He Long
Yuanshuai He Long | |
---|---|
贺龙 | |
Member of Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party | |
In office October 1954 – 9 June 1969 | |
Chairman | Mao Zedong |
Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China | |
In office October 1954 – 9 June 1969 | |
Premier | Zhou Enlai |
Personal details | |
Born | 賀龍 22 March 1896 Marshal of People's Republic of China |
Commands |
|
Battles/wars | |
Awards | Order of August the First (1st Class Medal) (1955) (1st Class Medal) (1955)Order of Independence and Freedom (1st Class Medal) (1955) Order of Liberation (China) |
He Long (
He rebelled against the Kuomintang after
After settling and establishing a headquarters in
He held a number of civilian and military positions after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. In 1955, his contributions to the victory of the Chinese Communist Party were recognized when he was named one of the
Biography
Early life
He Long was a member of the
Around 1918 He raised a volunteer revolutionary army that was aligned with a local Hunan warlord,[4] and in 1920, his personal army joined the National Revolutionary Army.[5] In 1923 He was promoted to command the Nationalist Twentieth Army. In 1925 He ran a school for training Kuomintang soldiers. While running this school, He became close with some of his students who were also Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members.[4] During the 1926 Northern Expedition, He commanded the 1st Division, 9th Corps of the National Revolutionary Army.[6] He served under Zhang Fakui during the Northern Expedition.[4]
In late 1926 He joined the CCP.
After his forces were defeated, He fled to Lufeng, Guangdong. He spent some time in Hong Kong, but was later sent by the CCP to Shanghai, then to Wuhan.[4] Chiang Kai-shek continuously tried to persuade him rejoin the Kuomintang, but failed.[citation needed]
Communist guerrilla
After the failure of the Nanchang Uprising, He turned down an offer by the CCP Central Committee to study in Russia and returned to Hunan, where he raised a new force in 1930.
In 1934 Ren Bishi joined He in Guizhou with his own surviving forces after also being forced to abandon his soviet in another Encirclement Campaign. Ren and He merged forces, with He becoming the military commander and Ren becoming the commissar.[9] He joined the Long March in November 1935, over a year after forces led by Zhu De and Mao Zedong were forced to evacuate their own soviet in Jiangxi.[5] He's ability to resist the Kuomintang was partially due to his position on the periphery of Communist-controlled territory.[2] While on the Long March He's forces met Communist forces led by Zhang Guotao in June 1936, but both He and Ren disagreed with Zhang about the direction of the Long March, and He eventually led his forces into Shaanxi to join Mao Zedong by the end of 1936. In 1937 He settled his troops in northwestern Shaanxi and established a new headquarters there.[9] Because the Second Army of the Chinese Red Army under He Long's command was one of the few Communist forces to arrive in Yan'an mostly intact, his force was able to assume the responsibility of protecting the new capital after their arrival.[2]
When the Red Army was reorganized into the Eighth Route Army in 1937, He was placed in command of the 120th Division.[5] From late 1938 to 1940 He fought both the Japanese army and Kuomintang-affiliated guerrillas in Hubei.[9] He's responsibilities increased during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and in 1943 he was promoted to be the overall commander of Communist forces in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, and Inner Mongolia.[5] By the end of World War II He commanded a force of approximately 175,000 troops across northwestern China. He's most notable subordinates included Zhang Zongxun, Xu Guangda, and Peng Shaohui.[10]
He was successful in expanding Communist base areas throughout the period of World War II. Part of He's success was due to the social confusion caused by Japan's Ichi-Go offensive in the areas of China that Japanese operations effected. He was frequently able to expand Communist areas of operation by allying with local, independent guerrilla forces who were also fighting the Japanese. He's experience fighting the Kuomintang and the Japanese led him to question Mao's unconditional emphasis on the importance of ideological guerrilla warfare at the expense of conventional tactics and military organization.[11]
In October 1945, one month after the Japanese surrender, the command of He's forces was transferred to
In the People's Republic
He's military accomplishments were recognized when he was promoted to being one of the
After Mao Zedong purged Peng Dehuai in 1959, Mao appointed He to the head of an office to investigate Peng's past and find reasons to criticize Peng. He accepted the position but was sympathetic to Peng, and stalled for over a year before submitting his report. Mao's prestige weakened when it became widely known that Mao's Great Leap Forward had been a disaster, and He eventually presented a report that was positive, and which attempted to vindicate Peng.[13] Peng was partially rehabilitated in 1965, but then purged again at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution 1966.[14]
Jiang Qing denounced He in December 1966 of being a "rightist" and of intra-CCP factionalism. Following Jiang's accusations He and his supporters were branded an anti-CCP element and quickly purged.[15] He's persecutors singled him out by labeling him the "biggest bandit".[11] He was the second highest-ranking member of the Military Affairs Commission at the time that he was purged, and the method in which he and those close to him were purged set the pattern for multiple later purges of the PLA leadership throughout the Cultural Revolution.[15]
After being purged, He was placed under indefinite house arrest for the last two and a half years of his life. He described the conditions of his imprisonment as a period of slow torture, in which his captors "intended to destroy my health so that they can murder me without spilling my blood". During the years that he was imprisoned, his captors restricted his access to water, cut off his house's heat during the winter, and refused him access to medicine to treat his diabetes.[16] He died in 1969 after being hospitalized for the severe malnutrition that he developed while under house arrest. He died soon after being admitted to hospital, after a glucose injection complicated his chronic diabetes.[17]
He was posthumously partially rehabilitated by Mao in 1974, then fully rehabilitated after Deng Xiaoping came to power in the late 1970s.[citation needed] A stadium in Changsha was named after him in 1987.
See also
- List of officers of the People's Liberation Army
- Outline of the military history of the People's Republic of China
References
Citations
- ^ Winchester 1
- ^ a b c d Lew 11
- ^ a b Whitson & Huang 28
- ^ a b c d e f Leung 49
- ^ a b c d e China at War 162
- ^ a b Whitson & Huang 34
- ^ China at War 147
- ^ a b Leung 49-50
- ^ a b c d Leung 50
- ^ a b Domes 43
- ^ a b c d China at War 163
- ISBN 9781501774157.
- ^ Rice 185-186
- ^ Domes 116-117
- ^ a b Central Intelligence Agency ii
- ^ Chung 391
- ^ The Cambridge History of China 213
Sources
- The Cambridge History of China. Vol 15: "The People's Republic". Part 2: "Revolutions". Eds. Roderick MacFarquhar & John K. Fairbank. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1991. ISBN 0-521-24337-8.
- "Intelligence Report: Mao's 'Cultural Revolution' III. The Purge of the P.L.A. and the Stardom of Madame Mao". Central Intelligence Agency. June 1968. Retrieved May 27, 2012.
- China at War: An Encyclopedia. Ed. Li Xiaobing. United States of America: ABC-CLIO. 2012. ISBN 978-1-59884-415-3. Retrieved May 21, 2012.
- Chung, Jang. White Swans: Three Daughters of China. New York, NY: Touchstone. 2003. ISBN 0-7432-4698-5.
- Domes, Jurgen. Peng Te-huai: The Man and the Image. London: C. Hurst & Company. 1985. ISBN 0-905838-99-8.
- Rice, Edward E. Mao's Way. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1974. ISBN 0-520-02623-3.
- Leung, Edward Pak-wah. Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Civil War. United States of America: Scarecrow Press. 2002. ISBN 0-8108-4435-4.
- Lew, Christopher R. The Third Chinese Revolutionary War, 1945-1949: An Analysis of Communist Strategy and Leadership. The USA and Canada: Routelage. 2009. ISBN 0-415-77730-5
- Whitson, William W., & Huang Chen-hsia. The Chinese High Command: A History of Communist Military Politics, 1927-71. New York: Praeger Publishers. 1973.
- Winchester, Simon. "China's Ancient Skyline". The New York Times. July 5, 2007. Retrieved May 21, 2012.