Editing Long March (section)

===The Red Army in 1934===
The divisions of the Red Army ({{zh|c=中國工農紅軍|p=Zhōngguó gōngnóng hóngjūn|l=Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army}}) were named according to historical circumstances, not strictly according to the chronological order of their formation. Indeed, early Communist units would often form by defection from existing Kuomintang forces, and they kept their original designations. By the time of the Long March, numerous small units had been organized into three unified Armies: the First, the Second, and the Fourth.<ref>Peoples Liberation Army Daily (August 14, 2006) [http://english.pladaily.com.cn/site2/special-reports/2006-08/14/content_554037.htm Notes] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081212212710/http://english.pladaily.com.cn/site2/special-reports/2006-08/14/content_554037.htm |date=December 12, 2008 }} Retrieved 2007-02-17</ref> To distinguish them from earlier organizational divisions, some translations opt to refer to these same units as the "Front Red Armies", correspondingly numbered.

The First Red Army under the command of [[Bo Gu]] and [[Otto Braun (communist)|Otto Braun]] formed from the 1st, 3rd, and 5th Army Corps in southern Jiangxi. When several units formed the Fourth Red Army under [[Zhang Guotao]] in the [[Sichuan]]–[[Shaanxi]] border area, no standard naming system yet existed, in part lending to limited central control by the CCP over separate Communist-controlled enclaves. After these first two forces were organized, the Second Red Army was formed in eastern [[Guizhou]] by unifying the 2nd Army Corps under [[Xiao Ke]] with the 6th Army Corps under [[He Long]]. A Third Red Army was briefly led by He in the area straddling the Hunan–Hubei border, but its defeat in 1932 led to its merger with the 6th Army Corps in October 1934. These three armies would maintain their historical designations until the formation of the [[Second United Front]] with the [[National Revolutionary Army]] during the [[Second Sino-Japanese War]], which nominally integrated the Communist forces into the NRA, forming the [[Eighth Route Army]] and the [[New Fourth Army]].