The world's most heroic military commander

An extraordinary life

Peng Dehuai, formerly known as Peng Dehua, is a native of Xiangtan, Hunan. Born in 1898, he entered the Hunan Xiang Army as a soldier in 1916. In 1922, he was admitted to the Hunan Officers' Lecture Hall, graduated in 1923, and served as a company commander in the Xiang Army. In 1926, he became the battalion commander, and soon the unit was reorganized into the National Revolutionary Army and participated in the Northern Expedition. In the winter of 1927, he became acting head of the regiment. In January 1928, he was appointed head of the regiment. In April of the same year, in the face of the white terror after the defeat of the Great Revolution, he resolutely chose the revolutionary road and joined the Communist Party of China. In July, together with Teng Daiyuan and Huang Gongluo, he launched the Pingjiang Uprising and established the 5th Army of the Red Army, serving as its commander. In November, he led the main force of the Red 5th Army to Jinggangshan and joined the Red 4th Army led by Mao Zedong and Zhu De. At the beginning of 1929, after the main force of the Red 4th Army marched to Gannan and western Fujian, it stayed in Jinggangshan to persist in the struggle. In June 1930, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the 3rd Red Army. In November 1931, he was appointed Vice Chairman of the Central Revolutionary Military Commission. He participated in and commanded the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd anti-"encirclement and suppression" campaigns, and made many meritorious achievements in the battle to defend the central revolutionary base areas. In January 1934, at the Fifth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, he was elected as an alternate member of the Central Committee. In October, he led the ministry to participate in the Long March. In January 1935, he attended the Zunyi Conference and supported Mao Zedong's correct ideas. After the Red 1st and Red 4th Fronts met, they waged a resolute struggle against Zhang Guotao's anti-party separatist activities. In September, he was appointed commander of the Shaanxi-Gansu detachment of the Red Army. In November, he was appointed vice chairman of the Northwest Revolutionary Military Committee and commander of the 1st Front of the Red Army, and participated in the command of the Battle of Zhiluo. In 1936, he was elected as a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, and successively served as the commander of the Anti-Japanese Pioneer Army, the commander and political commissar of the Northwest Field Army, and participated in the command of the Eastern Expedition and the Western Expedition. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, he served as the deputy commander-in-chief of the Eighth Route Army (deputy commander-in-chief of the 18th Group Army), assisting Zhu De in commanding the Eighth Route Army to penetrate deep behind enemy lines, carry out guerrilla warfare, and open up anti-Japanese base areas in North China. In the autumn of 1940, the Hundred Regiments War was organized in North China, which dealt a heavy blow to the Japanese invading army. In August 1942, he was appointed acting secretary of the Northern Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, and returned to Yan'an in September 1943 to assist Mao Zedong and Zhu De in directing the War of Resistance behind enemy lines in North China. In 1945, at the First Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, he was elected as a member of the Political Bureau of the Cpc Central Committee and served as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and chief of the General Staff. During the Liberation War, he served as deputy commander-in-chief of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, commander and political commissar of the Northwest Field Army (later organized as the 1st Field Army). After abandoning Yan'an, he commanded 30,000 troops to fight against the enemy's 230,000 people in northern Shaanxi, and won successive battles, crushing the key attack of the Kuomintang army on northern Shaanxi. In the stage of strategic decisive battle, the leading troops liberated the 5 northwestern provinces.

After the founding of New China, he served as a member of the Central People's Government, vice chairman of the People's Revolutionary Military Commission, chairman of the Northwest Military and Political Committee, first secretary of the Northwest Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, and commander of the Northwest Military Region. In October 1950, he became the commander and political commissar of the Chinese Volunteer Army, commanding the Chinese Volunteer Army to fight in Korea. After the famous 5 battles, the U.S. military offensive against northern Korea was crushed, forcing the United States to sign the armistice agreement. In 1952, he returned to China to preside over the daily work of the Central Military Commission. After 1954, he served as vice premier of the State Council, minister of national defense, and vice chairman of the National Defense Commission, and made outstanding contributions to the modernization and regularization of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. In 1955, he was awarded the rank of Marshal of the People's Republic of China. In 1956, at the First Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, he was elected as a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. In July 1959, during the Lushan Conference, because of the "Left" mistake of opposing the Great Leap Forward and the people's communization, he was wrongly criticized for petitioning for the people, and was branded as a backbone member of the "Peng, Zhang, Huang, and Zhou anti-party clique" and removed from the post of defense minister. In 1965, he resumed his work and was appointed deputy director of the "Third Line" Construction Committee. During the "Cultural Revolution," he was framed and brutally persecuted by The counterrevolutionary clique of Lin Biao and Jiang Qing, and was repeatedly beaten by you. He died on November 29, 1974. In 1978, the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China rehabilitated him and restored his reputation. He was a famous general of a generation, and Mao Zedong once wrote a poem for it: "The mountains are high and the roads are far and deep, and the large armies are galloping in all directions, and whoever dares to cross the sword is the only one who is General Peng." ”

Command the Battle of the Hundred Regiments

In December 1939, the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army in Wangjiayu, Wuxiang County, Shanxi Province.

One day, Zhu De, commander-in-chief of the Eighth Route Army, and Peng Dehuai, deputy commander-in-chief, received a top-secret telegram from Lu Zhengcao, commander of the Jizhong Military Region, and others. The telegram said:

"The enemy's recent purpose of building roads is different from the past ... The first is to connect the bunkers with deep ditches and high fortifications, and divide the base areas into isolated small pieces that cannot be linked to each other and support each other, so as to facilitate the enemy's search and suppression of each division one after another. The second method of revision is that the liaison of the automobile road is built to the outside, and the enemy's automobiles are constantly moving on the road to prevent our army from entering and leaving its circle. The telegram suggested that our Eighth Route Army "must not allow the enemy to be repaired," otherwise it "will create an extremely difficult situation of persisting in guerrilla warfare."

This vicious conspiracy, personally planned by Tada Jun, commander of the Japanese North China Front, naturally aroused the vigilance of Zhu De and Peng Dehuai at the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army.

After careful research and meticulous planning, a surprising and victorious battle plan was produced.

In the early morning of July 22, 1940, a top-secret telegram marked "100,000 Fire Emergencies" was sent from the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army to the leaders of various divisions and military regions behind enemy lines: Nie Rongzhen, He Long, Guan Xiangying, Liu Bocheng, and Deng Xiaoping, to the Yan'an Central Military Commission, and to Mao Zedong. The preparatory order for the battle to break the Zhengtai Road, jointly issued by Zhu De, Peng Dehuai, and Zuo Quan, first expounded the reasons for launching the great attack, and then the order called for "no less than 22 regiments directly participating in the Zhengtai Line operation (10 regiments in the Nie District, 8 regiments of the 129th Division, 4 to 6 regiments of the 120th Division, most of the artillery regiment of the headquarters, and 1 engineer unit of the headquarters)," "it is scheduled to complete preparations for reconnaissance, equipment preparation, and troop mobilization by August 10," and specifically instructed: "Before the preparation is completed, The intention of the campaign was only to inform the brigade commander. ”

The order detailed the preparations for the campaign. Although its text is not long, it embodies the painstaking efforts of Zhu De, Peng Dehuai, Zuo Quan, and other leaders of the Eighth Route Army headquarters, as well as leaders of Liu Bocheng, Deng Xiaoping, Nie Rongzhen, He Long, Guan Xiangying, and other units in the past four months.

The telegram was sent to Yan'an and was immediately copied to Mao Zedong, Wang Jiaxiang, Zhu De, Luo Fu, Wang Ming, Kang Sheng, Chen Yun, Deng Zihui, Ren Bishi, Tan Qilong, and the Central Military Commission's Operations Bureau.

August 20, 1940, a special day in the history of China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.

On this night, on the land of North China, in a small mountain village called Honghe Cao, where the front-line command post of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region was stationed, in Shiqiu Village, where the 129th Division's frontline command post was stationed, in the small courtyard of Caijiaya, Xingxian County, where the 120th Division's frontline command post was stationed, and in Wangjiayu, where the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army was stationed, they were in a tense atmosphere before the great war.

At 22:00, the corps launched an attack in accordance with the uniform regulations. Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping stayed up all night at the division's command post, and at dawn began to send a good news to the headquarters: Chen Geng Brigade, the left wing of the 129th Division, attacked Lujiazhuang in the west of Shouyang, 4 bunkers in Lianke, completely annihilated the enemy, completely occupied the Lujiazhuang station southwest of Shouyang, and destroyed all railways and bridges within 10 miles west of the station. The Zheng Regiment of the Chen Brigade attacked the enemy near Yangquan, and fought fiercely with more than 400 enemy encounters for 2 hours, defeating the enemy, killing and wounding more than half of the enemy, and capturing 6 light machine guns and more than 60 rifles.

He Long commanded the 120th Division to attack the Tongpu Railway in the Yangqu, Xinxian, Shuoxian, and Ningwu sections, and called the headquarters in the evening: Zhang Zongxun's brigade gathered to annihilate the Jingle Dongkang family to defend the enemy, killing more than 200 enemy soldiers, capturing more than 10 Japanese soldiers, and capturing a lot...

Peng Dehuai has been patiently waiting at the headquarters, and he is excited and relieved by the continuous good news he receives.

From the evening of the 21st to the 22nd, the staff of the Headquarters of the Eighth Route Army were even busier; Liu Bocheng and Nie Rongzhen continued to report on the situation of the various attack corps on Zhengtai Road several times in succession, and He Long, Chen Zaidao, Lü Zhengcao, Xiao Ke, commander of the Jichare Advance Army, and other leaders of the troops who cooperated with the Zhengtai Road offensive campaign also called one after another to report on the results of their attack.

The war situation developed smoothly, good news was frequently reported, and the railways and highway trunk lines of Zhengtai, Tongpu, Baijin, Pinghan, Pingsui, Jinpu, and Beining soon became "riddled with holes."

After lunch on the 22nd, Peng Dehuai and Zuo Quan listened to Wang Zhengzhu, chief of the operations section, report on the battle situation in the war room. When asked about the actual strength of the Eighth Route Army, Wang Zhengzhu replied in a loud voice: "There are 30 regiments on the Zhengtai Line, 15 regiments on the Pinghan Line from Lugou Bridge to Handan, 12 regiments in the Datong to Hongdong section of the Tongpu Line, and 4 regiments from Tianjin to Dezhou on the Jinpu Line... A total of 105 regiments participated in the battle. ”

Wang Zhengzhu's voice did not fall, and Zuo Quan's chief of staff preemptively said: "Good! This is a hundred regiments war, and the operations section must carefully check the numbers. Peng Dehuai said qualitatively: "Regardless of the hundred and several regiments, this battle is called the Hundred Regiments War." In the telegram sent to the corps and to the Central Military Commission that afternoon, the name "Hundred Regiments War" was first used.

In 1941, after the Hundred Regiments War, both inside and outside the Communist Party affirmed the war. When the news reached Yan'an, Mao Zedong immediately sent a telegram to Peng Dehuai, saying: "The Battle of the Hundred Regiments is really exciting, can a battle like this be organized once or twice?" On September 4, Chiang Kai-shek also sent a telegram of encouragement to Zhu De and Peng Dehuai, saying: "I am very happy that the Eighth Route Army seized the opportunity to strike decisively and deal a great blow to the enemy. ”

When the "Hundred Regiments War" broke out, coinciding with the conclusion of the memorandum of understanding between Japan and Chiang Kai-shek on July 23, the summit-level talks between Chiang Kai-shek and Itagaki Seishiro were planned to be held in Changsha in August. Although the Communist Party of China did not know the specific situation of the negotiations between Japan and Chiang Kai-shek at that time, it felt that Chiang Kai-shek's position was increasingly compromised with the Japanese side. It was precisely in the midst of the nationwide anti-Japanese upsurge and the anti-Japanese clamor instigated by the "Hundred Regiments War" that Chiang Kai-shek had to pause his compromise with Japan.

According to the results released by the Field Political Department of the General Headquarters of the Eighth Route Army, in the course of the 105 days of the Hundred Regiments War, a total of 1824 large and small battles were fought, killing and wounding 20,645 Japanese troops, 5,155 puppet troops, capturing 281 Japanese troops, and 18,400 puppet troops. The Eighth Route Army also paid the price of 17,000 casualties.

Battle of Guanjia'an

On October 26, 1940, the 3rd stage of the Hundred Regiments War. The Japanese Okazaki Brigade, with 500 men, marched westward via Guanjia'an. The main forces and death squads of the 385th Brigade, the 386th Brigade and the New 10th Brigade of the Eighth Route Army were ordered to encircle the enemy at Guanjia'an. Peng Dehuai, Liu Bocheng, and Deng Xiaoping personally commanded the front.

Unlike the ambush battles that the Eighth Route Army used to be good at, this was a tough battle. Chen Geng, then commander of the 386th Brigade of the 119th Division, expressed his confusion to Peng Dehuai. At that time, Chen Geng asked Peng Dehuai with tears: "The vast majority of the cadres of the Death Squad are young intellectuals, very cute, in the 1st and 2nd stages of the battle, 1570 people of the 25th Regiment and 38th Regiment have been wounded, and more than 500 people have died." This encirclement and annihilation battle was a position attack battle, and it was an uphill battle. In order to preserve the main force of the Death Squad, can this battle spare the two regiments the task? But Peng Dehuai did not agree.

After two days and two nights of bloody fighting, after repeated white-knife fighting, the well-armed Okazaki Brigade was annihilated in half, leaving more than 400 corpses to retreat; and the 25th and 38th Regiments of the Death Squad, in the words of Bo Yibo, the political commissar of the Death Squad, "also fought out and became the two main regiments with the strongest combat effectiveness of the Death Squad." ”

Witness the heroes of the Taihang Mountains

However, in this battle, the Eighth Route Army also paid a huge price, and some companies fought less than 1/3 of the way. Shanxi's terrain is majestic and rugged, with the Taihang Mountains as a barrier in the east, the Yellow River as a natural danger in the west, the Great Wall in the north to the YinShan Desert, and the Yellow River and the Zhongtiao Mountains in the south to see the Central Plains. Gu Zuyu of the Qing Dynasty called Shanxi the "Mountains and Rivers of the Table" and the Taihang Mountains as the "Ridge of the World". The role of the mountain range is to block, but there must be a passage, the 8 narrow passages that lead to the outside of the Taihang Mountains are historically called "Taihang Eight Tunnels", without exception, they are rugged and difficult to navigate, easy to defend and difficult to attack; rivers are expensive in circulation, but they must be guarded by strongholds. Shanxi was an excellent place for internal combat during the war, so it became a place where soldiers and families had to fight for generations.

The Eighth Route Army, led by the Communist Party of China, fought bloody battles against the Japanese and the Kosovars in the land of the Three Jins, created countless heroic deeds that can be sung and wept, and erected one immortal monument after another. In a sense, Shanxi and the Taihang Mountains have become blessed places for the Communist Party of China and the people's army, and the Communist Party of China has led the people's army from victory to victory after victory until the seizure of national power.

After the Lugou Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937, the Communist Party of China proceeded from the national righteousness and cooperated with the Kuomintang against foreign insults. In August, the CPC Central Committee held an enlarged meeting of the Politburo in Luochuan, northern Shaanxi, and Chairman Mao Zedong made the Decision on the Current Situation and the Party's Tasks and formulated the Ten Programs for Resisting Japan and Saving the Country. The meeting pointed out that the key to winning victory in the War of Resistance is to implement a comprehensive national line of resistance and a bitter and protracted war. The meeting demanded that the Communist Party of China and all the armed forces under its leadership should stand in the forefront of the War of Resistance, uphold the leadership of the proletariat in the War of Resistance Against Japan, and become the core of the National War of Resistance. On August 22, the Military Commission of the Nationalist Government officially announced the reorganization of the Red Army into the Eighth Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army (renamed the 18th Group Army on September 11) and agreed to set up a general headquarters with three divisions and a quota of 15,000 men each. On August 25, the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China issued an order to reorganize the 1st, 2nd and 4th Fronts of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army and the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in Northern Shaanxi into the Eighth Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army. Subsequently, the main force of the Eighth Route Army crossed the Yellow River in the east under the leadership of Zhu De and Peng Dehuai, and successively advanced into the anti-Japanese front in Shanxi.

At the beginning of the war, the Japanese army used only a small number of troops, and in a very short period of time, it easily occupied the Pingjin area, an important military, political, and economic center in north China, and most of Japan's military and political leaders thus despised China's ability and determination to resist the war even more. On August 5, 1937, the Japanese General Staff Decided to Conduct the Battle of North China. The Japanese army believed that if it controlled Shanxi, known as the "roof of North China", it would have the initiative in the entire North China Battlefield. Therefore, in the attack strategy implemented by the Japanese army on the battlefield of North China, breaking through the mountains of western North China and seizing Shanxi became the top priority. The Japanese army vainly tried to "take the whole province of Shanxi in 1 month and destroy all of China in 3 months."

In mid-September 1937, after the invading Japanese army advancing west along pingsui road occupied Datong, it divided its troops into two roads to attack the first line of Yanmen Pass and Pingshiguan in an attempt to advance into Taiyuan. In order to cooperate with friendly forces and block the Japanese offensive, the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army, under the command of division commander Lin Biao and deputy division commander Nie Rongzhen, was ordered to arrive at the Pingxingguan area to wait for the enemy to attack. On September 25, the follow-up troops of the 21st Brigade of the Japanese 5th Division (Itagaki Division) all entered the ambush area, and the ambush troops of the Eighth Route Army were condescending and quickly launched a fierce attack on the enemy, which immediately disrupted the command system of the Japanese army. The soldiers of the Eighth Route Army divided and annihilated the enemy, and the two sides engaged in a short white-knife hand-to-hand combat. After a day of fierce fighting, the Eighth Route Army won the Battle of Pingxingguan, killing more than 1,000 Japanese troops, destroying more than 100 cars, more than 200 horse-drawn carriages, capturing more than 1,000 rifles, more than 20 machine guns, 1 artillery piece, and a large number of military materials, and achieving the first major victory of the Chinese army since the beginning of the National War of Resistance.

In October 1937, the Japanese army continued to invade Taiyuan south. In order to cooperate with the defensive operations of the Kuomintang army at Xinkou, the 716th Regiment of the 358th Brigade of the 120th Division of the Eighth Route Army was ordered to penetrate deep into the Japanese flank and break the road from Datong to Taiyuan from Guangwu, Yanmenguan, and Taiheling in Dai County, attacking the Japanese transport team and cutting off the Japanese supply line. The two ambushes killed and wounded more than 500 Japanese troops, destroyed more than 30 cars, and once cut off the traffic between Fanzhi and Xinkou, cooperating with the Nationalist army's Xinkou defense operation. The first battle of the Yanmen Pass ambush was successful, breaking the myth that the Japanese army was invincible. The war not only tempered the troops and invigorated the national spirit, but also equipped itself with the weapons of the enemy.

In early October 1937, the Japanese army broke through the Kuomintang defense line in northern Shanxi Province, occupied Dai County and Cheng County (present-day Chengyang Town, Ping city), and continued to attack south. The Nationalist army retreated to the area around Xinkou (present-day north of Xinzhou City) to prevent the Japanese from attacking Taiyuan. In order to cooperate with the Kuomintang army, the 769th Regiment of the 385th Brigade of the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army was ordered to carry out the task of flanking the rear of the Japanese army in the area east of Dai County and Chengxian County. The regiment advanced to the south bank of the Tuotuo River and found that Japanese aircraft were constantly taking off from the Yangmingbao front airfield on the north bank of the Tuotuo River to bomb the Kuomintang positions in Xinkou. Chen Xilian, the head of the regiment, was determined to attack Yangmingbao Airport at night. On the night of October 19, the battle was launched, and after an hour of fierce fighting, the 769th Regiment annihilated more than 100 Japanese troops and damaged 24 Japanese aircraft at the cost of more than 30 casualties, supporting the Nationalist xinkou defense operation.

The Battle of Xinkou was a large-scale battle fought by Chinese troops against the Japanese invading forces in northern Jin. The campaign lasted 21 days from October 13 to November 2, 1937. The troops involved in the battle were the Jin Sui Army of Yan Xishan, the Central Army of the Kuomintang, and the Eighth Route Army led by the Communist Party of China. The campaign was the central battle of the Battle of Taiyuan, commanded by the 2nd Theater. The campaign set a record of annihilating more than 10,000 enemies and was a successful example of unity and cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists and the Chinese Communists in military cooperation.

Due to the successive loss of the Niangziguan pass in eastern Jin and the throat of northern Jin, the last strategic point in north China, the Taiyuan Portal, was opened, and the 23-day defense of Taiyuan was defeated. On November 8, 1937, Taiyuan fell, and the frontal battlefield in North China disintegrated, and the Japanese army also shifted its main force to the Jinpu Line and the Yangtze River Valley. This also provided a favorable opportunity and a broad space for the Communist Party and the Eighth Route Army to unleash their hands on mobilizing the masses, waging guerrilla warfare, and establishing anti-Japanese base areas.

According to the instructions of the CPC Central Committee and Mao Zedong, the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army then decided and deployed the main force of the 3rd Division from a regular army to a guerrilla army, from a regular war to a guerrilla war, and the four sides divided their troops and advanced behind the enemy's lines.

When the 115th Division was in the main force with the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army and traveled south to aid Niangziguan, Nie Rongzhen, the political commissar of the division, led the rest of the division to stay in the Wutaishan area to carry out guerrilla warfare. After one month of arduous work, the anti-Japanese order was extensively established in northeast Jin, the ties with the masses were strengthened, and the foundation for the anti-Japanese base areas was initially laid. On November 7, 1937, the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region was established in Wutai County, and by the beginning of 1938, the Jin-Cha-Ji Enemy Rear Area centered on Wutai County in northeastern Jin had expanded to a vast area including 43 counties and a population of more than 12 million. This was the first anti-Japanese fortress established by the Chinese Communist Party in Shanxi behind enemy lines.

As early as the Battle of Xinkou, the 120th Division, under the leadership of political commissar Guan Xiangying, went to 14 counties in northwestern Jin, including Ganlan and Xingxian, to carry out the work of creating base areas centered on mobilizing the masses. After the fall of Taiyuan, He Long led the main force of the 120th Division to the rear of the enemy in northwestern Jin, and by January 1938, the Communists and the Eighth Route Army had further established a foothold in this area, and the enemy rear area in northwestern Jin, relying on GuanZhuan Mountain, had begun to take shape.

The headquarters of the Eighth Route Army and the 129th Division successively held important meetings in Shiquan Town, Heshun County, and decided that the 129th Division would immediately complete the strategic development and create a Jin-Hebei Yu anti-Japanese base area relying on the Taihang and Taiyue Mountains. After the meeting, in accordance with the arrangements of the headquarters and the division headquarters, the whole division on the one hand marched with a part of the main force to the west of the Pinghan Railway, south of the Zhengtai Railway, and east of the Tongpu Railway to carry out guerrilla warfare; on the other hand, a large number of cadres and more than 2/3 of the troops were dispatched successively to form working groups and guerrilla detachments, dispersed to the vast areas of Jinji and Hebei, and opened up anti-Japanese base areas. By the beginning of April 1938, before the Siege of the Ninth Road by the Japanese Army, the enemy rear area in southeastern Jin had initially formed.

In December 1937, the main force of the 115th Division entered the Hong (Dong) and Zhao (Cheng) areas, and worked closely with the Northern Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, the Headquarters of the Eighth Route Army, and the Shanxi Provincial Committee of the CPC central committee to comprehensively carry out the creation of anti-Japanese base areas in Linfen and Hongdong. From the beginning of February to the end of March 1938, the division headquarters led the 343rd Brigade to go deep into the counties of southwestern Jinxi south of the Fenli Highway and west of the Tongpu Railway, and carried out extensive guerrilla warfare, fully controlling the southern end of the Lüliang Mountains and defending the Yellow River. After cooperating with the Kuomintang army in completing the task of flanking and suppressing the Japanese army's southward advance from central Jinzhong, it further repelled the enemy's offensive on southwestern Jin and the Yellow River crossing, ensured the safety of the party Central Committee and the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, and opened up a new situation in the anti-Japanese struggle in southwestern Jinxi.

The opening up of the Jin-Cha-Ji, Jin-Sui, Jin-Ji Yu Border Regions, and Southwest Jin-Jin Regions created a consolidated rear area and a strategic base for advancing in order to carry out guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines in North China.

After the fall of Taiyuan, the party organizations and leading organs of the Eighth Route Army in various parts of Shanxi clearly regarded the establishment and expansion of the anti-Japanese armed forces as the central task, and vigorously carried out the establishment and development of the trinity of anti-Japanese armed forces combining the main forces, local guerrillas, and the people's self-defense forces in Shanxi Province.

After the establishment of the anti-Japanese regime at all levels, in accordance with the instructions of the CPC Central Committee and the Northern Bureau to expand the Eighth Route Army, all localities immediately mobilized and organized the masses extensively in their jurisdictions, and soon set off a mass upsurge of joining the army. As a result, the three divisions of the Eighth Route Army generally developed rapidly in a short period of time. The troops of the 115th Division that remained at Wutaishan were only 3,000 people when the base area was first established, and after only 2 months, they expanded to more than 30,000 people. When the 120th Division crossed the Yellow River in the east, it had 8,200 troops in 3 regiments, and after the expansion and reorganization in early 1938, the main force of the division increased to 25,000 people in 6 regiments. The total strength of the 129th Division also reached 30,000 men. By the beginning of 1938, the main force of the three divisions had increased from more than 30,000 people at the time of entering the Jin Dynasty to nearly 100,000 people, and further expanded to 250,000 people in the autumn of the same year, effectively becoming the main force in Shanxi and all of North China to persist in the protracted War of Resistance. During this period, the Shanxi New Army, with the help of the Eighth Route Army, also achieved rapid development. The Shanxi Youth Anti-Japanese War Death Squad grew from 1 general brigade at the time of its founding to 4 columns in the spring of 1938, in addition to 13 guerrilla detachments led by the Workers' Armed Column, the Political Guard and the War Mobilization Association.

While strengthening the main forces and strengthening the building of regular armed forces, party organizations in various parts of Shanxi have also vigorously established and developed local guerrilla armed forces and people's self-defense armed forces. In northeast Jin, not only did the broad masses of workers and peasants join the anti-Japanese armed forces one after another, but all counties set up anti-Japanese guerrillas and volunteer armies with a small number of hundreds and thousands of people. In northwestern Jin, the local working group of the 120th Division spent only one month organizing more than 11,000 guerrillas and self-defense forces in various counties, and the self-defense forces that did not leave work 5. 70,000 people. By the end of 1938, the organized masses in the Jin-Cha-Ji Border Region had reached more than 1 million, and the number of self-defense officers who did not leave work had grown to more than 300,000. In southwestern Jin, county party organizations and the League of Thieves legally established anti-Japanese self-defense units and guerrillas ranging from 200 to 300 to 300 to 400 people.

The vigorous development of the anti-Japanese armed forces under the leadership of the party in Shanxi has greatly promoted the development of mass guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines, so that the anti-Japanese beacon fire has rapidly burned throughout the vast land of Shanxi in just a few months, and has expanded more and more violently to the whole of north China.

The rise of guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines in Shanxi and the opening up of anti-Japanese base areas held the Japanese army tightly at the very beginning, making it impossible for it to continue to advance. From late December 1937 to late April 1938, the anti-Japanese soldiers and civilians in the jin-Cha-Ji, northwestern Jin, southwestern Jin, and southeastern Jin successively smashed the multi-way siege of the Japanese army, so that the four strategic fulcrums stood resolutely behind the enemy, not only annihilating a large number of living forces of the Japanese army, but also effectively cooperating with the frontal battlefield operations of the Kuomintang army. Under this situation, the CPC Central Committee issued instructions on waging guerrilla warfare in the plains, and since late April, the various units of the Eighth Route Army have successively dispatched their main forces to carry out strategic development in the North China Plain from the various theaters centered on Shanxi.

Xu Xiangqian, deputy commander of the 129th Division, led his troops out of Taihang in the east and advanced into southern Hebei, opening up anti-Japanese base areas from the Pinghan Railway in the west, the Jinpu Railway in the east, the Cangshi Highway in the north, the Zhanghe River in the south, and the Jilu-Yubian Anti-Japanese Base Area. The 120th Division advanced from the Northern Yan region into Suiyuan and, in coordination with the guerrilla units led by the local party organization, opened up the anti-Japanese guerrilla base areas in Suinan, Suizhong, and Suixi, relying on Daqingshan. The 115th Division set out from western Jinxi to reach northwestern Lu and opened up an anti-Japanese guerrilla base area on the Jilu border. The Eighth Route Army used Shanxi as its base to carry out a large division of troops throughout northern China, marking the initial formation of the three major anti-Japanese base areas of Jin-Cha-Ji, Jin-Sui, and Jin-Ji-Yu.

From 1944 onwards, the Communist Party of China launched a local counteroffensive against the Japanese army when the Japanese army was mobilizing forces in the Pacific Theater and opening up the mainland communication line. From April 23 to June 11, 1945, the Communist Party of China held its Seventh National Congress in Yan'an and formulated the political line of "letting go and mobilizing the masses, strengthening the people's strength, and under the leadership of our party, defeating the Japanese aggressors, liberating the people of the whole country, and establishing a new democratic China."

In 1945, the Chinese army launched a comprehensive counteroffensive against the Invading Japanese Army. On August 15, Japan officially announced its unconditional surrender. On September 9, Ninji Okamura, commander-in-chief of the Japanese invasion of China, signed a surrender instrument in Nanjing. At this point, the Chinese People's War of National Liberation against Japanese Aggression ended in victory.

According to statistics, 114 officers at or above the brigade level of the Eighth Route Army died in the eight-year War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and more than 35 million Chinese soldiers and civilians suffered casualties, annihilating about 2 million Japanese troops. The People's Anti-Japanese Forces led by the Communist Party of China fought more than 125,000 battles against the enemy, annihilated 527,000 Japanese troops, annihilated 1.18 million puppet troops, and recovered more than 1 million square kilometers of land.

Taihang Mountain is a magical mountain range, the backbone of the world. Its shape is like a knife, its body is like iron, its peak is like a sword, its ridge is like a blade, its god is like a bone, and its momentum is like running. Taihang Mountain is a monument engraved with the flesh and blood of the Chinese Communists in the War of Resistance, and Taihang Mountain testifies that the Communist Party of China is the mainstay of the unity of the whole nation in the War of Resistance. Taihang Mountain is also a mirror, reflecting the tenacious and indomitable spirit of a great nation, but also reflecting many souls with distinct personalities.