The so-called National Revolution, also known as the Great Revolution, is the first domestic revolutionary war in modern China, in January 1924, the Kuomintang Congress was held in Guangzhou, announcing the rise of the first domestic revolution based on the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, in February 1926, the Guangzhou Revolutionary Government decided to go north and overthrow the reactionary warlords in Beiyang, after more than a year of war, the main forces of Sun Chuanfang and Wu Peifu were eliminated, but in the middle of 1927, Wang Jingwei, The Kuomintang reactionaries headed by Chiang Kai-shek swung their butcher knives at the Communist Party and the Kuomintang leftists and wantonly hunted down progressives, and the National Revolution was declared a failure.
Chiang Kai-shek.
National Revolutionary Army (leftmost)
So why did the great revolution fail so badly? In fact, the hidden danger of the failure of the National Revolution was already laid on the eve of the Northern Expedition. Let's take an example: the 26th Army of the National Revolutionary Army, which helped Chiang Kai-shek carry out the 412 counter-revolutionary coup in Shanghai, was less than a year ago the Third Division of the Zhejiang Army of the Beiyang warlord Sun Chuanfang' department, and the Beiyang warlord troops directly accepted the name of the National Revolutionary Army without any transformation, which was actually very common in the Northern Expedition.
Bai Chongxi.
The Gui Army during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
In fact, this situation actually appeared at the beginning of the Northern Expedition, except for the First Army of the National Revolutionary Army and the Fourth Army of the National Revolutionary Army (the main force of the Northern Expedition, Ye Ting's independent regiment was subordinate to this army), the remaining legions had a strong local influence. For example, the former name of the Second Army of the National Revolutionary Army was the Third Mixed Brigade and the Sixth Mixed Brigade of the Xiang Army (Commander Tan Yankai, Party Representative Wang Jingwei), while the predecessor of the Fifth Army of the National Revolutionary Army was Li Fulin's "Fu Army", whose history can even be traced back to the Xinhai Revolution. The Seventh Army of the National Revolutionary Army (led by Li Zongren and party representative Huang Shaohu) was a member of the New Gui clan.
Li Zongren.
Military uniforms from the northern expedition.
Although the predecessor of the First Army of the National Revolutionary Army was the Whampoa Military Academy Teaching Regiment, its commander was Chiang Kai-shek, who was later succeeded by He Yingqin, in fact, this unit was still controlled by Chiang Kai-shek's forces, and later Feng Yuxiang (formerly a brave general under Wu Peifu, who later rebelled against Wu in the Second Zhifeng War), Yan Xishan (who had occupied Shanxi for nearly 40 years) and others joined the Northern Expedition and were also reorganized into the National Revolutionary Army, and the composition of the revolutionary forces was even more complicated, so we say that the participants in the National Revolution were actually not monolithic The complication of the composition of the revolutionary forces is bound to lay hidden dangers for the failure of the Great Revolution.
Group photo of Chiang Kai-shek, Yan Xishan, and Feng Yuxiang.
The Beiyang government was involved in intervening in the October Revolution in Russia.
From 1926 to 1927, when the Northern Expedition was in full swing, a large number of Beiyang warlord troops became the "National Revolutionary Army", in fact, it was just a change of hat emblem. At the beginning of 1927, Chiang Kai-shek incorporated nearly 40,000 prisoners of Sun Chuanfang's troops into the First Army of the National Revolutionary Army, and soon He Yingqin incorporated nearly four regiments of troops; the Third Army of the National Revolutionary Army incorporated two divisions of the Soviet-Zhejiang Army and the Dian Army; the Sixth Army of the National Revolutionary Army also absorbed a large number of prisoners of the Soviet and Zhejiang Armies; and the Seventh army and the Eighth Army of the National Revolutionary Army also collected a large number of Wu Peifu's army in the Hubei area.
Beiyang warlord forces.
Wu Peifu was defeated in the Northern Expedition.
Such a large number of soldiers of the old warlord army were incorporated into the army without reform, which was bound to damage the atmosphere of the entire army, and since then, the Kuomintang army has gradually degenerated from a modern unit to a feudal warlord force that is no different from the Beiyang warlords, and finally become an army "like a huge number of Tsarist Russian troops" in the mouths of foreign journalists.
Feng Yuxiang.
The Kuomintang troops wore American-style hats during the Liberation War
Zhang Zuolin.
In modern China, especially after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, China urgently needs a thorough revolution, a revolution that is completely uncompromising and struggles to the end against feudal forces and foreign capitalist aggressive forces, and the complexity of the national revolution at the beginning is bound to bring fatal flaws to the process of revolution, which also determines the fate of the inevitable defeat of the National Revolution and the Northern Expedition (referring to the failure to complete the historical task of anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism). After the Second Northern Expedition in 1928, China not only did not usher in peace, but instead ushered in the largest warlord melee in modern history, the Central Plains War.