Mao: The Unknown Story

The Party was no longer able to operate underground in any city in the White areas, as a result of effective Nationalist policing plus massive defections. In history books this failure is blamed, unfairly, on Li Li-san, the all-purpose scapegoat.

Apart from Japan, the only states that recognized it were El Salvador, the Vatican and the Soviet Union, where the Manchukuo flag flew over consulates at Chita and Vladivostok. This was part of an attempt by Stalin to appease Tokyo, to try to prevent it turning north to attack the Soviet Union.

11. HOW MAO GOT ONTO THE LONG MARCH (1933–34 AGE 39–40)

IN SEPTEMBER 1933, Chiang Kai-shek mobilized half a million troops for yet another “annihilation expedition”—his fifth — against the Ruijin base. In May he had agreed to a truce with the Japanese, acquiescing to their seizure of parts of north China, in addition to Manchuria, and this freed him to concentrate in strength against the Reds.

Over the previous months Chiang had been building solid roads that enabled his troops to mass in the area and bring up supplies. With this logistic preparation, Chiang was now able to close in on the Red area. The armies then pushed into the Red base slowly, pausing every couple of kilometers to construct small forts that stood so close together they could virtually be connected by machine-gun fire. The Reds were tightly encircled by these blockhouses. As their commander, Peng De-huai, described it, Chiang was forcing the Red area “to shrink gradually: the tactics of drying the pond and then getting the fish.”

The Red Army had only one-tenth of Chiang’s strength, and was far less well armed. Chiang’s army, moreover, was now much better trained, thanks to the work of a large group of German military advisers. In particular, the Generalissimo had obtained the services of the man who had played the key role in reconstituting the German army in secret after the First World War, General Hans von Seeckt. So Moscow built up a “German” network of its own to help the Chinese Reds to counter Chiang’s advisers. It dispatched a German-speaking military expert, Manfred Stern (later famous as General Kléber in the Spanish Civil War), to be the chief military adviser, based in Shanghai. And the German Otto Braun was sent to Ruijin in September, as de facto army commander on the spot.

In Ruijin, Braun settled in the barricaded area reserved for Party leaders, in a thatched house in the middle of rice paddies. He was asked to “stay inside my house as much as possible for my safety as a ‘foreign devil,’ and in view of the constant [Nationalist] clamour about ‘Russian agents.’ ” He was given a Chinese name, Li De—“Li the German”—and provided with a “wife,” whose one vital qualification was that “she had to be big,” and “of very strong physique,” the assumption being that foreigners needed strong women to cope with their sexual demands.

According to Mrs. Zhu De (successor to the one executed by the Nationalists), whose information reflected the gossip of the day, “no women comrades wanted to marry a foreigner who could not speak Chinese. So for a while they [the Party] could not find a suitable partner.” Eventually they lit on a good-looking country girl who had been a child bride and had escaped to join the revolution. However, in spite of high-level pressure, she refused. “A few days later, she received an order: ‘Li De is a leading comrade sent to help the Chinese revolution. To be his wife is the need of the revolution. The Organization has decided that you marry him.’ She obeyed, with great reluctance … they did not get on.”

In this, her second arranged marriage, this woman bore Braun a son. The boy had dark skin — closer in color to that of a Chinese than a white person’s, which prompted Mao to crack a joke: “Well, this defeats the theory of the superiority of the Germanic race.”

The man closest to Braun was Po Ku, the Party No. 1, who had worked with him in Shanghai, and could talk to him in Russian. They played cards with the interpreters and went horse-riding together. Chou En-lai, as the No. 2 and the senior military man, also saw Braun a lot. But Braun had little to do with Mao, whom he met only at official functions. On such occasions, Braun wrote, Mao “maintained a solemn reserve.” Mao spoke no Russian, and kept his guard up with Braun, regarding him as a threat.