Mao Zedong's idea of dealing with prisoners is one of the treasures of his military thought. He has superb strategic strategies and is unique in world history, showing Chairman Mao's unique wisdom.
Chairman Mao advocates preferential treatment of prisoners in general, release, recruit or special treatment based on the performance and wishes of prisoners of war. Whether in the difficult period of the Agrarian Revolution or the War of Liberation, whether it is the civil war or the foreign war, it fully reflects the humanitarian spirit during the war. While promoting our army's "Justice of Justice", it strengthens the revolutionary force, plays a role in dismantling the enemy's army, and becomes a sharp weapon of our party, creating important conditions for winning the war and consolidating the regime.
Today, let us sort out the formation and development process of Chairman Mao’s prisoner of war thought, and learn from it another great wisdom of Chairman Mao.
1. "Passive Tolerance" during the Agrarian Revolution War
The Agrarian Revolution War lasted for ten years. No matter who wins and who loses in every battle, there will inevitably be captives from the other side. How to treat prisoners is not only a humanitarian issue, but also a strategic issue for winning the war.
Mao Zedong read the twenty-four histories and was well aware of the laws of the rise and fall of all dynasties. At the beginning of leading the armed struggle, he clearly stipulated that do not search for prisoners' property, do not beat or scold or insult prisoners, give prisoners the same material treatment as Red Army soldiers, and pay travel expenses to prisoners who request to go home.
In September 1927, Mao Zedong led the remaining troops of the Autumn Harvest Uprising Army, which suffered heavy damage, to Sanwan Village, Yongxin County, Jiangxi Province. Some soldiers had negative emotions in the face of the tragic situation of the autumn harvest Uprising.
Mao Zedong immediately made regulations "Anyone who does not want to stay in the team can return to the countryside to work, and will be given a five-yuan travel fee and a letter of introduction will be issued." The provision of
This regulation is an important basis for Mao Zedong to deal with prisoners' thoughts. Civil War The soldiers on both sides were almost all from poor peasants and bankrupt handicraftsmen. Almost all of them were forced to "get the army and eat food" or participated in the revolution because of their lives. Which side could truly treat the soldiers as human beings, the soldiers on this side were willing to charge.
In order to win more people to join the Red Army and disintegrate the Kuomintang army, Mao Zedong formulated a basic policy to deal with prisoners.
In January 1928, Mao Zedong led his troops from Ninggang to Suichuan . During this activity, Mao Zedong formulated six military disciplines for the Red Army in response to various bad phenomena in the troops. Soon, two items were added: "Take a bath to avoid women" and "Don't search the captive's pockets".
"Do not search the captain's pockets" This regulation aims to respect the captain's personality and protect the money or valuables carried by the captain.
This regulation was quickly applied to war practice. On February 18, 1928, the Red Army fought fiercely with more than 500 enemy troops (a battalion of Zhu Peide's army and Jingwei Regiment) in Ninggang New City, annihilated the enemy and captured more than 100 people.
On the way back to the base, some soldiers beat and scolded the prisoners. Mao Zedong attached great importance to this. Soon, he formulated four policies to respect the personality of the prisoners, ensure the personal and property safety of the prisoners, and respect the wishes of the prisoners on the issue of staying or leaving.
Its implementation truly makes it possible to regard the captives as misleading brothers.
In that era of chaos, those who were captured from other places fought far away in a foreign land, even if they had a certain amount of travel expenses, it would be difficult for them to return to their hometown smoothly. Even if they went back, they were often despised or persecuted.
Therefore, for these prisoners, the better way out is to stay and be the Red Army.
According to Sheng Renxue and others' recollections, on April 3, 1928, Mao Zedong promulgated the "Hidden Three Disciplines and Eight Points to Pay attention to " to the Red Army in Shatian, Dongdong. The eighth item of is the preferential treatment of prisoners.
Also, according to the old Red Army Yang Zhicheng's recollection, in April 1928, "Comrade Mao Zedong had such instructions: caught prisoners on the battlefield, one was not allowed to be beaten, two was not allowed to scold, three was not allowed to search the pockets, and those who were injured had to be treated; those who were willing to stay were absorbed and joined the Red Army, and those who were willing to go were sent home."
It can be seen that the Red Army's policy of preferential treatment of prisoners was mainly formulated by Mao Zedong. At least before April 1928, Mao Zedong's troops had implemented a relatively clear and systematic policy of preferential treatment of prisoners.
preferential policy of prisoners has played an irreplaceable role in establishing and consolidating Jinggangshan revolutionary base .
In November 1928, Mao Zedong said in a report to the central government:
"The most effective propaganda to the enemy is to release prisoners and treat the enemy's wounded soldiers."
This preferential treatment of prisoners broke the bad propaganda of "the Communist bandits kill everyone when they see them", especially when the enemy's middle and lower-level officers, such as battalion commanders, company commanders, and platoon commanders, came over, after some propaganda, some returned to the enemy, not only played the role of breaking the enemy's rumors, but also effectively destroyed the enemy's fighting spirit.
Under the extremely difficult conditions of the revolution, some prisoners who were willing to stay in the Red Army provided the Red Army with a source of troops.
1928, after more than a year of battle, the initial uprising troops of the Red Army lost nearly two-thirds, and a large number of soldiers transformed and supplemented from the captive soldiers of various units such as Xu Kexiang, Tang Shengzhi, Bai Chongxi, Zhu Peide, etc. Even some middle and lower-level officers are "captured" and use them as soon as possible.
November 25, when reporting the situation of the Red Army soldiers to the Central Committee, Mao Zedong mentioned that "the current subordinate cadres, due to too many casualties, often came from the enemy's prisoners yesterday, and today they asked him to be the platoon leader or even the company commander. The prisoners in February and March this year are now the battalion commanders."
From his report, it can be seen that the Red Army has achieved remarkable results in implementing the policy of preferential treatment of prisoners. Many prisoners joined the Red Army under the inspiration of the policy of tolerance, and prisoners even accounted for a large proportion of the number of Red Army personnel.
In this regard, Yang Chisheng, who was the commander of the 9th Division of the Third Army of the National Revolutionary Army at that time, sighed that this method was "very poisonous".
On the other hand, in the initial stage of the revolution, due to the casualties of combat and the sparse population of Jinggangshan area, the Red Army's source of troops was very limited. In addition to transforming and utilizing prisoners, it was difficult to obtain supplies. The implementation of this policy is also a helpless strategy.
At the end of December 1929, the 9th Party Congress of the Red Fourth Army (i.e. " Gutian Conference ") was held. Mao Zedong said at the meeting that he "opposed to be greedy for more soldiers and forced to stay the elements who were unwilling to stay" and "if those who were unwilling to stay, they would be given travel expenses after publicity and let them go back."
He emphasized that prisoners should be "not searched" and "not insulted" and carried out publicity and education, and implemented equal life and medical treatment with our army, and believed that this was an extremely effective method of propaganda to the enemy and that the entire army must attach great importance to it. After the meeting, a resolution drafted by Mao Zedong was passed, and four clear provisions were made on the issue of preferential treatment of prisoners. These regulations basically established the Red Army's policy of preferential treatment of prisoners.
In June 1930, Mao Zedong presided over the formulation of the "Political Work Program of the Fourth Army of the Red Army at All Levels", and made specific provisions on training and educating prisoners in the form of regulations from the perspective of strategic strategies.
On March 2, 1936, in view of the insulting actions of some Red Army soldiers to strip the captured officers such as stripping clothes, Mao Zedong, Peng Dehuai, and Yang Shangkun jointly called Lin Biao and Nie Rongzhen and other Red Army generals to reexamine the consistent proposition of preferential treatment of prisoners and demanded that political education work be strengthened to make all soldiers understand the strategic significance and welcome the prisoners to join the Red Army with a sincere attitude.
On August 13, 1936, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Yang Shangkun jointly called Peng Dehuai and others, asking "In order to strengthen the activities of the united front and strive for the work of the White Army, it is necessary to provide important political education from the captured White Army officers and soldiers, and special preferential treatment is required to train a group of talents (talents) who can abandon all parties, and at least do communications." . All the surrendered enemy officers and soldiers and the captives of the Red Army troops on the front line were sent to the rear, and the military commission was trained by and . This determines the important principle of recruitment for the number of prisoners.
According to statistics, from January 1931 to October 1933, in just over two years, the Red Army wiped out more than 510,000 enemies, of which nearly 200,000 were captured. Most of the prisoners joined the Red Army after education and transformation, which not only strengthened the Red Army, but also invisibly weakened the Kuomintang army.
In addition, the correct policy of captives has continuously expanded the political influence of the Red Army and immediately broke the enemy's so-called deception of "the Communist bandits kill when they see others".
revolutionary team correctly implemented Mao Zedong's strategy of preferential treatment of prisoners, even though the Red Army had encountered many major setbacks, they could always seize the opportunity to spread fire.
2. During the War of Liberation, different treatment of captured officers and soldiers
After the outbreak of the full-scale civil war, the People's Liberation Army's good news spread frequently. In order to correctly deal with the prisoners, on November 23, 1945, Mao Zedong proposed two ways to deal with the prisoners in a telegram to senior generals such as Liu Bocheng, commander of the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Hebei Military Region, and Deng Xiaoping, political commissar, and affirmed the preferential treatment of Northwest Army officers, but asked not to let them go, and encouraged them to make declarations and conversations against civil war and advocate peace.
November 8, 1946, Mao Zedong ordered the deputy commander of the Shandong Military Region, Zhang Yunyi and other generals, and required that the captive officers should be dealt with separately, " assistant officers , except those who absorb in our army, will be released." However, among the main officers, no battalion commanders or above will be released. After education and transformation, some officers can be released into the enemy army for differentiation work; the company commanders and platoon leaders among the lower-level officers should be educated and transformed, and some progressive elements should be encouraged to join our army anyway. "If the rest cannot be taken in, they can be released, but the most reactionary ones will not be released", "Anyone who releases should be educated and then released."
Based on this instruction, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued the "Measures for Handling Captive Officers", which stipulated specific methods for differential handling of captive officers of different levels and different hostile attitudes. captive officers, in line with the principle of "adhering to leniency, not stimulating, not insulting, and treating them as friends", focused on publicizing the revolutionary purpose of our army to them, exposing the hypocritical face of the Kuomintang, and eliminating their hostility towards the Communist Party. "The minimum requirement is to turn enemies into friends, and the highest requirement is to turn friends into me." The main measures to deal with prisoners are to not release, to combine the release of prisoners and to deal with them separately.
As the War of Liberation is winning one after another, the People's Liberation Army urgently needs to replenish its troops, but the Liberated Area has serious shortage of troops. It is very interesting that one of the important sources of the People's Liberation Army was actually the "Liberation Warriors".
On October 10, 1948, Mao Zedong pointed out in the "Notice of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on September Meeting": "In two years, especially in the last year... about 800,000 prisoners from the Kuomintang army were dissolved, turning them into liberation soldiers, and turning them into guns to attack the Kuomintang."
In order to strengthen the people's army, Mao Zedong decided to let go of the prisoners to replenish the source of troops. He believed that our army had 2.8 million people and was preparing to contain 1.7 million prisoners to join our army in the next three years (calculated to account for 60% of all the prisoners).
At that time, the key to our party’s solution to all problems was that it must complete the established plan to annihilate the enemy - annihilate the regular troops of about 100 brigades (divisions) of the Kuomintang army every year on average.
In this regard, Mao Zedong emphasized that "the captives must be used in large quantities." Because as the scale of the war continued to expand, great difficulties occurred in the liberated areas, mainly due to insufficient materials and troops.
In order to overcome difficulties, Mao Zedong pointed out: must pay attention to "protecting prisoners" on the front line in the process of attacking the Kuomintang-controlled areas.
On December 22, 1948, after the new security enemy was completely wiped out, Mao Zedong drafted a telegram for the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China to Yang Dezhi, commander of the Second Corps of the North China Military Region, and ordered them to "I hope you can follow the policy of Liu, Deng, Chen Su's prisoner and investigation and repair and fight immediately in the Xu-Beng battle, and immediately replenish the largest part of the prisoners into the army and quickly dissolve them."
"Pre-in-Captain" policy has quickly replenished the combat effectiveness of the People's Liberation Army and even increased compared with the previous ones. At the same time, it has also promptly and properly handled hundreds of thousands of prisoners in external combat to avoid being reused by the enemy.
This has a dual effect on disintegrating the enemy and enhancing the strength of our army. Under the guidance of this idea, the number of the People's Liberation Army not only did not decrease, but even increased.
Relevant information shows that during the Liberation War, the People's Liberation Army captured as many as 4.5 million Kuomintang officers and soldiers, of which from July 1946 to July 1949, the number of prisoners reached "4.15 million, and 2.8 million of the prisoners became the People's Liberation Army."
company Chiang Kai-shek also lamented that "what particularly hurts me" is that "many senior generals who were ordered by me were captured." They both "cannot be generous" and "cannot be cameras anyway". Many subordinate officers and soldiers were captured and were actually incorporated into the People's Liberation Army to fight the Kuomintang army. This is "an unprecedented shame and humiliation!"
Because Mao Zedong implemented a differentiated treatment strategy for the captured officers and soldiers, he incorporated ideological education into the process of the transformation of prisoners, and found an effective way, which to a certain extent disintegrated the "loyalty" idea of captured Kuomintang officers and soldiers, which greatly accelerated the victory of the Liberation War.
III. The idea of superior prisoners of international humanitarianism
War to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea was the war between the Chinese army in North Korea and the United States led by the United States. How to deal with the captives of the "United Nations Army" with different races and languages is a very difficult thing and is crucial for China to win this war.
At the beginning of the war, the Chinese People's Volunteer Army implemented preferential treatment policies for US prisoners based on Mao Zedong's idea of handling prisoners, and dealt a certain blow to the US invading army from outside the battlefield.
On November 24, 1950, Mao Zedong sent a telegram to the head of the Volunteer Army, "Your action to release American prisoners has achieved excellent results internationally. Please prepare to release a large number of people after this battle, such as three or four hundred people."
On November 29, 1950, the 179th Regiment of the 60th Division of the Volunteer Army captured more than 240 American, British and South Korean officers and soldiers from the "United Nations Army" in the battle of Fushengli.
Soon after, Mao Zedong approved the volunteer army to release these prisoners, and pointed out that "It is very right for you to release a group of prisoners. You should be let go quickly. You should be let go in batches at any time, and do not ask for instructions."
Following Mao Zedong's instructions, the volunteer army successively released several batches of prisoners of war in a planned manner. The released prisoners talked about their own personal experiences, objectively and effectively promoted the policy of the volunteer army not to kill prisoners and treat prisoners preferentially, making the enemy's deception and propaganda bankrupt and invisibly disintegrated the enemy's fighting spirit.
Because the volunteer army preferential treatment of prisoners, many incidents of enemy troops surrendering to the volunteer army in the war.
On November 27, 1950, the 24th Regiment of the 25th Division of the US Army (115 people, of which more than 90 were black soldiers, most of whom were white officers) was surrounded and captured by the 39th Army of the Volunteer Army in the Jiudong area south of Yunshan, North Korea.
This is the first reorganized company of the United States to surrender to foreign troops since the War of Independence , and it is also the only established company in which the Chinese and American troops collectively surrendered to our Volunteer Army.
This incident shocked the US Department of Defense. For this reason, the US Department of Defense decided that black and white people in the US military will no longer be separated.
The war to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea is a modern war in which our army defeats the enemy with its disadvantaged equipment. It is not only a military contest, but also a political contest of "a war that defeats others without fighting".
On the Korean battlefield, the Chinese People's Volunteer Army implemented the policy of lenient prisoners from beginning to end, and successfully educated and transformed various prisoners, which played an important role in winning the war.
summary
Mao Zedong took preferential treatment and transformation of prisoners as an important political work in the struggle against the enemy, under the principle of winning the war, treated and transformed prisoners differently and targetedly through different ways, focusing on influencing prisoners ideologically, respecting the captive personality, and using it for our own use. This not only disintegrates the enemy's army, but also strengthens his own team.
Mao Zedong's thoughts on dealing with prisoners not only demonstrated his superb military and political wisdom, but also reflected the glory of humanity, providing important strength for winning the war .
This is a unique existence in human history!
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