The Long March started after Chiang Kaishek launched his fifth and biggest “extermination” campaign to eliminate the Communists. This involved the Guomindang surrounding the Red Army and slowly closing in causing the communists to starve of food, ammunition, weapons and fuel, and gradually losing the area they controlled. This was the Red Armies first military disaster; they lost around 60,000 soldiers and a lot of the area. Even though they were successful in breaking through the lines of the Guomindang in the end, this was still a military disaster.

On October 16th 1934 some 87,000 soldiers of the red army went out on retreat, which was planned by the trio of Bo Gu, Zhou Enlai and Otto Bra

The Long March was a political victory because of Mao Zedong coming to power of the Communist Party and overall commander of the Red Army after the Zunyi Conference in January 1935. Mao influenced his men and was said to be “right all the time” by Zhuo Enlai. This may not seem to be a political victory but without Mao Zedong coming to power than the Long March would have never succeeded nor would have communism been spread throughout China. Because of the Red Army’s admiration and respect to Mao Zedong and his many quotations, the thought of communism throughout china, usually by the peasants, was accepted. Mao’s quotations include 3 Do’s, 3 Don’ts, 3 Main rules of discipline, 8 rules for attention, 8 bad types of people, 2 supports, 2 defy’s, 2 haves, 3 stresses, 8 evils, 2 whatever’s, 3 principles of peaceful coexistence, 4 clean-ups, 4 olds, 10 fighting tasks, 3 great differences, 4 bigs, 2 appraisals, 5 things to stress, 4 things to beautify and 3 loves . This is what many of the Red Army Soldiers followed and lived by.

The Red Army Troops suffered many deaths and injures this time not from other armies but from nature itself. Over the period of crossing the Great Snowy Mountains, July 1935, and High Grasslands, August 1935, many of the soldiers who survived the cold of the Great Snowy Mountains died of dysentery, which was when they had to change their usual diet of rice to barley. In the High Grasslands many soldiers suffered from the dysentery and after the seven day crossing the casualty figure was estimated to be at 32,000 of the 40,000 men.

un. The idea was to withdraw to the communist base on the Hunan-Hubei border where the second army group was positioned. But this turned out to be nevertheless another military disaster waiting, the soldiers left lacking of an adequate amounts of equipment considering the fact they had 87,000 troops. Only supplied with 33,243 guns, 1,801,640 cartridges, 76,526 grenades, 38 mortars and 25,000 mortar shells.

On the 19th of October Mao Zedong l

Some topics in this essay:
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