So today is the 82nd anniversary of the Xi'an incident, in which Zhang Xueliang kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek in order to persuade him to call off his campaign against the Communists and align in a United Front against the Japanese.
This is a bold-faced lie that stems from more than half a century of ChiComm propaganda.
The whole thing started out as Zhang Xueliang's miscalculation and self-preservation losing Manchuria to the Japanese. [1][2][3] Since then, the Northeast Army had been without a home base from which it could be reliably supplied with armaments and monetary incomes (via tax or other "creative means") - I mean, sure, they do get stuff from Nanking every now and then, but they were definitely not a high priority on the National Revolutionary Army's resupply list. So yeah, the going had been rough for them.
The NE Army was then sent to Shaanxi as part of the anti-Communist campaign, which gave the Young Marshal an opening to gain full control over a piece of territory that he could directly control and from which he could support the Northeast Army. The problem is, they'd need outside help if they were to take over the Northwest (minus Xinjiang). Which was where the Communist Party of China come in: as the main client/representative of USSR, an alliance with them would open the NE Army up to Soviet material aid; by the same token, an alliance with the NE Army would remove the immediate existential threat to the CPC (which was attrited down to dangerous levels after the Long *cough* March *hackling cough*).
Thus came about the Unholy Trinity between the CPC, NE Army, and Northwest Army (Yang Hucheng's boys who were kind of the natives there), and the key part of their plan was a planned
Northwest Government of National Defence, which would be independent from the ROC government in Nanking. Apparently CPC was convinced USSR would support the
de facto separatist movement because of the Soviet-(Outer) Mongolia Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation of 1936, which pretty much turned Mongolia into a Soviet protectorate. It was believed that should the NWGND came to be, they would get a similar treatment.
What they didn't know was that Stalin was determined to bring about a Second United Front, so that in the event of a Japanese invasion, a unified China would bog down the Japanese so badly it couldn't turn its eye to the Russian Far East. Or at least, the Young Marshal didn't know that, for Mao Zedong hid that piece of info with him. This, along with repeated CPC attempts to launch a westwards offensive in order to open up lines of communications to the USSR, led the Young Marshal to believe the NWGND plan was still on.
All of the above, and coupled with Chiang Kai-shek's "unintentional" "leaking" of plans of a) replacing him with more loyal men as the commander of the anti-Communist campaign in Shaanxi, and b) redeploying the NE Army to the eastern provinces of China, was what pushed the Young Marshal over the edge and into a mutiny.
[1] Zhang moved a great portion of the NE Army to Northern China to secure it in the aftermath of the Central Plains War (CKS allowed him
de facto control over that part of China as reward for entering the CPW on his side), leaving Manchuria empty for IJA shenanigans
[2] Had Zhang chose to fight, he would at least be able to slow down Japanese advances (who numbered less than 10,000 men FFS; the NE Army had at least 100,000 men and reasonably well-armed, too), instead of the debacle that was OTL
[3] There was NEVER a "do not engage" order sent by CKS; not resisting the IJA was Zhang's decision and his alone. Firstly, no one, and I mean NO ONE, had been able to produce any record of such an order being sent, and you'd think a somewhat accomplished warlord wouldn't want to keep such an incriminating piece of evidence in case he needs to screw with CKS one day? Oh and also, even after being released from his long-time house arrest, Zhang maintained it was his own fault for not fighting back. Secondly, orders given to warlords were treated more as (not so) friendly suggestions than Word of God, so had he been inclined to fight like the anti-Japanese hero he was made out to be, Zhang could've easily done it, and there was nothing anyone can do about it
From the article it's clear that there are a number of ways this could have gone wrong, so what happens should Zhang's plan fail and no agreement can be reached or worse Chiang is killed; either accidentally or by design?
The only thing that kept the Central Forces (basically forces absolutely loyal to the Central Government) was a living CKS. Without that, the Unholy Trinity gets squashed, its forces scattered, reorganised and subsumed into CF units, or left to wither in the vine (so whatever happens afterwards, at the very least you'd have taken out the CPC). Gloryhounds within the IJA Kantogun would probably take advantage of the chaos and power vacuum and manufacture some kind of incident a la Marco Polo Bridge, which either ends with them getting what they want (the North China Buffer State) or straight up open warfare, one that probably ends up a punitive expedition instead of the OTL quagmire (whatever his other faults, that guy was quite Churchillian when it comes to fighting the Japanese).
Marc A
P.S. Oh and also, the ROC government was making peace overtures to the CPC as early as May 1936. Oh yeah, I was surprised when I first learned of it too
