Mao: The Unknown Story

But what most infuriated Mao was that the initiative lessened the chances of Chiang’s defeat — and hence of Russia intervening. In future years, Mao was to make Peng pay dearly for this, the only large-scale operation carried out by any Communist forces during the whole eight years of the Japanese occupation.

MEANWHILE, IN SPITE of Japanese bombing, Chongqing still stood, and Chiang did not collapse. Mao had to find another way to try to draw the Russians in. Chiang now came up with a plan to end the Nationalist — Communist fighting by separating the two forces physically. By this time, the 8RA had control over most of the territories they could expect to lay their hands on in northern China, so fighting there had died down. The main theater of civil war had moved to the Yangtze Valley in east central China near Shanghai and Nanjing. Chiang’s plan called for the Red N4A to move out of the Yangtze region and join the 8RA in the north, in return for letting the Reds keep virtually all of the territory seized in northern China. On 16 July 1940, Chiang offered this trade-off, couched in the form of an “order,” and gave the N4A a deadline of a month.

Mao had no intention of giving up the rich and strategic heartland. He turned Chiang’s order-offer down flat. Actually, he positively hoped that Chiang would use force to remove the N4A, and that there would be all-out civil war. “Mao’s calculation,” Russian ambassador Panyushkin wrote, was that “if there is a civil war, the Russians would back the CCP,” and Mao wanted to “nudge such a development.”

In his many cables to Moscow that summer, Mao kept urging the Russians to help him deal “serious blows” to the Nationalists. Instead of moving north, the N4A launched its biggest-ever attack on the Nationalists at the beginning of October, at a place called Yellow Bridge, wiping out 11,000 Nationalist troops and killing two generals. Chiang did not order any retaliation, and kept quiet about the defeat, as he had after many other defeats at the hands of the Reds. Unlike Mao, Chiang was afraid of igniting an all-out civil war, which would doom China’s chances against Japan. He only reiterated on 19 October that the N4A must move to the “appointed areas” within one month.

Mao met this second deadline with silence. He wanted to goad the Generalissimo into resorting to force, so that an all-out civil war could start and, as Mao told Chou, “the Soviet Union would step in.” Again Chiang took no action. Mao knew the Generalissimo’s weak spots. He wrote to Chou on 3 November: “What Chiang fears most is civil war, and the Soviet Union. So we can bully him on this.”

On 7 November 1940, the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Mao appealed to Moscow with his most overtly bellicose proposition yet. Signed by himself, the cable was addressed to Dimitrov and Manuilsky, Mao’s main backer in the Comintern. Copies were sent to Stalin and defense minister Semyon Timoshenko. Mao’s plan was to dispatch 150,000 soldiers “to deliver a blow” at Chiang’s rear. He called this a “preventive counter-offensive,” i.e., he would fire the first shot.

Mao was asking Moscow to endorse his starting a full-scale civil war, in the thick of the Sino-Japanese War. The reason he felt able to venture this far now was his perception that the latest developments might cause Stalin to favor a strike at Chiang. The Kremlin was considering joining the Tripartite Pact of which Japan was a member, together with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. If Mao struck now, in effect forming a pincer attack with Japan on Chiang, Chiang might well collapse. If Mao contributed to the defeat of Chiang, this would greatly strengthen Stalin’s hand at the negotiating table with Tokyo.

Mao’s entreaty to Moscow to allow him to enter this unholy de facto alliance with Japan arrived as Soviet foreign minister Molotov was about to set off for Berlin, where one of his goals was to get Hitler to help Moscow muscle in as a major interested party in the Sino-Japanese War. Molotov’s agenda stated: “Discuss the necessity of reaching an honorable [sic] peace for China (Chiang Kai-shek), in which the USSR may with the participation of G[ermany] and I[taly] be ready to take on mediation … (Manchukuo stays for J[apan]).” Molotov then told the Führer: “[We] must find a compromise exit from the situation prevailing between China and Japan … in this regard the USSR and Germany could play an important role.” But the Führer was not interested.