Yan'an and The North China Front
In Xi'an Bertram received a radio message from Mao Zedong, inviting him to become the first official 'British' visitor to YenanYan'an. Bertram spent nearly a month in Yan'an during which time he conducted an extensive series of interviews with Mao in his cave-dwelling during which Mao expounded the Japanese objectives and the strategies he believed that the Chinese should adopt to defeat the Japanese. The "Interview with the British Journalist James Bertram" were cited in Mao's Collected Works.
From Yan'an Bertram set out for the Eighth Route Army headquarters in southern Shansi Shanxi and travelled for five months with the army in northern China. On the day that he crossed the Yellow River from ShensiShaanxi back to Shanxi, this time by boat, Taiyuan the Shanxi capital fell to the Japanese. Most of his time was spent with the troops of General Ho Lung (He Long). Based on these experiences behind the front he wrote a book North China Front (1939).
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