Zhu De

Biography

Zhu De was born on December 1, 1886, in Yilong County, Sichuan province, into a poor tenant farming family. He became one of the founders of the Chinese Red Army and the Eighth Route Army's commander during the Second Sino-Japanese War — the military architect of Chinese Communist guerrilla warfare who built the army that eventually defeated Chiang Kai-shek. Zhu De's early life was one of remarkable social mobility for a peasant's son in late Qing China. He studied at the Yunnan Military Academy and served as an officer in the Yunnan Army, reaching the rank of brigade commander and becoming an opium addict — a habit he later broke with characteristic willpower. He traveled to Germany in 1922 and joined the Chinese Communist Party in Berlin, then studied military science in the Soviet Union. He returned to China in 1926 and played a key role in the Nanchang Uprising of August 1927 — the first major armed Communist revolt against the Nationalists, now celebrated as the founding of the People's Liberation Army. During the anti-Japanese war, Zhu De commanded the Eighth Route Army, which became the primary Communist military force operating in northern China. He developed and refined the guerrilla warfare tactics that Mao had theorized — mobile war, avoiding direct confrontation with superior Japanese forces, attacking supply lines and isolated outposts, building political organizations in liberated areas. His forces fought in the Hundred Regiments Offensive of August 1940, the largest Communist military operation of the war, in which 400,000 troops simultaneously attacked Japanese rail lines, cutting communications across North China. Zhu De and Mao Zedong were inseparable during the war years — so closely identified that the Communist forces were often called the 'Zhu-Mao Army.' But Zhu De was the military practitioner where Mao was the political theorist. After the Communist victory in 1949, Zhu De became Commander-in-Chief of the People's Liberation Army and a major figure in the new state. He survived the Cultural Revolution despite being criticized by Red Guards, and died on July 6, 1976, at the age of 89, two months before Mao.

Key Battles