After the defeat of the Western Route Army, the commander-in-chief Chen Changhao disappeared, where did he go?
Chen Changhao, a well-known figure in the history of our Party during the agrarian revolution, served as a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, the general political commissar of the Red Fourth Front, and the chairman of the Military and Political Committee of the Western Route Army, as well as his fate was particularly concerned because he was a close confidant of Zhang Guotao and that the Western Route Army under his command was defeated in Hexi.
What is surprising is that after the defeat of the Western Route Army, Chen Changhao, like evaporation in the world, disappeared on the stage of history and is no longer known, and many people are curious, where did Chen Changhao go after the defeat of the soldiers?
On March 14, 1937, Chen Changhao and Xu Laozong led the remnants of the Western Route Army to retreat from the Kanglong Temple area of Qilian Mountain in Gannan province, and finally retreated to the icy Shiwo Mountain.
At this time, the Western Route Army was alone and deep, had run out of ammunition, and its strength had been reduced from 28,000 at the time of departure to less than 3,000, facing the danger of total annihilation.
In this situation, in order to preserve the backbone, the Military and Political Committee of the Western Route Army held a final meeting and made three decisions:
Chen and Xu left the troops to report their work to the Party Central Committee; the Western Route Army Committee was set up, with Li Zhuoran and 8 others under unified command of the troops; the remnants of the Western Route Army were organized into three detachments of left, center, and right to disperse and break through, or to persist in guerrilla struggle in the Qilian Mountains and Belt.
After the meeting, the decision was reported to the Central Committee in the form of a telegram.
On the evening of March 16, Chen and Xu, with a deeply sad mood, bid farewell to their comrades-in-arms and set off to return to the east.
When the two broke through, they once stopped in a village called Dama Camp, and a civilian named Dan Fusan asked them to stay overnight.
Coincidentally, but Fusan was Chen Changhao's hometown in Hubei, and Chen Changhao, who had a high fever that did not recede, could not act, and he was afraid of being involved in the same life and death, so he stayed down to recuperate, and Xu Laozong traveled day and night along the Gobi Desert in the Qilian Mountains alone, and finally returned to Yan'an.
After the preserved Red Fourth Front was reorganized into the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army, Xu Laozong served as the deputy division commander, became an important general in the Eighth Route Army, and became the marshal of the Republic after the founding of the People's Republic.
Chen Changhao's later fate was very different from his old partner, which was probably not expected when the two broke up.
After more than two months of recuperation, Chen Changhao's condition gradually improved and his physical strength was restored.
At the end of June 1937, Chen Changhao proposed to continue to go to northern Shaanxi to find the central government, but Fusan was not assured that he would run away alone, and resolutely decided to personally escort him, and successfully arrived in Lanzhou.
When Chen Changhao was looking for the party organization, he heard that there was an office of our army in Xi'an, so he drove to Xi'an, but did not find it, and in desperation, he wrote a letter to yan'an, and in order not to expose his whereabouts, Chen Changhao did not sign his name.
As a result, the letter sank into the sea.
During the anxious waiting period, Chen Changhao first sent Dan Fusan to his hometown in Hanyang, Hubei Province, to explore the situation of his family.
After receiving the news, he took a train south to Wuhan, because he did not dare to go home directly, in a small hotel near the railway station, he met with his old mother and his original wife and two sons who had been separated for 10 years.
After being reunited with his relatives, Chen Changhao had a heart affair, and the next day, he entrusted his wife, children, and mother to Dan Fusan's care, and sneaked back to Yingshan County, Hubei Province, the old revolutionary area of Eyuwan, alone, with the intention of re-raising the revolutionary banner here and trying to make a comeback.
Due to the brutal killing of the Kuomintang reactionaries, the former red zone has become a white zone, and Chen Changhao's wish is difficult to realize, so he returned to Xi'an, experienced some twists and turns, and returned to the embrace of the party in late August 1937.
Chen Changhao himself was very distressed by the defeat of the Western Route Army, and he also realized that he could not escape the blame, and he silently assumed the main responsibility for the collapse of the Western Route Army, repeatedly saying: "I must review my mistakes with the comrades who returned from the Party and the Red Army and even the Western Route Army and the comrades who went to Xinjiang." ”
Therefore, in the nearly one year after returning to Yan'an, he made self-criticism as soon as he had the opportunity, and there were countless large and small explanations for review.
After Chen Changhao's review report passed, the central authorities finally assigned him work, and although he had already made ideological preparations, the assigned work still surprised him.
The unit that informed him to report was the Propaganda Department of the Yan'an County CPC Committee, who had no position but was just an ordinary clerk.
Chen Changhao realized that this clearly meant punishment, and he could not help but go; after reporting for duty, he endured humiliation and burden for a period of time, and was transferred to the Central Propaganda Department, where he successively served as the chief of the Propaganda Section and the chief of the International Propaganda Section.
Chen Changhao went to university in Wuhan in his early years, and then went to Moscow to study at Sun Yat-sen University for several years, with a high degree of theoretical accomplishment, and can speak well and write well; during this period, he published many articles in Yan'an newspapers publicizing the party's theory and encouraging the War of Resistance, which caused great repercussions in all walks of life in Yan'an.
His hard work soon made him an influential theoretical worker in Yan'an.
But this is by no means Chen Changhao's ideal ambition.
As one of the principal responsible persons of the former Fourth Front, a senior general of the Red Army who had experienced hundreds of battles, he always considered himself a real soldier, and when the country was in trouble, he should go to the anti-Japanese front line without hesitation, lead his troops to kill the enemy, recover the national territory, make meritorious achievements, and revitalize his mighty might in order to make up for his own mistakes.
Due to the serious stomach ulcer, on August 27, 1939, with the approval of the central government, Chen Changhao took a plane to the Soviet Union for medical treatment, and during the plane's stay in Xinjiang, he accompanied him to visit the remnants of the Xilu Army in Dihua.
He told his former subordinates that the defeat of the Western Route Army was all caused by his command mistakes, and that he was sorry for the soldiers of the Western Route Army, who was fully responsible, and that during the conversation, he bowed many times to apologize for his sins, so that his hands were clasped to his forehead, and the comrades present were all unmoved.
At the end of August 1939, Chen Changhao arrived in the Soviet Union, and since then began a miserable career of more than 10 years of wandering in foreign countries, he has written many letters or telegrams asking to return to China to participate in the war, but there is no reply, after the end of the War of Resistance Against Japan, he wrote a letter to ask for returning to China to participate in the War of Liberation, but never received a reply, is it that the Party Central Committee did not receive his letter, or did history abandon him? No one can say for sure.
In March 1952, Chen Changhao, who had been away from the motherland for more than 10 years, was able to return to China.
After returning to China, Chen Changhao served as the deputy director of the Central Compilation Bureau, after which his physical condition continued to decline, and he returned to his hometown in Hubei to recuperate, and unfortunately died in July 1967 at the age of 61.
Source: "Records of the Life and Death of the Western Route Army", "History of the Red Western Route Army"