THE CAUSES OF THE LONG MARCH

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THE LONG MARCH
CAUSES, KEY EVENTS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE
MARCH
Andrea Nam, Ayush, James Hooi, James Huang,
Alessio, Vicky Lee, Sau Gwan Chan, David
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THE CAUSES OF THE LONG MARCH
THE CAUSES OF THE LONG MARCH
THE CAUSES OF THE LONG MARCH
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THE CAUSES OF THE LONG MARCH
THE CAUSES OF THE LONG MARCH

• The Long March was caused mainly because of
  Chiang Kai Sheks 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 peasants support.
• .

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THE CAUSES OF THE LONG MARCH
THE CAUSES OF THE LONG MARCH

• 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.
• .

Hans Von Seeckt, KMDs military advisor from
Germany
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THE CAUSES OF THE LONG MARCH
THE CAUSES OF THE LONG MARCH

• 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 USSR
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THE CAUSES OF THE LONG MARCH
THE CAUSES OF THE LONG MARCH

• 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
  Maos cowardly tactics.
• However,Otto Brauns 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 Brauns point of view, Maos
  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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THE CAUSES OF THE LONG MARCH
THE CAUSES OF THE LONG MARCH

• 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.

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THE KEY FEATURES OF THE LONG MARCH
THE KEY FEATURES OF THE LONG MARCH
THE KEY FEATURES OF THE LONG MARCH
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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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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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.
13

• 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.

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• 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 mens faces black and their bodies
  weak. The swampy water smelled horrible and made
  people vomit.

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• 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.

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• The Long march ended in October 1935 at the Red
  Army base in Shaanxi province.

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• 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

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THE CONSQUENCES OF THE LONG MARCH
THE CONSQUENCES OF THE LONG MARCH
THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE LONG MARCH
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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 womens rights. Mao's
position as the undisputed leader of the CCP
solidified because of the Long March.
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The Consequences of the Long MarchTHE GMDs 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 Armys 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 south-west of
  China so those provinces would be under their
  governments control.

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The Consequences of the Long MarchMAOS 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
  KMDs 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.

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The Consequences of the Long MarchHISTORIANS
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 CCPs 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 its authenticity.

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The Consequences of the Long MarchTHE CCPs 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.

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The Consequences of the Long MarchTHE CCPs 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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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
  all-conquering fighting strength.