The Whampoa Academy

 

 

 

 

examination was held, after which the total dumber of accepted students was approxi­mately 500. Though most of the students were from the southern provinces and spoke Cantonese, the official tongue of the academy 'vas mandarin Chinese, which was spoken m the North.

Because of hostility from the local warlords, the academy suffered for want of arms and ^e<fuipment for the first five months. The ^academy opened with only 30 rifles, but in October 1924, a Soviet ship delivered 8,000 tines with 500 rounds of ammunition for each. Later, another 15,000 rifles, machine guns ^and pieces of artillery were obtained from the Soviets through cash purchases or other transactions.

Chiang Kai-shek, whose military prestige 'vas greatly enhanced through his recent Moscow visit, presided over a staff, the ^Organizational chart of which showed the ^School’s dual role as military and political ^and the bi-national origin of the personnel as Russian and Chinese. Liao Chung-Kai, a ^Seasoned revolutionary and the Minister of Linance, was the Party Representative at the ^academy. This American-born, Japanese- ^ducated supporter of Sun was considered Leftist because of his advocation of radical peasant and workers reforms and for his ^avoring of close co-operation with the Russians. He was not a Communist, however.

It was Liao who became the “peacemaker” at the academy, effectively smoothing over the inevitable frictions between the military and political factions and, most importantly, between the Chinese and Russian advisers. His first performance in this latter role oc­curred before the school had even opened. He had managed to get Chiang placated and the Russians to mitigate their demands after an open disagreement between the two concerning the curriculum and the manage­ment of the academy. Through Liao, the Kuomintang kept non-military control over the school until his assassination in 1925.

Not to be found on any organization chart was the very important man “behind the scene”: Borodin, the Russian adviser to Sun, on whose advice the academy was started. The high regard Sun held for Borodin was shown in a speech of 1 December 1923.

If we want to achieve success in our revolu­tion we must learn the Russian method, organ­ization and training ... So I ask Mr. Borodin to be the educator of our party to train our comrades ... I hope that our comrades will give up their prejudices and faithfully learn his method.

This outstanding political organizer, as­sisting at the policy-making level, was matched in competency at the working level by the high-caliber Russian military advisers.

The senior general in this category was

General Vassily Blucher, alias General Galens, a leading Red Army General who later became head of Red Army forces in Siberia. In the Academy organization he is listed both as Chiang’s Chief-of Staff and as Head of Tactics. Four other generals were included in the total of some 40 Russian experts at Whampoa.

If the Russian instructors had direct for­eign influence on the academy, the Japanese had an indirect influence. The upper eche­lons of the Chinese officers had been trained at the Japanese military academy, Shikan Gakko. Graduates of this academy included Chiang Kai-shek; his commandant of cadets, the Chairman of the Education Department and the Weapons Officer.

Graduates of the leading Chinese Military schools, Paoting and Yunnan Military Acade­mies, filled the lower billets. In both these schools the Japanese influence was strongly felt, since most of the staff of each had been educated in Japanese military schools. About 60 per cent of Whampoa’s faculty came from the Yunnan school and 20 per cent from Paoting.

Although the academy had been orga­nized quite over the head of the Chinese Communist Party by Chiang Kai-shek, General Galens (Blucher), and Borodin, it did not mean that Communists were not to be on the staff, especially since the role of the academy, as previously stated, was to be political and military. In the political field the Communists hoped to exert their great­est influence through Chou En-lai, First Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in Canton, and Ho Chi Minh, a protege of Borodin, who had early joined the French Communist Party after having lived in New York and Paris.

Generally, most of the leading Chinese members of the staff were friends of Chiang. Ho Ying-ch’in, the Chief Instructing Officer, had been trained in Japan with Chiang. Wang Po-ling, head of the Education De­partment, had previously run a military school in Yunnan. He, too, was a loyal Chiang man and former comrade-in-arms. His assistant was Yeh Chien-ying, who later became a leading Communist general. Li Chi-shen was the official head of the Training Department, but he was also the Chief of staff of the First Division of the Kwangtung Army and a Kuomintang member.

The daily schedule of the Academy I^s fairly descriptive of cadet routine:

A.M.

P.M.

Time	Activity
5:00	Reveille—cadets dressed and paraded by squads.
5:00	Roll Call—by duty cadet, fob lowed by Calisthenics.
5:30	Breakfast—lasted about 10 min.
6-7 or 8	Preparation—for cadets. In­structors conference with Chiang. Classes—Practical classes, 1t hours each; 10 minute break between lectures. All classes re­quiring brain work given 10 morning.
7 or 8-12
12:00	Lunch
12:40	Classes—Every afternoon. At least 2-4 hours of outside work- Concentration on use of rifle and knife.
6:00	Supper
6:15-8:30	Preparation Political Discussion—in srna groups, cadets and officers re­garded as equals at this periot •
8:30
9:00	Roll Call
9:30	Lights Out

The curriculum of the academy must be remembered in apposition to the mission ⁰ the academy. The subject mission was ^t0 provide political and military training and the driving force for the fulfillment ⁰ that mission was awareness of the ultim^atc goal—the reunification of China. The early policy was to train as many junior officers ^aS quickly as possible for front line duty. ChianS had suggested a three-month course, while th^e faculty held for a year-and-a-half. The ^re' sultant compromise was a six-month course- This period was extended to a year by ^c'^lC fourth class and, later, to two years.           ^

The subjects taught were a potpourri ⁰ classical Chinese military tradition, Russia'j. Red Army experience and the influence Japanese military schools. The experience the Russian Red Army was drawn on ¹ both organizational and tactical lessons, ^aIj popular mobilization through political tec niques was given equal status with P^ure j- military concerns. The technical subjects artillery, engineering, infantry, communffi^a tions, topography, and supply were taug¹ ‘

^as individuals.

In the Declaration of the First National

di

The courses were simple in detail and shallow 'n depth because of the urgency of training ^and, secondly, because the Army was small ^and uncomplicated by serious logistic, ad­ministrative or strategic problems. Subse­quent lack of training in these areas was to prove the cause of irreparable damage to Ghiang’s military clique.

Of prime importance to the military train- tog of the cadets was the emphasis placed on military discipline. The military law of collec- hve responsibility, nien-tso-fa, was of Chinese origin attributable to the 16th century. A Parallel concept, lien-tso (standing and falling together), was the basis of the rigid disci­pline used by Tseng Kuo-fan in the Taiping Rebellion. The system taught at Whampoa, togardless of name or origin, was that upon Penalty of death a brigade commander was Uever to retreat unless ordered to do so by his commander-in-chief; a regimental com­mander was never to retreat unless ordered to do so by his brigade commander and so on through each lower echelon to the lowest level—the individual soldier. It followed then that each Chinese soldier supported his superior and did nothing contrary to his ^0riginal directive unless specifically ordered to do so.

Early in his career Sun Yat-sen had de­^Veloped a political platform based on three Ghinese slogans: Min-chu, People’s Rule; Tfin-ch’uan, People’s Authority; and Min- ^sheng, People’s Livelihood. Late in 1922, in­fluenced by the apparent success of the Rus­sian Revolution, the Kuomintang was reor­ganized by expanding the Three Principles in broader terms in order to absorb representa­tives from most of the nationalist minded Actions and even Communist party members

^J°ngress of the Kuomintang, called imme- 'iately before the start of the Whampoa ^^cadeiny, we see a further shift to the Left in Interpreting the Three People’s Principles. . ^eople’s Rule now became nationalism fight- tog imperialism; People’s Authority was now n superior type democracy guaranteeing that .^ghts enjoyed by recognized citizens of the Republic are not allowed to enemies of the ^Public”; People’s Livelihood involved a to'o-prongcd drive for “equalization of land holdings and regulation of capital.” To ac­complish the fulfillment of the revised Three Principles, it was declared: “We must also work untiringly to persuade farmers and workers to become members of the Kuomin­tang, making clear to them that since the Kuomintang is fighting against the imperialist and the warlords and all privileged classes, the national revolution is also a revolution to emancipate farmers and laborers.”

The interpretations then became the basis of the political education of the Whampoa cadets. They were taught that they were the chosen elite in training for the high calling of national liberation and self-strengthening. Their mission was military victory over war­lords and other enemies of the new Republic and political education of the workers and farmers. The language used in the Kuomin­tang Manifesto and in the Declaration of the First National Congress of the Kuomintang

Hai Tien Printing Co., Ltd.

Chinese Communist faction which aspired to influence the future officers. We have already seen that Communism per se was not part ° the curriculum and that Moscow had di rected Chinese Communists to co-operat^e with the Kuomintang; yet, it is significant that the leading Communist on the Staff ^waS in the Political Department. Chou En-lai, ^aS the functioning head of the Political Depart ment, organized a Communist cadet society called the Union of Military Youth. Very f^e'^v cadets joined the Union who were not Con¹ munists before entering the academy, since rival group had the advantage of name an the support of Chiang: The Sun Yat-s^eI

first

ah

un^ry

alli^ed u- it in we^re

. Vol' tial the The>^r rank^s

was not too alien to Communist doctrine, and Chinese Communist co-operation with Sun Yat-sen’s movement had been directed through the Comintern from Moscow. Small wonder, then, that the theories of Sun Yat- sen and his modified San-min-chi-i, Three Principles, and not Marxism and the straight Communist dogma, were the matrix against which national and international problems were studied and compared. This is not to say that Russian Bolshevik accomplishments were ignored. They were praised and studied, but the driving force was nationalism—Chinese nationalism—under Sun’s leadership, with Borodin in the wings giving advice. Sun Yat- sen, the visible contemporary national hero, fanned the flames of a nationalist movement more than doting on any foreign fait accompli ever could. Even after Sun’s death, the reli­gious devotion to his memory continued to pro­mote the dynamic nationalist feeling. Be­sides, Borodin and his faraway supporter, Joseph Stalin, whose maneuvering for power in Moscow was based partly on the future success of the Soviets in China, were confident that a successful nationalist revolution would eventually mean Soviet control of the country.

It must be remembered that revolutionary political training, even Sun Yat-sen-ism, was still new medicine in the early days of Wham­poa. In a setting which found instructors and cadets living together for months on end in near isolation under rigid discipline, the evening political training in small discusssion groups fostered a particular camaraderie from which grew the Whampoa clique. Since the ideas discussed were often as new to the in­structors as to the cadets, the political train­ing had a tendency to reduce the two sides to a common level. Lest it be thought that there was no substance or organization to the teaching, it must be pointed out that Chiang considered the ideological training, “ching- shen chiao-yu," to be the most important task of the academy. Party elite such as Hu Han-min gave lectures on San-min-chu-i and the lectures formed the most important course at the academy and were attended by Chiang Kai- shek himself, as well as by every professor and cadet.

Though the unwritten criterion for selec­tion for the academy was belief in the Kuo- mintang ideals, there was the ever present

A graduate of the University of North Carolina, Capta'ⁿ Herzog served successively in the USS George (DE-697) and the USS Iowa between 1946 and 1948. A naval avia­tor, his subsequent duties in­clude service in Transport Squadron 8 in Hawaii (1950 to 1953); Patrol Squadron 7, Quonset Point, R. I. (1955' 1956); and on the Staffs of Fleet Air Wing 3, Bruns­wick, Maine (1956 to 1958), and Commander FIe^et Air Quonset (1958 to 1960). He received an M.A. 1° Public Administration from Harvard in 1961 and ³ Ph.D. in Political Science from Brown in 1963. H^e was assigned to the U. S. European Command ⁱⁿ Paris from 1963 until 1966 when he joined the faculty of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, Was*¹' ington, D. C.

Society.

The closeness of the cadets in the classes to their officers, their intense nation' ism, their hero worship of their milit^a / leader, their sense of elitism and the __ feeling of being the “first” in a new rev° ^u tionary political army created an esprit corps unlike that found in any other groiff China. Their fame, power, and egos "" bound to rise.

After the suppression of the Merchant ■   ,

unteers in mid-October 1924 and their major victory over Ch’en Ching-mingj cadets went from victory to victory, prestige preceded them and their grew despite heavy losses of the original e ¹ From the First Whampoa Training ment, under Wang Po-ling, the brigade expanded into a division, a corps, and fin^a

the Party Army. With this force Chiang broke out of his Canton enclave and pushed for na­tional unification in his famous Northern Expedition. Friction within the Kuomintang intensified over Chiang’s increased power and his use of that power against the Communists. A break was inevitable. The coup d’etat in Shanghai in April 1927, ruptured the Mos- cow-Canton Entente. Stalin, who had hoped to “squeeze out Chiang like a lemon” and throw him aside, had met one of his worst de­feats. The Russian equipped and trained army was controlled by a small Whampoa clique—the survivors of the decimated ranks of the first few classes—who were loyal to Chiang alone. The Whampoa Academy in­vestment had paid off in a successful national­ist revolution, but it was Chiang Kai-shek, supported by the Whampoa clique, and not the Communists who collected.

Ironically, this clique, which helped put Chiang into power, ultimately contributed to his defeat by the Chinese Communists. Their seniority and personal acquaintance with Chiang ensured their holding almost all the important military assignments in the Na­tionalist Army. Incompetency, corruption, and favoritism were the order of the day. Lack of training at Whampoa in administra­tion, logistics, and operational training was never corrected. By necessity, the more self­sufficient Red Army, built by Mao Tse-tung ^upon a rural base, learned the importance of i°gistics, organization, and training tech­niques. The loss of many of the best National­'s! troops, in fighting the Japanese around Shanghai in 1937, set up the rest of the medi- °^cre troops under incompetent and inher­ently weak leadership, for ultimate defeat by the Communists.

There can be no doubt that in 1923 Sun ^at-sen had a great need for a loyal revolu­tionary army and that the Whampoa Acad­^emy was a big step in the filling of that need, before the academy could come into existence | there had to be financial and technical sup- I hurt. Though assistance was requested by the Chinese of the Soviet Russians, the latter were tt'ore than merely willing to help. Highly Qualified personnel rushed to advise Sun and t° train his future officers.

Only three years after Chiang’s fait ac- ^Cornpli, Professor Holcombe of Harvard, in

The Chinese Revolution, stated this amazing analysis of the Chinese-Russian partnership:

It may seem strange in the light of later events that Sun Yat-sen should have entered so readily into a compact with Soviet Russia. Both parties knew that their ultimate aims were irreconcilable and that their entente cor- diale could not last long. . . . The Chinese Revolutionists wanted help in the military stage of their movement and were willing to take the chance that Communist propaganda might eventually prove more seductive than their own among their own people. The Rus­sian Revolutionists wanted help in their Far Eastern campaign against the outposts of capitalism and were willing to take the chance that the regenerated Chinese Republic might prove at last to be an enemy to their World Revolution rather than a friend. . . . Each party stood to gain at the outset by utilizing the aid of the other and each might hope that in the end the cost of that aid would not be too high. Both were willing to play with fire, since both expected to be warmed, but not consumed, by the conflagration.

Again, it must be said that the Academy was a success in its mission of training young officers quickly for the specific task of defeat­ing warlords, and of imbuing them with a revolutionary fervor reflected in their highly commendable bravery and discipline.

From the beginning of the Academy in 1924 until it was moved to Nanking and renamed the Central Military Academy in 1927, Party or civilian control slipped by stages until the military, and especially Chiang Kai-shek, con­trolled the school completely. The initial Party restraints on the military by Sun Yat- sen and Liao Chung-Kai were never regained after their respective deaths. The loyalty of the young officers and of his own contempo­rary classmates to Chiang as a revolution­ary leader was natural enough in the setting of the academy. The loyalty was even , more natural to Chiang as a military leader after the initial victories had won South China for the new government. As Chiang’s power rose, so rose the status of the graduates of Whampoa. It was this clique supporting him in the 1927 Shanghai coup detat that defeated the Com­munist plan to control China, at least for the time being. The decimated ranks of this same Whampoa-bred clique contributed to his loss of mainland China in 1949.