What went wrong? Was Mao a military genius of some kind

File: keitty.jpg (54KB, 600x593px) Image search: [Google]

54KB, 600x593px

nah, they just ended up having less rice farmers than the other side as the war progressed

nationalist armies that are actually fighting at least in principle for the nation will tend to have an advantage over 'nationalist' armies that are really just pawns of foreign business interests.

Mao's communists weren't 'world-wide revolution' types. They were hardcore chinese nationalists with communist social and economic views.

>>1810386
This. Mao completely destroyed the idea of egalitarianism anyway. Chiang Kai Shek was the one who wanted to befriend and work with the Western Powers.

>>1810380

It was less the brilliance of the Chi-Coms and more that the KMT was possibly the dumbest and weakest political power to emerge outside of Sub-Saharan Africa in the 20th century.

Even before the Japanese so rudely interrupted their struggle, the Encirclement campaigns often failed, and when they did succeed in evicting Communist influence, it wasn't to be replaced with KMT influence in the southeast, instead that void being filled up by new warlords. In fact, it can be fair to say that Chiang didn't really unify China, instead just being the biggest warlord of the bunch, and in a strong enough position to demand tribute from the other, still largely independent forces.

What primarily went wrong is that the KMT had no mechanism for transforming battlefield success into actual control of the ground, which kept sliding away from them, bit by bit, until they couldn't win battlefield successes anymore. Sure, the Japanese invasion, as well as Soviet aid helped Mao's boys, but he was in a bad position before that happened.


tl;dr they were terminally incompetent, and if it wasn't Mao, it would have been someone else to knock them over and take charge, or plunge China into another warring states period.

KMT had no rural support and had general apathy from the cities. They also had the problem of war lords promising to fight and then when the battle happened the warlords just fled.

Additionally, Mao was a guerrilla war genius and his propaganda skills were vital in winning over the rural Chineae who joined in droves after the Long March.

The Long March also had the effects of hardening and creating a bond between the CCP, who on the brink of utter destruction, had emerged with ten times more zeal and belief in their cause.

KMT had none of this. No support, no zeal, no unity and no good leadership

>>1810380
He played the waiting game

>Let the KMT exhaust themselves fighting the Japanese
>Get given soviet material support & entirety of Manchuria by the soviets (at the time the most industrialised region of china)

>>1810493
>as well as Soviet aid helped Mao's boys,
What the fuck am I reading?

Stalin would deliver supplies and aid exclusively to the KMT before Mao's victory.

>>1810652
And yet the massive influx of weapons from defeated Japanese forces in Manchuria somehow managed to get from Soviet storage centers into Mao's hands.

File: General Peng Dehuai.jpg (17KB, 220x283px) Image search: [Google]

17KB, 220x283px

>>1810380
Mao was purely a politician.

The military efforts of the CCP was led by two brilliant generals: Peng Dehuai and Zhu De. Of the two, Peng was notable for his role in the Long March, one of the sane voices that advocated stopping the Civil War to fight the Japs, and humiliated that pompous prima donna, MacArthur, in Korea with that devastating surprise attack that forced UN forces to run back South behind the 38th Parallel.

Nonetheless, Peng Dehuai was treated abominably by Mao during the cultural revolution, not to mention allowed Mao to steal his ideas on guerilla warfare for his book out of party solidarity.

>>1811250
>Peng Dehuai
UNDERRATED

Master of 20th Century Guerilla Warfare.

The (Communist-sympathizing) American China Hands managed to convince President Truman to cut off arms shipments and support for Chiang.

Don't get me wrong the KMT was corrupt as hell and incompetent in many ways but that was far better than the pure retardation that was Mao Zedong.

>>1810426

as opposed to Mao taking material and technical support form the USSR?

>>1811398

if mao was retarded, then why did he win while chiang retreat to taiwan where he had tor rely on the US navy to prevent an invasion

>>1811444

I'll give him credit for his campaigns and maneuvers up until the Sino-Soviet split; but the sheer retardation of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution overshadows any of his earlier achievements.

File: 1471846277921.gif (3MB, 266x264px) Image search: [Google]

3MB, 266x264px

>>1810386
>Nationalist
>Tried to destroy the countrys cultural heritage

File: maoist pepe.png (425KB, 3516x2264px) Image search: [Google]

425KB, 3516x2264px

>>1810380
more like Chiang was an idiot

>>1810602
>>Let the KMT exhaust themselves fighting the Japanese

KMT and CCP lost a similar ratio of their forces in WW2.

It was Japan losing hard to the Soviets, and the Soviets gifting Manchuria to the CCP that changed the civil war.

>>1811196
1925-1945 != 1946-1949

>>1811913
Also, Chiang acting like a conqueror, rather than a liberator, after the war certainly didn't help. Who loots their own capital?

>>1811509
>but the sheer retardation of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution overshadows any of his earlier achievements.

Not really. China was united and put in the position to grow immensely by Mao's government.

By 1972 China was improving rapidly.

If China continued how it was pre-1950's, it would have remained disunified and in a civil war for decades.

The Soviets likely would have intervened and torn off Northern China as well.

Mao should have died in 1950, but his early success outweighs his later failures.

Chiang won anyways, life in Taiwan was much better than life in the mainland even to this day

>>1811521
>Tried to destroy the countrys cultural heritage

Nationalist != supporting culture
Nationalist = a lot of things that promote the nation

China pre-1950 was extremely socially backwards. Not saying the Commies helped, but they definitely thought they were changing China for China's benefit.

>>1811948
>reforming the culture is the same as destroying cultural heritage

>>1812036
>reformation doesn't require destruction

File: image.jpg (269KB, 960x720px) Image search: [Google]

269KB, 960x720px

>>1811942
>Chiang won
>because one backwater province that doesn't consider itself as Chinese got US economic aid