First Field Army

The First Field Army of the Chinese Communist Party was a military formation in the last stages of the Chinese Civil War (1949–1950). The Northwest Field Army was originally under the command of Peng Dehuai with He Long and Xi Zhongxun as political commissars, which originally operated in Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Ningxia. It was 175,000 strong; most of its soldiers had been under the command of He Long during the war against Japan. He then became Peng's second-in-command. Peng's notable subordinates in the Northwest Field Army included Zhang Zongxun and Wang Zhen. Peng's forces were the most poorly armed of the newly re-organized army but were responsible for the area around the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) revolutionary base area, Yan'an. In March 1947, Kuomintang General Hu Zongnan, invaded the area with 260,000 soldiers. Hu's forces were among the best-trained and most well-supplied Nationalist units, but Xiong Xianghui, one of Zhou Enlai's spies, was able to provide Peng with information about Hu's strategic plans, his forces' troop distributions, strength, and positions, and details about the air cover available to Hu. Peng was forced to abandon Yan'an in late March but resisted Hu's forces long enough for Mao and other senior party leaders to evacuate safely. Mao wanted Peng to provoke a decisive confrontation with Hu immediately, but Peng dissuaded him. By April, Mao agreed that Peng's objective was to "keep the enemy on the run... tire him out completely, reduce his food supplies, and then look for an opportunity to destroy him." On January 15, 1949, the CCP Central Military Commission decided to reorganize the regional armies of the PLA into four field armies. On February 1, 1949, the joint defense military area command covering the Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Shanxi and Suiyuan provinces was renamed the Northwest Military Area Command and...