Red Army commanders Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Bo Gu and Zhu De, after the Long...

Left to right, senior Red Army commanders Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Bo Gu and Zhu De in northern Shanxi after the Long March, 1937. The Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Zhongguo Gongnong Hongjun), also known as the Chinese Red Army, or simply the Red Army, was a group army under the command of the Communist Party of China. The Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army was created on May 25, 1928 in the First Chinese Civil War. Between 1934 to 1935, the Red Army survived several campaigns against the Nationalist forces who were led by the Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek and engaged in the Long March. By the time of 1934 Long March, numerous small units had been organized into three unified groups, the First Red Army, the Second Red Army and the Fourth Red Army. When the anti-Japanese war broke out on July 7, 1937, the communist military forces were nominally integrated into the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China forming the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army units.