Chapter 7 The Seventh German Adviser Calls Jiang Meng's Staff to Travel Northwest

The fortress doctrine that Chiang Kai-shek has promoted since the fifth "encirclement and suppression" campaign is not the imagination of Chiang Kai-shek and his staff, but comes from the German senior adviser-Von Seeckt.The most interesting thing is that Li De, an adviser to the Red Army, also came from Germany, and Li De also promoted fortressism, short-term assault.Since the Red Army's fifth counter-campaign against "encirclement and suppression", it can be said that the two Germans were competing, but there were two different endings. This is a very intriguing thing.

Von Seeckt was born into a noble family in Prussia.During the First World War, he successively served as the chief of staff of the 11th Army of Mackensen, the Army of Archduke Karl, the Army of Archduke Joseph, and the Supreme Commander of the Turkish Army, and the Chief of Staff of the German Army. After the war, he served as the military representative of the Paris and German delegations . From 1920 to 1926, he served as the commander-in-chief of the German Wehrmacht. He proposed and implemented a plan to establish a 100,000 "pocket army", which laid the foundation for the re-emergence of the German army. In 1926, he was promoted to the rank of general and retired.He was ordered by Hitler to serve as Chiang Kai-shek's senior military adviser, not only because of his rich military experience, but more importantly, he was a follower of Hitler's fascist dictatorship and an out-and-out Nazi.He wants to spread Hitler's fascist dictatorship all over the world.

Once von Seeckt arrived in China, he instilled Hitler's authoritarianism in Chiang Kai-shek.In von Seeckt's eyes, Hitler's thought has a long history, and it was inherited and developed from the thought of the First Reich to the Second Reich. Von Seeckt sold Hitler's dictatorship to Chiang Kai-shek over and over again-the majority must not decide the system, only the responsible person can make the decision. Of course, everyone must have an advisor by their side. The advisor is for you, and finally The principle of making the final decision by your own will is the unconditional combination of responsibility and absolute authority that arises under dictatorship.Some major issues cannot be resolved with resolutions and majority votes. This will make the matter itself a mess, but it must be resolved with iron and blood...

When von Seeckt first arrived in China, Chiang Kai-shek invited him to give lectures to the officer training corps on Lushan Mountain.Von Seeckt stood on a high podium with a chair prepared for him behind him, but he did not sit down. He felt that standing up and speaking was a kind of majesty, while sitting down and speaking was a kind of heart-to-heart talk. At that time, he came to China not to talk with the Chinese, but to promote Hitler's dictatorship to the Chinese.The opening remark of his speech actually quoted a sentence from a paper by a junior officer entitled "What kind of person should lead Germany to restore its former glory", and he went on in one breath:

When all authority is gone, only a person who comes from the people can establish authority. Then this person is a person who comes from the people but is different from the ordinary people. He must be a dictator. The roots of a dictator should be deeply rooted in Among the people, he knows how to treat them. He himself has nothing in common with the people, because he is a great man, with a great personality and the charm of a dictator. He does not flinch before bloodshed, does not tremble before death, For the sake of the goal, he did not hesitate to trample on his relatives and friends. Victory was bought with Wang Yang's blood...

Von Seeckt's speech aroused strong repercussions in the officer training corps, setting off an upsurge of worshiping the leader.Von Seeckt's rhapsody also aroused waves of waves in Chiang Kai-shek's heart. Invisibly, there are many things that coincide with Hitler's thoughts and views.In order to strengthen his thinking, he engraved this slogan on the hilt of the short sword of each officer training corps member. In his conversation with Chiang Kai-shek, von Seeckt also quoted a lot of Hegel's discussion on war:  … The history of world wars is not a paradise of happiness, and happy periods are blank pages in history, for these periods are periods of harmony and absence of conflict...War is the greatest purifier for all peoples corrupted by long peace The moral health of the people.... Those who do great things must not call out in a humble way--humility, love, tolerance--to oppose world-wide works and conflicts in their realization, to build strong nations, Many innocent people must be trampled on, and all stumbling blocks on the way forward must be crushed...

These theories promoted by von Seeckt undoubtedly had a profound impact on Chiang Kai-shek. He said in a lecture to the officer training corps: In addition to Marxism and the Jews, the republic is also our enemy, and our struggle has only two This kind of ending, either the enemy will step over our corpses, or we will step over the enemy's corpses... Chiang Kai-shek is Chiang Kai-shek, he is not Bo Gu.Chiang Kai-shek was not a man without his own opinions. He knew that copying fascist things was not in line with China's national conditions, and he could only absorb part of what was applicable to him. Hitler was Hitler, and he, Chiang Kai-shek, was Chiang Kai-shek.It can be said that Chiang Kai-shek has a deep understanding of China's feudal culture of more than two thousand years, and he knows that the way of Confucius and Mencius has permeated every corner of the entire nation.It can be said that he, like Mao Zedong, knew the land of China very well. However, the paths they took in the end were so different. One was revolution, the other was suppression of revolution, and the endings were different.The other is that Chiang Kai-shek did not understand a large part of the Chinese people's hearts, and he lost the hearts of the people, and at the same time he was doomed to his end.

The four creeds of von Seeckt's life are: "Love, Hate and Motherland, Interest".Since the fifth counter-campaign against "encirclement and suppression", what he never expected was that in the ranks of the Red Army, there was a German named Li De who was fighting to the death with him.They coincidentally used the same tactic, but fought a war of two moods, one was the fascists and the other was the Bolsheviks, but they were fighting each other through two Chinese armies. As early as the barricade in Munich, the two had already contested.However, the identities of the two people were different at that time. At that time, von Seckert was the commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht commanding thousands of troops, while Li De was an uprising soldier.

When they arrived in China, the two German consultants spared no effort to fight, on the one hand, for their different missions, and more importantly, because of their different beliefs. One is a wanderer of the proletariat, and the other regards communism as the number one enemy An expansionist dictator.Seeing the Red Army's base areas retreating steadily under his fortressist siege, von Seeckt had a short-lived excitement. Later, when he saw the Red Army abandon their base areas and march westward, his excitement did not last long. Finally found that this little victory in front of them is not as brilliant as they pursued.

What von Seeckt revered and pursued was the glory and image of the empire, and what he pursued was the glory of the First Empire.How sacred was the Roman Empire in the Middle Ages, but history ruthlessly made this sacredness decline quickly.He dreams of building Germany into the image of the First Reich through his own efforts. He admires Hitler's imperialist ambition, which is expansion and dictatorship, but his health is getting worse and worse. It's time for the world to become the emperor, and my ideals and long-cherished wishes have not yet been fulfilled.His visit to China this time was part of the plan to carry out Germany's imperialist plan. The small victory in front of him prevented him from seeing the dawn of this dawn. He was still far away from the goal of Germany's imperialism, so far away that it seemed endless, but He still clearly remembers Hitler's words: To obtain new lands, only the East is possible... With the German sword to obtain the land for the German plow, to obtain the daily bread of the German people.

Von Seeckt did not have time to wait for the realization of his glorious dream, so he returned home in 1935 and died of illness soon after.He spread the idea of ​​"dictatorship", but deeply influenced Chiang Kai-shek. Since the fifth "encirclement", Chiang Kai-shek felt that his ambition to unify China was gradually becoming a reality.During that period of time, no matter where he went, he would ask his attendants to bring him the enlarged map of China, which was the size of a wall. He often stood in front of the map of China and imagined the great cause of unifying China. Among the ancient Chinese emperors, he admired Qin Shihuang, Li Shimin, Genghis Khan and other emperors who were ambitious and courageous. As soon as he stood in front of that map, he felt his own strength, and what burst out in his heart was the momentum of swallowing mountains and rivers. This powerful sense of victory often makes him feel a kind of drunken, drunk-like pleasure. In July 1936, in Baijiaping in northern Shaanxi, Zhou Enlai had a conversation with Snow and commented on Chiang Kai-shek at that time. Snow: Do you think Chiang Kai-shek's power has increased or weakened compared to previous years? Zhou Enlai: Chiang Kai-shek's power reached its peak in 1934, but now it is rapidly declining. During the fifth "encirclement and suppression" campaign in Jiangxi, he was able to mobilize 500,000 troops to attack and blockade.That was the period when he was the most powerful. After he crushed the 19th Route Army and forced us to retreat, he became the overlord of the Yangtze River Basin, but all this was achieved at a heavy price.Since then, his civil war slogans have completely lost their appeal. Snow: As a soldier, what do you think of Chiang Kai-shek? Zhou Enlai: As a tactician, he is a clumsy layman. As a strategist, he may be better.As a tactician, Chiang Kai-shek adopted Napoleon's method. Napoleon's tactics need to greatly encourage the high morale and fighting spirit of the soldiers, and the will to win ahead. Chiang Kai-shek always makes mistakes in this regard. He is too fond of imagining himself as a The hero who leads the death squads, he leads a regiment or a division, always makes a mess.He was always concentrating his troops in an attempt to seize positions by storming them. In the Battle of Wuhan in 1927, after the failure of other troops, Chiang Kai-shek led a division to attack the city and invested all his strength into the fortifications, but the entire division was wiped out. In Nanchang, Chiang Kai-shek repeated the same mistake, and without waiting for reinforcements to arrive, he launched a surprise attack on the city occupied by Sun Chuanfang with his first division. The undulating area between a river finally defeated Jiang's army. But Chiang Kai-shek was better strategically than tactically, and his political sense was stronger than his military sense, which is why he was able to win over other warlords, and he was often able to plan a campaign quite tactfully. Snow: From a military point of view, what was the main reason for the failure of the Red Army in the fifth counter-campaign against "encirclement and suppression" in Jiangxi? Zhou Enlai: There were two important factors that led to Chiang Kai-shek's first victory. First, he adopted the German's suggestion to build a group of fortresses in depth. effective siege.Second, we failed to cooperate militarily with the Fujian Uprising launched by the 19th Route Army of the Kuomintang, and we did not support this force to contain Chiang.We could have successfully coordinated with the Fujian uprising forces, but following the advice of Li De and the international advisers in Shanghai, instead of doing so, we withdrew to attack Chiang Kai-shek's massed forces near Ruijin, which enabled Chiang Kai-shek to flank Suppress the 19th Route Army and defeat it. At this time, Chiang Kai-shek stood in front of the military map of the Nanchang camp, staring at Yinjiang, Dejiang, Yanhe and Youyang in Sichuan for a long time.This is where the red 2nd and 6th legions are located.When the 6th Army Corps broke through the Xiangjiang River and "fleeed" in the direction of Hunan, Hubei, and Sichuan, Chiang Kai-shek realized something. He thought that maybe this was a vanguard of the Red Army's large army. He thought of the Red Army's plan to withdraw, but he never I didn't expect the Red Army to go so fast. At that time, he ordered He Jian to pursue the army while preventing the Red Army from fleeing westward.He has already deployed heavy troops to prevent the large Red Army from joining hands with He Long in Tingxi.He was a little proud of the plan. When his gaze left the Yinjiang and Dejiang areas and moved to the Sichuan-Shaanxi base of the Fourth Red Army, he shuddered involuntarily. He knew in his heart that this was a force no easier to deal with than Zhu Mao's team. He felt that At this time, the ideal of eradicating the red bandits and unifying China became far away.At the end of 1933, the Red Army there smashed the six-way siege of more than 200,000 Sichuan troops.After the Red Fourth Front Army withdrew from Sichuan and Shaanxi, it arrived in northern Shaanxi, and the main force quickly crossed the Yellow River westward. On the eve of the Red Army's main force preparing for the Western Expedition, Chiang Kai-shek arrived in Luoyang from Hankou on October 10, 1934, the Double Tenth Day, together with his wife Song Meiling, personal consultant Duan Na, and young marshal Zhang Xueliang. The opening ceremony of the branch. Standing on the inspection platform with his wife, he watched the square teams of students passing by in front of him. The music played by the powerful military band and the slogans shouted in the square teams were deafening. At that moment, Chiang Kai-shek experienced that again. A slightly drunken feeling.After the review, more than 3,000 students still lined up in front of the review stand, listening to Chiang Kai-shek’s teachings—since ancient times, no country has had frequent civil wars and used troops abroad!If you are uneasy inside, you cannot fight outside. The Japanese invaders are a disease of scabies, and the Communist bandits are a serious problem. Fang Zhimin of the Communist Party went north to the anti-Japanese advance team. After staying in Luoyang for a few days, Chiang Kai-shek arrived in the ancient capital of Xi'an on the 14th, taking the first step of his trip to the northwest. The "North China Daily" of that day described Chiang Kai-shek's trip to Xi'an: …Public opinion believes that Chiang Kai-shek's trip to Xi'an has something to do with the Communist Party's threat to Sichuan.Because any actions of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party will turn the province into a major front, but Chairman Jiang and his wife are advocating the new life movement... After the departure, General Jiang and Mrs. Jiang made impromptu speeches, the former in Chinese, and the latter in accurate and beautiful English.Everyone here admired the dignity and demeanor of Chairman Jiang and his wife, and was deeply gratified that there are such intelligent, energetic and dedicated figures in the Chinese leadership. Chiang Kai-shek went to Lanzhou, Ningxia and other places again, and "North China Daily" reported Chiang Kai-shek's trip to Ningxia on October 21: For a radius of about a hundred miles, there are only endless stretches of light brown loess hills with pointed tops, and the surrounding hills have been eroded into dry and cracked valleys. The horn sounded.The crowd began to cheer, and the band began to play music to welcome the Chiang Kai-shek couple and Zhang Shaoshuai. The guests stepped off the plane. General Ma Hongkui and his brother General Ma Hongbin, who was the chairman of Shandong Province, stepped forward to shake hands with them one by one, indicating that Ningxia was still in the hands of the party-state... … At that time, Inner Mongolia also invited Chiang Kai-shek to inspect it. Chiang Kai-shek adopted a compromise method and sent a friend to Inner Mongolia. He and his team came to Zhangjiakou, and then went to Taiyuan. Chiang Kai-shek's trip this time was considered to be dangerous. Since Zhang Shaoshuai, Duan Na and others who accompanied him did not stop him, he was criticized by many senior officials of the Nationalist Government afterwards. It can be seen from Chiang Kai-shek's trip to the northwest that although Chiang Kai-shek believed that the Red Army had reached the most dangerous moment, he also expected that the Red Army would flee when it was at the end of its rope, but he never expected it to be so soon, until the Nanchang camp called the Central Red Army. After the expedition to the west, Chiang Kai-shek and his senior staff hurriedly flew to Nanchang to command the troops that pursued the Red Army.