A Re-compilation of Old Postings

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?/topic/24901-roc-lost-mainland-because-of-wwii/

Wiki’s fallacious claims:

“However, the nearly nonexistent Soviet help proved not to be a problem for the Communists; in the mean time, the huge Communist need was filled by an unexpected source: their adversaries, the Nationalists. Due to the fatal mistake the Nationalists made in their demilitarization, the Communists were able to pinpoint nearly every Japanese secret depot with the help of former Nationalist troops in their ranks, and the total amount of Japanese weaponry recovered was enough to sustain the Communists for 2 years before relying on captured American weaponry from the Nationalists in the later stage of the war. For example, a single secret depot typically contained as much as 150,000 artillery rounds. By February 1947, hundreds of artillery pieces were recovered by the communists, including: 49 howitzers, 300 heavy mortars, 137 anti-aircraft artilleries, 141 anti-tank guns, 108 mountain guns, 97 cannons, and many other smaller artillery pieces, almost one-third of the Nationalist weaponry. “

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?/topic/33559-why-did-china-become-communist/page__st__15

China could have been communized in 1927, not 1949. In 1927, the Soviets had funded the wars of both Chiang Kai-shek and Feng Yuxiang. I already said that the Soviets gave Feng Yuxiang more guns than Chiang Kai-shek, and the Soviets never trusted Chiang Kai-shek, and held off the endorsement of the northern expedition till December 1926. Looking back in history, I would rather China to be communized in 1927, then to be defeated in a world wide war while bound to the Soviet chariot, than to go through the dozens of years of civil wars and world wars.

Appreciation for Chiang: without Chiang, China might have been enslaved by Japan already and the landscape of the world could have been totally different today. I will give an example as to how Chiang was thought of. In 1938, Stalin had another order for the world communists, i.e., to defend Wuhan as China’s Madrid. So, the communists world wide came to China, and all praised Chiang as the greatest leader. Only two persons did not buy that. One was Stilwell, who was called over for a censure by the Chinese government, and the other person who disdained Chiang was Mao.

 

BACKGROUND

The Russians and the CCP attempted to route the Japanese from at least 1924-1925 onward. Check out Guo Songling’s rebellion against Zhang Zuolin in Manchuria. Guo Songling had a wife from the YMCA Peking/Mukden cells, i.e., the operating center of the Soviet GRU agents [a project of Communist Youth International leader Dalin who first failed to stage the world anti-Christian coalition and hence changed the strategy to infiltrate YMCA] , the predecessor to the Soviet-operated Institute of Pacific Relations. From 1925 to 1929, everything the CCP did was to thwart Japan’s expansion in Manchuria by denying the pavement of railways. Three months before the 1929 war against the Soviet Union, the Russian consulates were closed down by Zhang Xueliang for the communist agitation work – i.e., rallies and protests across Manchuria.

Jeffrey T. Richelson A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century
p. 88

A decrypted March 1931 telegram from the Japanese military attachE in Moscow to the General Staff, six months prior to the Manchurian Incident,* aroused Soviet fears of war. The telegram read:

It will be [Japan’s] unavoidable destiny to clash with the U.S.S.R. sooner or later. … The sooner the Soviet-Japanese war comes, the better for us. We must realize that with every day the situation develops more favorably for the U.S.S.R. In short, I hope the authorities will make up their minds for a speedy war with the Soviet Union and initiate policies accordingly.52

After initially calling on the world communists to militarily defend the Soviet Union from 1931 to 1933, Stalin subsequently designed the united front in 1935, and ultimately in the time period of 1936-1937 successfully lit the fuse of the Sion-Japanese War by means of repeated GRU operations in northern China.

From 1936 to 1937, the Chinese GRU agents repeatedly sabotaged the Japanese installations and facilities in Peiping, Tientsin, Dairen and Qingdao. The war of 1937 was per-meditated.

A conspiracy. Imai Takeo had mentioned that TWO Japanese inspectors, from the army ministry and a separate government department, were sent to Peking one month ahead of July 7th Marco Polo Bridge Incident to check out rumors about the pending war.

Hitler did not come to power till 1933. Before 1933, the Russians and the Germans had a honeymoon for over ten years. 200,000 German officers were trained in the USSR. The Comintern agents used German as the relay point. The CCP had its European safe houses scattered across Germany. Mme Song Qing-ling liaison-ed with the Comintern while she stayed in Germany. The CCP returnees from Moscow went through identity ‘sanitation’ through Berlin.

There was no Hitler-Japan relationship before 1933. It was after 1933 that Stalin became double-pananoid about invasions from two fronts.

China and Germany began cooperation from 1926 onward – when the Russian and the Germans were still on good term.

Stalin first called for the UNITED FRONT in 1934, one year after the 1933 Hitler rose to power. In 1933, Stalin was still demanding the world communists to break off with the social democrats and socialists. That’s why the CCP suddenly decided not to aid the Fujian People’s Republic mutiny of late 1933; and Mme Song Qing-ling, who convened the world anti-war congress in Shanghai in September 1933 against the imperialist intervention war in the Soviet Union, also denounced Chen Mingshu’s Fujian mutiny – which was provoked by the Comintern agents in the first place.

 

The USA feared no communism after 1933. Before 1933, Hoover, who was the real force crushing the Hungarian and German communist uprisings in 1920s (how? by the economic constraint of food embargo), was the most vocal anti-communist, and played the major role in appeasing and encouraging Japan’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria. After 1933, Roosevelt tacked on presidency THREE times, with support from both the CP USA and the socialist party and union members included. Like George Marshall’s wife, Roosevelt’s wife was surrounded by the communists, including the members of the China Defense League of HK, which funneled 20 MILLION US DOLLARS to Yenan from 1937 to 1941.

Hitler should be thankful to the German communists for the rise to power in 1933. I already mentioned that NAZI and the German communists worked together to destroy the German social democrat government. Hitler’s “unholy alliance” with the Russian communism was a ploy, similar to the Russo-Japanese Neutrality Treaty. People long ago already talked about the similarity between NAZI and the communist party. That’s because they shared the same roots at the beginning. Germany, the Soviet Union and Japan had exhibited the opportunism by ratifying alliance treaties on several rounds, which showed that those guys knew no principles in international politics.

Germany, with or without Hitler, was seeking to re-establish its status as an European power. Its military cooperation with the Soviet Union prior to 1933 was a way to develop armaments free of the restraints of the Treaty of Versailles . And, its cooperation with China was more than that, but also to obtain strategic materials – stibium and tungsten – China being one of two countries in the world capable of production of these materials at the time. Pre-1933 years: the German communists colluded with NAZI party for years before 1933 in getting rid of the German democrat socialist party. They worked together in attacking governors and mayors of Germany who were of the socialist background. This was similar to the KMT-CCP collaboration before the 1927 split. In 1936, Hitler sent a top general to China for striking a China-Japan-Germany anti-Comintern pact. Chiang declined it because Chiang was a believer in the industrial base of America, thinking that Germany and Japan, lacking the economic resources, would ultimately lose in a World-Wide-War.

More, from 1935 to 1936, Chiang sent batches of emissaries to the USSR for collaboration talk. Chiang was not stamping an agreement with the CCP, albeit talking with the CCP continuously. Chiang told the Russians he wanted to stamp a comprehensive agreement with the”Russians and the CCP” together.

Stalin was smart enough to make sure that he was to sign only a non-aggression pact, not an alliance treaty, with China. Chiang did not like the non-aggreesion pact – which did not get signed till he was cornered by the Japanese after 7-7-1937 war. This was a strategic mistake since at the very beginning Stalin wanted a military alliance when he was paranoid about the two direction attacks from Germany and Japan.

In 1936, Chiang already told the Russians he would not continue to attack the Red Army in northern Shenxi. This was before the 12-12-1936 coup. Georgi Dimitrov’s diaries proved this point. That’s why Stalin called Zhang Xueliang by a “Japanese spy” and demanded the CCP to end the coup.
As for the German-China relationship, Hitler was against Japan’s attack at China. Obviously, he did not want Japan’s strength weakened. But Stalin outsmarted him. Stalin’s spy, Ozaki, working as a secretary of the Japanese prime minister, wanted to turn Japan into a replay of the Soviet revolution. To know how Ozaki, Sorge’s pal, was to do it, note that Ozaki likened the Japanese prime minister to Karenski -of the 1917 transitional Russian government.

See the point? If Ozaki wanted to stop war on China, he was one of five brain trusts of the Japanese prime minister to exert his influence to making it happen. The Communists’ aim was however to bog down Japan and China. War was inevitable. Neither Chiang nor Hitler could control it.Up to 1940, Chiang was still feeling he had a CARD to play in WWII, saying to every international visitor that should China lean to any party, the world wide war would be changed. You would need to have confidence in the indispensable role China played in WWII.

Germany “condemn”ing Japan’s aggression against China? Germans played the role in mediation prior to and after the fall of Nanking. It was a logistic mishaps [as well as Chiang’s false hope for the international intervention at the Brussels Conference, plus Chiang’s false hope that Stalin would declare war on Japan] that China did not receive on time or promptly review the Japanese conditions. Things after the fall of Nanking went out of control, especially after Konoe declared not treating Chiang as a party for talks in January 1938. -You want to know why Ozaki did not do anything to compel Konoe onto the ‘peace’ track. The Russian agent wanted to turn Konoe into Karenskii [Kerensky] and launch a Bolshevik revolution in Japan, which could be only possible by making sure Japan was to fail in a bogged-down war in China.

Again, Hitler would in no case go to war against the United States. He did not perceive the alliance with Japan to be used as buttressing Japan’s position in attacking HK, Singapore and SE Asia. Hitler was outsmarted by Stalin. Hitler was so upset by the Pearl Harbor that he talked for hours after the Japanese attack about why Germany was pulled into a war against the USA. Nobody in the world would be crazy to launch a war against the USA, not today, nor in the 1930s-1940s. The USA simply had and has immense industrial base to sustain any war. However, the Comintern agents knew the only way to win a war was to hijack the United States government, which they did.

International Gaming

The United States was a two party system, with the Democrats leaning socialism similar to the social democrats of Europe. Wellington Koo often said the U.S. policy had no continuity. This is the essence about the US politics. Prior to 1933, it was Hoover, a Republican, who was the U.S. president. He encouraged Japan in invading Manchuria, thinking China was half-Bolshevikized already. Hoover acknowledged he broke the communist uprisings in Hungary and Germany in the early 1920s by grain embargo. After 1933, Roosevelt and then Truman, tacked on the presidency. First thing for Roosevelt to do was establishing the diplomatic relations with the USSR in 1933.

Now about McCarthy. This guy was given information by FBI director Edgar Hoover (a different Hoover), and hence was in the knowhow about the Russian and Chinese communist spies in the US government. VENONA, released in 1995, validated McCarthy’s accusations. However, nobody in the US cares to read into VENONA to know McCarthy was right. In 1950s, the Republicans re-asserted control over the government. The relation between the U.S. and the USSR did not worsen however. Because there was a so-called “Khrushchev Thaw”, i.e., De-stalinization. It was after Khrushchev was toppled that the cold war went into a full swing.

Hitler was somebody you need to look at in different perspective. I already mentioned Hitler talking about why Germany was drawn into a war with the U.S. for 1.5 hours. It showed you how bitter he was. You won’t know this point unless you read the news report about Hitler’s national radio message which was about declaring the war on the U.S. If Hitler was so eager to go to war, he would not have been so bitter. Similarly, Hitler was bitter about Italy’s joining the war by invading France. Hitler did not need Italy to help in taking over France, not invading the Balkans and Africa. Hitler merely wanted Italy to remain neutral and act as detente against the other powers. You would have to know a warmonger like Hitler was not a mentally ill zealot.

You could not blame Hitler for not doing much on Japan. Japan, in January 1938, declared that they were not to treat Chiang Kai-shek and the ROC as a party for talks. This is a declaration internationally. Germany had no control over the Japanese government. But, the Russians did. The Russians had two batches of agents working in Japan, 1) the IPR agents, and 2) the Ozaki-Sorge ring. Both batches of agents had access to the Japanese prime minister and the cabinet. As I already said, Ozaki wanted to turn Konoe into Kerensky and launch the Soviet revolution in Japan. This is “one stone against two birds, Japan and the ROC”. Got it?

Germany and Britain. Germany, after WWI, was demilitarized. That’s why Germany was training the army officers in the Soviet Union. That’s why the Russans were using Hamburg as the relay of Comintern and GRU operations in 1920s. And, almost all GRU agents sent to China were German [and all Comintern agents sent to China were Americans]. Britain, in late 1920s, was so scared by the spread of anti-imperialism (not communism) that it got a treaty ratified against the USSR, called the Lacarno Treaty. Because of Lacarno, Trotsky and the Russian Red Army at one time gave up the idea of setting up a Northwestern China military base to assist Chiang Kai-shek’s northern expedition. You have to know what Lacarno was to know the relations between Britain and Germany.

Stalin was not worried about Germany at all till after 1933. What happened before was that Stalin and Hitler worked hand in hand to destroy the German socialist party. It was in 1933, after Hitler controlled Germany, that Stalin became wary about Hitler – because of the Parliament arson incident. You have to cut the line at 1933. Before 1933, the Russian instruction for the communists worldwide was no mercy on the social democrats. In 1934, the Comintern changed policies. In 1935, the popular front and united front scams were invented. Then in 1936-7, the Chinese GRU agents began the sabotage and provocation against the Japanese army in northern China. -Those GRU agents were all members of YMCA in Mukden and Peking of early 1920s.

Japan’s 1931 invasion against Manchuria was tied to the Russian and CCP agitations in Manchuria. The 1929 Chinese-Eastern Railway War was tied to the Russians and the CCP. Everything went back to the Russian policy versus Japan that was devised in the early 1920s. This was too broad a subject. One thing certain was that Stalin could not have succeeded in communizing China while keeping friendship with Japan.

 

Hitler and Germany did not cut diplomatic relations with the ROC. After Pearl Harbor (Dec 1941), Wellington Koo was surprised to know that the ROC had declared war on Japan, Germany, Italy etc. In Koo’s view, there was no need to declare war on Germany. Chiang was simply putting all his eggs in one basket, a big mistake. In late Dec of 1941, G Marshall, probably the most hidden and notorious guy working on behalf of the Russians, had selected Stilwell for the dirty job in China after the previous selection declined the offer after finding out that the U.S. had no intention to support the ROC at all. Through 1944, Stilwell used the meager lend-lease to choke China. Effective military aid was about 110 million from 1941 to 1948.

Hitler withdrew the German military advisers in mid-1938 because of one reason: the German generals complaining to Hitler that the German officers were directing the Chinese troops who were fighting the Japanese with the Russian weapons. The Russian pilots came in November 1937 and participated in the Defense Battle at Nanking in December 1937. I guess any reasonable German would find it embarrassing to be shoulder to shoulder with the Russians in the China battle field. Chennault was shoulder to shoulder with the Russians for some time till he was shuffled to Guilin for the non-combat mission, for example. The Russians bombed the Japanese air base in Taiwan in 1938. After the eruption of war, the Russian heavy weapons were streaming into China. The mechanized corps sent to Burma was equipped with the Russian armored vehicles and heavy guns, for example.

Hitler did not cease support of China till well after 1940, when the Japanese took over Northern Vietnam and cut off the Haiphong port. The German armaments continued to be delivered to China through Vietnam before 1940. It was the French who obstructed the German weapons from delivery to China, not Germany. Prior to the German blitz attack on the U.S.S.R., the Germans gave the ROC embassy staff advance warning, saying that should any ROC diplomats need to go back to China, they should take the trip before the Siberian Railway was to be shut down –a piece of information that the ROC embassy immediately reported to the home base.

After end of war, wives of the German officers and generals constantly visited China’s embassy and consulate for financial support and food assistance. The relationship between Germany and the ROC was not damaged on the personal level at all. The German generals in occupied Belgium and Holland also befriended the Chinese residents, to the extent that the Chinese nationals in those territories profiteered from monopolized trade and smuggling under the German protection. Hope these facts would shed light on your perplexity over Germany’s relations with China.

During 1937-1945 War

VENONA already showed how the Comintern agents choked China financially and militarily. The effective American aid to China from 1941 to 1948 was merely 110 million USD.

How much was 110 million USD?

Just compare with Chen Hansheng’s number disclosed in his memoirs. From 1939 to 1941, Chen Hansheng, in cooperation with the CP USA, funneled 20 million USD to Yenan through the HK-Shanghai operations.

CPUSA and Chen Hansheng funneling 20 million US dollars to Yenan from 1939 to 1941:

The money sent to the communists was used for buying weapons from the puppets, as validated by Yu Maochun. In another word, the CCP got the guns, so-called 145,000 broken guns (Mao’s words during 1945 Chungking peace talk), from the puppets by money, not battles. Certainly they killed the  government troops to rob the guns as well.

The reason that when “WWII ended the communist grew stronger and started to seize territories” was rooted in the Yalta Treaty. The betrayals made at Yalta were certainly facilitated by the Comintern agents embedded within the U.S. governments. Again read VENONA for the list of Soviet agents. The Soviet Union could not withstand the German attacks without massive U.S. aid – which came during WWII as well as pre-WWII. The United States capitalists built up the Russian industries in mid-1930s in the Urals and Siberia. Why? You want to go back to “Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution” to know how the American capitalists and State Department officials rode on the same ship to St Petersburg with Leon Trotsky who was in possession of big cashier’s checks and cash – all from German and the Wall Street.

The Civil War

Stilwell-related books talked about the American plan to train 30 Chinese divisions. That’s at most 200,000 American rifles if they were delivered at all. This training plan never panned out. That was after the recall of Stillwell and the start of Wedemeyer’s mission. According to the memoirs of the nationalist generals, in the early spring of 1945, the Chinese army divisions began to converge onto southwestern China for the said training of 30 divisions. The Chinese divisions were reorganized into army groups, and the military commission was changed to the defense department, namely, a nationalized army instead of a military commission that reported to the KMT party.

Though, the training was just started when the counterattack began in southwestern China as the Japanese army, knowing the coming doomsday, began to pull out from Vietnam and southwestern China. When Shi Jue’s 13th Corps, i.e., Tang Enbo’s crack army that fought against the Japanese army from the 1937 Nankou Battle all the way to the 1944 Ichigo Campaign, received the order to march to Manchuria, the troops had one third training ammunition left. That is, the 13th Corps never received any more supply for the while time period between the training and the Manchuria mission.

Whereas, the Russians, on the October Revolution day of 1947, already broadcasted to the world their military assistance to the CCP. In 1970s, they said they gave the CCP 700,000 guns. No kidding.

More, after the American arms embargo from 1946 to 1947, the U.S. Congress passed the 125 million China Aid Act. The weapons, which cost 3-5 times the replacement price, did not arrive till after Dec 1948.

At the same time when the Americans gave ROC the China Aid Act, Stalin gave the CCP the exactly same amount of USD equivalent rubles, with no string attached. – A catch here: The ROC did not get all amount of the 125 million – this credit line was later merged into the CHINA AREA AID which was transferred to Indochina in 1950s – another Comintern agents’ trick – till the Korean War reversed the American policy.

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?/topic/33559-why-did-china-become-communist/page__st__15

The arms embargo was imposed on China in 1946, on the purported pretense that the civil war had flared up in Manchuria. What happened was that Chiang already conceded to Marshall in putting a stop to the push towards Harbin, with Sun Liren leaving a battalion of soldiers on the northern bank of the Sungari, where they stayed on till well after the starvation and surrender of Changchun in late 1948. Marshall still scrapped the US Exp-Imp Bank loan, nevertheless. (We never knew the fate of those soldiers on the northern bank. Most likely all shot by the PLA, as was the fate with the regiment of Yunnan Army who rebelled against the communist at Meihekou in 1946.)

Chen Lifu, at one time, held a talk with some American representatives, and during the interview, explicitly told the Americans that their guns, with the exact numbers, were mostly locked up because i) the guns ran out of ammunition; and ii) the bolts of the American guns were not made for the cold weather [but for the Burma Campaign].

There was a statistical report on the artillery of the ROC troops. The majority artillery pieces were Japanese mountain guns that were sorted through the bounty at the end of the resistance war. The wide caliber American guns numbered by single digits, and some by dozens – all of them being the supply from Stilwell for the X and Y forces. (I had an itemization of the US lead lease aid for the years 1941 to 1944, somewhere on this forum. Most of the $$ were spent on Chennault’s air force, not on the Chinese army. And the numbers of 1945 included the shipping costs, as well as the weapons dumped by the Americans into the Indian Ocean.)

Chiang Kai-shek never realized that the American government had been hijacked by the Comintern agents. Roosevelt did not know that, either. Roosevelt thought that his State Department was run by the “British hands”, and thought that was why the State Department was hostile to China. There were rumors about Chiang Kai-shek funding Dewey’s presidential election campaign. I had read through available reports and did not find any evidence of it. I tried to find something in Wellington Koo’s memoirs, and could not find any, either. The most I saw among Mme Chiang and Mme Kung were something to do with the setup of some award for some essay writing in the U.S., some donation to the college they attended, and some payment towards the cost that was not uncovered by the Chinese embassy. The debunked myth about the ROC’s “corruption” would be a bribery that was exposed in about 1954 around. Note that China’s financial dealings were scrutinized by the Americans. Example: monitoring the ROC transfers between HK and Taipei, the Americans demanded supervision especially for the funds that were contributed by the Americans.

The unwavering American support for Chiang came from the missionaries, as represented by Henry Luce, a true friend of China. Mme Chiang’s American connection rested with Henry Luce and the religious sect, nothing other than that. The American government was always hostile to the ROC, with the exception of the Commerce Department and the American Navy, two places that were still retained by the true American patriots. When Mme Chiang was touring the U.S. for rallying the American support for China, Wellington Koo repeatedly passed on the advice from the American government that Mme Chiang should end her tour and go back to China.

I suggest that you find a book written by a Soviet diplomat called Ledovsky. This guy is the only person who disclosed the fact that Stalin personally endorsed a Soviet China Aid Act with the amount matching the dollars from the US China Aid Act. And, you may want to check out the records of a CCP czar sitting in Pyongyang from 1946 to 1950, who was responsible for shipping the [Operation August Storm] artilleries to Manchuria and Shandong. With this background, the communist Anyang Siege lasting from 1946 to 1950, and the communist Taiyuan Siege from 1948 to 1950, could be better understood.

Land Revolution & Proliferation of the Communist Army

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?/topic/33559-why-did-china-become-communist/page__st__30

The “people’s support” theory:

The communist revolution succeeded on the back of the Soviet artilleries. Communist general Su Yu had a memoirs, and he boasted of his communist army having more artillery and shells than the government troops, all shipped over across the sea from Korea and the Soviet ports of Dairen and Port Arthur. The Soviet artillery blanket-blasted the government troops at the Huai-hai Campaign, and 900+ Soviet artillery blasted Jinzhou to pieces, and took down Taiyuan, for example. Not to mention 250,000 Korean mercenaries fighting on behalf of the Chinese Communists.

Let’s go back to the the “people’s support” theme. I would ask you to check out the memoirs by Zhang Xiushan, 张秀山《我的 85 年》，i.e., My Eighty Five Years. The “great, glorious and correct” party had decided to abandon Harbin in spring 1946 when George Marshall saved them. Basically, Lin Biao was telegraphing Mao Tse-tung that he had no soldiers left to defend Harbin, and Mao replied that you Lin Biao had my permission to vacate towards the Soviet border. The so-called crack troops of the 8th Route and New 4th Armies were all spent at the Sipingjie Battle.

Now how did the “great, glorious and correct” party rebuild the army? Initially, pure Korean diehards stayed with them, while all the puppet armies and police, who once were pacified by the communists, defected to the government side.  Lin Biao was dubious about the “people’s support”, and he commented “东北人见人很恭顺，简直成了羔羊，太驯服了”，”Northeasters were obedient and very humble, simply becoming a lamb, too tame.” What was his point? Lin Biao was saying the people in Manchuria, after 15 years rule under the Japanese, did not support the communist war. Another memoirs showed what the case was: 在 西满分局工作的张平化（建国后曾任中共湖南省委第一书记、中共中央宣传部部长）搞土改试点时说他在实践中发现东北的农民发动的时候比较难，一旦发动起来就很有战斗力 – Zhang Pinghua said only after the “land reform” , the Northeast farmers, who were difficult to mobilize, started up fighting. So back to the “land reform”. What was it? It was to kill the landlords and wealthy peasants, so that the murderers had no choice but to chain them to the war chariots of the communists to become the fodder of war. That’s how the people’s war was launched into the full swing in 1947 and later. Again on the ‘people’s support’. When Manchuria people heard about the starving-death of 300,000 at Changchun, everybody packed up and fled south. There were tons of memoirs about this trip south. The same people, like how they did when Japan attacked China, continued to move south to evade the war, and majority of them had to stop at the southeastern Chinese coast for no means to cross the Taiwan straits.

About the supply of man and fodder of war. I covered this somewhere as well. There were writings by people who trekked across the communist territory. One writing mentioned that the only young man working at a hotel whom he met was someone who had no fingers in the right hand. (Women did not work outside of home in the pre-communist time.) You might say that the people supported the communist wholeheartedly that all able-bodied men went to the front. Alternatively, you could see how much fear the communists instilled in the people, by killing one class of people and distributing their land, that the peasants had no choice but to stick with the communists for ever -since they had blood in the hands. This is back to what I wrote about the reason that Chiang launched the encirclement campaign against the Red Army in the 1930s, with a slogan of 30% military solution and 70% political solution. Chiang must have heard how hundreds of thousands of people, following Heh Long’s Red Army on the flee across the Yangtze, got drowned. The civilians were simply too scared to stay behind since they were forced to act as butchers to kill their wealthy villagers.

http://book.sina.com.cn/nzt/history/his/wode85/108.shtml

根据敌人进攻的态势，6月1日，林彪致电中共中央，提出准备放弃哈尔滨的设想。6月3日，党中央复电东北局：“同意你们作放弃哈尔滨之准备。采取运动战与游击战方针”应对敌人“实行中央去年12月对东北工作的指示，作长期打算，为在中小城市和广大农村建立根据地而斗争”。《辽沈决战》（下），人民出版社1988年版，第612页。

TRANSLATE:

According to the situation of the enemy attack and postures, on June 1, Lin Biao wired to the CPC Central Committee, and proposed that he was to make ​​ready to give up ​​Harbin. On June 3, the CPC Central Committee replied to the Northeast Bureau: “agreed to give up Harbin and agree with your plan to be ready for mobile warfare and guerrilla warfare approach” …. “”Liao Shen battle” (part II), People’s Publishing House, 1988, p. 612.

The Myth of Government Troops’ Defection

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?/topic/33559-why-did-china-become-communist/page__st__15

Facts:

the 250,000 Korean mercenaries and diehards who fought for the Chinese communist cause while the so-called communist crack troops from Shandong and Hebei were totally shattered at Sipingjie and fled all the way to Harbin. Not to mention Stalin’s “China Aid Act” of hundreds of millions of USD in early 1948, on top of the transfer of Japanese guns and the “Operation Augusta” U.S. lease goods, and the direct participation of the Soviet engineering corps, Soviet railway army corps, and the international brigades, and the Outer Mongolia Cavalry troops.

The brave Chinese soldiers who died by millions in the civil war, plus the 5 million “bandits” who were destroyed from 1950 to 1955, were the FLOWER China ever had in the history of 5000 years !!!

About the poster who posted the gibberish. Let’s zero in a bit into what he said:

“第一次高潮，在内战之初。相对而言，“国军”这一时期的倒戈数量不多，但政治影响很大。此时，“国军”与“共军”之间力量悬殊，蒋介石、陈诚夸下海口要“三个月剿灭关内共军”，结果，不但“共军”没有如期“剿灭”，青天白日下的“国军”却接二连三地“叛变投共”。先是1945年10月30日高树勋率新编第8军在河北邯郸起义，接着是1946年1月郝鹏举率第6路先遣军在山东台儿庄起义，再就是1946年5月30日潘朔端率第184师一部在辽宁海城起义。“走高树勋、潘朔端的道路”，在相当长的一段时间内，成了***军队开展敌军工作的一个很响亮、能震撼人心的口号。

第二次高潮，在1948年9月至1949年1月的战略决战时期”

Reading this in an analytical way, you could interpret it as something like this:

From the 1945 to 1948, there was no “climax” of government troops defecting to the communist side; in 1945, the communists scored three big defections. … What were those defections?

1) Gao Shuxun, a Northwestern Army general, was with the communists for 20+ years, and his defection was a setup by the communist mole in the general staff headquarters, i.e., Liu Fei. Gao was asked to go to Peking for receiving Japan’s surrender, but instead of taking the train along Long-hai and Tienstin-Pukow, he walked along the derailed Peking-Hankow RR. I do not have info on the fate of soldiers Gao took to the communist side. I doubt they had a good fate, i.e., fodder of war. Now, the next. Let’s see the fate of those in next two examples.

2) Hao Pengju had four division commanders at the time of the Japanese surrender. However, out of the four puppet army generals, at least two were undercover communists. You would be amazed to see how successful the communist penetration into the puppet army was. What happened after the uprising was that Hao changed mind, and separated from the communists, and were then encircled and destroyed. Why would Hao not stick with the communists? Simple. The whole country of China knew that the communists were traitors, and accomplices of the Russians, and had no mandate and “YI” ( justice or moral authority).

3) The last example is a joke. It was one regiment which was disarmed and surrendered to the communist. This regiment under Pan was made into a propaganda that the whole division had an “uprising”. What happened next was that this regiment, while being shepherded northward, rebelled against the communists, and at a battle near Meihekou, was completely wiped out and killed to the last person. You may ask why the soldiers rebelled against the communists???

Now the other poster talked about the Huai-Hai Campaign. I had discussed at the thread about how some communist general recalled that their PLA front armies were cut in half after the Huai-Hai Campaign. Cut in half, not to mention that hundreds of thousands of bare-hand peasants were thrown in to fill the gun barrels – i.e., the human wave attacks.

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?/topic/2292-chinese-civil-war-1945-1949/page__st__75

Remember, before 1948, often, a government division chased several divisons of the communist troops across several provinces. Check out the thread above to see how I described about the Kaifeng Siege: one and a half government divisions withdstood attacks by 200,000 communist troops from three field armies. I do not want to go into the Siege of Taiyuan, and etc. Only the Russian artilleries took them out. Otherwise, you would have things similar to Mongol siege of Xiangyang, lasting like 5 years or 10 years.

The KMT soldiers if caught by the Communist forces.

The Red Army, the 8th Route Army and the PLA had a tradition of killing officers of government troops. Many division commanders and brigade commanders of government troops disappeared under the communist custody, and those generals were first used as chips for the ransom money, then used as “lecturers” at the Red Army College, and finally killed while fleeing on the Long March. There was only one brigade commander spared alive by Heh Long’s Red Army, and this guy later became a crowned communist general in the 1950s. The Red Army generals’ memoirs had accounts about a special NKVD force killing the sick and wounded Red Army soldiers with batons, i.e., the soldiers who could not move further. You may want to read into the “Ningdu Uprising” of 1931, when about 17000 Northwestern Army troops defected to the Red Army. All officers, except for Dong Zhentang and a few officers of communist background, were purged, and killed.

It was in 1948, when the PLA began to have an upper hand over the government troops, that the communist began to launch a false propaganda to win over the government troops, i.e., setting up a so-called “officer corps training school”, and even releasing the generals for instigation among the government troops. However, the mid-level government officers were unanimously killed. Now, about this “officer corps training school”. In 1950, when the communists were to win the war for sure, this school was closed down, and all the generals automatically became the “war criminals”, and were imprisoned till the first amnesty of 1959 at the earliest, and three more amnesties ending in late 1970s. Those who were still in prisons survived the day, while those who were released under the amnesty programs were mostly killed by the Red Guards during the cultural revolution in the 1960s.

Key Battles

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?/topic/33559-why-did-china-become-communist/page__st__15

The wars and campaigns of the civil war.

The Sipingjie Campaign and the communist flee to Harbin. I already covered this part. Chiang was planning to leave the Qiqihar strip to the communists, and never intended to drive them out of the border. Stalin and Mao had different calculations, as well. Stalin would be happy to control China’s northern belt 50-50. Mao was smart enough to have engineer Zhang Xinfu murdered so that Chiang could not have reached a joint venture agreement with the Russians. Then went the Russian order to defend Sipingjie as China’s Madrid. What happened was that the so-called communist crack forces of the 8th route and new 4th armies were destroyed at Sipingjie. And Kim Il-sun had to send in 200,000 mercenaries to help Mao, not counting the Koreans who were converted from the Japanese Kwantung Army. After 4 years of war, there were only 50,000 Koreans left, to be shipped back to Kim for the 1950 Korean War.

I had talked about the disclosures of historical facts during the cultural revolution. What was disclosed was that Lin Biao hesitated about attacking Sipingjie the 3rd time after maulings he suffered the previous two times, and from early 1948 to autumn 1948, loitered between Jinzhou and Sipingjie for over half a year, against Mao’s repeating demands to attack Jinzhou. At one time, Lin Biao requested for a western campaign towards Jehol, which was defended by Shi Jue for 3-4 years, against frequent raids by the Outer Mongolia Cavalry. (To know who Shi Jue was, check out the Battle of Huwan at republicanchina.org/campaign.html ) It was till the Soviet engineering corps and railway army corps fully laid the tracks and shipped over 900+ pieces of artilleries that Lin Biao finally attacked Jinzhou. (Zhang Rong had a talk about how the shelling poured into her mother’s house.)

Now what I want to talk about is the “brother soldiers” – i.e., the flowers of China.

Unlike the U.S. system, China had no draft law. The American soldiers were mostly kids of age 17-20, as G Marshall said. The Chinese soldiers were professionals, and treated the military career as his lifelong devotion. The troops who were killed in the civil war were veterans from the 8-year-long anti-Japanese war. In contrast with the government troops, the communist soldiers were mostly civilians and peasants. The other poster, while exaggerating the communist invincibility, claimed that the government troops numbered more than the communist troops. The fact was that the government troops never bothered to replenish their lost ranks. I already gave the example of the 52nd Corps which fought in Manchuria for three years without replenishment, the same soldiers who fought across China south to north, north to south, and south to north, as was said in Zhang Mingming’s song “Father’s Straw Saddles”. (The 52nd Corps was one of Tang Enbo’s crack forces which fought against the Japanese in different war zones, as a contingency force, and participated in almost every major campaign, including the Ichigo Campaign.)

Stalin knew better what a nation’s flowers were. It was not the age 17-20 foot soldiers, but the officer corps. That’s why Stalin ordered to have 20000-30000 Polish officers murdered, and why Stalin wanted to shoot 50,000 German officers. Stalin himself know he made a mistake in purging his officer corps, which made it possible for the German Army to almost destroy the Soviet Union, which was saved only when the Americans went in with the help transported along the Siberian RR. The millions of ROC troops and the 5 million “bandits” were of this category of flowers that I talked about here.

There was a person called Deng Wenyi who was the military inspector traveling across the battlefields. He inspected the thousands of remnant wounded soldiers at Menglianggu and filed a report about the cause of the debacle. He talked about the shortage of water for cooling wweapons. This report convinced Chiang that Zhang Lingfu did his best, and hence Chiang named one British “bribery” warship as the Lingfu Warship. What you probably did not know, like most Chinese, was that the Comintern moles in the U.S. White House had an order to destroy all China-bound lend-lease goods by dumping them into the Indian Ocean. The one army corps which went to Manchuria, together with the non-U.S.-equipped 52nd Corps, had only one third training ammunition left. Thereafter, you have the George Marshall ams embargo, and hence all U.S. weapons were effectively locked up and never used. The bullets that ROC ordered with the U.S., for the German calibre guns, were denied export, even though the order was placed in 1943-1944. Your claim that the 74th Division was using the American weapons was wrong. To know how fierce the Menglianggu Battle was, you want to cite some communist military district commander’s lecture, which was made in early 2000s, and what this guy (Liu Yazhou) said was what I cited somewhere, namely, the “Odd Shoes” story. Basically, this guy’s father joined the communist 8th route with 7-8 village pals, was given a pair of shoes by his mom, but never used the shoes throughout the resistance war, and survived intact with his village pals – because you know the communists were friends of the Japanese and did not fight the Japanese, and at the Battle of Menglianggu, decided to open up the wrap to wear the shoes to feel the love of his mom before possible death, found that his mom mistakenly packed two shoes for the same foot, and what this guy said was that his father’s village pals all died, and the young men of China, in 2000s, should remember the sacrifice of the “revolutionary” ancestors, etc etc.

The story of Du Yuming could tell something about how the government soldiers thought about the communists. Du was among the prisoners. However, no soldier ever betrayed him. Only after Du committed suicide did the soldiers murmured among themselves that “Corps chief is dead”. The communists overheard the soldiers’ talk, and then investigated the prisoners to find the wounded Du. What does this tell you?

After comparing the “invoice” from the Americans with the “inventory” of the Chinese Communists from 1950, will you be able to tell that the 155-mm guns were in fact part of the American lend-lease for the Soviet August Storm Campaign.

Now the Browning M2 guns that were used by the 74th Corps.

简介 M2 勃朗宁机枪(M2 Machine Gun)俗称 0.50 重机枪(Browning Machine Gun， Cal. .50，M2HB，Flexible.)，是由 约翰·摩西·勃朗宁设计的大口径重机枪，发射12.7 ×99 毫米(.50BMG)大口径弹药，常见用于步兵架设的火力阵地及军用车辆如坦克、装甲运兵车等，主要用途用途是攻击轻装甲目标，集结有生目标和低空防空。从1921 年就开始使用服役至到21 世纪。 M2 的.50BMG 弹药由美国温彻斯特连发武器公司开发，主要是对抗第一次世界大战时德国的13 毫米口径反坦克步枪弹药。

Chen Lifu’s memoirs had a passage on the interview with Americans in regards to the exact number of American weapons. There was a Burma Theater War published by the US Army College, where you will find a list of guns that the US supplied to the Chinese Army, exact numbers as to the 108mm, 80mm, and etc. The X-force had the light US weapons, but the Y-force had none.

I believe this was part of the original purchase that the Peking government placed with the United States in 1917, about 10,000 to 20,000 guns in total, that was supposedly to be an award for China’s declaring war on Germany. Thereafter, from 1919 onward, there was the 10-year arms embargo on China, and there is no way for the American guns to slip into China in batches.
Battle of Menglianggu. It was a setup by two moles, Guo Rugui and Liu Fei. Zhang’s reinforced division, while pressuring onto the hills, had no water supply. Their machine guns could only be cooled by human pee, and by the time pee was finished, the guns were of no use. The officers and generals who were killed on Menglianggu were the pals who had fought in the same trenches during the 1937 Battle of nanking against the Japanese, as well as the pals at the Battle of Wanjialing which saw a Japanese Shidan annihilated.

As to Zhang Lingfu, and the human urine, you could find information at http://www.boxun.tv/forum/lishi/5721.shtml

You want to read the writings by two eyewitnesses and they invariably said the machine guns were 水冷式, i.e., water-cooling type
# 朱夜(抗日铁军幸存将领): 孟良崮的黄昏

http://www.boxun.tv/forum/lishi/5720.shtml

一 场惨烈血战，经过四昼夜的搏杀之后，弹尽援绝，几乎伤亡殆尽。少数轻伤的官兵，仍然坚守阵地，纷纷用刺刀、拳足齿牙和匪军展开肉搏。四天以来，这个北地战 场，眼见它堆积着无数尸骸，硝烟弥漫号角悲泣裹，仍然有零星的枪声，也还有三五名战士，同冲到山头的匪军作殊死搏斗。经过了四昼夜激烈战斗，官兵们没有吃 一口饭饮一滴水。北地的烈日和浓重风沙硝烟灸烤，除了唇绽肤裂之外，饥渴得使人难支。当时我躺在两座岩石之间，望着高照的火伞，极思有削一捧清泉入口。眼 见伙伴们以自己的小便解渴，在几度犹豫之后，也只有不得已了，一经入口不知其味，确实感到有了精力。不远的一位女政工队员，她不肯喝自己的便溺，却也不愿 把它浪费，她把那一捧黄汤从小盆倒进一个磁碗，对着伙伴们扬了一扬，立刻就有人争着把它接过喝了。看在眼裹，使我忘记了疲惫同饥渴，远远地对她唤一声聋 “施水少女”，她对我挥手一笑罢了。

# 林伟年(抗日铁军幸存将领): 张灵甫壮烈千秋

http://www.boxun.tv/forum/lishi/5719.shtml

孟 良崮是一处东西连绵十数里的石头山，乱石遍布，怪岩错落，既无村舍，亦无树木，缺乏水源。匪军迅即调集八个纵队（军）四面围攻，战况激烈，双方伤亡惨重， 我军缺弹药粮水，枵腹征战，所用水冷式重机枪因缺水无法发射（初以人尿代替后来尿亦无出），空军虽空投弹药、大饼馒头及茶水，因山陡多落敌区。在万般困难 状况下，浴血苦斗，黄沙滚滚，杀声震天，至十六日中午匪军己接近军指挥所附近，张将军毅然写下遗书：“十余万之匪，向我围攻数日，今弹尽援绝，水粮俱无， 我决与仁杰（副军长蔡仁杰）战至最后以一弹饮诀成仁，上报国家领袖，下对部属袍泽。老父来京，未克亲侍，希菩待之，幼子希善抚之，玉玲吾妻，今永诀矣。三 十六年五月十六日灵甫绝笔。”遗书先交随从杨少校突围带出（此一遗书原件现藏凤山陆军官校校史馆）。

About the women soldiers in the ROC troops. I want to remind you of a picture showing female Chinese soldiers taken prisoners of war at the 1938 Battle of Xuzhou, and the subsequent enslavement of those dozens of women soldiers as “comfort women”, and the ultimate torture death.

1917 model versus 1921 model

全师装备计有12门105毫米榴弹炮（卡车牵引）、36门75毫米山炮（吉普车牵引）、108门105毫米迫击炮（骡马牵引）、108门81毫米迫击炮（骡马牵引）、108门37毫米战防炮（吉普车牵引）、486门60毫米迫击炮、255具火焰喷射器、324具M1“巴祖卡”火箭筒、324挺7.62毫米勃郎宁M1917水冷式重机枪、1080挺7.62毫米1918A2轻机枪、2400支9毫米美制M1汤姆森冲锋枪和加拿大斯太令卡宾枪、4800支7.62毫米M1903A1春田步枪，军官配9毫米勃郎宁M1911A1手枪。无线电报话机配备到连，共有机动车约300辆、骡马1000匹。淮阴之战
——《国军五大主力之首：74军（整编74师）》

What is shown here is that other than 12 pieces of 105-mm howitzer.

Chinese army reorganized the artillery units by absorbing the Japanese mountain guns which were abundant in supply at the end of the war. The majority of light weapons were Japanese rifles. It is a wonder that the Chinese army were still using the 1917 model for the heavy machine guns – stuff that must be purchased by the Peking government during WWI. In 1930s, Chinese army had a military equipment remodeling, and standardized the rifles and light machine guns on basis of the Czech/German model, and tweaked the gun barrel to have both rifles and machine guns use the same bullets. I am quite surprised to see the 74th Corps had 324 1917 water-cooled heavy machine guns. (It also exhibited an American accusation that Chinese troops treasure weapons so much that rarely did they destroy weapons at defeat – which was true in instances of warlord battles, not Sino-Japanese or CCP-KMT battles.)

I took some time reading through the History of CBI Theatre, and noted that the 74th Corps was treated as a reserved unit at Kunming, not part of the Y-force for penetration into Burma; however, it was to be part of the 30-division reorganization plan, which never took off since the manpower was never secured and the US supplies were constantly diverted to the airforce, to teh X-force in India, and to the US bomber bases. I checked the page about the supply of light weapons, and noted that the agreement said that China was to supply 74% of the machine guns, while the rest was to be supplied by the US. What happened was that the Comintern agent, Curries, ordered the weapons to be dumped into the Indian Ocean in 1945. There was a memoirs about one army corps using up 2/3rd training ammunition in spring 1945, and then sailed to Manchuria with one third ammunition left, and that could give you a hint as to the American weapons.

I recalled reading in more than a few places about the women soldiers. Wu Lili, who was in 1937 kicked out of Yenan, together with Smedley, was at one time working as a political indoctrination worker in Hu Zongnan’s army. The practice of having women work in the army had its history in the northern expedition time period. Chiang, in 1945, adopted Wedemeyer’s advice in kicking out political workers, but two years later, reinstated the political indoctrination department. (CCP had two lines: political commissar, and political director in the army, by the way.)

I found the following quote to be corroborating what I described about the “Odd Shoe” story. Check out http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=196484051 where you will see a citation that the communist side incurred 60,000 casualties in attacking Mengliangu. And you have the communist general Chen Yi said this:
打到激烈时,陈毅亲自抱着电话机对前线的指挥员喊:你们不要怕伤亡,我手里还有十万整训的民兵,你们损失二万,我给你们补充两万.你们部队打光了,我也给你们恢复番号!
事后,陈毅也曾感叹,说什么也不让自己的儿子带兵,”打仗真不是人干的事儿!”