The Basic Reason for the Great Victory in the
Northwest Is Winter Training1
(March 4, 1948)
The Yichuan Campaign,2 in which 70,000 of our men from eleven brigades encircled and wiped out five brigades (minus one regiment, at Luochuan), two division
headquarters, and one army headquarters, 28,000 of Hu [Zongnan]’s3 crack troops
in all, without a single one escaping, is the greatest victory on the northwest front.
The basic reason for this victory is the winter consolidation and training that
lasted more than two months. Following this campaign, Hu’s army has no main
forces left apart from the two brigades of the Seventeenth Division defending
Yan’an and the approximately two brigades of the First Division that recently
headed back to Tongguan from western Henan and that still have relatively strong
combat effectiveness. The gateway for our armies to advance into the area north
of the Wei River and into southern Gansu is already wide open.
The Military Commission
Our source for this text is Mao Zedong junshi wenji, Vol. 4, pp. 413–14, where it is
reproduced from Mao’s handwritten manuscript preserved in the Central Archives.

--- Notes

1.  Mao Zedong wrote this note on behalf of the Central Military Commission about a
report on the outcome of the Yichuan Campaign written by Commander and Political Commissar Peng Dehuai and Deputy Commanders Zhang Zongxun and Zhao Shoushan of the
Northwest Field Army.

2.  In spring 1948, after the new-style army rectification campaign, the Northwest Field
Army launched the Yichuan Campaign on February 23. The campaign ended when Yichuan
was taken on March 3.

3.  Hu Zongnan was director of the Guomindang army’s Xi’an Pacification Office.
DOI:  10.4324/9781315719436-97