For a long time, every move of the Red Army was largely controlled by the Comintern. It was in this context that Reed was born.
Reed
The Fifth Anti-"Encirclement and Suppression" campaign of the Central Red Army commanded by Li De failed, and the Kuomintang advanced on a large scale toward the central base areas, and Bogu and Li De panicked. In October 1934, without discussion, Li De decided on a major transfer of the Central Red Army. The Red Twenty-fourth Division and local troops were ordered to take over the defense, and the first, third, fifth, eighth, and ninth armies were prepared to concentrate on the breakthrough.
Such an important thing, Li De decided.
From this, it can be seen that Li De had absolute leadership in the ranks of the Red Army at that time.
So who is Li De and what is he doing in China? Who gave him so much power?
There are still inconclusive, but there are the following statements:
Statement one
According to Wu Xiuquan, who had translated for Li De:
Lidder, whose original name was Otto Braun, heard that he was Austrian, and that in World War I he had joined the German army in the battle against Tsarist Russia, so he was also called a German.
In a battle, Reed was captured by the Russians and exiled to Siberia. After the victory of the October Revolution in the SOVIET Union, he joined the Red Army. Because he had served in the German army and had a certain amount of practical combat experience, he was promoted quickly, and the highest position was the chief of staff of the cavalry division of the Red Army.
Later, he was also selected to study at the Moscow Army University, where he was a high-achieving student, graduated with honors, and was later selected by the "Comintern" to serve as an adviser to China.
Statement two
According to Li De's memoirs Chronicle of China, published in 1980:
In April 1919 he stood firm on the barricades of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, and in the twenties he remained at the centre of the class struggle, carrying out the important tasks entrusted to the multiparties as a cadre of the German Communist Party. After being persecuted and imprisoned by the Weimar Republic, he escaped from prison in 1928 and went to the Soviet Union according to the party's decision.
He went to the Soviet Union and was sent to China four years later.
It can be found that only one or two of the more authoritative statements are already inconsistent.
Next, let's look at two other statements
Wang Ming
Wang Ming said
In 1937, when Wang Jiaxiang met with Wang Ming, then a member of the presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International and minister of the Orient, in Moscow, he asked:
"How did the Comintern decide to go to China? What did you and Reed talk about? Why did Bogu rely entirely on Li De's military command? ”
Wang Ming replied: "When Li De went to China, the Domestic International did not participate in it, nor did he give Li De any instructions, and Li De was sent by the General Staff of the Soviet Army."
The answer was unexpected, Li De was not sent by the Comintern, so why did he use the banner of the Comintern?
Shi Zhe (an old acquaintance of Li De before he came to China) said
When Li De came to China, he was not sent by the Comintern at all, and the Eastern Ministry and the Chinese Communist delegation did not send him as an adviser. I heard that he was initially sent to the Far East by the Soviet General Staff to do intelligence work, because he was German, and at that time the northeast was occupied by Japan, and he was convenient to deal with the Japanese as a German. That's why I was sent to Northeast China. Later, I didn't know how to go to Shanghai again, and I happened to be met by Bogu at the Comintern's Office in China, and I was acquainted with each other before, and I was taken to the Soviet area by Bogu and became a military adviser.
At this point, the two statements of Wang Ming and Shi Zhe can be corroborated with each other, and it seems to be more credible. If conclusive, two facts can be affirmed:
First, Li De was not a military adviser sent to China by the Comintern;
Second, Li De was an intelligence officer sent by the Soviet Army to China.
Bogu
The real Reed
According to the Life of Sorge:
In the 1920s and 1930s, the famous Soviet international spy group "Sorge Group", which was active in Shanghai, was the intelligence agency of the Soviet military in China. When this institution was in Shanghai, it had a fixed contact method with the domestic international organization in China and the central leaders of the Central Committee, and Zor often used the name of the Communist International when he was active within the party. So the Chinese communist side regarded this intelligence agency as part of the League of Nations International Organization for Housing in China.
In 1932, The Members of the "Zorge Group" Ruge and his wife were arrested by the Kuomintang, and in order to rescue them, the Soviet General Staff sent Otto Braun (Li De) to China. Thus, Li De met Bogu in Shanghai. Because Li De had studied at the Frunze Military Academy in the Soviet Union and seemed to have a background of "domestic international", Bogu intended to ask Li De to serve as a military adviser.
Li De readily agreed.
In the spring of 1933, when the security of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai was threatened, Bogu, Zhang Wentian, Chen Yun, and the central committee organs decided to go to the Central Soviet Region. Bogu then invited Li De to go with him, and Li De put forward a condition, asking the Comintern to issue a directive, and Bogu complied. According to the instructions: Li De, as an adviser without command authority, was at the mercy of the CENTRAL Committee.
In the autumn of 1933, Li De arrived in the Soviet zone, and soon he took over the power and completely took charge of the military. From military adviser status to military decision-maker.
Why did Li De, an outsider, quickly grasp power, one is that Bogu and others gave in, and the other is the signboard of his Comintern.
But the damn thing is that Li De was just a pure literati with no practical experience in the military.
Look at the real Reed
The name on Li De's passport is Otto Braun, and Li De is a commonly used Chinese name, which means a German with the surname Lee.
Li De was born in 1900 on the outskirts of Munich, Germany, to an accountant father and a teacher mother. When his father died when he was 6 years old, he was sent to a Catholic orphanage. There, he received a primary education with excellent grades and was later admitted to a teachers' college.
In 1918, he was supposed to conquer military service and has been on the front line. After World War I, he returned to school. In 1919, he joined the Komsomol, and at the same time he joined an organization, the Spartak League, the predecessor of the German Communist Party. In that year, he also took part in the defense of Bavaria, and after his defeat he was arrested and imprisoned, after which he fled.
In 1921, he went to work in the Military and Political Intelligence Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany, and during the two years he read a large number of Western military works, as well as the biographies of Napoleon and others. But he was dismissive of the biographies of military men in the East, and he was reluctant to know about the East.
In 1926, he was transferred to the CIA and was arrested. He escaped from prison in 1928 and was secretly sent to the Soviet Union by the German Communists. In 1929, he studied at the Frunze Military Academy, and after graduating in 1932, he was sent to China.