Peng Dehuai
Peng Dehuai ( Chinese 彭德懷 / 彭德怀 , Pinyin Péng Déhuái , W.-G. P'eng Te-huai ; actually Peng Dehua; Chinese 彭 得 华 Péng Déhuá, W.-G. P'eng Te-hua; * October 24th 1898 in Xiangtan , Hunan ; † November 29, 1974 in Beijing ) was one of the most important military leaders of the Chinese People's Liberation Army , among other things as commander of the so-called People's Volunteer Army in the Korean War , and from 1954 the first defense minister of the People's Republic of China . Peng Dehuai was the only political leader to openly criticize Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward .
Childhood and youth
Peng Dehuai was born as one of four sons into an impoverished farming family. After the early death of his mother, the family's financial situation deteriorated and Peng's youngest brother died during the 1905/06 famine in Hunan . After a very short school period of about two years, he supported his family by working as a buffalo herder, in a coal mine and on a dam construction project.
Early life
Little is known about Peng Dehuai's first marriage, which he entered into in the 1920s. In 1938 he married the communist intellectual Pu Anxin in Yan'an, with whom he had a childless marriage. During the Cultural Revolution , Pu Anxin divorced Peng Dehuai under political pressure.
In 1916 Peng Dehuai joined the troops of a warlord in his home province of Hunan . He rose to company commander within a few years. In 1922/23 Peng took part in a course at the Military Academy of Hunan Province and, after successfully completing it, returned to his old regiment, where he was promoted to captain. In the northern campaign (1926/27), Tang Shengzhi's troops, which included Peng's regiment, fought on the side of the National Revolutionary Army under Chiang Kai-shek .
In 1928 Peng changed fronts for all to see when he became a member of the Communist Party . An uprising that he organized with his troops in the city of Pingjiang and aimed at establishing a Soviet government in Hunan Province failed. He then led his association to the Jinggang Mountains and united them with the troops of Mao Zedong and Zhu Des . Peng stayed with Mao and defended the base of the Jiangxi Soviet (also known as the Chinese Soviet Republic) in Ruijin against Chiang Kai-shek's campaigns . In 1934 he went on the Long March , where he often led the vanguard.
During the Second United Front between the Communists and the Kuomintang in the Sino-Japanese War , Peng Dehuai became Zhu Des's deputy in 1937 , who led the 8th March Army . In the Hundred Regiments Offensive in 1940, Peng suffered heavy losses.
In the civil war against the Kuomintang, Peng was Commander in Chief of the Northwest Field Army. In 1947 he defended Yan'an in order to gain time for the communist leadership to retreat. Shortly afterwards, in August 1947, Peng won the Battle of Shajiadian . This was a decisive battle in the Chinese civil war, which is often interpreted as a turning point in the war in favor of the communists. In April 1948, Peng retook Yan'an. As part of a restructuring of the People's Liberation Army in February 1949, Peng's troops were renamed First Field Army. Even after the proclamation of the People's Republic of China in October 1949, Peng fought until September 1951 in the north-western province of Xinjiang , which was only considered pacified with the conquest of Ladakh .
Political career and case
Peng Dehuai's political rise began in January 1934 when he became a non-permanent member of the Communist Party Central Committee . In the autumn of the following year he became a permanent member of the 6th Central Committee. At the 7th Communist Party Congress in Yan'an, he became vice-chairman and chief of staff of the military commission.
After the proclamation of the People's Republic in October 1949, Peng was briefly chairman of the military and administrative council in north-west China before, after China's entry into the Korean War in 1950, he took over the supreme command of the units of the People's Liberation Army sent to support North Korea , which he held until the ceasefire in 1953. After Peng had become first vice-chairman of the military commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the spring of 1954 , he was appointed the first defense minister of the People's Republic in September of the same year . Peng's endeavors as Defense Minister were in particular the professionalization and modernization of the People's Liberation Army based on the Soviet model. From May 11-14, 1955, he also took part in the conference on the establishment of the Warsaw Pact as an observer for the People's Republic of China .
Peng Dehuai's career came to an abrupt end in 1959. At the Lushan Conference he openly criticized Mao Zedong's economic policy (“ Big Leap Forward ”), as he had seen the impending famine in his home province of Hunan with his own eyes, as well as the general ideologization of politics. As a result, he fell out of favor and was removed from the posts of Defense Minister and Vice-Chairman of the Military Commission within a month. He remained a member of the Politburo , but was excluded from the meeting for a long time. His successor as Minister of Defense was Lin Biao , who gave the military's ideological education more weight than Peng did and who is considered one of the driving forces behind the Cultural Revolution . In September 1965, Peng was partially rehabilitated and sent to south-west China, where he took on responsibility for industrial development in the provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan and Tibet.
In December 1966, at the age of 68, he was arrested by the Red Guards in Chengdu at the urging of Jiang Qing and Chi Benyu and taken to Beijing , where he was repeatedly tortured and humiliated at public criticism sessions . Peng spent the following years in solitary confinement. Again and again he had to endure criticism sessions and torture, including severe injuries to his internal organs. After he had an operation in 1973, his health deteriorated again the following year. However, since he was denied all medical aid on Mao Zedong's orders, he died in custody on November 29, 1974. Peng Dehuai's death was initially kept secret; it was not until 1978 that his widow found out about her husband's fate.
In the course of a review of the case at the third plenary session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in December 1978, the sentence against him was overturned and his contribution to the Chinese Revolution was recognized again.
literature
- Peng Dehuai: Memoirs of a chinese marshal - a cultural revolution 'confession' by marshal Peng Dehuai (1898–1974) . Foreign Languages Press, Beijing
- Jürgen Domes : P'eng Te-huai: The Man & the Image . Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1985; ISBN 0-8047-1303-0
- The Case of Peng Teh-huai . Union Research Institute, Hong Kong, 1968
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Final document of the Warsaw Conference of European States on Ensuring Peace and Security in Europe . Federal Archives, accessed on June 16, 2014 (pdf; 294 kB)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Peng, Dehuai |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Chinese politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 24, 1898 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Xiangtan , Hunan |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 29, 1974 |
| Place of death | Beijing |