Comrade Dehuai [1]: Successive campaigns have proven that when our army conducts strategic or campaign-level large-scale outflanking maneuvers, encircling several divisions of the U.S. forces at once, or one entire division, or even one entire regiment, it is difficult to accomplish the task of annihilation.
This is because the U.S. forces at present still possess rather strong combat morale and self-confidence.
In order to strike down this self-confidence of the enemy so as to achieve the ultimate goal of large-scale encirclement and annihilation, it seems advisable that in each operation our ambition should not be too great; we should only require that each of our armies annihilate one entire battalion of U.S., British, and Turkish forces in a single operation—at most two entire battalions—and that will suffice.
At present, we have eight armies on the first line. If each army annihilates one entire enemy battalion, that makes eight entire battalions in total, which will already deal a very heavy blow to the enemy.
If, in each operation, each army can annihilate two entire enemy battalions, making sixteen entire battalions in total, then the blow to the enemy will be even greater.
If this cannot be done, then it is still appropriate to require that each army annihilate only one entire enemy battalion per operation.
That is to say, fighting the U.S. and British forces is different from fighting the puppet forces. Against the puppet forces, we can carry out strategic or campaign-level large-scale encirclement. Against the U.S. and British forces, however, we should not yet conduct such large-scale encirclement for several months; we should only carry out tactical small-scale encirclement—that is, each army, in each operation, should carefully select only one enemy battalion or slightly more as its target and completely encircle and annihilate it.
In this way, after fighting three or four more campaigns—so that each U.S. or British division has another three or four entire battalions cleanly annihilated—their morale cannot but drop, their confidence cannot but waver, and then we can make plans to annihilate one entire enemy division, or two or three entire divisions, in a single operation.
In the past, when we fought Chiang Kai-shek’s New First Army, New Sixth Army, Fifth Army, Eighteenth Army, and the Guangxi clique’s Seventh Army, it was precisely through this process from small-scale annihilation to large-scale annihilation.
Since our army entered Korea, the five campaigns have already completed a stretch of this small-scale annihilation warfare, but it is still not enough; we must still go through several more campaigns to complete the stage of small-scale annihilation warfare and advance to the stage of large-scale annihilation warfare.
As for the location of the fighting, as long as the enemy is willing to advance, the farther north the better, provided it does not exceed the Pyongyang-Wonsan line.
The above is for your consideration; please telegraph your reply.
Mao Zedong
May 26
Based on the manuscript.

Note
[1] Dehuai, i.e., Peng Dehuai, then serving as Commander and Political Commissar of the Chinese People’s Volunteers.