by Edgar Snow
One thing Chiang must have understood after his October visit to Sian. That was that the Tungpei troops were becoming useless in the war against the Communists. In interviews with Tungpei commanders the Generalissimo could now discern a profound lack of interest in his new offensive. One of Chang Hsueh-liang’s staff told me later that at this time the Young Marshal formally presented to the Generalissimo the program for a national front, cessation of civil war, alliance with Russia, and resistance to Japan. Chiang Kai-shek replied, “I will never talk about this until every Red soldier in China is exterminated, and every Communist is in prison. Only then would it be possible to cooperate with Russia.” A little before this the Generalissimo had rejected a Russian offer of a mutual-defense pact through his then foreign minister, Wang Ching-wei.1
Now the Generalissimo went back to his headquarters in Loyang and supervised preparations for his new campaign. Twenty divisions of troops were to be brought into the Northwest if necessary. By late November over ten full war-strength divisions had already been concentrated near Tungkuan, outside the historic pass at the gateway to Shensi. Train-loads of shells and supplies poured into Sian. Tanks, armored cars, motor transports were prepared to move after them.
A flame of strong nationalist feeling swept through the country, and the Japanese demanded the suppression of the National Salvation movement, which they held responsible for the anti-Japanese agitation. Nanking obliged. Seven of the most prominent leaders of the organization, all respectable citizens, including a prominent banker, a lawyer, educators, and writers, were arrested. At the same time the government suppressed fourteen nationally popular magazines. Strikes in the Japanese mills of Shanghai, partly in patriotic protest against the Japanese invasion of Suiyuan, were also broken up with considerable violence by the Japanese, in cooperation with the Kuomintang. When other patriotic strikes occurred in Tsingtao, the Japanese landed their own marines, arrested the strikers, occupied the city. The marines were withdrawn only after Chiang had agreed virtually to prohibit all strikes in Japanese mills of Tsingtao in the future.
All those happenings had further repercussions in the Northwest. In November, under pressure from his own officers, Chang Hsueh-liang dispatched his famous appeal to be sent to the Suiyuan front. “In order to control our troops,” this missive concluded, “we should keep our promise to them that whenever the chance comes they will be allowed to carry out their desire of fighting the enemy. Otherwise they will regard not only myself, but also Your Excellency, as a cheat, and thus will no longer obey us. Please give us the order to mobilize at least a part, if not the whole, of the Tungpei Army, to march immediately to Suiyuan as re-enforcements to those who are fulfilling their sacred mission of fighting Japanese imperialism there. If so, I, as well as my troops, of more than 100,000, shall follow Your Excellency’s leadership to the end.” The earnest tone of this whole letter,* the hope of restoring an army’s lost prestige, were overwhelmingly evident. But Chiang rejected the suggestion. He still wanted the Tungpei Army to fight the Reds.
Not long afterwards, importunate, the Marshal flew his plane to Loyang to repeat the request in person. At this time also he interceded for the arrested leaders of the National Salvation Association. Later on, after the arrest of the Generalissimo, Chang Hsueh-liang recounted that conversation:†
“‘Recently Generalissimo Chiang arrested and imprisoned seven of our National Salvation leaders in Shanghai. I asked him to release those leaders. Now, none of the National Salvation leaders are my friends or relatives, and I do not even know most of them. But I protested at their arrest because their principles are the same as mine. My request that they be released was rejected. To Chiang I then said: “Your cruelty in dealing with the patriotic movement of the people is exactly the same as that of Yuan Shih-k’ai or Chang Tsung-chang.‡
“‘Generalissimo Chiang replied: “That is merely your viewpoint. I am the Government. My action was that of a revolutionary.”
“‘Fellow countrymen, do you believe this?’
“The question was answered by an angry roar from the assembled thousands.”
But Chang Hsueh-liang’s flight to Loyang at that time had one positive result. The Generalissimo agreed that when he next came to Sian he would explain his plans and strategy to the Tungpei division generals in detail. The Young Marshal returned to await impatiently his superior’s second visit. Before Chiang arrived, however, two occurrences intervened which further antagonized the Northwest.
The first of these was the signing of the German-Japanese anti-Communist agreement, and Italy’s unofficial adherence thereto. Italy had already tacitly recognized Japan’s conquest of Manchuria, in return for which Japan had acknowledged Italy’s control of Abyssinia. The opening of Italian relations with Manchukuo had infuriated the Young Marshal, who had once been pals with Count Ciano. With receipt of this news he denounced both Ciano and Mussolini, and swore to destroy Italian influence in his country. “This is absolutely the end of the Fascist movement in China!” he exclaimed in a speech before his cadets.
Then, in November also, came news of the disaster to Hu Tsung-nan’s famed First Army, which on the 21st suffered a severe defeat from the Reds. General Hu, ablest of Nanking’s tacticians, had for weeks been moving almost unimpeded into northern Kansu. The Reds had slowly withdrawn, refusing battle except in minor skirmishes. But in various ways they propagandized the Nanking troops about the “united front,” trying to persuade them to halt, issuing declarations that the Red Army would attack no anti-Japanese troops, urging the enemy to join them in resisting Japan. “Chinese must not fight Chinese!” The propaganda was to prove highly effective.
General Hu pushed on. The Reds continued to withdraw until they had almost reached Holienwan. Then they decided to retreat no farther; the enemy needed a lesson.* It needed to be shown that the united front also had teeth in it. Suddenly turning, they skillfully maneuvered General Hu’s troops into a valley of loessland, surrounded them at dusk, when the air bombardment had ceased, and at night staged a surprise frontal attack supported by bayonet charges from both flanks. It was zero weather, and the Reds’ bare hands were so cold they could not pull the caps from their hand grenades. Hundreds of them went into the enemy lines using their potato-masher grenades for clubs. The fierce onslaught, led by the First Army Corps, resulted in the complete destruction and disarming of two infantry brigades and a regiment of cavalry, while thousands of rifles and machine guns were captured, and one government regiment turned over intact to join the Reds. General Hu beat a hasty retreat, giving up in a few days all the territory which he had “recovered” over a period of weeks.
The Tungpei generals must have been amused. Was it not just as they had said? Did not the Reds have more punch in them than ever? Did not this inauspicious beginning of the new campaign show how difficult the process of annihilation was going to be? A year, two years, three, and where would they be? Still fighting the Reds. And Japan? In occupation of new and greater areas of Chinese territory. But the obstinate Generalissimo, angered by the humiliation of his best army, censured General Hu and only became more determined to destroy his ten-year enemy.
Into this main theater of events Chiang Kai-shek stepped from his airplane onto the flying field of Sian on December 7, 1936.
Meanwhile, important things had happened on both the right and left wings of the stage. Among the Tungpei commanders an agreement had been reached to present a common request for cancellation of civil war, and resistance to Japan. Into this agreement had come the officers of the army of General Yang Hu-ch’eng, the pacification commissioner of Shensi. General Yang’s army, of about 40,000 men, had even less interest in continuing the war against the Reds than the Tungpei troops. To them it was Nanking’s war, and they saw no good reason for wrecking themselves against the Reds, many of whom were Shensi people like themselves. It was to them also a disgraceful war, when Japan was invading the neighboring province of Suiyuan. General Yang’s troops, known as the Hsipei
Chun, or Northwest Army, had some months previously formed a close solidarity with the Tungpei troops, and secretly joined in the truce with the Reds.
The substance of all that surely must have been known to the Premier-Generalissimo. Although he had no regular troops in Sian, a few months earlier some 1,500 of the Third Gendarmes, a so-called “special service” regiment of the Blueshirts, commanded by his nephew, General Chiang Hsiao-hsien, who was credited with the abduction, imprisonment, and killing of hundreds of radicals, had arrived in the city. They had established espionage headquarters throughout the province, and had begun to arrest and kidnap alleged Communist students, political workers, and soldiers. Shao Li-tzu, the Nanking-appointed governor of Shensi, was in control of the police force of the capital. As neither the Young Marshal nor Yang Hu-ch’eng had any troops but bodyguards in the city, the Generalissimo had practical command there.
This situation helped to provoke a further incident. On the 9th, two days after Chiang’s arrival, several thousand students held an anti-Japanese demonstration and started to march to Lintung, to present a petition to the Generalissimo. Governor Shao ordered it to be dispersed. The police, assisted by some of Chiang Kai-shek’s gendarmes, handled the students roughly, and at one stage opened fire on them. Two students were wounded, and as they happened to be children of a Tungpei officer the shooting was especially inflammatory. Chang Hsueh-liang intervened, stopped the fight, persuaded the students to return to the city, and agreed to present their petition to the Generalissimo. Infuriated, Chiang Kai-shek reprimanded Chang for his “disloyalty” in trying “to represent both sides.” Chiang Kai-shek himself wrote that he considered this incident between them the immediate cause of the revolt.
So, despite all the objections and warnings, the Generalissimo summoned a General Staff Congress on the 10th, when final plans were formally adopted to push ahead with the Sixth Campaign. A general mobilization order was prepared for the Hsipei, Tungpei, and Nanking troops already in Kansu and Shensi, together with the Nanking troops waiting at Tungkuan. It was announced that the order would be published on the 12th. It was openly stated that if Marshal Chang refused these orders his troops would be disarmed by Nanking forces, and he himself would be dismissed from his command. General Chiang Ting-wen had already been appointed to replace Chang Hsueh-liang as head of the Bandit Suppression Commission. At the same time reports reached both Chang and Yang that the Blueshirts, together with the police, had prepared a “black list” of Communist sympathizers in their armies, who were to be arrested immediately after publication of the mobilization order.
Thus it was as the culmination of this complicated chain of events that Chang Hsueh-liang called a joint meeting of the division commanders of the Tungpei and Hsipei armies at ten o’clock on the night of December 11. Orders had been secretly given on the previous day for a division of Tungpei troops and a regiment of Yang Hu-ch’eng’s army to move into the environs of Sianfu. The decision was now taken to use these forces to “arrest” the Generalissimo and his staff. The mutiny of 170,000 troops had become a fact.
2
The Generalissimo Is Arrested
Whatever we may say against its motives, or the political energies behind them, it must be admitted that the coup de théâtre enacted at Sian was brilliantly timed and executed. No word of the rebels’ plans reached their enemies until too late. By six o’clock on the morning of December 12 the whole affair was over. Tungpei and Hsipei troops were in control at Sian. The Blueshirts, surprised in their sleep, had been disarmed and arrested; practically the whole General Staff had been surrounded in its quarters at the Sian Guest House, and was imprisoned; Governor Shao Li-tzu and the chief of police were also prisoners; the city police force had surrendered to the mutineers; and fifty Nanking bombers and their pilots had been seized at the airfield.
But the arrest of the Generalissimo was a bloodier affair. Chiang Kai-shek was staying ten miles from the city, at Lintung, a famous hot-springs resort, which had been cleared of all other guests. To Lintung, at midnight, went twenty-six-year-old Captain Sun Ming-chiu,* commander of the Young Marshal’s bodyguard. Halfway there he picked up two hundred Tungpei troops, and at 3 A.M. drove to the outskirts of Lintung. There they waited till five o’clock, when the first truck, with about fifteen men, roared up to the hotel, was challenged by sentries, and opened fire.
Reinforcements soon arrived for the Tungpei vanguard, and Captain Sun led an assault on the Generalissimo’s residence. Taken by complete surprise, the bodyguards put up a short fight—long enough, however, to permit the astounded Generalissimo to escape. When Captain Sun reached Chiang’s bedroom he had already fled. Sun took a search party up the side of the rocky, snow-covered hill behind the resort. Presently they found the Generalissimo’s personal servant, and not long afterwards came upon the man himself. Clad only in a loose robe thrown over his nightshirt, his bare feet and hands cut in his nimble flight up the mountain, shaking in the bitter cold, and minus his false teeth, he was crouching in a cave beside a great rock.
“Sun Ming-chiu hailed him, and the Generalissimo’s first words were, ‘If you are my comrade, shoot me and finish it all.’ To which Sun replied, ‘We will not shoot. We only ask you to lead our country against Japan.’
“Chiang remained seated on his rock, and said with difficulty, ‘Call Marshal Chang here, and I will come down.’
“‘Marshal Chang isn’t here. The troops are rising in the city; we came to protect you.’
“At this the Generalissimo seemed much relieved, and called for a horse to take him down the mountain. ‘There is no horse here,’ said Sun, * ‘but I will carry you down the mountain on my back.’ And he knelt at Chiang’s feet. After some hesitation, Chiang accepted, and climbed painfully on to the broad back of the young officer. They proceeded solemnly down the slope in this fashion, escorted by troops, until a servant arrived with Chiang’s shoes. The little group got into a car at the foot of the hill and set off for Sian.
“‘The past is the past,’ Sun said to him. ‘From now on there must be a new policy for China. What are you going to do? … The one urgent task for China is to fight Japan. This is the special demand of the men of the Northeast. Why do you not fight Japan, but instead give the order to fight the Red Army?’
“‘I am the leader of the Chinese people,’ Chiang shouted. ‘I represent the nation. I think my policy is correct.’ “*
In this way, a little bloody but unbowed, the Generalissimo arrived in the city, where he became the involuntary guest of General Yang Hu-ch’eng and the Young Marshal.
On the day of the coup all division commanders of the Tungpei and Hsipei armies signed and issued a circular telegram addressed to the Central Government, to various provincial leaders, and to the people at large. The brief missive explained that “in order to stimulate his awakening” the Generalissimo had been “requested to remain for the time being in Sianfu.” Meanwhile his personal safety was guaranteed. The demands of “national salvation” submitted to the Generalissimo were broadcast to the nation—but everywhere suppressed in the Kuomintang-censored newspapers. Here are the rebels’ eight-points:
1. Reorganize the Nanking Government and admit all parties to share the joint responsibility of national salvation.
2. End all civil war immediately and adopt the policy of armed resistance against Japan.
3. Release the [seven] leaders of the patriotic movement in Shanghai.
4. Pardon all political prisoners.
5. Guarantee the people liberty of assembly.
6. Safeguard the people’s rights of patriotic organization and political liberty.
7. Put into effect the will of Dr. Sun Yat-sen.
8. Immediately convene a National Salvation conference.
To this program the Chinese Red Army, the Chinese Soviet Government and the Communist Party of China immediately offered their support.* A few days later Chang Hsueh-liang sent to Pao An his personal plane, which returned to Sian with three Re
d delegates: Chou En-lai, vice-chairman of the military council; Yeh Chien-ying, chief of staff of the East Front Army; and Po Ku, chairman of the Northwest Branch Soviet Government. A joint meeting was called between the Tungpei, Hsipei, and Red Army delegates, and the three groups became open allies. On the 14th an announcement was issued of the formation of a United Anti-Japanese Army, consisting of about 130,000 Tungpei troops, 40,000 Hsipei troops, and approximately 90,000 troops of the Red Army.
Chang Hsueh-liang was elected chairman of a United Anti-Japanese Military Council, and Yang Hu-ch’eng vice-chairman. Tungpei troops under General Yu Hsueh-chung had on the 12th carried out a coup of their own against the Central Government officials and troops in Lanchow, capital of Kansu province, and had disarmed the Nanking garrison there. In the rest of Kansu the Reds and the Manchurian troops together held control of all main communications, surrounding about 50,000 Nanking troops in that province, so that the rebels had effective power in all Shensi and Kansu.
Immediately after the incident, Tungpei and Hsipei troops moved eastward to the Shensi-Shansi and Shensi-Honan borders, on instructions from the new Council. From the same Council the Red Army took orders to push southward. Within a week the Reds had moved their “capital” to Yenan city and occupied virtually the whole of north Shensi above the Wei River. A Red vanguard under P’eng Teh-huai was located at San Yuan, a city only thirty miles from Sianfu. Another contingent of 10,000 Reds under Hsu Hai-tung was preparing to move over to the Shensi-Honan border. The Red, Northeastern, and Northwestern troops stood shoulder to shoulder along the Shensi border. While these defensive arrangements proceeded, all three armies issued clear-cut statements declaring their opposition to a new internal war.