Since the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army crossed the Yellow River in the east and advanced to the northeast of Jin, the whereabouts and future of this unit have always worried Chairman Mao in the caves of Yan'an and cannot let go.
For several days, Chairman Mao had lost sleep again. Every night, he slept only two or three hours in the wee hours of the morning. Whether Li Yinqiao, the head of the guard, combed his hair or beat his back, it did not help. Chairman Mao, who smoked one cigarette after another, either pondered for a long time in front of the map or paced back and forth on the ground. Everything in the cave was shrouded in smoke.
The scene of the Luochuan Conference is still vividly remembered. In fighting against the Japanese army, Zhou Enlai, from a diplomatic point of view, once advocated fighting one or two big victories, but as soon as the party made a final decision, he would abandon his personal opinions and resolutely implement the party's decisions to the letter. Some other senior leaders of the Party and the generals of the Red Army also have the idea of fighting a big battle, especially Lin Biao, out of the mentality of causing a sensation throughout the country, strongly advocated concentrating forces to fight a mobile war; although after many in-depth and meticulous patient persuasions, on the surface he had accepted the strategic idea of guerrilla warfare, but what was he thinking in his heart? Is it consistent in the table? Are words and deeds unified? A trace of worry lingered in Chairman Mao's mind.
At present, the main energy of the Eighth Route Army should be focused on creating a base area behind enemy lines and trying to avoid fighting the Japanese army head-on with the main force, because that would not fundamentally prevent the Japanese army from attacking, nor would it be conducive to the development and growth of the Eighth Route Army. If there is a strategic problem in the fight against the Japanese army, it is very likely that the main forces of the Chinese revolution will be destroyed, and the quality of the revolutionary struggle will be greatly reduced in the future, and the speed of the success of the revolution will be greatly slowed down.
Lin Biao's personality, Chairman Mao knows very well, is good at using soldiers, can fight, but likes self-expression, individualism is serious, if used well, this is a very rare general talent.
Thinking of this, Chairman Mao decided to send a telegram to Lin Biao again.
On the morning of September 16, a ray of morning light penetrated the cave through the hemp paper on the window. Chairman Mao, by the morning light, prostrated himself on the old wooden table, lifted up his brush and wrote:
Our army should adhere to the established policy and cooperate with friendly forces in guerrilla warfare; this policy was decided in Beijing with Chiang Kai-shek and He, and Zhou and Peng were decided in person in Jin and Yan.
When Lin Biao received Chairman Mao's telegram, he was standing on the flat pass with his guard squad.
The next day, Chairman Mao also sent a telegram to the generals of the various units crossing the Yellow River in the east, on the one hand, to judge the situation and make strategic arrangements, and on the other hand to reiterate the strategic idea of "independent guerrilla warfare in the mountains" put forward by him:
On the issue of situation judgment and strategic deployment:
A. Judging that the enemy attack on North China was about four routes, with a total strength of about 150,000 to 200,000 troops. All the way to Shandong, there is no dispatch at present. Another way to the Jinpu line, about a half division regiment, now attacked to the horse factory. Another way to the Pinghan Line, about a half division regiment, now north of Zhuo County has not moved. Another way, the Pingsui and Tongpu lines, about three divisions, as their main force, in a big detour posture, tried to capture Taiyuan, threatened the central army of the Pinghan line and finally broke through it and captured the north of the Yellow River. In this posture, it threatens the back of Henan and Shandong, and is conducive to the final capture of Shandong and the completion of its attempt to capture the five provinces of North China. Its general strategic policy is to adopt a right-wing detour. As for the shanghai army, in addition to destroying the lifeblood of China's economy, it also blocked the main force of the central army to facilitate its capture of northern China. The above is the basic judgment of the first phase of the Japanese war plan.
First, the main force of the right wing of the Japanese Kou was divided into three routes, all advancing in a pursuit posture: one way along the eastern section of Pingsui and the northern section of Tongpu to attack Yanmen Pass, judging that about one division regiment, after occupying Datong, was now untouched. After occupying Guangling in Tianzhen, the first route attacked Lingqiu and Pingshiguan, and returned to the right flank of the Jin Sui army. After Zhangjiakou occupied Wei County, it had the potential to attack the source of the river, and detoured to the left wing of the Wei Lihuang army and the Zijingguan army. These two judgments are formed into a joint corps, at least two divisions, with the posture of the first step of the central breakthrough, to achieve the purpose of the second step of the two wings of the detour.
C. Jiang and Jiang yiwei Lihuang's army were surrounded by the enemy and ordered them to retreat to the Pinghan line. Yan took Lingqiu as the lifeline of Shanxi, and planned to concentrate 14 regiments to hold a decisive battle north of Pingxingguan. Judging that if the battle is won, the enemy's southward advance can be slightly delayed, but it is necessary to send troops to attack fiercely. If the decisive battle fails, the enemy will quickly attack Pingshi pass and Yanmen Pass, and when the rear road reserve corps arrives, the main force will go straight down to Taiyuan, so that the Jin Sui army in the western part of Suiyuan, the Wutai army in the southern section of the Hengshan Mountains, and the armies in the northern section of Pinghan will not be allowed to retreat on their own.
Ding, Laiyuan, and Lingqiu are places where the enemy must fight. If there is no north-south highway in Muping, Wutai, and Luxian, they may not be occupied by the enemy for the time being; if there is a north-south highway, the enemy may send a southward cut off the Zhengtai Road. In any case, the Hengshan Mountains will be the strategic center for the enemy to seize the three provinces of Jicha and Jin, and to dispatch the main force to this, which has been proved by the enemy occupation of Hunyuan, WeiXian and Guangling.
The various armies of Fu Yang and Liu Tang under the command of Jin Yan have lost their vigor, so that we cannot play the role of this army in fundamentally destroying the enemy's strategic plan in the present position.
At this time, the Red Army was of a detachment nature and could not play a decisive role in a decisive battle. But if properly deployed, it can play a decisive role in supporting guerrilla warfare in northern China (mainly in Shanxi).
Geng, in the past, it was decided that the Red Army's plan to create guerrilla base areas in the Hengshan Mountains was fundamentally ineffective in the above-mentioned situation between the enemy and ourselves, and if it was carried out according to the original plan, it would all be in the enemy's strategic detour, and even if the second step was withdrawn to the Taihang Mountains, it would be completely in a passive position in its great detour (imagined in the case of the enemy occupying Taiyuan).
According to the judgment of the above situation, in order to strategically unfold in a mobile position, that is, to deploy on the flank of the enemy's wing, to block the enemy's attack on Taiyuan and continue to the south, to assist the Jin Sui Army so that it does not lose too much strength, to truly carry out independent guerrilla warfare in the mountains, to mobilize the masses extensively, to organize volunteer armies, to create guerrilla bases, to support the north China to travel to war, and for the sake of expanding the Red Army itself, it is proposed to change the original deployment and adopt the following strategic deployment: (1) The 1st and 2nd O Divisions of our army should be assembled in Xinxian County, north of Taiyuan, on standby. With the consent of Yan Zhi, he was transferred to guan cen shan and other areas in northwestern Jin. (2) Our 129th Division, at the appropriate time, entered the Lüliang Mountains. (3) Our 115th Division, in a consciously passive posture, immediately entered the southern section of the Hengshan Mountains, and if the enemy advanced southward and the friendly forces failed to repel them, they were prepared to move southwards according to the situation and unfold in the Taihang and Taiyue Mountains in the southeast of Jin. (4) The headquarters shall enter the vicinity of Taiyuan and decide the appropriate location according to the situation.
After receiving Chairman Mao's telegram, Lin Biao deviated from the spirit of the Luochuan Conference, ignored Chairman Mao's strategic deployment, drafted two telegrams on the 18th, and immediately sent them.
The first was a reply to Chairman Mao:
With the enemy currently attacking, our vanguard brigade should take the annihilation of the enemy in combat as its main task
The second was a telegram sent to Zhu and Peng and to Mao and Nie:
With regard to the current course of action of the Army on the one hand, I mean that not only should the Chen Brigade cooperate with friendly forces in the present, but the Division and xu brigade should also approach with the same task, and the Chen Brigade should not take doing mass work as the central task for the time being...
At present, the military and the people are watching me directly participate in the war, and if I participate in the war with too few troops, I will lose the hope of the public.
At present, it is necessary to fight wars and capture prisoners to enhance the confidence of the army and the people in the war of resistance and to enhance the prestige of the Party and the Red Army...
At present, if the troops of the first division or above are concentrated in a narrow area for battle, of course, it is inappropriate and cannot be used, but the strength of the first division or below is needed and can be used. At present, the first battle should be based on the concentration of about the strength of about one division, and Lin Biao's ideological change was indeed guessed by Chairman Mao.
After reading Lin Biao's call, Chairman Mao was very angry. When he was angry, he never moved, just stared out the window with both eyes, looking into the distance for a long time. What is he looking at? In fact, he didn't look at anything, just put himself in a calm environment, turning his wisdom on, looking for lightning that cut through the darkness. He thought that Lin Biao's idea of expressing himself and becoming an anti-Japanese hero had risen again, and perhaps his thinking had not changed at all, and the persuasion at the Luochuan Conference was only a superficial phenomenon. This kind of thinking is not good! Resolutely not! So what to do? It will be outside, and it will be difficult for the king to do it.
Suddenly, Chairman Mao's eyes flashed with a sparkle, and the shining place was one of his most familiar names, Peng Dehuai. After the Zunyi Conference, Lin Biao wrote to the Central Committee asking peng Dehuai to replace him, which showed Lin Biao's distrust of him, but it was enough to prove how high Peng Dehuai's position in Lin Biao's mind was. Other people's words can not be listened to, and Peng Dehuai's words must always be listened to. At that time, the Red Army was reorganized into the Eighth Route Army, and he considered zhu De as the commander-in-chief and Peng Dehuai as the deputy commander-in-chief, among which there was a reason for Peng Dehuai to hold Lin Biao hostage.
On the 21st, Chairman Mao drafted a telegram to Peng Dehuai in a cave:
Yan Xishan is now in a contradiction that if he does not fight a war, he will not be able to reply to the people of Shanxi, and if he wants to fight a war, he will not be sure. This contradiction of his cannot be resolved. Your estimate that the determination to abandon the Pingshi Pass and attempt to fight a decisive battle on the Sand (Sand) River is shaken, and this estimate is completely correct. His subordinates have no determination at all, his army has lost its combat effectiveness, and perhaps a decisive battle will be forced to be held in the areas of Yanmen Pass, Pingxing Pass, and Sha (Sand) River, but the trend of the times will be difficult to last. Regardless of the decisive victory, Taiyuan and the whole of North China are in danger. Individual comrades do not seem to have a profound understanding of this objective and inevitable tendency and are tempted by the temporary situation. If this view remains unchanged, it is inevitable that the Red Army will also be similar to Yan Xishan, caught in a passive, and broken situation by the enemy. Today the Red Army does not play any decisive role in the decisive battle, but has its own kind of good play, in which it must play a decisive role, that is, truly independent mountain guerrilla warfare (not mobile warfare).
Chairman Mao stopped his pen, took a deep breath of his cigarette, then spat out the smoke for a long time, pondered a little, and continued:
To implement such a policy, it is necessary to have a strategically powerful force on the enemy's flank, to focus on creating base areas to mobilize the masses, and to disperse the forces instead of concentrating on fighting wars. If we fight a war in a concentrated way, we cannot do mass work, and if we do mass work, we cannot fight a war in a concentrated way, and the two cannot be carried out at the same time. However, only the dispersion of mass work is the only way to decisively defeat the enemy and to aid friendly forces. Centralized fighting is fruitless at the present time. The current situation is fundamentally different from the past civil wars, and it is impossible to recall the taste of the past, and it will be done again in the past. The inappropriate views of individual comrades are profoundly explained, so that the strategic policy is unified.
Writing this, Chairman Mao felt that Lin Biao had repeatedly demanded that one brigade be temporarily concentrated in a single battle, and if it was indeed feasible and feasible according to the actual situation in the front, it was also possible, but it was absolutely not allowed to throw in the entire 115th Division. So he went on to write:
Lin Biao only wanted to use Chen Brigade's concentrated camera to strike at the enemy, and it would not be dispersed for the time being. Of course, it is possible to temporarily concentrate a brigade in this way, but when there is no opportunity to take advantage of it for a long time, it is still appropriate to turn the center to mass work after the time.
With this telegram to Peng Dehuai, Peng Dehuai, who was on the front line, would naturally blackmail Lin Biao's wrong behavior. Chairman Mao's heart widened slightly.
Shortly after the telegram was sent, the "Central Daily" sponsored by the Kuomintang published the "Declaration of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China for Announcing the Establishment of Cooperation Between the Two Parties", which was handed over to the Kuomintang on July 15.
Chairman Mao said happily: This manifesto of the Communist Party and this speech spoken by Chiang Kai-shek announced the establishment of cooperation between the two parties and established the necessary foundation for the great cause of joint national salvation between the two parties. This ushered in a new era in the history of the Chinese revolution. This will have a vast and profound impact on the Chinese revolution and will have a decisive effect on the overthrow of Japanese imperialism.