mao reid it to the leadership as an effective leader. so they made fewer mistakes after that. they still made mistakes but they made fewer mistakes. they fought branded battles every day. the march was upon nod. it was a very difficult. c-span: where do they get their weapons? >> guest: from the nationalist. they basically captured weapons from the nationalist side to try to wear to the national skip their weapons? >> guest: from america. initially not, initially they got them by buying them on the open market but later on they had more and more american aid. very substantial amount of american aid. c-span: where were the japanese at this point? >> guest: we are talking about the time of the long march, mid-1930s when as i say to go back chiang kai-shek had control of the whole of china and mao had tiny tiny forces. bright to there being fed by the russians a full-time? >> guest: not even any contact at that time. they had a lot of contact guests in the very early stages. they got financial aid from russia. that was how the party started going pray they didn't get weapons from