Mao Tse Tung (1893-1976). Chinese. Born in the Hunan province of central China, Mao came from a peasant background but achieved an education at Changsa and Peking (Beijing), where he worked in the university library. During this period he was introduced to Marxism and, in 1921, became a co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party. His influence steadily increased and, with his associates, Chou En-lai and Chu Teh, he endeavoured to establish a Soviet republic in Kiangsi province. But Nationalist opposition ensured its failure and forced a mass migration of the communists. Known as “The Long March”, the
8,000 mile (12,900km) trek to the north west reaches of China was completed in October 1935 by only 30 percent of the 100,000 who had embarked upon it a year earlier. Subsequently Mao accepted a truce with Chiang Kai-shek during the early phases of the war against Japan, their common enemy. Mao’s forces favoured guerrilla warfare. Punitive Japanese measures helped reinforce peasant support for the communists. The truce with the Nationalists was regularly broken and open conflict was resumed in
1945. The communists gradually won control of the country and, as their strength grew, they switched from guerrilla tactics to set-piece battles. By the beginning of 1949 victory was in their grasp and in January Peking was captured, followed in the spring by the fall of Nanking and Shanghai. On October 1 1949, the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed and Mao was appointed Chairman of its Central Administrative Council. While concentrating on economic, industrial and ideological matters, Mao steered a difficult path in international affairs, notably over Korea and China’s uneasy relationship with the Soviet Union. In April 1959 he relinquished his position as head of state but retained the party chairmanship. During the “cultural revolution” in the 1960s, his theories of agrarian communism were adopted by the Red Guards and a cult of Maoism proliferated. He died in relative obscurity in 1976. MS.
Maquis. Corsican for “brushwood”, used of Frenchmen who fled to the hills instead of undertaking forced labour in Germany, 1942-44. Often underfed, underarmed and ill-disciplined, but in midsummer 1944 distracted large bodies of German troops from Normandy with soE and sas help. Two notable massacres of tbe Maquis, in the Vercors near Grenoble and at Montmoucbet in tbe Auvergne, were offset by successes in Brittany, Burgundy and near Carcassonne.
Marauder see b-26 marauder.
March offensive, German (1918). Their unrestricted submarine campaign having failed, but with troops freed from the Eastern Front following the Russian Revolution, the German High Command decided to seek a decisive victory in the west in 1918 before American manpower made its presence felt. Ludendorff therefore planned a Kaiserschlacht (“Kaiser’s Battle”) aimed at causing the collapse of the Allied armies on the Western Front. Operation “Michael”, the first of a series of major offensives, was launched on March 21 1918 by the German Second, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Armies against the front held by the British Third and Fifth Armies between Arras and La Fere, on either side of St Quentin. Attacking after a five-hour hurricane bombardment devised by Col Bruchmiiller, and using storm troops trained in infiltration tactics, the Germans hoped to drive a wedge between the French and British forces and wheel to the north to roll up the bef and press it back to the sea. On March 21 British Fifth Army under Gough - starved of men and inadequately trained in a new elastic defence system - quickly gave way, compelling Byng’s Third Army, on its left, to retire in turn. However, while Fifth Army continued to retreat, Byng was more successful in limiting German gains on his front. Thus, what was originally intended as a subsidiary advance by von Hutier’s Eighteenth Army on the German left had become the main area of German progress. On March 23 Ludendorff was tempted into altering his plan in order to exploit this situation, now directing Second and Eighteenth Armies west and southwest towards Amiens and Paris. Albert was evacuated on March 26 and, the same day, with Petain seemingly reluctant to support the British, Gen Foch was appointed to coordinate Allied operations. Operation “Mars”, a German attack at Arras on March 28, was repulsed with heavy losses. Although, by this time, Gough had been removed from tbe command of the British Fifth Army, the German offensive had already lost its momentum and, when the German drive towards the key communications centre of Amiens was halted by the Australians at Villers Bre-tonneux on April 4-5, Ludendorff called off “Michael”. Despite having advanced 40 miles (64km) and taken some 70,000 British prisoners, the Germans had fallen far short of their principal strategic objectives.
Ludendorff s next offensive,
“Georgette”, which was smaller in scale, opened on April 9 against the British front on both sides of the River Lys, between Armen-tieres and the La Bassee Canal. The Germans brushed aside a Portuguese division near Neuve-Chapelle and advanced 3.5 miles (5.5km) on the first day. Armen-tieres was abandoned on April 10 and as the Germans neared the vital rail junction of Hazebrouck, Haig issued a “backs to the wall” order on April 11, appealing to his soldiers to hold their positions at all costs. The German attack spread to the British Second Army’s sector south of Ypres, and much of the ground won by the British in 1917 was given up, with Plumer withdrawing to a shorter line just east of Ypres itself. French troops, having arrived as reinforcements, lost Mount Kem-mel on April 25 but this was “Georgette’s” last success. By April 30 Ludendorff had realized that all hope of achieving a decisive breakthrough had disappeared for the time being: he ordered operations in Flanders to cease.
World History
