1. Zhu De was a Chinese general, military strategist, politician and revolutionary in the Chinese Communist Party.
33 Facts About Zhu De
1. 2.
Zhu De was adopted by a wealthy uncle at age nine and received a superior early education that led to his admission into a military academy.
3.
Zhu De commanded the Eighth Route Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War.
4.
Zhu De was chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress from 1959 to 1976.
5.
Zhu De was born on 1 December 1886, to a poor tenant farmer's family in Hung, a town in Yilong County, Nanchong, a hilly and isolated part of northern Sichuan province.
6.
Zhu De's family relocated to Sichuan during the migration from Hunan province and Guangdong province.
7.
Zhu De's origins are often given as Hakka, but Agnes Smedley's biography of him says his people came from Guangdong and speaks of Hakka as merely associates of his.
8.
Zhu De says that older generations of his family had spoken the "Kwangtung dialect" and that his generation spoke Sichuanese, a distinct regional variant of Southwestern Mandarin that is unintelligible to other speakers of Standard Chinese.
9.
Zhu De enrolled in a Sichuan high school around 1907 and graduated in 1908.
10.
Zhu De taught at the academy after his graduation in July 1911.
11.
When Cai became governor of Sichuan after Yuan's death in June 1916, Zhu De was made a brigade commander.
12.
Zhu De's troops continued to support him, and so he consolidated his forces to become a warlord.
13.
Zhu De first traveled to Shanghai, where he broke his opium habit and, according to historians of the Kuomintang, met Sun Yat-sen.
14.
Zhu De attempted to join the Chinese Communist Party in early 1922, but was rejected for being a warlord.
15.
In late 1922 Zhu De went to Berlin, along with his partner He Zhihua.
16.
Zhu De resided in Germany until 1925, studying at one point at Gottingen University.
17.
Zhu De returned to China in July 1926 to unsuccessfully persuade Sichuan warlord Yang Sen to support the Northern Expedition.
18.
The uprising failed to gather support and Zhu De was forced to flee Nanchang with his army.
19.
Under the false name of Wang Kai, Zhu De managed to find shelter for his remaining forces by joining warlord Fan Shisheng.
20.
Zhu De's leadership made him a figure of immense prestige; locals even credited him with supernatural abilities.
21.
In 1931 Zhu De was appointed leader of the Red Army in Ruijin by the CCP leadership.
22.
Zhu De successfully led a conventional military force against the Kuomintang in the lead-up to the Fourth Counter Encirclement Campaign; however, he was not able to do the same during the Fifth Counter Encirclement Campaign and the CCP fled.
23.
Zhu De helped form the 1934 break-out that began the Long March.
24.
When separation between the two divisions occurred, Zhu De was forced by Zhang Guotao, the leader of Fourth Red Army, to go south.
25.
In 1949 Zhu De was named Commander-in-Chief of the People's Liberation Army.
26.
Zhu De served as the vice-chairman of the Communist Party and vice-chairman of the People's Republic of China.
27.
Zhu De oversaw the PLA during the Korean War within his authority as Commander-in-Chief.
28.
In October 1969, Lin Biao issued a command named "Order Number One" that evacuated important martial figures to distant areas due to the tension between China and Soviet Union, and Zhu De was taken to Guangdong.
29.
In 1973 Zhu De was reinstated in the Politburo Standing Committee.
30.
Zhu De continued to work as a statesman until his death on 6 July 1976.
31.
Zhu De's passing came six months after the death of Zhou Enlai, and just two months before the death of Mao Zedong.
32.
Zhu De was cremated three days later, and received a funeral days afterwards.
33.
Zhu De married four times, according to the unfinished biography written by Agnes Smedley.