The mention of US atomic weapoms was something I was waiting to see if you'd mention. There is no plausible universe where a mid to late 1950s US invasion of Mainlamd China *wouldn't* involve at least tactical nuclear weapons as a major part of the prepatory and interdiction fires plan. This was the era of the Davy Crockett, the development of nuclear artillery, every US fighter bomber (even small.ones like the F-86 of Koream fame) was *required* to have a nuclear delivery capability, nuckear antiaircraft and air to air missiles were being developes and fielded, the "Pentomic Division" was being developed *specifically* to fight on "the nuclear battlefield", juclear land mines being developed and sited, etc. Plus, any invasion of Chinese mainland by the US would *automatically* include either an *existing* war with the USSR in Europe (which would *immediately* go full Hellscape with nukes, bugs, amd gas), or the US would be trying to premptively *prevent* a Soviet response in Western Europe - meaning that they wouod want to win fast, with forces on hand, because there wasn't going to be anything available from tbe full court deployment in Europe. Which doubles down on the idea that a high value target like large armored forces, would be a bad idea. The US would simply nuke or slime (persistent chemical agents) the bulk of the Chinese armored forces before they became a factor in the defense. And after Guadalcanal, Normandy, and (critically) *Pusan and Inchon* , it was apparent to anyone with enough brains to play a game of Risk well that IF you allow the US to gain and hold a significant beachhead with a port (even if they have to make the port with a floating artificial harbor, as in Normandy), you *aren't* going to succeed in throwing them off that beachhead afterwards. (Note, the post-colonial assymetric wars hadnt been successfully used against the *US* at this point - the Vietnamese beating the French was a partial victory against a severely war damaged foe, by arranging a set oiece battoe & siege where the "insurgents" actually had local logostics superiority. The idea of "outlast the Americans until voters get bored and sick and tired of casualties for no apparent progress" had yet to be proven.)
Something about Su is that he has always been a big fan of mobile warfare. If you are interested, you can look up one of his most famous campaigns, the “Middle Jiangsu campaign" (苏中战役）, more famously known as "Seven battles, seven victories" (七战七捷）。In the said campaign, Su achieved almost total victory over KMT forces numbers 4 times his own with daring movement, which is made possible not only with the renowned speed of PLA infantry but also through a sophisticated intel web formed by mass civilian mobilization, which the CPC is also known for. I think examining this campaign would be very helpful in terms of developing an understanding of Su's ideal scenario when formulating his war plan.
In addition, the opposition to Su has some of its roots in his personal history. He is not one of the "Old Red Army"(老红军）because he did not participate in the Long March. His division (in which he was a staff officer) was sent by CPC command (Which was under Otto Braun and Buo Gu's command at the time) up north as a diversion and eventually crushed by the KMT, with only Su and around 300 others made it out of the encirclement. The remnant, among other displaced Red Army elements, started what is called the "Three Years of Guerrilla Campaigns" (三年游击战争）and most lost nearly all forms of communications to the main Red Army forces and later Yanan. After being incorporated into the New Fourth Army, he went on to fight some impressive skirmishes with the Japanese, but it was not until the Liberation War that he became most prominent. This has interesting ramifications; for example, many of the old New Fourth Army commanders weren't particularly convinced of him when he took de-facto command of the East China Field Army, in which he often had to delegate the talking to the old revolutionary Cheng Yi. This is perhaps also why he let go of the chance to be made marshal despite being arguably the most successful commander in the Liberation War. He is surely a straight talker, though, as he is one of the few front-line commanders who convinced Mao to change his strategic planning. Mao was rarely wrong in his strategic planning in the Liberation War, but being able to talk Mao out of his decision isn't something that can be done often.
Speaking of Điện Biên Phủ being a learning experience for the PLA, the "official" history from the Vietnam side maintain that the pivital moment that the battle was won was that the Viet Minh changed their plan from a Zerg bum rush stratergy that the Chinese advisor pitched to a slow, sapping, meticulous seige. The original plan called for a "massive" artilery bombardment of a few thousands 105mm shell on the whole of Điện Biên Phủ and then basically bum rush all the enemy's position. This isn't without merit though due to the supply problem that both the Viet Minh and China have in suppling the forces in the area. After some recollection the Viet Minh realize that the number of 105mm shells that would be fired on the French, while impressive in number and literally more than they have ever fired, is still less than what the French fired at Nà Sản which was a smaller base and still that base held against the Viet Minh assault. The planned barrage would then be practically useless and the assaulting troops would then be walking to their doom. This is where the famous "Hầm chữ thọ" or 寿 letter dug out for the 105mm howitzer was born. Very well camouflaged hardend firring position that's impossible to spot and even if you spot them you can't really damage them, and then there are the decoys for them. The repositioning of artilery, the change of plan and the AAA that was able to first retrict and then finally cut off any resupply that the French can hope to bring to Điện Biên Phủ was why the Viet Minh was able to win the day.
Yup. The French's arrogance ruined them. Their tactic worked before, by "luring" VM to attack their fortified bases, turn it into a battle of attrition that they had confidence of winning. But they did not take into account that VM learned from their prior mistakes and was well prepared this time.
The idea of an armored force for counterattacking the beachheads is very reminiscent of both Salerno and Normandy but also the Japanese plans for defending Kyushu, I wonder if anyone in the PLA or Soviet Armed Forces brought up the German panzer forces at Salerno being halted when they came out to drive the Americans and British into the sea and were exposed to sustained fire from battleships and cruisers, or that in Normandy the German mobile spearhead that was supposed to cut off and isolate the American breakout was interdicted from the air and incapable of bringing to bear the full combat power they had when they started driving west.
To be compleyly honest if i was a political leader asked to choose between allocating limited funds and production capacity as well as logistics train to getting a lot of trucks and artilery vs getting a pretty small armored force. I dont think i would even consider using it for said armored force unless general suu had some serious dirt on me. There had to have been some setiously interesting discusions going on there
I'd skimp even on artillery.Trucks are dual use, build them hand them out to farms, factories, and municipalities with their civilian drivers and mechanics part of the militia, so that if need be trucks and men are available, but in the meantime they are helping to build up the economy and give you more resources down the line.
As a stinking intellectual (SI for short) I would like to speculate that talking About Beijing being invaded again, upsetting all the big wigs In their nice new houses etc, might have been one way of getting them to focus on military defense. So maybe he was not just rebuking them but also reminding them about what did had to lose. Double strategy.?
Thank you Prof. Clower for this early Thanksgiving gift of another amazingly informative and entertaining episode! Did anyone else hear at 14:06 a sharp intake of pained breath from those survivors of the Cultural Revolution who remember those dunce caps?
This channel is so new and fresh. High standards. Very small community of followers and commenters with an incredible amount of scholarly insight. We happened to stumble on this gem of a class by the impeccable Prof.Clower. Makes me think, did we made it? Are we the èlite? Have we been chosen by the algorithm? For what purpose?😂
Surprising that PRC thought an invasion was likely or imminent. MacArthur was hot on invading China at the time of Korea, but I think at this point, the US had too much respect for the PLA after years of bloodshed in Korea (and the growing Soviet nuclear stockpile) to think about fking around with a mainland invasion. US was, and is, a seaborne naval power. Korea, Vietnam, and the forever wars definitively demonstrate that it sucks at land warfare.
The US suffers from a very odd phenomena where they are extremely good at winning battles but not wars thanks to personalities in suits like mcnmarra. Westmoreland (as ass as he was) was ready to invade laos to eliminate the Ho Chi Minh trail, which NVA Col Bui Tinh said would have absolutely won the war for the US, but “The Americans were more interested in continuing the war than winning it.”
@@engine4403 I now get to see things through Red Chinese eyes circa 1955. I grew sorta being able to see things through Russian eyes. Even if I didn’t agree, I still think understood they had a point of view. The Red Chinese view was completely alien to me. Now I get to hear what they thought in the mid 1950s. This invasion scenario and discussion of the People’s trucks is fascinating.
Eh, the U.S. is very good at fighting head to head it’s just that it is politically dysfunctional at setting realistic victory conditions. I would attribute this to the U.S. not being very experienced in conquest that doesn’t involve ethnic cleansing thus has no idea how to deal with hostile populations
Professor, I greatly enjoy your channel. As a Southerner of your generation, my grandfather turned me on to a wonderful yarn-spinner in my childhood, around the late 1970s. Grandpa owned several 33 rpm vinyl recordings of a remarkable entertainer by the name of Jerry Clower. Your surname is not one I come across often. Any relation to yourself that you are aware of? Regardless, you both are vibrant in your manner of portraying characters and their circumstances in vivid detail. Great job, Jason! Thank you. **edit due to typographical errors caused by platform interface**
@p0rqu3 Welcome! I looked into that very thing! Turns out, I couldn't find any relation, which bummed me out. I figured that if I weren't the descendent of Charlemagne or something, maybe I'd at least be related to a comedian.
@@Type56_Ordnance_Dept Do you have other areas of interest? Other than the mid 20th century PLA, and I am certain you thoroughly immersed yourself in *“Chinese”* to have your utter ease of fluency employing the intonations needed to impart meaning in *“Chinese”* (this is my improper way of saying the language in use in 20th Century mainland China). Thanks.🙏
I would say they need to give the navy a bigger role in this. Their primary role should be to mine the hell out of any conceivable landing area, to build cheap submarines whose main job is drop mines where enemy minesweepers have cleared. Maybe, just maybe deploy mines near invasion embarkation points in Japan and South Korea. Sea mines are cheap, they don't need to eat, and work 24/7.
The Soviets would have had to teach that kind of military science calculus such as the importance of rate, because it is inherent to the concept of military science itself as Soviet/Russian military thought understands it, to how they practice it, and thus teach it. From the Soviet General Staff perspective, it would be like trying to teach any other engineering subject. The math is an essential prerequisite for any kind of planning or understanding of the dynamics. I could be misremembering, but I think that Lin Biao was Su Yu's greatest opponent on the mechanised warfare concept and funding, both because he didn't think China could afford it, especially after the Korean War, and because the old school guerilla warfare light infantry PLA concept was what he had spent his career excelling at, and that concept also meshed better with Mao's concept of a revolutionary People's Army than a force that required so much more suspiciously reactionary specialization, technical skill, and essentially, the creation of a military bourgeoisie, kind of like what you were talking about with the PLAAF.
Well, as far as Air Bourne goes, cross roads to block, bridges to be taken, and any close to the beach air field or logistics base of operations. Yet, before all of this, reconnecons. Who, what, where and how much.
Trucks! Trucks! Trucks! I think everything you said in this video about trucks being favored by the PLA could be directly applied to why trucks are favored in the third world as military vehicles instead of tanks! As you say, trucks have many many many more uses than just as combat vehicles. Also, they are very cheap easy to maintain very reliable, very unlikely to be prohibited for shipment to other countries, the future etc. And, because they are so cheap and because they could be used for domestic purposes, they are much less likely to be fired upon by military forces like the United States with weapons that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Truck wisdom of the past is also truck wisdom of the future!
I don’t remember the source and might be wrong, but during Desert Storm and the cross country march to Bagdad the US wound up with about a third of their tanks still operational when they reached the city. These weren’t combat losses, just losses incurred from going hundreds of miles nonstop through the desert and that’s with the US Army’s logistical capability. So I can see why if China didn’t have infrastructure to road march armor, railways to railhead them into position, or transport trucks to reduce operational hours and were operating under the assumption that time to build that capability wasn’t on their side that Su would get rebuked a bit.
@@kevinlau9018 I teach in Asian Studies, but my "tenure home" is actually in Comparative Religion. At bottom, I'm a student of doctrine getting played our in real life.
34:50 oh great machine guns , barbed wire , gas now assault rifles , land mines , nukes everyone talks about strategic atomic bombs but no one talks about how horrible it would be to fight a war in radioactive wasteland
I remember reading on a blog somewhere a military officers analysis of what post nuclear warfare would look like, and it was just astonishing to me. Entire Army groups turn into brigade sized elements, supply lines break down, starvation and disease come roaring back into military thought. And thats just the economic/industrial impact. Once you factored in radiation snd chemical weapons, it boggled the mind to think about anybody being able to fight in that environment. He did make a convincing argument about that though, saying that "as long as theres any from of organized society (assuming we don't degrade back into hunter gatherer tribes) there's going to be warfare" . Very eye opening
This ten-minute video demonstrates that there were worse choices than the SKS: th-cam.com/video/j-BISiLKhN8/w-d-xo.html Different mission--fighting starvation instead of fighting Marines. I had a Charter Arms AR-7 and a Henry Survival Rifle--the Charter Arms was not very reliable; the Henry was only ammo sensitive (don't touch that magazine or it won't feed) and the 16" barrel was to comply with the NFA (machine gun ban). The Hornet is considerably more powerful than the .22 LR--the choice of .22 Long Rifle was due to making Stoner's AR-7 more saleable to an American civilian market. The semiautomatic AR-7 is probably simpler than the bolt action AR-5 to manufacture. In terms of range, power, accuracy and reliability, the SKS stacks up well against the specialized competition--the only two that rival the SKS in this video are the M1A1 paratrooper carbine and the new USAF "M4 Survival Rifle." I zeroed my AR-7's in at 50 yards (very little difference between zeroing the .22LR rifle with iron sights in at 25 yards or 50 yards) and was good on rabbit size targets to around 65 yards--and could stay on a human-size silhouette target in excess of 115 yards; no wonder the Israeli Defense Force packed them in their fighter pilot bail-out kits! Eight rounds of .22 Long Rifle are no match for ten rounds of 7.62x39mm--and in the Middle East, the opposition probably had select-fire Kalashnikov rifles. Mission counts! Pick the right tool for the job. The US M1 Rifle (Garand) was standard issue until 1957, and didn't get replaced overnight. When the Berlin Wall went up on 13 August 1961 -- JFK had been notified back in July but didn't contest it because America wasn't ready to face another war like Korea. Meanwhile, most of the world was switching over to semiautomatic rifles, with newer rifles on the horizon. France was fielding these alongside its MAS-36 bolt action rifle from WW2--at last, France was free of its 1886 Lebel rifles! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAS-49_rifle en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FN_Model_1949 Germany produced about 400,000 of these during WW2 and they are still found in use: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gewehr_43 The USSR had been fielding similar rifles since 1936 with 1.6 million of this specific model, some editions select fire and some models were semiautomatic only: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SVT-40 This was Britian's most-common rifle in 1955 even though the L1A1 (FN FAL) had been adopted earlier: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee%E2%80%93Enfield With fifteen million produced to include some variants made in China, this was a very common service rifle used all over the world: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karabiner_98k And, with thirty-seven million made, this was the service rifle that the SKS replaced: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosin%E2%80%93Nagant Not only did China produce these as their Type 53, but during World War One the US Army issued them to its Siberian Expedition because of millions of rounds of American-made ammo for these rifles. As the "U.S. Magazine Rifle, 7.62mm, Model of 1916" these were issued to Stateside training units due to a shortage of M1903 Springfield rifles. These American-made Mosin-Nagant rifles were made by Westinghouse and Remington. I'll bet that few people know that China and the USA both made Mosin-Nagant rifles and issued them to combat troops! I found out in the early 1980's when I learned of the Siberian Expeditions. While most nations were seeking to rid themselves of bolt action rifles as China was selecting their Type 56 Carbine, and several larger nations were armed with standard semiautomatic rifles, the select-fire service rifle programs in NATO were hampered by having the 7.62x51mm NATO--a bit too powerful for full-auto fire in a ten-pound rifle. Automatic fire is desirable sometimes--that's why a squad automatic weapon is required in the French-style rifle squad (ten or so soldiers with one light machine gun and the rest with rifles in a machine gun team and a maneuver element) and why these rifle squads frequently have one or two pistol-caliber submachine guns even when the standard rifle is a semiautomatic rifle with a 20-shot magazine. Putting the adoption of an SKS by China in context of what the rest of the world was doing had to be a factor in China's PLA opting for the SKS as its Type 56--and once the Type 56 Carbine had been produced in large numbers (several million) logistical inertia set in--China hasn't participated in a major war since 1953 in Korea, with the largest being the 1979 border clash with Vietnam. smallarmsreview.com/the-sks-rifle/
You pronounce the "u" differently in each syllable of the name of general Su Yu (long "oo" on the first, short "u" on the second). Is there any way to tell which pronunciation should be used in the romanization of Chinese?
I would think that the PLA would look to the Soviet experience at Kursk; using every available civilian to dig a defensive system battlefield wide and miles deep. Start with force multipliers that you have plenty of, and then parcel out limited resources to obvious avenue of approaches and landing areas.
@@pistonar Yeah, one of these days I want to see exactly what was on the curriculum at these military academies that the pla was trying to set up just then. For sure, most of the content was translated Soviet material, and I feel positive that Kursk must have been a marquee item in the syllabi.
Prof. Clower, may I ask in 1955 what was the PLA's doctrine in terms of troop/vehicle movement during nighttime versus daytime? Based on hard earned experience from WW2, Korean War and I assume in Vietnam, presumably the PLA leadership was well aware that US air power is extremely deadly during the daytime. Was PLA doctrine to take full advantage of the relative safety of the nighttime to do most of their mass movement of troops, vehicles and logistics and to avoid as much as possible daytime movement? Thanks in advance.
How real is the PLA plan as it sounds insane militarily? A force (China) which is vastly outgunned by the enemy in firepower and artillery cannot hold an enemy at the beach or resist on a narrow front. See WW2 battles in the amphibious island hopping where the Japanese got pasted or Axis tanks getting stopped cold by naval gunfire in Sicily. Even in WW2 against a vastly weaker enemy in Japan China could not hold the coastal cities and needed to stretch the Japanese forces out inland. If they tried this they'd be blown to bits on the beach and coast by overwhelming naval and air support. Against anything other than a minor skirmish the Chinese best strategy would be to fall back inland abandoning the coastal cities and using space and time to spread out American firepower and allow your one advantage numbers to start to tell in guerrilla warfare and rapid strikes as the American forces are forced to spread out in garrisons or literally because of the huge front.
The 3 Soviet mobilization categories are almost precisely the same as the French inter-war system. I haven't looked at who came up with it first, or many other countries had 3-category systems.
Not sure about other countries, but in WW1 Serbia there were 3 moblization. First category was 21-31, fit, well trained and capable, second was 31-37, third was 37-45. There was the 4th category, boys aged 18-21 and men aged 45-50 and above. Unfortunately, I've seen the equivalent of the 4th in lots of videos in Ukraine, on Ukrainian side, where commanders would throw those as a last line of defence that would not retreat and would die in that trench. Hotheaded 18yr olds and 50-60 year olds one next to another.
@nikola12nis The French system was by formation readiness, rather than explicit age group. Standing formations were supposed to have about 90% of their slots filled by active duty personnel. Category A might be (making up numbers because I don't remember specifics) 50-60% active, while Category B reserve units would have no more than 20% of their slots filled by active duty personnel. There were varying levels of equipment readiness. Category B divisions would be heavily reliant on trucks requisitioned from the civilian sector and were generally shorted on weapons. I'm not sure if the intent was to bring the equipment up to strength with new production or what. Anyhow, you can see how tightly this parallels the Soviet system.
I am loving your series so far, wondering if you have any thoughts about sharing your favorite movies about the PLA or modern Chinese history, or Korea or Vietnam? I am curious what other movies there are you might recommend like the devils on the doorstep or city of life and death or the red operas of the 60’s to give people a taste of how China got to where it was in the modern era?
(SI hat on) i have ro wonder if the PLA's ummm lacking overseas logistical capacity blinded them to that fact that any landing in North China would be a nightmare that would make Normandy look easy. Pardon my lacking 1960s geographic knowledge but the only major port up there was the former port Arthur and that was nearly half a century out of date. Not to mention the USN having coniption fits fits about having 2-4 carriers floating within striking range of Chinese airpower.
@Type56_Ordnance_Dept in my non expert opinion staging in Taiwan and landing in Fujian seems much less difficult and frought with soviet "volunteer" divebombers sinking my carriers.
Come on, though the Intellectuals are stinky sometime, but they are still needed for educating people! In the propaganda drama "The Taking of Tiger Mountain"（智取威虎山）, there was a line said "Don't go, Ninth Brother!"（老九不能走！）And Ninth Brother was the title of the protagonist Yang Zirong when he was being an undercover inside the Tiger Mountain, the pro-KMT bandits. And "Lao Jiu"（老九） was the nickname of the intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution. Why the intellectuals were defamed as "stinky"? It was because the Gang of Four wanted to commit obscurantism to the Chinese people for them to takeover the CPC regime. Deng restored the fame of the intellectuals based on that line in that drama, he claimed it was the true attitude towards the intellectuals from Mao himself.
It seems it would be little inappropriate to dressed as a criticize and denounce victim as a joke reference. Those were victims of political purging, and should be treated as the victims of the USSR Great Purge and Cambodia Genocide. For those going to say Chinese won’t mind that at all, I can guarantee that this video cannot pass Chinese Censorship.
Given the infrastructure and terrain stay behind small units (see Auxiliary Units in Britain) with explosives are the most accurate and discriminative choice to disable the field engineering resources of an invading USA army. Without the heavy items to build the means to advance and supply the US Army (ie bridging and road building) the tempo of US advances becomes very slow and China is very big. I doubt of any significant PLA armoured force could survive an advance to contact with the almost inevitable command of the air by the USA and the air delivered firepower available to them. It would be degraded into a ad hoc collection of survivors probably shorn of their vital logistical support. Mobile pillboxes not an armoured fist. This is the early era of infantry man portable HE weapons from the close range shoulder fired weapon to long range mortars. Portable by mule and porters. I would have gone for an upgrade to the infantry as a modernised classic PLA before Soviet inspired armoured toys (which was the right answer for the Soviets). Lorries yes. To bring the weapon stocks close enough to transfer to animal/human portage but not too close. The NVA were later experts in concealing lorries and night movements. The 1955 US forces have no means of tracing night movements in the rear areas as long as the PLA employ proper movement security. Essentially no lights. The availability of military lorries for use as civilian infrastructure will enhance agricultural and industrial China as a whole until conscripted back into military use in war and build up a mechanical and driving skill set across the country which will enhance the PLA mechanisable troop numbers. It will need the Party to keep control of their use or you will get what the Soviets found when they tried to call up the Western Military District in the 1980s and the loaned out Lorrie’s were suddenly in repair or in use far away and sundry other excuses given to not return them for transporting the called up reservists (who also were suddenly otherwise engaged……)
The mention of US atomic weapoms was something I was waiting to see if you'd mention.
There is no plausible universe where a mid to late 1950s US invasion of Mainlamd China *wouldn't* involve at least tactical nuclear weapons as a major part of the prepatory and interdiction fires plan. This was the era of the Davy Crockett, the development of nuclear artillery, every US fighter bomber (even small.ones like the F-86 of Koream fame) was *required* to have a nuclear delivery capability, nuckear antiaircraft and air to air missiles were being developes and fielded, the "Pentomic Division" was being developed *specifically* to fight on "the nuclear battlefield", juclear land mines being developed and sited, etc.
Plus, any invasion of Chinese mainland by the US would *automatically* include either an *existing* war with the USSR in Europe (which would *immediately* go full Hellscape with nukes, bugs, amd gas), or the US would be trying to premptively *prevent* a Soviet response in Western Europe - meaning that they wouod want to win fast, with forces on hand, because there wasn't going to be anything available from tbe full court deployment in Europe.
Which doubles down on the idea that a high value target like large armored forces, would be a bad idea. The US would simply nuke or slime (persistent chemical agents) the bulk of the Chinese armored forces before they became a factor in the defense.
And after Guadalcanal, Normandy, and (critically) *Pusan and Inchon* , it was apparent to anyone with enough brains to play a game of Risk well that IF you allow the US to gain and hold a significant beachhead with a port (even if they have to make the port with a floating artificial harbor, as in Normandy), you *aren't* going to succeed in throwing them off that beachhead afterwards.
(Note, the post-colonial assymetric wars hadnt been successfully used against the *US* at this point - the Vietnamese beating the French was a partial victory against a severely war damaged foe, by arranging a set oiece battoe & siege where the "insurgents" actually had local logostics superiority. The idea of "outlast the Americans until voters get bored and sick and tired of casualties for no apparent progress" had yet to be proven.)
One of my favourite channels as of late, thanks for your work 💯
Something about Su is that he has always been a big fan of mobile warfare. If you are interested, you can look up one of his most famous campaigns, the “Middle Jiangsu campaign" (苏中战役）, more famously known as "Seven battles, seven victories" (七战七捷）。In the said campaign, Su achieved almost total victory over KMT forces numbers 4 times his own with daring movement, which is made possible not only with the renowned speed of PLA infantry but also through a sophisticated intel web formed by mass civilian mobilization, which the CPC is also known for. I think examining this campaign would be very helpful in terms of developing an understanding of Su's ideal scenario when formulating his war plan.
In addition, the opposition to Su has some of its roots in his personal history. He is not one of the "Old Red Army"(老红军）because he did not participate in the Long March. His division (in which he was a staff officer) was sent by CPC command (Which was under Otto Braun and Buo Gu's command at the time) up north as a diversion and eventually crushed by the KMT, with only Su and around 300 others made it out of the encirclement. The remnant, among other displaced Red Army elements, started what is called the "Three Years of Guerrilla Campaigns" (三年游击战争）and most lost nearly all forms of communications to the main Red Army forces and later Yanan. After being incorporated into the New Fourth Army, he went on to fight some impressive skirmishes with the Japanese, but it was not until the Liberation War that he became most prominent. This has interesting ramifications; for example, many of the old New Fourth Army commanders weren't particularly convinced of him when he took de-facto command of the East China Field Army, in which he often had to delegate the talking to the old revolutionary Cheng Yi. This is perhaps also why he let go of the chance to be made marshal despite being arguably the most successful commander in the Liberation War. He is surely a straight talker, though, as he is one of the few front-line commanders who convinced Mao to change his strategic planning. Mao was rarely wrong in his strategic planning in the Liberation War, but being able to talk Mao out of his decision isn't something that can be done often.
Tau strike team boarded on a devilfish
Please also do how PLA counter the invasion of Soviet invasion of outer Mongolia and Xingjiang.
I don't know why TH-cam recommended this extremely specific channel to me. But I am quite happy it did!
Speaking of Điện Biên Phủ being a learning experience for the PLA, the "official" history from the Vietnam side maintain that the pivital moment that the battle was won was that the Viet Minh changed their plan from a Zerg bum rush stratergy that the Chinese advisor pitched to a slow, sapping, meticulous seige. The original plan called for a "massive" artilery bombardment of a few thousands 105mm shell on the whole of Điện Biên Phủ and then basically bum rush all the enemy's position. This isn't without merit though due to the supply problem that both the Viet Minh and China have in suppling the forces in the area. After some recollection the Viet Minh realize that the number of 105mm shells that would be fired on the French, while impressive in number and literally more than they have ever fired, is still less than what the French fired at Nà Sản which was a smaller base and still that base held against the Viet Minh assault. The planned barrage would then be practically useless and the assaulting troops would then be walking to their doom. This is where the famous "Hầm chữ thọ" or 寿 letter dug out for the 105mm howitzer was born. Very well camouflaged hardend firring position that's impossible to spot and even if you spot them you can't really damage them, and then there are the decoys for them. The repositioning of artilery, the change of plan and the AAA that was able to first retrict and then finally cut off any resupply that the French can hope to bring to Điện Biên Phủ was why the Viet Minh was able to win the day.
Yup. The French's arrogance ruined them. Their tactic worked before, by "luring" VM to attack their fortified bases, turn it into a battle of attrition that they had confidence of winning. But they did not take into account that VM learned from their prior mistakes and was well prepared this time.
@@Lustanda Awesome stuff!
The idea of an armored force for counterattacking the beachheads is very reminiscent of both Salerno and Normandy but also the Japanese plans for defending Kyushu, I wonder if anyone in the PLA or Soviet Armed Forces brought up the German panzer forces at Salerno being halted when they came out to drive the Americans and British into the sea and were exposed to sustained fire from battleships and cruisers, or that in Normandy the German mobile spearhead that was supposed to cut off and isolate the American breakout was interdicted from the air and incapable of bringing to bear the full combat power they had when they started driving west.
This channel is so good I'm sure rank speculation is heads and tails above most anything else on YT.
This just gets better mate keep it coming
To be compleyly honest if i was a political leader asked to choose between allocating limited funds and production capacity as well as logistics train to getting a lot of trucks and artilery vs getting a pretty small armored force. I dont think i would even consider using it for said armored force unless general suu had some serious dirt on me. There had to have been some setiously interesting discusions going on there
I'd skimp even on artillery.Trucks are dual use, build them hand them out to farms, factories, and municipalities with their civilian drivers and mechanics part of the militia, so that if need be trucks and men are available, but in the meantime they are helping to build up the economy and give you more resources down the line.
@@KTo288 If only someone had yet invented the Technical.
Thanks for all these videos, this is great!
As a stinking intellectual (SI for short) I would like to speculate that talking About Beijing being invaded again, upsetting all the big wigs In their nice new houses etc, might have been one way of getting them to focus on military defense. So maybe he was not just rebuking them but also reminding them about what did had to lose. Double strategy.?
Fascinating details as always. The People’s Truck turned out to be high on the list. It makes sense . Thank You
Thank you Prof. Clower for this early Thanksgiving gift of another amazingly informative and entertaining episode! Did anyone else hear at 14:06 a sharp intake of pained breath from those survivors of the Cultural Revolution who remember those dunce caps?
@@davidk6269 Extra credit to anyone who knows/guesses who was in that "struggle session" at the end.
Soviet Revisionist Coup Agent Peng Dehuai!@@Type56_Ordnance_Dept
Where was your self-criticism?
I thought for sure with the cap on your would end with criticism and self-criticism!
This channel is so new and fresh. High standards. Very small community of followers and commenters with an incredible amount of scholarly insight. We happened to stumble on this gem of a class by the impeccable Prof.Clower.
Makes me think, did we made it? Are we the èlite? Have we been chosen by the algorithm? For what purpose?😂
Surprising that PRC thought an invasion was likely or imminent. MacArthur was hot on invading China at the time of Korea, but I think at this point, the US had too much respect for the PLA after years of bloodshed in Korea (and the growing Soviet nuclear stockpile) to think about fking around with a mainland invasion. US was, and is, a seaborne naval power. Korea, Vietnam, and the forever wars definitively demonstrate that it sucks at land warfare.
All parties involved in the cold war (read: planet earth) were absolutely convinced that the enemy side would attack first.
@@engine4403 🔔🔔🔔🔔
The US suffers from a very odd phenomena where they are extremely good at winning battles but not wars thanks to personalities in suits like mcnmarra. Westmoreland (as ass as he was) was ready to invade laos to eliminate the Ho Chi Minh trail, which NVA Col Bui Tinh said would have absolutely won the war for the US, but “The Americans were more interested in continuing the war than winning it.”
@@engine4403 I now get to see things through Red Chinese eyes circa 1955. I grew sorta being able to see things through Russian eyes. Even if I didn’t agree, I still think understood they had a point of view. The Red Chinese view was completely alien to me. Now I get to hear what they thought in the mid 1950s. This invasion scenario and discussion of the People’s trucks is fascinating.
Eh, the U.S. is very good at fighting head to head it’s just that it is politically dysfunctional at setting realistic victory conditions. I would attribute this to the U.S. not being very experienced in conquest that doesn’t involve ethnic cleansing thus has no idea how to deal with hostile populations
Professor, I greatly enjoy your channel. As a Southerner of your generation, my grandfather turned me on to a wonderful yarn-spinner in my childhood, around the late 1970s. Grandpa owned several 33 rpm vinyl recordings of a remarkable entertainer by the name of Jerry Clower. Your surname is not one I come across often. Any relation to yourself that you are aware of? Regardless, you both are vibrant in your manner of portraying characters and their circumstances in vivid detail. Great job, Jason!
Thank you.
**edit due to typographical errors caused by platform interface**
@p0rqu3 Welcome! I looked into that very thing! Turns out, I couldn't find any relation, which bummed me out. I figured that if I weren't the descendent of Charlemagne or something, maybe I'd at least be related to a comedian.
@@Type56_Ordnance_Dept Do you have other areas of interest? Other than the mid 20th century PLA, and I am certain you thoroughly immersed yourself in *“Chinese”* to have your utter ease of fluency employing the intonations needed to impart meaning in *“Chinese”* (this is my improper way of saying the language in use in 20th Century mainland China). Thanks.🙏
13:40 much respect . people speaking with confidence about stuff they don't know is a big problem on the internet .
I would say they need to give the navy a bigger role in this. Their primary role should be to mine the hell out of any conceivable landing area, to build cheap submarines whose main job is drop mines where enemy minesweepers have cleared. Maybe, just maybe deploy mines near invasion embarkation points in Japan and South Korea.
Sea mines are cheap, they don't need to eat, and work 24/7.
The Soviets would have had to teach that kind of military science calculus such as the importance of rate, because it is inherent to the concept of military science itself as Soviet/Russian military thought understands it, to how they practice it, and thus teach it. From the Soviet General Staff perspective, it would be like trying to teach any other engineering subject. The math is an essential prerequisite for any kind of planning or understanding of the dynamics.
I could be misremembering, but I think that Lin Biao was Su Yu's greatest opponent on the mechanised warfare concept and funding, both because he didn't think China could afford it, especially after the Korean War, and because the old school guerilla warfare light infantry PLA concept was what he had spent his career excelling at, and that concept also meshed better with Mao's concept of a revolutionary People's Army than a force that required so much more suspiciously reactionary specialization, technical skill, and essentially, the creation of a military bourgeoisie, kind of like what you were talking about with the PLAAF.
Seeing it at work in Ukraine is eye opening. One side is improvising while the other side is going by math tables. Frightening.
@@novaskies5538 Exactly.
@@novaskies5538 Can you give me some examples and sources? I am legitimately interested.
YES to Bigeard episode!
"I'm calling them the Viet Minh."
Damn straight!
Tactical nukes, drones, mines, ballistic missiles.
Thank you Professor. 👍👍👍😁
Well, as far as Air Bourne goes, cross roads to block, bridges to be taken, and any close to the beach air field or logistics base of operations. Yet, before all of this, reconnecons. Who, what, where and how much.
Enjoying your videos
It’s not a guess, it’s your assessment!
Trucks! Trucks! Trucks! I think everything you said in this video about trucks being favored by the PLA could be directly applied to why trucks are favored in the third world as military vehicles instead of tanks! As you say, trucks have many many many more uses than just as combat vehicles. Also, they are very cheap easy to maintain very reliable, very unlikely to be prohibited for shipment to other countries, the future etc. And, because they are so cheap and because they could be used for domestic purposes, they are much less likely to be fired upon by military forces like the United States with weapons that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Truck wisdom of the past is also truck wisdom of the future!
Su had a sense of war, he could see what others couldn't
I don’t remember the source and might be wrong, but during Desert Storm and the cross country march to Bagdad the US wound up with about a third of their tanks still operational when they reached the city. These weren’t combat losses, just losses incurred from going hundreds of miles nonstop through the desert and that’s with the US Army’s logistical capability. So I can see why if China didn’t have infrastructure to road march armor, railways to railhead them into position, or transport trucks to reduce operational hours and were operating under the assumption that time to build that capability wasn’t on their side that Su would get rebuked a bit.
I've gotten a little behind in the seris but you're doing a great job.
Dr. Clower do you offer Chinese History courses at Cal State Chico?
@@kevinlau9018 I teach in Asian Studies, but my "tenure home" is actually in Comparative Religion. At bottom, I'm a student of doctrine getting played our in real life.
34:50 oh great
machine guns , barbed wire , gas
now
assault rifles , land mines , nukes
everyone talks about strategic atomic bombs but no one talks about how horrible it would be to fight a war in radioactive wasteland
I remember reading on a blog somewhere a military officers analysis of what post nuclear warfare would look like, and it was just astonishing to me. Entire Army groups turn into brigade sized elements, supply lines break down, starvation and disease come roaring back into military thought. And thats just the economic/industrial impact. Once you factored in radiation snd chemical weapons, it boggled the mind to think about anybody being able to fight in that environment.
He did make a convincing argument about that though, saying that "as long as theres any from of organized society (assuming we don't degrade back into hunter gatherer tribes) there's going to be warfare" . Very eye opening
This ten-minute video demonstrates that there were worse choices than the SKS:
th-cam.com/video/j-BISiLKhN8/w-d-xo.html
Different mission--fighting starvation instead of fighting Marines. I had a Charter Arms AR-7 and a Henry Survival Rifle--the Charter Arms was not very reliable; the Henry was only ammo sensitive (don't touch that magazine or it won't feed) and the 16" barrel was to comply with the NFA (machine gun ban). The Hornet is considerably more powerful than the .22 LR--the choice of .22 Long Rifle was due to making Stoner's AR-7 more saleable to an American civilian market. The semiautomatic AR-7 is probably simpler than the bolt action AR-5 to manufacture. In terms of range, power, accuracy and reliability, the SKS stacks up well against the specialized competition--the only two that rival the SKS in this video are the M1A1 paratrooper carbine and the new USAF "M4 Survival Rifle." I zeroed my AR-7's in at 50 yards (very little difference between zeroing the .22LR rifle with iron sights in at 25 yards or 50 yards) and was good on rabbit size targets to around 65 yards--and could stay on a human-size silhouette target in excess of 115 yards; no wonder the Israeli Defense Force packed them in their fighter pilot bail-out kits! Eight rounds of .22 Long Rifle are no match for ten rounds of 7.62x39mm--and in the Middle East, the opposition probably had select-fire Kalashnikov rifles.
Mission counts! Pick the right tool for the job.
The US M1 Rifle (Garand) was standard issue until 1957, and didn't get replaced overnight. When the Berlin Wall went up on 13 August 1961 -- JFK had been notified back in July but didn't contest it because America wasn't ready to face another war like Korea. Meanwhile, most of the world was switching over to semiautomatic rifles, with newer rifles on the horizon.
France was fielding these alongside its MAS-36 bolt action rifle from WW2--at last, France was free of its 1886 Lebel rifles!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAS-49_rifle
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FN_Model_1949
Germany produced about 400,000 of these during WW2 and they are still found in use: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gewehr_43
The USSR had been fielding similar rifles since 1936 with 1.6 million of this specific model, some editions select fire and some models were semiautomatic only:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SVT-40
This was Britian's most-common rifle in 1955 even though the L1A1 (FN FAL) had been adopted earlier:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee%E2%80%93Enfield
With fifteen million produced to include some variants made in China, this was a very common service rifle used all over the world:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karabiner_98k
And, with thirty-seven million made, this was the service rifle that the SKS replaced:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosin%E2%80%93Nagant
Not only did China produce these as their Type 53, but during World War One the US Army issued them to its Siberian Expedition because of millions of rounds of American-made ammo for these rifles. As the "U.S. Magazine Rifle, 7.62mm, Model of 1916" these were issued to Stateside training units due to a shortage of M1903 Springfield rifles. These American-made Mosin-Nagant rifles were made by Westinghouse and Remington.
I'll bet that few people know that China and the USA both made Mosin-Nagant rifles and issued them to combat troops! I found out in the early 1980's when I learned of the Siberian Expeditions.
While most nations were seeking to rid themselves of bolt action rifles as China was selecting their Type 56 Carbine, and several larger nations were armed with standard semiautomatic rifles, the select-fire service rifle programs in NATO were hampered by having the 7.62x51mm NATO--a bit too powerful for full-auto fire in a ten-pound rifle. Automatic fire is desirable sometimes--that's why a squad automatic weapon is required in the French-style rifle squad (ten or so soldiers with one light machine gun and the rest with rifles in a machine gun team and a maneuver element) and why these rifle squads frequently have one or two pistol-caliber submachine guns even when the standard rifle is a semiautomatic rifle with a 20-shot magazine. Putting the adoption of an SKS by China in context of what the rest of the world was doing had to be a factor in China's PLA opting for the SKS as its Type 56--and once the Type 56 Carbine had been produced in large numbers (several million) logistical inertia set in--China hasn't participated in a major war since 1953 in Korea, with the largest being the 1979 border clash with Vietnam. smallarmsreview.com/the-sks-rifle/
You pronounce the "u" differently in each syllable of the name of general Su Yu (long "oo" on the first, short "u" on the second). Is there any way to tell which pronunciation should be used in the romanization of Chinese?
oh this is going to be fun.
Nice work
A boy named Su
An excellent military education
Are you ever going to discuss the Great Tunnel of China?
I would think that the PLA would look to the Soviet experience at Kursk; using every available civilian to dig a defensive system battlefield wide and miles deep. Start with force multipliers that you have plenty of, and then parcel out limited resources to obvious avenue of approaches and landing areas.
@@pistonar Yeah, one of these days I want to see exactly what was on the curriculum at these military academies that the pla was trying to set up just then. For sure, most of the content was translated Soviet material, and I feel positive that Kursk must have been a marquee item in the syllabi.
Cheers from Albania. Will you ever cover Sino-Albanian arms lending? Also do you like communist era cars?
Prof. Clower, may I ask in 1955 what was the PLA's doctrine in terms of troop/vehicle movement during nighttime versus daytime? Based on hard earned experience from WW2, Korean War and I assume in Vietnam, presumably the PLA leadership was well aware that US air power is extremely deadly during the daytime. Was PLA doctrine to take full advantage of the relative safety of the nighttime to do most of their mass movement of troops, vehicles and logistics and to avoid as much as possible daytime movement? Thanks in advance.
Is midget submarine still acceptable or is the correct term little person submarine?
With all due respect professor, that hat well never get you monetized In mainland China.😂
@@yifuwang2269 🤣
How real is the PLA plan as it sounds insane militarily? A force (China) which is vastly outgunned by the enemy in firepower and artillery cannot hold an enemy at the beach or resist on a narrow front. See WW2 battles in the amphibious island hopping where the Japanese got pasted or Axis tanks getting stopped cold by naval gunfire in Sicily. Even in WW2 against a vastly weaker enemy in Japan China could not hold the coastal cities and needed to stretch the Japanese forces out inland. If they tried this they'd be blown to bits on the beach and coast by overwhelming naval and air support.
Against anything other than a minor skirmish the Chinese best strategy would be to fall back inland abandoning the coastal cities and using space and time to spread out American firepower and allow your one advantage numbers to start to tell in guerrilla warfare and rapid strikes as the American forces are forced to spread out in garrisons or literally because of the huge front.
The 3 Soviet mobilization categories are almost precisely the same as the French inter-war system. I haven't looked at who came up with it first, or many other countries had 3-category systems.
Not sure about other countries, but in WW1 Serbia there were 3 moblization. First category was 21-31, fit, well trained and capable, second was 31-37, third was 37-45. There was the 4th category, boys aged 18-21 and men aged 45-50 and above. Unfortunately, I've seen the equivalent of the 4th in lots of videos in Ukraine, on Ukrainian side, where commanders would throw those as a last line of defence that would not retreat and would die in that trench. Hotheaded 18yr olds and 50-60 year olds one next to another.
@nikola12nis The French system was by formation readiness, rather than explicit age group. Standing formations were supposed to have about 90% of their slots filled by active duty personnel. Category A might be (making up numbers because I don't remember specifics) 50-60% active, while Category B reserve units would have no more than 20% of their slots filled by active duty personnel.
There were varying levels of equipment readiness. Category B divisions would be heavily reliant on trucks requisitioned from the civilian sector and were generally shorted on weapons. I'm not sure if the intent was to bring the equipment up to strength with new production or what.
Anyhow, you can see how tightly this parallels the Soviet system.
I am loving your series so far, wondering if you have any thoughts about sharing your favorite movies about the PLA or modern Chinese history, or Korea or Vietnam? I am curious what other movies there are you might recommend like the devils on the doorstep or city of life and death or the red operas of the 60’s to give people a taste of how China got to where it was in the modern era?
@@hieronymushieronymus8768 for at the moment, check out the "Political Officer's Movie Night" playlist!
(SI hat on) i have ro wonder if the PLA's ummm lacking overseas logistical capacity blinded them to that fact that any landing in North China would be a nightmare that would make Normandy look easy. Pardon my lacking 1960s geographic knowledge but the only major port up there was the former port Arthur and that was nearly half a century out of date. Not to mention the USN having coniption fits fits about having 2-4 carriers floating within striking range of Chinese airpower.
This is really a great point! I've been wondering what a real naval mind would make of the Bohai Sea. I'd better invoke the Hive Mind...
@Type56_Ordnance_Dept in my non expert opinion staging in Taiwan and landing in Fujian seems much less difficult and frought with soviet "volunteer" divebombers sinking my carriers.
Come on, though the Intellectuals are stinky sometime, but they are still needed for educating people!
In the propaganda drama "The Taking of Tiger Mountain"（智取威虎山）, there was a line said "Don't go, Ninth Brother!"（老九不能走！）And Ninth Brother was the title of the protagonist Yang Zirong when he was being an undercover inside the Tiger Mountain, the pro-KMT bandits. And "Lao Jiu"（老九） was the nickname of the intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution.
Why the intellectuals were defamed as "stinky"? It was because the Gang of Four wanted to commit obscurantism to the Chinese people for them to takeover the CPC regime. Deng restored the fame of the intellectuals based on that line in that drama, he claimed it was the true attitude towards the intellectuals from Mao himself.
So basically what Taipei has been preparing
nice video 36.30
you have a very distracting book wall 😅
老师，文化大革命已经完了。没必要批斗会。
Sources please
🤣
It seems it would be little inappropriate to dressed as a criticize and denounce victim as a joke reference. Those were victims of political purging, and should be treated as the victims of the USSR Great Purge and Cambodia Genocide.
For those going to say Chinese won’t mind that at all, I can guarantee that this video cannot pass Chinese Censorship.
Given the infrastructure and terrain stay behind small units (see Auxiliary Units in Britain) with explosives are the most accurate and discriminative choice to disable the field engineering resources of an invading USA army. Without the heavy items to build the means to advance and supply the US Army (ie bridging and road building) the tempo of US advances becomes very slow and China is very big. I doubt of any significant PLA armoured force could survive an advance to contact with the almost inevitable command of the air by the USA and the air delivered firepower available to them. It would be degraded into a ad hoc collection of survivors probably shorn of their vital logistical support. Mobile pillboxes not an armoured fist.
This is the early era of infantry man portable HE weapons from the close range shoulder fired weapon to long range mortars. Portable by mule and porters. I would have gone for an upgrade to the infantry as a modernised classic PLA before Soviet inspired armoured toys (which was the right answer for the Soviets). Lorries yes. To bring the weapon stocks close enough to transfer to animal/human portage but not too close. The NVA were later experts in concealing lorries and night movements. The 1955 US forces have no means of tracing night movements in the rear areas as long as the PLA employ proper movement security. Essentially no lights. The availability of military lorries for use as civilian infrastructure will enhance agricultural and industrial China as a whole until conscripted back into military use in war and build up a mechanical and driving skill set across the country which will enhance the PLA mechanisable troop numbers. It will need the Party to keep control of their use or you will get what the Soviets found when they tried to call up the Western Military District in the 1980s and the loaned out Lorrie’s were suddenly in repair or in use far away and sundry other excuses given to not return them for transporting the called up reservists (who also were suddenly otherwise engaged……)