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— CH. 1 · INTRODUCTION —

National Revolutionary Army

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  • The National Revolutionary Army existed for just over two decades, yet in that span it fought warlords, Communists, Imperial Japan, and itself. It began in 1924 as the armed instrument of a political party trying to stitch a fractured country back together. By 1947, when a new constitution finally gave China a formal civilian-controlled military, the NRA had been through the Northern Expedition, five encirclement campaigns, eight years of total war against Japan, and a civil war that would end with most of its survivors retreating to an island. How a single armed force navigated so many conflicts, so many commanders, and so many loyalties is a story that runs through the entire history of twentieth-century China.

  • Sun Yat-sen established the Constitutional Protection Junta on the 1st of September 1917, setting the Kuomintang against the Beiyang government that controlled much of northern China. The NRA itself was officially formed in 1924, built from pro-Nationalist regional forces and bolstered by foreign assistance. Organisational support came from the Comintern, while ideological direction came from Sun's own Three Principles of the People. The two influences shaped the force in a particular way: the line between party, government, and military was never clearly drawn. Many of the NRA's officers were graduates of the Whampoa Military Academy, the institution that produced the army's first generation of professional commanders. The academy's inaugural commandant was Chiang Kai-shek, who rose to commander-in-chief by 1925 and would remain at the apex of the NRA's command for more than two decades.

  • In July 1926, the NRA marched north from Canton on a campaign to break the power of the Beiyang warlords and unify China under Nationalist rule. Soviet advisers Mikhail Borodin and Vasily Blyukher supported the advance, and early gains were swift. Wu Peifu and Sun Chuanfang, two of the most powerful warlord commanders in central China, were defeated in rapid succession. The internal politics of the expedition were as volatile as its battles. In April 1927, Chiang ordered a purge of Communists in Shanghai. The event, known as the Shanghai Massacre, shattered the alliance with the Soviet Union and split the KMT into left and right factions. Chiang stepped aside temporarily, then returned to lead the campaign's second phase in early 1928. Allied warlords Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang reinforced the NRA as it closed on Beijing. The Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin was assassinated by the Japanese Kwantung Army in the Huanggutun incident just as NRA forces approached; his son Zhang Xueliang subsequently declared allegiance to Nanjing. When the Northeast formally accepted Nationalist rule in December 1928, the Warlord Era was declared over, and the Nanjing Decade began.

  • Official troop figures at the end of the Northern Expedition listed 1,502,000 soldiers under arms, though only 224,000 were directly acknowledged as Chiang's own. Chiang himself later admitted to controlling over 500,000; Feng Yuxiang's official count of 269,000 likely concealed closer to 600,000 men. The total NRA strength was probably nearer to two million. To manage this sprawling force, Chiang convened financial conferences in July 1928 and formally called for the army to be cut to 65 divisions. The regional councils that had been established during the expedition were theoretically subordinate to Nanjing, but in practice each operated on its own. Feng Yuxiang ran the Kaifeng council, Yan Xishan oversaw Taiyuan, Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi controlled two councils in Wuhan and Beijing respectively, and Zhang Xueliang held Shenyang. Li Zongren later remarked that Chiang's demobilisation plan seemed deliberately designed to provoke a reaction, which would give Chiang grounds to neutralise his rivals. The provocation worked. The Central Plains War that followed involved more than one million soldiers and produced roughly 300,000 casualties. Zhang Xueliang's decision to side with Chiang, secured in part through strategic bribery, brought the war to an end and left Chiang more powerful than before.

  • From 1929 to 1934, the Nationalist government launched five major campaigns against the Jiangxi Soviet and a parallel series against the Eyuwan Soviet. The first four campaigns against the Jiangxi Soviet were repelled by Mao Zedong and Zhu De using guerrilla and mobile tactics. Early NRA operations were poorly coordinated and often relied on local warlord forces rather than central units. Communist commanders such as He Long and Duan Dechang successfully held off multiple assaults in Honghu in 1930 and 1931 despite being heavily outnumbered. The fifth campaign, launched in 1933, was different. German military advisers Hans von Seeckt and Alexander von Falkenhausen introduced blockhouse strategies and scorched-earth tactics. Fortified positions and overwhelming numbers finally broke through, forcing the Communists out of their base in October 1934 and onto the Long March. The Eyuwan Soviet endured five campaigns of its own between 1930 and 1934. The 25th Army under Xu Haidong survived as a guerrilla force and later linked up with the main Communist column. The German-advised fifth campaign against the Jiangxi Soviet was itself a product of a broader shift in the NRA's foreign relationships: after the collapse of the First United Front, Chiang had turned from Moscow to the Weimar Republic for military assistance, though the Treaty of Versailles barred German advisers from officially serving in combat roles abroad.

  • The Marco Polo Bridge Incident near Beiping in July 1937 opened eight years of total war with Imperial Japan. German-trained NRA divisions engaged in months of street fighting at Shanghai, hoping to demonstrate the army's resolve to foreign powers and win diplomatic support. The defence failed; the fall of Nanjing was followed by the Nanjing Massacre. After losing the capital, the NRA relocated its headquarters to Chongqing, which served as the wartime capital until 1945. Critical victories did come: at Taierzhuang in 1938 and in the repeated defence of Changsha. Women contributed through formal units such as the Guangxi Women's Battalion, encouraged by Soong Mei-ling. From 1938, the Soviet Union supplied matériel and volunteer aviators under the Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. From 1941, the United States became the primary backer via Lend-Lease, though the relationship between Chiang and General Joseph Stilwell was persistently strained. Stilwell was appointed Chief of Staff to Chiang and oversaw training for modernised units designated the X Force, but the two clashed repeatedly over strategy. In the Burma Campaign, NRA troops forming the Chinese Expeditionary Force recaptured key territory under General Sun Li-jen and helped secure the Ledo Road. General Wei Lihuang led Yunnan-based forces that restored overland logistics to Chongqing by late 1944. Across the full conflict, the NRA suffered an estimated 750,000 combat casualties, and between 1937 and 1945 approximately 14 million men were conscripted into its service.

  • Within the NRA's centralised core, the Air Force required literacy, mathematics, and English proficiency from flight and technical personnel. The Military Police typically demanded at minimum a junior high school education and a vetted background. For these elite branches, recruitment often attracted volunteers. The broader picture was far grimmer. In rural areas far from government control, military forces used press-gangs, kidnappings, and mass roundups. Young men and elderly villagers alike were seized, beaten, or shackled, and marched long distances to conscription centres with minimal food or water. Rudolph Rummel described the conscript camps as resembling concentration camps in their conditions, with mortality in transit sometimes exceeding half the men collected. The Nationalist Government was often unable or politically constrained from intervening in how regional forces filled their ranks. The NRA also operated penal battalions during the Civil War years of 1945 to 1949, composed of deserters and men accused of cowardice, assigned to scout ahead for ambushes, test river crossings, and cross unmapped minefields.

  • Over its entire existence the NRA recruited approximately 4,300,000 regular soldiers and organised them into 515 divisions. These included 370 standard divisions, 46 new divisions, 12 cavalry divisions, 8 new cavalry divisions, 66 temporary divisions, and 13 reserve divisions. Not all 515 existed simultaneously; many were reconstituted from destroyed units assigned the same numerical designation. The average NRA division comprised 5,000-6,000 troops, while a field army division might field 10,000-15,000. Even the elite German-trained divisions rarely exceeded 10,000 personnel, making them smaller than their German or Japanese counterparts. At the command apex sat the National Military Council, chaired by Chiang Kai-shek, which from 1937 onward included the Chief of the General Staff (General He Yingqin), the War Ministry, regional commands, and the air and naval branches. The NRA's armoured force began with French Renault FT tanks acquired by warlord Zhang Zuolin in the late 1920s. By 1937, three armoured battalions had been assembled with vehicles from France, Britain, Germany, and Italy. After their near-destruction at Shanghai and Nanjing, Soviet aid provided 82 T-26 tanks, enabling the formation of the 200th Division. Later Lend-Lease deliveries brought M2A4, M3A3 Stuart, M5A1 Stuart, and M4 Sherman tanks. Among the NRA's most respected formations were the Muslim divisions of the Ma Clique, whose battlefield discipline and fierce combat capabilities drew admiration from European observers including Sven Hedin and Georg Vasel. The 36th Division, composed entirely of Chinese Muslim soldiers, inflicted heavy casualties on Soviet forces during the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang despite limited modern equipment.

    The Submarine and Motor Torpedo Boat College, established in 1932 directly under the NRA's General Staff Headquarters rather than the Ministry of the Navy, trained personnel transferred from Whampoa and was known as the "Whampoa of the Navy." Before the war, the Nationalist government purchased five submarines from the Third Reich under the Sino-German cooperation programme: one Type VII U-boat and four Type IIB U-boats. None were ever delivered, and the agreement was cancelled; the funds were later refunded. Had the submarines arrived, they would have been operated by the Army, not the Navy, an organisational anomaly almost without precedent in modern military history. The 1947 Constitution of the Republic of China ended the NRA as a formal institution. Ground units became the Republic of China Army, the military police became the Republic of China Military Police, the Air Force and Air Defense Troops merged as the Republic of China Air Force, and the Navy completed the quartet. The Air Defense Troops themselves had their institutional roots in the Central Air Defense College, established in 1934 as China's first dedicated air defence training institution. By 1943, they operated five area commands stretching from Chongqing in Sichuan to Xi'an in Shaanxi. The bulk of what had been the NRA retreated to Taiwan in 1949, carrying with it the structure, the ranks, and the institutional memory of a force that had fought, and ultimately lost, for mainland China.

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Central Plains War

Common questions

When was the National Revolutionary Army founded and by whom?

The National Revolutionary Army was officially formed in 1924 by the Kuomintang as its military arm. It was created under Sun Yat-sen's leadership with support from the Comintern and built from pro-Nationalist regional forces.

Who commanded the National Revolutionary Army?

Chiang Kai-shek served as commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army from 1925 to 1947. He was also chairman of the National Military Council, which directed all military operations and strategic planning.

What major wars did the National Revolutionary Army fight?

The National Revolutionary Army fought the Northern Expedition against Beiyang warlords from 1926 to 1928, a series of encirclement campaigns against Communist forces from 1929 to 1934, the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945, and the Chinese Civil War against the People's Liberation Army.

How many soldiers served in the National Revolutionary Army?

Over its existence the National Revolutionary Army recruited approximately 4,300,000 regular soldiers. Between 1937 and 1945 alone, approximately 14 million men were conscripted into NRA service during the war against Japan.

How was the National Revolutionary Army reorganised after World War Two?

Under the 1947 Constitution of the Republic of China, the National Revolutionary Army was formally disbanded and reorganised into the Republic of China Armed Forces. Ground units became the Republic of China Army, which retreated to Taiwan in 1949.

What foreign powers supplied and trained the National Revolutionary Army?

The Soviet Union provided early support, including Comintern advisers and, from 1938-82 T-26 tanks. Germany supplied military advisers and equipment during the Nanjing Decade, including German-trained elite divisions. From 1941, the United States became the primary backer via Lend-Lease, supplying Sherman and Stuart tanks and training modernised units known as the X Force and Y Force.

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