Fifth Encirclement Campaign against Jiangxi Soviet

Fifth Encirclement Campaign
Part of the Chinese Civil War

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek in 1933
DateSeptember 25, 1933 - October 10, 1934
LocationJiangxi province
Result Decisive Nationalist victory; Jiangxi Soviet eliminated. Red Army forced onto Long March
Belligerents
National Revolutionary Army Chinese Red Army
Commanders and leaders
Chiang Kai-shek
Chen Jitang
Chen Cheng
Xue Yue
Gu Zhutong
Tang Enbo		 Mao Zedong
Wang Ming
Zhou Enlai
Bo Gu
Li De
Lin Biao
Peng Dehuai
Strength
500,000 under Chiang Kai-shek
300,000 under Chen Jitang
200,000 from various
Manchuria
Sichuan
Hunan
Fujian
Guangxi. 1,000,000 total mobilized		 130,000
Casualties and losses
Unknown 40,000+

The Fifth Encirclement Campaign against Jiangxi Soviet was a series of battles fought during the Chinese Civil War from September 25, 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 called this campaign the Fifth Encirclement Campaign (Chinese: 第五次圍剿) at the time, while the Chinese communists call it 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.

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 totalled more than one million, most of them being the forces of regional warlords; of which the largest percentage were men from the Guangdong warlord Chen Jitang's army of more than 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 captured communist regions. Chiang Kai-shek's own Kuomintang troops carried out the majority of the fighting.

location of Jiangxi Soviet

Chiang Kai-shek was commander-in-chief of the Nationalist forces and set up his headquarters in Nanchang. In addition to mobilizing many warlords' troops, Chiang also adopted his German advisers' (Hans von Seeckt and Alexander von Falkenhausen) strategy, 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 September 25, 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 October 9, 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 October 17, 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 December 11, 1933, a total of eight columns of Kuomintang troops ventured out of their fortifications and began a 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 in 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 defence. Due to overwhelming Nationalist superiority, Communist strongholds at Ganzhu (甘竹)、Great Luo Mountain (大罗山) and Yanfuzhang (延福嶂) fell. At dawn of April 19, 1934, the Communists launched a counterattack against the Nationalist force at the Great Luo Mountain, only to be driven off. On April 27, 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 August 5, 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:

References

See also

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