Red agent Qian Zhuangfei once saved the Party Central Committee at a critical juncture, and obtained a large amount of important political and military information for our Party regardless of his life. But such a person who made a great contribution eventually disappeared on the road of the Long March.
At the end of March 1935, Qian Zhuangfei was bombed by Kuomintang planes in the Wujiang area of Guizhou Province and lost contact with the large army, and was later confirmed to have died. However, there have been many opinions about the location and reason for his sacrifice over the years.
The first theory is that he was killed in an air raid, and the second theory is that he was killed by a militia group that straddled on the march.
Has this historical mystery finally been solved?
Secretly infiltrated the top secret service of the Kuomintang
In 1896, Qian Zhuangfei was born in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province, and his family was engaged in business.
In 1915, he was admitted to a school in Beijing to study medicine, and after graduation, he stayed in Beijing to become a doctor.
While Xi at the Beijing Medical College, he met a female classmate, Zhang Zhenhua, and after the two graduated from the medical college in 1919, they became a family in Beijing.
Qian Zhuangfei not only knows medical skills, but also specializes in art and anatomy, is proficient in calligraphy, painting and radio technology, and once starred in China's first black-and-white martial arts film "Yanshan Xia Yin".
In 1926, Qian Zhuangfei was introduced to the Communist Party of China by Zhang Zhenhua's younger brother Zhang Xianzhong. After the April 12 counter-revolutionary coup, he was wanted by the Kuomintang and later transferred to Shanghai.
In December 1927, the Party Central Committee decided to send one or two determined and extremely loyal comrades to the Kuomintang and other reactionary institutions to engage in intelligence work.
In November 1928, the Central Special Committee of the Communist Party of China was established, and the second section set up within it was the Intelligence Section, and Chen Geng was the section chief. After careful consideration, Chen Geng designated the person who broke into the Kuomintang intelligence department as Qian Zhuangfei.
It happened that this year, under the command of Chen Lifu, Xu En held a radio training course in Shanghai to recruit students. After hearing the news, Qian Zhuangfei went to register and was successfully admitted with the first place.
There is no doubt that Qian Zhuangfei's professional skills are excellent, and he is a fellow countryman with Chen Lifu and Xu Enzeng, so he is very appreciated and respected by Xu Enzeng.
Xu En used to be a gentleman, with no ink on his chest, and he had the best food, drink, prostitution and gambling in his life.
He has a mistress surnamed Wang, the red flag at home does not fall, and the colorful flags flutter outside, and at the same time he is afraid that the eldest wife in the family will make a big noise, so he asks Qian Zhuangfei to find him a suitable house for him.
After Qian Zhuangfei reported the situation to the party organization, the party organization decided to give the front building on the second floor where the Qian family lived to this mistress surnamed Wang to live. Xu Enzeng was very satisfied with Qian Zhuangfei's arrangement, and he trusted Qian Zhuangfei more and more, and regarded him as his right-hand man.
Therefore, for those high-level secrets that were given to him, he handed them over to Qian Zhuangfei to deal with, and even when his mother was sick, he also entrusted Qian Zhuangfei to take care of them, and the quarrel between the two also relied on Qian Zhuangfei to mediate.
When Xu En took office in Nanjing, he appointed Qian Zhuangfei as a confidential secretary, responsible for establishing grassroots organizations in various localities, and also secretly establishing command organs and radio stations.
When Xu Enzeng's secret command organ was established, all confidential documents, telegrams, and intelligence sent to him by the Kuomintang Central Party Headquarters had to be sent here.
It's just that Xu Enzeng doesn't care about the work of the command organ, he just goes to the office every day with a briefcase to deal with those urgent matters that must be handled by him, and then he will find an excuse to leave, take the opportunity to sneak to the dance hall, brothel, or mistress to mess around, and hand over the daily work to Qian Zhuangfei.
Therefore, within this "base camp", almost all the information is in the hands of Qian Zhuangfei, except for one thing.
In Xu Enzeng's hand, there was a code book commonly used among high-ranking Kuomintang officials, according to the orders of Chiang Kai-shek and Chen Lifu, this code book could only be kept by Xu Enzeng himself, and no one else could fake it.
Intercept the secret telegram and turn the danger into a disaster at a critical moment
After Qian Zhuangfei knew that there was such a codebook, he felt that the matter was important, so he took advantage of Xu Enzeng's lustful characteristics to set up a special bureau.
Once, Xu Enzeng was about to go out with this codebook to find his mistress, and Qian Zhuangfei reminded him: "What are you going to do with this thing?" So, Xu Enzeng locked the encrypted codebook in the safe at Qian Zhuangfei's suggestion.
After Xu Enzeng left, Qian Zhuangfei opened the safe with the key he had already arrived, and took pictures of all the passwords with his camera, and then put them back in lock. It was this codebook that played a crucial role in the future.
On April 24, 1931, the traitor You Chongxin stumbled upon Gu Shunzhang on the streets of Wuhan, and immediately secretly told the Kuomintang secret service organization to arrest Gu Shunzhang.
Gu Shunzhang's real name is Liming, he was originally a worker of the Nanyang Tobacco Company, and when the Shanghai workers rebelled, he served as the leader of the pickets, and was elected as a member of the Central Committee at the Sixth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and was the head of the special committee of the Party Central Committee.
Gu Shunzhang defected soon after his arrest, not only confessed to a dozen comrades in the Wuhan office, but also claimed to meet Chiang Kai-shek and had important information to present.
As a result, He Chengjun, commander of the Kuomintang Wuhan Pacification Office, immediately sent six urgent secret telegrams of 100,000 yuan to the Kuomintang Central Committee headquarters in Nanjing, and asked Xu Enzeng to forward them to Chen Lifu as soon as he received them.
The main content of these six telegrams is that Gu Shunzhang has been arrested, and all the central organs of the Communist Party of China can be wiped out within three days, and Gu Shunzhang is ready to be escorted to Nanjing by plane.
In the end, the telegram also said that this matter must not be known to others, otherwise the plan to wipe out the CCP in one fell swoop will be in vain.
But it happened that it was Saturday, Xu Enzeng was not in the office, he went out to look for a woman, Qian Zhuangfei found that these telegrams were too unusual, so he translated them overnight, and the content of the telegrams shocked him.
Qian Zhuangfei, who knew the seriousness of the matter, first urgently sent his son-in-law Liu Qifu to Shanghai overnight to report the matter to Li Kenong, and forwarded it to Chen Geng and Zhou Enlai. Then, he sent an urgent telegram to Hu Di in Tianjin, and immediately informed the comrades working in Nanjing to evacuate urgently.
When Xu Enzeng came to the office the next day, he handed him the original copy of the secret message as if nothing happened.
After that, Qian Zhuangfei took the train to Shanghai in order to avoid the pursuit of the enemy, he got off the train at Zhenru Station in the suburbs of Shanghai, and then took a detour to the city, and gradually disappeared into the crowd.
With Qian Zhuangfei's intelligence, the Party Central Committee made arrangements in advance, transferred all the party cadres that Gu Shunzhang was familiar with, and abolished all the secret codes and secret work methods that he was familiar with, and all departments responded to the situation.
By the time Gu Shunzhang arrived in Nanjing on the 27th and proudly led the spies to the Communist Party's secret communications office in Nanjing, it was already empty and he didn't know where to go.
How he was killed became a historical mystery
Xu Enzeng only then knew that it was Qian Zhuangfei who sent this information, and decades later, Xu Enzeng once said in a book that the biggest mistake he made in his life was that he should not reuse Qian Zhuangfei......
Qian Zhuangfei's identity was exposed, and he could no longer engage in the party's intelligence work, and according to the decision of the party Central Committee, he evacuated Shanghai and went to the Central Soviet District, where he served as deputy secretary general of the General Political Department of the Red Army after the Zunyi Conference.
In April 1945, on the eve of the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Qian Zhuangfei's name was included in the "Heroic List of Martyrs".
However, the reasons for Qian Zhuangfei's sacrifice have always been inconclusive, and the most widely circulated are two theories: the air crash and the death of the reactionary militia after the march was lost.
According to Qian Zhuangfei's second son, Qian Yiping, Premier Zhou and Ms. Deng Yingchao once called him over and told him that the team was attacked by the enemy when crossing the Wujiang River, and when the Kuomintang planes stopped bombing and the team gathered and walked for a while, Premier Zhou found that Qian Zhuangfei was not in the team, and asked people to go back to look for it, and found that he had been sacrificed.
In addition, according to the local people, during the air raid, some people saw a general riding a white horse fall into the river, and the appearance and physical signs of this general in the mouths of the masses were very consistent with Qian Zhuangfei.
It's just that, after all, these statements are only passed on by word of mouth, and there is no historical record, so there is no way to study them.
However, the party history departments of Jinsha County and Xifeng County have different inferences, and they believe that Qian Zhuangfei was killed by the reactionary militia.
According to an investigation by the party history department of Jinsha County, when the large army crossed the Wujiang River south, there was a Red Army soldier who lost contact with the large army, wearing a military uniform, carrying a small pistol, and carrying a yellow cloth bag and a small leather bag.
When it was dark, he strayed into the bully's house and asked the bully to take him across the river, but the bully, coveting his finances, pretended to take him across the river, took the opportunity to push him to the bottom of the rock, and stoned him to death.
After investigation and argumentation, the party history department of Jinsha County believed that this person was Qian Zhuangfei.
Xifeng County has a different conclusion from Jinsha County, they believe that Qian Zhuangfei was sacrificed in the Wuliang pit next to Songjiazhai in Liuchang Township, Xifeng County, after crossing the Wujiang River.
It is also said by the local people that there was once a Red Army who claimed to be "Xia Shuyun", because he was separated from the large army, he was robbed of his luggage by Luo Shaoan, the backbone of the "Qingxiang Regiment" who had been followed here, and then he was pushed to death by Song Zizhen, a member of the Qingxiang Committee, and his subordinates into a pit of more than 40 meters.
After the liberation, the murderer of the Red Army confessed that the appearance and characteristics of this Red Army and Qian Zhuangfei were very similar, and he even took a photo of Qian Zhuangfei and swore that he was "Xia Shuyun".
So where exactly did Qian Zhuangfei die? The statements of the two places have their credibility, but there are doubts, but what can be confirmed is that Qian Zhuangfei was sacrificed in the Wujiang area.
Although the martyrs died and buried their bones in other places, their names are forever engraved on the great monument of China's revolutionary history, and the souls of heroes will never be extinguished!