When Red troops were marched to Manchuria, mainly from Shandong, pep talks focused not on high ideals but on material enticements. Commissar Chen Yi told officers: “When I left Yenan, Chairman Mao asked me to tell you that you are going to a good place, a place of great fun. There are electric lights and high-rises, and gold and silver in plenty …” Others told their subordinates: “In Manchuria we’ll be eating rice and white flour [desirable foods] all the time,” and “everyone will be given a promotion.” Even so some officers found it impossible to motivate the soldiers, and kept the destination secret until the troops were safely on board ship en route to Manchuria.
Communist officers who trekked to Manchuria remembered abysmal morale. One officer recalled:
The thing that gave us the worst headache was desertions … Generally speaking, all of us Party members, squad commanders, combat team leaders had our own “wobblies” to watch. We would do everything — sentry duty, chores, and errands — together … When the wobblies wanted to take a leak, we would say “I want to have a piss, too” … Signs of depression, homesickness, complaints — all had to be dealt with instantly … After fighting, particularly defeats, we kept our eyes peeled.
Most of those who ran away did so after camp was pitched, so … as well as normal sentries, we placed secret sentries … Some of us tied ourselves surreptitiously to our wobblies at night … Some of us were so desperate we adopted the method the Japanese used with their labourers — collected the men’s trousers and stowed them in the company HQ at night.
Yet even some of these trusted cadres deserted.
The commander of one division that had transferred from Shandong to Manchuria reported to Mao on 15 November that between “deserters, stragglers and the sick” he had lost 3,000 men out of the 32,500 he had set off with. Earlier, the commander of another unit reported: “Last night alone … over 80 escaped.” One unit suffered a desertion rate of over 50 percent, ending up with fewer than 2,000 out of its original 4,000-plus men. Local Manchurian recruits also defected in droves when they realized they would be fighting the national government. During a ten-day period in late December 1945 to early January 1946, over 40,000 went over to the Nationalists, according to the Reds’ own statistics. Although CCP troops in Manchuria far outnumbered the Nationalists, and were well armed with Japanese weapons, they were still unable to hold their own.
MAO’S NO. 2, Liu Shao-chi, had foreseen that the Reds would not be able to shut Chiang out of Manchuria. He had a different strategy from Mao. While Mao was in Chongqing, Liu had instructed the CCP in Manchuria to focus on building a solid base on the borders with Russia and its satellites, where the troops could receive proper training in modern warfare. On 2 October 1945, he had sent an order: “Do not deploy the main forces at the gate to Manchuria to try to keep Chiang out, but at the borders with the USSR, Mongolia and Korea, and dig our heels in.” In addition, Liu had told the Reds to be ready to abandon big cities and go and build bases in the countryside surrounding the cities.
But when Mao returned to Yenan from Chongqing, he overruled Liu. Concentrate the main forces at the pass into Manchuria and at big railway junctions, he ordered on 19 October. Mao could not wait to “possess the whole of Manchuria,” as another order put it. But his army was not up to the job.
Mao’s relationship with his army was in many ways a remote one. He never tried to inspire his troops in person, never visited the front, nor went to meet the troops in the rear. He did not care about them. Many of the soldiers sent to Manchuria had malaria. In order to drag these feverish men the many hundreds of kilometers, each sick man was sandwiched between two able-bodied soldiers and pulled along by a rope around the waist. Mao’s preferred method for dealing with wounded soldiers was to leave them with local peasants, who were usually living on a knife-edge between subsistence and starvation, and had no access to medicine.
His army’s performance showed that Mao had no prospect of victory anytime soon, and Stalin adjusted rapidly. On 17 November 1945, after Chiang’s army stormed into southern Manchuria, Chiang noted a “sudden change of attitude” in the Russians. They told the CCP it would have to vacate the cities, putting an end to Mao’s hopes of becoming immediate master of all Manchuria, and of a quick victory nationwide.
