Background
Zhu De was born in Yilong County, Sichuan, to a tenant family which had relocated from Guangdong, hence he was raised with a knowledge of both the Sichuanese and Cantonese dialects.
Zhu De was born in Yilong County, Sichuan, to a tenant family which had relocated from Guangdong, hence he was raised with a knowledge of both the Sichuanese and Cantonese dialects.
Zhu attended middle school in Shunqing (later Nanchong), higher normal school in Chengdu where he studied physical education. In 1909, he enrolled in the new Yunnan Military Academy, where he secretly joined Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary Tongmen-ghui and the Kelaohui secret society.
While stationed in Kunming, Yunnan, Zhu participated in the October 1911 revolution, and in the following year joined the Guomindang (GMD). He also participated in the 1916 civil war against Yuan Shikai's monarchical ambition. He spent the next several years in southwest Sichuan commanding a brigade of the Yunnan Army on behalf of Sichuan governor Cai O, and living the dissolute life of a petty warlord. In 1920, he returned to Yunnan where he was appointed provincial commissioner of public security the following year. The vicissitudes of warlord politics soon forced him to withdraw to the Sichuan-Tibet border area. But in early 1922 he went to Shanghai where he was cured of the opium habit. Having already read revolutionary literature in recent years and greatly influenced by a friend, Sun Pingwen, Zhu at this time met with Sun Yat-sen and Chen Duxiu, although Chen responded coolly to his request for admission into the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
In his mid-thirties, Zhu went to Europe in late 1922. Soon after arriving in Berlin he met Zhou Enlai and joined the CCP. After studying both German and Marxism for several months, he attended lectures in 1923-1924 at the University of Gottingen, although he considered this less useful than his visits to factories and other sites in various cities of Germany. In 1924 he edited the GMD's Zhengzhi zhoupao (Political Weekly) in Berlin. After being arrested briefly on two occasions in 1925, he was quickly deported to the USSR. Here he studied at the University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow.
Zhu returned to China just in time for the Northern Expedition. He played a useful role in that campaign by persuading the powerful Sichuan warlord General Yang Sen to join the revolutionary cause. However, Yang Sen soon afterward betrayed the Communists, and Zhu narrowly avoided arrest. Zhu then went to Nanchang, Jiangxi, where a former student gave him important positions including those of chief public security officer and deputy army commander. Thus was Zhu De well-placed strategically when the CCP, having been expelled by the Guomindang (GMD) in Shanghai in April and then in Wuhan in July 1927, staged the Nanchang Uprising of August 1, 1927. In the aftermath of this historic but disastrous event, Ziiu’s forces were reduced to a few hundred men, poorly armed. By January 1928 his modest forces captured Yizhang in southern Hunan and publicly proclaimed themselves to be a Communist, rather than a GMD, military unit. In the spring of 1928 Mao Zedong abandoned his precarious base at Jing-gangshan and joined forces with Zhu. The combined force of about 10,000 men now reoccupied Jinggangshan where they formally established the Fourth Red Army. In this difficult early period of establishing a base in the mountains (eventually centered at Ruijin, Jiangxi, formally the seat of the Chinese Soviet Republic beginning in November 1931), Mao and Zhu forged a cooperative relationship, with Zhu subordinate to Mao. Both men opposed the Li Lisan line of fruitlessly attempting to take large cities during 1930, although they grudgingly complied for a time. Zhu also sided with Mao during the Futian incident (a revolt directed against Mao) late that year, a critical juncture because it coincided with an imminent assault from the first of Jiang Jieshi’s five annihilation campaigns against the Communist stronghold. Zhu was preoccupied by these successive campaigns, successfully turning all of them back except the last one when the Communists were forced to abandon the Jiangxi Soviet in late 1934. Zhu was made a member of the Politburo sometime during the period of the Jiangxi Soviet. In addition, he sat on the Soviet's political cabinet, and chaired its Central Revolutionary Military Council. Zhu was commander-in-chief of the famed and perilous Long March which relocated the Communists in Shaanxi a year later, although at the outset of the flight from Jiangxi Zhou Enlai was the chairman of the important Party Military Affairs Committee. Zhu became a vice-chairman of this committee. After Mao resumed the Long March to Shaanxi, Zhu remained for a time with Zhang Guotao, which gave rise to conflicting stories that Zhu and Mao either disagreed with each other at the time or the militarily stronger forces of Zhang detained Zhu. In any case, Zhu rejoined Mao in Shaanxi in the fall of 1936 and resumed overall command of the Red Army.
Following the renewed cooperation between the CCP and GMD Zhu was named deputy commander of the Second War Zone, and commander of the Eighth Route Army, as the Red Army was now redesignated. Following Japan's invasion of North China in July 1987, he was at the front much of the time until the end of 1939 when he was ordered back to Yan’an where he stayed throughout the remainder of the war against Japan. He concentrated his attention now on measures to deal both with the GMD’s new siege of Yan’an and the pressure exerted by the Japanese. After the American Dixie Mission was established in Yan’an in 1944, a number of American officials and journalists interviewed Zhu. They generally admired his modest manner and apparent lack of political dogmatism.
Following the victory over Japan, and as the Chinese civil war resumed despite the effort of the Marshall Mission to avert it, the Communist military units were redesignated the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and Zhu continued as commander-in-chief. After Yan’an fell to the Nationalists in March 1947, Zhu eventually relocated the headquarters in Xipaipo village which was near Shijiazhuang in southwest Hebei in time for Mao's arrival in May. By now the war was turning decisively in favor of the Communists and this was happening much more quickly than either Mao or Zhu had anticipated. Victory came within the next several months. On October 1, 1949 Mao pronounced the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Zhu was accorded a place of honor at the ceremony on Tiananmen Square.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Zhu was frequently active in the several high positions that he held. He was elected regularly from Sichuan province to the National People’s Congress (NPC) after it was established in 1954. That year he relinquished command of the PLA. Five years later, by 1959, he no longer had any formal military position but retained the title of marshal. He was appointed chairman of the standing committee of the NPC in 1959 and was elected to the position in January 1965, and reelected in January 1975. During this tumultuous decade, Zhu was in his eighties and mostly stayed clear of politics, being on hand for ceremonial occasions only.
Zhu De died on July 6, 1976 at ninety years of age. He had been well enough to meet with visiting Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser only a couple of weeks before his death (and after the infirm Mao was no longer seeing foreigners). Interestingly, Zhu outlived Zhou Enlai by six months while Mao lived only two months longer than Zhu.
Zhu De was legally married four times, according to the unfinished biography written by Agnes Smedley, however there is no evidence of his marrying the mother of his only daughter.
His known relationships were with:
Xiao Jufang. Xiao was a fellow student of Zhu's at Kunming Normal Institute. The pair married in 1912. Xiao died of a fever in 1916 after giving birth to Zhu's only son, Baozhu.
Chen Yuzhen. After the death of Xiao Jufang, Zhu was advised to find a mother for his infant son. He was introduced to Chen by friends in the military. Chen had participated in revolutionary activities in 1911, as well as in 1916. Chen reportedly set the condition that she would not marry unless her future husband proposed to her in person, which Zhu did. The two married in 1916. Chen looked after the home, even building a study for Zhu and his scholarly friends to meet, which she furnished with pamphlets, books, and manifestos on the Russian October Revolution. In the spring of 1922, Zhu left his home to visit the Sichuanese warlord Yang Sen. According to Agnes Smedley's biography, Zhu considered himself separated from Chen after leaving her and felt free to marry again, though there had been no formal divorce. Chen was killed by the Kuomintang in 1935.
He Zhihua. He met Zhu in Shanghai and followed him to Germany in late 1922. When Zhu was deported from Germany in 1925, He was already pregnant and later gave birth in a village on the outskirts of Moscow. Zhu named the daughter Sixun, but relations between He and Zhu had diminished and she rejected his choice, naming the baby Feifei. He sent her daughter to live with her sister in Chengdu shortly after the birth. She then married Huo Jiaxin in the same year. He returned to Shanghai in 1928. She reportedly betrayed wanted communists to the Kuomintang, before being blinded in a gun attack by Red Army soldiers that killed her husband. After this, she returned to Sichuan, dying of illness before 1949.
Wu Ruolan. Wu was the daughter of an Intellectual from Jiuyantang in Hunan. Zhu met Wu after attacking Leiyang with the Peasant's and Workers Army. They married in 1928. In January 1929, Zhu and Wu were encircled by Kuomintang troops at a temple in the Jinggang Mountains. Zhu escaped, but Wu was captured. She was executed by decapitation and her head was allegedly sent to Changsha for display.
Kang Keqing (K'ang K'e-ching or Kang Keh-chin). Zhu married Kang in 1929 when he was 43. She was a member of the Red Army and also a peasant leader. Kang was highly studious and Zhu taught her to read and write before they married. Kang outlived him.