spirit.He didn't think it would be helpful to make compromises with China, because at that time, he didn't think Japan would launch an all-out war against China.He stubbornly adhered to the policy of "to fight against the outside world, we must first settle down at home", and he regarded the Communist Party as his opposite, but he turned a deaf ear to the growing domestic calls to stop the internal strife and unify the outside world. History played a trick on Chiang Kai-shek in the end. It was in 1936 that he was "admonished" by Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng, who had determined to unite with the Communist Party to fight against Japan, during another "suppression of the Communist Party" by the supervisors, and he had to make the decision to stop the civil war and unanimously go abroad.History is serious and ruthless, and those who lose their historic opportunity are like passengers who missed the last subway.