Unknown 40,000+ Location Jiangxi, China | Dates 25 Sep 1933 – 10 Oct 1934 | |
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Results Nationalist victory, Jiangxi Soviet eliminated, Red Army forced onto Long March Similar Encirclement Campaigns, Long March, Chinese Civil War, Chinese Communist Revolution, Nanchang uprising | ||
The Fifth Encirclement Campaign against Jiangxi Soviet was a series of battles fought during the Chinese Civil War from 25 September 1933, to October 1934 between Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (nationalist) and the Chinese communists. During this campaign, the Kuomintang successfully overran the communist Chinese Soviet Republic and forced the communists on the run, an event later known as the Long March. Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang termed this campaign as the Fifth Encirclement Campaign (Chinese: 第五次圍剿), whilst the Chinese communists termed it as the Fifth Counter Encirclement Campaign at the Central Soviet (Chinese: 中央苏区第五次反围剿), also known as the Fifth Counter-Encirclement Campaign at the Central Revolutionary Base (Chinese: 中央革命根据地第五次反围剿) or Fifth Extermination Campaign.
Contents
Prelude
After the failure of the 4th encirclement campaign in the spring of 1933, Chiang Kai-shek immediately mobilized troops for the next campaign. Nationalist troops eventually totaled more than one million, mostly forces under various regional warlords, of which the largest part were men from the Guangdong warlord Chen Jitang's army of 300,000+ (or 30% of the total nationalist force). Chen Jitang's troops were mobilized to blockade the southern border of the Jiangxi Soviet. However, most of the warlords were somewhat half-hearted towards the campaign, due to a mixture of only wanting to keep their own power and having already seen four previous campaigns fail. In the end, the majority of warlord troops only participated as block-troops and occupiers of the captured communist regions. Chiang Kai-shek's own Kuomintang troops carried out the majority of the fighting.
As the commander-in-chief of the Nationalist forces, Chiang Kai-shek established his headquarters in Nanchang. In addition to mobilizing the warlords' troops, Chiang also adopted the strategy given to him by his German advisers' (Hans von Seeckt and Alexander von Falkenhausen), which involved the systematic encirclement of the Jiangxi Soviet region with fortified blockhouses. This method proved to be very effective. In an effort to break the blockade, the Red Army—under the orders of a three-man committee consisting of Bo Gu, Zhou Enlai and Li De (Otto Braun)—besieged the forts many times, but suffered heavy casualties with little success. The Jiangxi Soviet shrunk significantly due to the Chinese Red Army's disastrous loss of manpower and material throughout the year, and by the end only a handful of towns and cities remained in Communist hands.
First Phase
The campaign officially began on 25 September 1933, when the first Kuomintang assault on Communist positions was launched. Three days later the Communists lost Lichuan (黎川). Although their force managed to stop the Nationalist advance on the southwest of Lichuan (黎川), further operations ended in failure: when the 24th division of the Chinese Red Army attempted to take Xiaoshi (硝石) on 9 October 1933, not only did the city remain firmly in Nationalist hands, but the communists were forced to withdraw over the next few days while suffering heavy casualties. Witnessing this success, Chiang Kai-shek issued a new order on 17 October 1933, requiring troops to follow the principle of tactical defense, strategic offense in order to perfect his German advisers' blockhouse strategy. In contrast, the Communist leadership refused to adjust their tactics and stubbornly continued futile attacks on Kuomintang blockhouses. Between September 25, 1933, and mid-November 1933, the Chinese Red Army failed to achieve any major victories and suffered serious losses, not only in battle but from defection and disease.
Second Phase
On 11 December 1933, a total of eight columns of Kuomintang troops ventured out of their fortifications and started the second offensive. The Communist leadership decided to face the numerically and technically superior Nationalist army in open battle. As a result, Communist forces suffered badly. By the end of January 1934, warlord forces began to participate, and men from the Fujian warlord armies struck from the east in coordination with Nationalists from the north and south.
Third Phase
On April 10, 1934, eleven divisions of the National Revolutionary Army began their attack on Guangchang (广昌), and the communists decided to concentrate a total of nine divisions in its defense. Due to overwhelming Nationalist superiority, Communist strongholds at Ganzhu (甘竹), Great Luo Mountain (大罗山) and Yanfuzhang (延福嶂) fell. On the dawn of 19 April 1934, the Communists launched a counterattack against the Nationalist force at the Great Luo Mountain, only to be driven off. On 27 April 1934, the Nationalists launched their final assault on Guangchang, succeeding in taking it by the evening and inflicting over 5,500 casualties on its Communist defenders. Remnants of the shattered Communist defense fled to the south and west under the cover of darkness.
Final phase
The three-man committee of the communist leadership divided their force into six different groups in early July 1934. On 5th August 1934, nine Nationalist divisions ventured out of their forts, taking areas north of Yiqian (驿前) and adjacent regions. By the late September 1934, the Chinese Soviet Republic was left with only Ruijin, Huichang, Xingguo, Ningdu, Shicheng, Ninghua and Changting.
It was at this point that Zhou Enlai's spy network within Chiang Kai-shek's headquarter in Nanchang passed intelligence to the Communists revealing that Chiang was massing for a final push. The decision was made to abandon the Jiangxi Salient, resulting in the beginning of the Long March. As a result of the Communist failure to defeat the Fifth Encirclement, the largest Communist base in China was lost.
Conclusion
Communist failures were mainly due to the policies of the Communist leadership: