West Route Army (1936)
서로군 (1936)
The force of 21,800 men, the bulk of the Red Fourth Front Army, that crossed the Yellow River westward in October 1936. On the centre's orders it tried to seize the Hexi Corridor in Gansu to open an aid route to the Soviet Union, but, isolated while the centre's strategy shifted again and again, it was destroyed within five months near the Qilian Mountains by the Hui cavalry of the Ma clique. Its defeat broke Zhang Guotao's power.
In depth
The idea of moving north-west to link up with the Soviet Union was already in the resolution of the Shawo meeting of August 1935 and in Mao's report to the Ejie meeting in September, and in November Lin Yuying (Zhang Hao), arriving from Moscow, conveyed Stalin's view that he did not oppose the Red Army's main force approaching the Soviet Union from the north (Outer Mongolia) or the north-west (Xinjiang). After the three armies met in Gansu in October 1936, the main body of the Fourth Front Army crossed the Yellow River as part of the Ningxia operation plan and was soon designated the West Route Army. It numbered two-fifths of the whole Red Army.
Chen Changhao chaired its military committee and Xu Xiangqian was its commander. It advanced west along the Hexi Corridor, but lost its bearings each time the centre's strategic intentions changed, and amid command errors, poor equipment and the lack of a popular base it fought the Hui armies of the Ma clique for more than four months. In March 1937 it collapsed near the Qilian Mountains, and Chen Changhao, hidden among the wounded, made his way back to Yan'an on 16 March.
The defeat had wide repercussions inside the party. Zhang Guotao and his supporters were badly weakened, and after being purged at an enlarged Politburo meeting in 1937 Zhang went over to the Kuomintang in 1938. Who bore responsibility for the West Route Army's failure, whether the centre's shifting orders or Zhang's misjudgement, long remained a sensitive question in CCP historiography.