Peng Dehuai's military tactics

Author: Zhang Lu et al
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-12-01
Features:
Chapter 1 of this book provides a general overview of Peng Dehuai's military practices, focusing on his unparalleled courage and strategy in taking on great responsibilities at critical junctures in the Chinese revolutionary war and turning the tide in dire situations. It reflects the historical conditions that gave rise to Peng Dehuai's military tactics and the immense power they wielded.
Chapter 2 explores Peng Dehuai's guerrilla warfare ideology, elaborating on his fundamental guiding principles for guerrilla warfare, the main operational methods, the organizational forms of guerrilla forces, the strategic bases for guerrilla warfare, the conditions for transitioning from guerrilla warfare to mobile warfare or positional warfare, and the role of guerrilla warfare in coordination with regular warfare. It delves into his profound insights and theoretical contributions in these areas.
Chapter 3 examines Peng Dehuai's mobile warfare ideology, focusing on the creation and grasp of opportunities for troop mobility and mobile warfare, the application of operational rules in mobile warfare under terrain conditions when strategically disadvantaged, and the implementation of principles for swift, decisive victories and complete annihilation in mobile warfare.
Chapter 4 analyzes Peng Dehuai's theories and operational principles for both positional offensive and defensive warfare.
Chapter 5 primarily explores the art of (maneuvering the enemy into our strategic framework) by Peng Dehuai. Through the analysis of several typical battle cases, it explains the key principles of his tactics, such as feigning weakness to exploit arrogance, feigning retreat to lure pursuit, the mushroom tactic, disrupting the enemy to seize the opportunity, adapting to the enemy's intentions, using the enemy's plans against them, intentionally revealing weaknesses to lure the enemy into a trap, attacking where the enemy is bound to rescue, and setting traps.
Chapter 6 elaborates on Peng Dehuai's strategic thinking and focus, including deep insights into the interests of both the enemy and ourselves, leveraging the strength of the entire populace in total war, changing the balance of power through active defense and protracted warfare, grasping the pivotal points of strategic deployment, and adapting strategies in response to changing circumstances.
Chapter 7 explores the philosophical essence of his military tactics—the soul of his military thought.
Chapter 8 explains Peng Dehuai's grand strategy for army governance from six aspects: governing the heart, governing training, governing discipline, governing commanders, caring for soldiers, and caring for the people.