Mao: The Unknown Story

When Wang Ming was still in Moscow, he told the Comintern that Mao “wired me repeatedly that they need money terribly [and] asked that you continue to send money every month.”

^†Piatnitsky was arrested on 7 July 1937, the day the Marco Polo Bridge incident occurred, leading to Japan’s attack on northern China and threat to Russia. The first recorded interrogation of him is dated 11 November 1937; that same day Stalin saw Wang Ming before the latter left for Yenan to press the CCP and Mao to fight Japan. These were unmistakable indications that the arrest of Piatnitsky had to do with the war with Japan, the CCP — and Mao.

20. FIGHT RIVALS AND CHIANG — NOT JAPAN (1937–40 AGE 43–46)

ONE MAN who sought to exploit Mao’s vulnerability was Chang Kuo-tao. He had met up with Mao in June 1935 during the Long March, with an army 80,000-strong in contrast to Mao’s battered 10,000. He also had solid credentials to be the leader of the CCP. Over the next few months, however, Mao had methodically sabotaged his army, and monopolized the route north to link up with the Russians, leaving Kuo-tao to languish on the Tibetan border. By the time Kuo-tao reached Party HQin northern Shaanxi in October 1936, his army had been halved in strength and he had become very much the junior partner. Even so, Mao was bent on further weakening Kuo-tao, because his army was still twice the size of Mao’s, and he was still a potential rival.

That month, October 1936, when Mao dispatched the Red Army to try to open the way to the Russian arms supplies near the Outer Mongolia border, he designated Kuo-tao’s combat-hardened units to break through the Nationalist force blocking the route. When this operation failed, 21,800 of Kuo-tao’s troops — half of his remaining men — were cut off on the far side of the Yellow River. Moscow then floated the idea that the CCP might collect arms in another Soviet-controlled region, Xinjiang. The mission was hopeless, given that it involved crossing more than 1,500 kilometers, through uninhabited desert and territory held by a fierce anti-Communist Muslim army. But Mao jumped at this idea and assigned Kuo-tao’s stranded force to this doomed mission. The force was named the Western Contingent.

Mao managed to make the journey even more futile by issuing a stream of contradictory orders that drove the Contingent from one hellish locale to another, continually plunging it into pitched battles. Its commander recorded bitterly that the tasks assigned him by Yenan were “elusive and changeable.” When the Contingent cabled early in February 1937 from the middle of the desert that it could not hold out much longer, nor go on, and asked for permission to come to Yenan, Mao ordered it to hold on where it was, telling it to “fight to the last person and the last drop of blood.”

By mid-March the Contingent, once the backbone of Kuo-tao’s army, had been all but killed off. Those captured met horrible deaths. After one climactic battle in western Gansu, more than 1,000 were buried alive. Heart-rending photos were taken of a large group of unsuspecting prisoners before they were slaughtered. The 2,000 women were raped, some tortured and killed, others sold in the local slave markets. Of the original 21,800 men and women, only around 400 eventually made it to Xinjiang at the end of April, more dead than alive.

The extermination of this force allowed Mao to slam the lid on the coffin of Kuo-tao. Mao turned Kuo-tao, who was in Yenan, into the scapegoat, asserting that the Contingent had been following “the Chang Kuo-tao line.” But Moscow refused to support Mao’s attempt to get Kuo-tao kicked out of the Politburo. Still, Kuo-tao was denounced in front of his own officers.

Mao not only ended Kuo-tao’s political prospects, he ended the lives of the few of the Western Contingent who eventually made it to Yenan. A local official described what happened:

When they were chased into our [area], we first of all gave them a welcome party and took over their arms. Then we said to them: “Comrades, you have been through a lot. You are transferred to the rear to have a good rest.” We took them in batches into the valleys, and buried all these grandsons of turtles [i.e., bastards] alive.

It was such fun burying them. At first, we said to them with smiles: “Comrades, dig the pits well, we want to bury Nationalist troops alive.” They really worked hard, one spade after another, wiping sweat from their faces … After they finished, we shoved them and kicked them all in. At first, they thought we were joking. But when we began to shovel earth in, they started shouting: “Comrades, we are not Nationalist troops!” We cursed: “Sons of bitches. We don’t care whether you are Nationalist troops or not. We want you to die, and you die …”

At this point, the bragger was challenged: “I absolutely refuse to believe this was the order of the Party.”