Eighth Route Army
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The force created during the war with Japan when, under the second united front, the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army in northern Shaanxi was incorporated into the National Revolutionary Army. Officially the Eighth Route Army of the NRA, soon redesignated the 18th Group Army, it was still called the Eighth Route Army by the Communists and the Japanese. Nominally under the Nationalist Military Council but in practice commanded by the Communist Party, it waged guerrilla war and built base areas behind Japanese lines in north China. It was renamed the People’s Liberation Army in 1947.
In depth
Formed in August 1937 with Zhu De as commander and Peng Dehuai as deputy, it had three divisions: Lin Biao’s 115th, He Long’s 120th and Liu Bocheng’s 129th. Its men wore Nationalist uniforms and flew the Republic’s flag, but its political organs and operations answered to the Communist Party centre. After its first victory at Pingxingguan in September 1937 it avoided large regular battles and concentrated on building base areas behind enemy lines such as Taihang and Jin-Cha-Ji.
It grew from about 80,000 men in 1937 to 400,000 by the winter of 1940 and over a million by 1945. The Hundred Regiments Offensive from August 1940 was its largest offensive, and the Japanese retaliated with the Three Alls campaigns. The party’s liaison offices in Nationalist cities such as Chongqing and Guilin were called Eighth Route Army offices. Its General Political Department also re-educated Japanese prisoners, founding a Japanese workers’ and peasants’ school at Yan’an in 1940, and the Korean Volunteer Army served under its command from 1943.
By its own count, from September 1937 to October 1945 it fought nearly 100,000 engagements, killing or wounding over 710,000 Japanese and puppet troops, and lost over 120,000 killed. Critics, among them the Nationalist war minister He Yingqin, regard such Communist claims as exaggerated.