Mao Zedong 201 ment. It had endured a trial by fire and had survived. The lead- ership was aware that the entire future of the movement hung on what was going to happen to this small, imperiled army. The military council held a hasty meeting to discuss what to do. Mao Zedong was not a member but was invited to attend. It had become clear that his advice was needed. Mao immedi- ately took a dominant role. Radio intercepts had shown that if the army turned north toward He Long it would be blocked by a quarter of a million Kuomintang troops, 100,000 of them al- ready in Hunan. Mao proposed that the attempt to reach He Long be abandoned and that the army move northwest into Guizhou, where there were few troops and better prospects. The military leaders agreed and the other leaders joined in, including Zhou Enlai, Otto Braun, and Bo Gu. Two days later the 1st Army captured Liping, a substantial county seat where everyone could rest and get much-needed food. Here Mao gained a de facto place on the party’s ruling Politburo and got it to agree to head for Zunyi, a city of about 50,000 people in northern Guizhou about 150 miles northwest. There the army could form a new base or move northeast to join He Long or across the upper Yangtze River to Zhang Guotao in Sichuan. Asa last resort, it could retreat southwest into Yunnan province. Nevertheless, Chiang Kai-shek was not going to allow the Reds to march unopposed on Zunyi. His forces were approach- ing half a million men, and they could be brought to bear from any direction. In this situation, Mao Zedong, now the effective leader of the march, ordered a series of maneuvers that rank among the most deceptive and successful in history. To throw off KMT general Xue Yue, who was following behind the Reds with a force considerably stronger than the entire ist Army, Mao ordered a Red column to make a feint straight west toward the Guizhou capital of Guiyang. As the main Communist army turned northwest, Xue obligingly sent his force west to relieve the city and thereby removed it from the strategic picture. The Red Army did not march directly on Zunyi. Instead, it sped north, giving the impression it might turn northeast to join202 HOW GREAT GENERALS WIN, He Long, now less than 200 miles away. This move held in place the strong bodies of KMT troops along the Hunan-Guizhou border. With nothing but weak Guizhou provincial troops now facing it, the Red Army switched northwest and struck for Zu- nyi, seizing the city on January 7, 1935. Although the Red Army was momentarily safe, examination showed that the Zunyi region was not suitable for a new soviet area. It was poor, producing little surplus food. Moreover, Xue Yue’s KMT army was now in Guiyang and had stimulated Guizhou’s warlord, Wang Jialie, into attacking the Reds from the south while Chiang Kai-shek, now at Chongqing in Si- chuan, was blocking passage across the Yangtze and junction with Zhang Guotao. On January 15, 1935, twenty Red leaders sat down at Zunyi for a three-day conference. This meeting was one of the turning points of the twentieth century. Here the Communist move- ment abandoned the doctrinaire, Moscow-inspired leadership that had been destroying Marxism-Leninism in China. In its place it named Mao Zedong as its leader. Though a heretic to orthodox Marxists, Mao saw an indigenous route to domination of China through championing the cause of the peasants. But this was not the reason for his victory at Zunyi. Rather, it was the advice he had given that had saved the Red Army. This had convinced most Communist leaders that he should lead the movement. Thus his military sagacity, not his political argu- ments, ensured his dominance. On January 19, the Red Army moved north out of Zunyi. It numbered about 35,000 men. Ranging in all directions were Kuomintang and warlord troops, 400,000 of them, all far better armed than the Communists. Chiang Kai-shek was confident the Reds would try to force the Yangtze River, and he had every possible crossing covered with troops, every ferry boat se- cured, Mao did want to cross the river and hoped he could find a poorly guarded crossing upstream (southwest) from Chongq- ing. But he ran into a strong body of Sichuanese troops which mauled the Red Army. He continued another eighty miles upriver, but radio intercepts showed that Chiang was shifting troops to block him. To continue would lead the army into aMao Zedong 203 cul-de-sac with KMT forces shielding the river and troops from Yunnan barring the way west. Mao realized the only hope for the army was to confuse Chiang as to its whereabouts and intentions. For the next six weeks he carried out a campaign almost unparalleled in decep- tion, speed of movement, and unexpected descent upon enemy forces. On February 11, Mao abruptly turned the Red Army about- face and raced it back at forced march toward Zunyi. As soon as Chiang’s aircraft detected the movement, Chiang began shift- ing his forces back eastward to cover once again the crossings of the Yangtze. He also ordered Wang Jialie to move up from the south to capture Loushan Pass about twelve miles north of Zunyi, the only opening south through the mountains. This would seal off the Red Army between the Yangtze and the pass and permit Chiang to destroy it at leisure. The Red Army was about twelve miles north of the pass on February 26 when radio intercepts told Mao that Wang Jialie’s troops had just left Zunyi. It became a race for the pass, with each army equidistant. The Reds won by five minutes, climb- ing onto the crest while Wang’s vanguard was only 300 yards away. Red gunfire scattered the enemy and secured the pass. The next morning the Communists rushed down the pass, shat- tered the force Wang had drawn up, seized Zunyi, and struck two KMT divisions coming up behind, driving them against the Wu River and forcing 2,000 soldiers to surrender. Mao now tumed back toward the crossings of the Yangtze. He wanted Chiang to believe they were still his goal, although they no longer were. His only hope of escape was to hold the bulk of Chiang’s forces along the river. Making no secret of his movements, Mao marched over the Chishui or Red River, a tributary to the Yangtze, giving the impression the whole army heading for the Yangtze. But he ordered his men to hide just beyond the stream and sent a single regiment across the Yangtze into southern Sichuan, where it attracted as much at- tention as possible. This convinced Chiang that the Reds were trapped. With his wife, Soong May-ling, he flew to the Guizhou capital of Guiyang on March 24 to set up headquarters for the final de-