In 1949, at the third meeting of the members of the people's government after the founding of New China, Premier Zhou announced a letter of appointment in public with a solemn look: Comrade Fu Zuoyi was appointed as the first minister of water resources of New China.
The presidium of the meeting unanimously approved, and in an instant, Fu Zuoyi, who was attending the meeting in the audience, wept bitterly on the spot and shouted with his arms raised: Long live the Communist Party, long live Chairman Mao. When the participants saw this scene, they also shouted with him with great emotion: Long live the Communist Party. The meeting was therefore forced to be suspended.
What's going on? In this issue, Brother Craftsman circled a useful history, deciphering Fu Zuoyi, as a Kuomintang feudal official who had made great achievements in battle and held 550,000 heavy troops, why would he be so excited because of a small water conservancy minister, and cover his face and cry in public? What the hell happened?
When Premier Zhou announced the appointment of the Minister of Water Resources, why did Fu Zuoyi weep bitterly?
Fu Zuoyi, whose ancestral home was Yuncheng, Shanxi, in 1910, at the age of 15, actively responded to the Xinhai Revolution initiated by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, followed the commander-in-chief of the rebel army Yao Yiwei in Taiyuan, Shanxi, and rushed to Shanhaiguan to resist the Qing army, and then because of his outstanding performance in battle, he was sent to the Beijing First Army Middle School for further study.
After graduating in 1915, he was admitted to the Baoding Military Academy in Hebei Province with excellent results, and ranked among the best in infantry, equestrian and shooting examinations.
In 1918, Fu Zuoyi returned to his hometown of Shanxi, joined the warlord Yan Xishan, and participated in the Second Zhifeng War, and fought with the Zhifeng United Jin Army against the Kuomintang.
In Tianzhen, he was ordered to block the Nationalist Army Song Zheyuan's headquarters for three months, made great achievements, and was promoted to lieutenant general division commander after the war, and in 1928, after the reunification of the north and the south, Fu Zuoyi led an artillery regiment to raid Zhuozhou, Hebei.
With less than 10,000 troops, he desperately resisted the Northeast Fengzhi army for 100 days, and finally forced the Fengshi grand marshal Zhang Zuolin to negotiate peace. Fu Zuoyi was also recognized by the domestic military community for his extraordinary military ability in the Zhuozhou War, which was famous all over the world and could attack and defend well.
Stick to Pingjin to ensure Haikou, but do not retreat to a remote corner of South China
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, although Fu Zuoyi was awarded the rank of second-class general of the army in 1935, due to the restrictions of various parties, he could only be regarded as a small warlord of the Suiyuan second line sitting in Inner Mongolia, who was subordinated to the Shanxi warlord Yan Xishan.
Until 1946, after Chiang Kai-shek's ambitions were exposed and he openly provoked a civil war, Yan Xishan was defeated by the Eighth Route Army in northern Jin, trapped in Taiyuan, in a dilemma, and no one in the North China Theater was available.
During this period, Fu Zuoyi's power soared, from a small warlord of the Suiyuan second-line to a feudal official with an army of 550,000 troops, and was a huge obstacle to the great cause of the liberation of our party and the whole country.
It is worth mentioning that during the period when Fu Zuoyi was in Suiyuan and was in charge of the Suppression of North China, Fu Zuoyi's daughter Fu Dongju was also recommended to join the Communist Party of China during the same period.
He was ordered to stay by Fu Zuoyi's side to monitor his every move, frequently instilled in Fu Zuoyi the advanced patriotic ideology and concept of communism and serving the country and the people, and always maintained secret contacts with our party and our army, making positive and major contributions to the march of the Pingjin Campaign in the future and the peaceful liberation of Peiping.
In late October 1948, under the wise decision of the three chiefs of Lin, Luo, and Liu, our Northeast Field Army won consecutive victories in Jinzhou and Changchun.
The North China Field Military Region was also ordered to go to Shanxi and Inner Mongolia to fight, and the defense of the Base Area in Hebei and Jizhong was empty, and Chiang Kai-shek felt that there was an opportunity to take advantage of it, so he personally took a special plane to secretly fly directly to Beiping to discuss with Fu Zuoyi a conspiracy to raid the Xibaipo base area in Hebei Province.
Fu Zuoyi gladly agreed, and immediately ordered two of his capable generals, Eyousan and Zheng Tingfeng, to lead a brigade and an army to attack the Shimen area in Hebei.
Unexpectedly, Chairman Mao expected the enemy to take the lead and only wrote an article, which frightened Fu Zuoyi's army. In early November 1948, after the great victory in the Liaoshen Campaign and the complete liberation of the northeast region, the main strategic decision-making direction of the Platon Began to move rapidly southward, gradually advancing to the North China Battlefield.
On November 4, Chiang Kai-shek held a high-level military conference in Nanjing, asked Fu Zuoyi to temporarily avoid the front, immediately led his troops south, and promised him a high position as the administrator of the southeast, but in fact, Fu Zuoyi had long been dissatisfied with Chiang Kai-shek's practice of constantly provoking civil war, and made a preliminary prediction of the current situation.
He held that Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Government' reactionary style, which deviates from the will of the people, seems to be in the limelight, but in fact the defeat has been decided, and sooner or later it will lose the support of the people.
Therefore, he politely rejected Chiang Kai-shek's proposal to let him retreat to East china and South China, and put forward the proposal of adhering to the overall situation of preserving North China and never retreating to a peaceful corner of South China.
At the same time, Fu Zuoyi also made a pledge on the spot: he would stick to Pingjin, ensure Haikou, and constantly expand his strength to wait for the situation and wait for it to change.
Misjudged the time of Higashino's entry into the customs and buried the elite 35th Army
After Fu Zuoyi returned to Beiping from Nanjing, he misestimated the specific time when the Northeast Field Army entered the south of the Guannan, believing that our army would need at least three months of rest after the comprehensive liberation of the northeast.
Therefore, Fu Zuoyi temporarily issued an order to shrink the strength of the troops, and placed the four major corps and 12 elite armies under his command, a total of more than 550,000 people, all on the Tangshan-Zhangjiakou railway line centered on Beiping and Tianjin.
Spreading out in a long snake formation, demarcating defensive areas to build strong fortifications and pillboxes, on the surface, it seems that they are going to fight our army to the death, but in fact, Fu Zuoyi has left a way back for retreating to Suiyuan in the northwest and negotiating peace with the Communists.
However, on November 29, 1948, General Yang Chengwu, commander of the North China Field Corps, led his troops to the northwest and interspersed horizontally, encircling Zhangjiakou in Hebei Province, Fu Zuoyi was greatly alarmed, and in order to protect his retreat to the west, he urgently ordered his elite 35th Army under the leadership of Guo Jingyun to reinforce Zhangjiakou.
In early December, under the command of General Cheng Zihua, the commander of the Corps, the northeast field army advanced south from Beiping, and after being detected by Fu Zuoyi, he urgently dispatched 8 elite divisions defending Tianjin to defend Beiping, and urgently sent a telegram to Guo Jingyun's 35th Army, abandoning Zhangjiakou, quickly breaking through, and retreating to Beiping.
Unexpectedly, however, after the 35th Army broke through from Zhangjiakou, it was surrounded by our North China Field Corps in the New Security Area, and the enemy general Guo Jingyun committed suicide in defeat on December 22, at which point Fu Zuoyi's retreat to the west was cut off by our army.
Our party immediately informed Ms. Fu Dongju, the eldest daughter of Fu Zuoyi and a member of the underground party, to further carry out Fu Zuoyi's ideological work and always pay close attention to Fu Zuoyi's dynamics and changes.
At the same time, it actively mobilized and developed democratic patriots whose ideology pursued progress, and launched a revolutionary movement to "reject civil war and peacefully liberate Peiping." Fu Zuoyi finally made up his mind and took the first step towards a peaceful uprising.
However, at this critical juncture, at the behest of Chairman Mao, at the end of 1948, our Party's Xinhua News Agency suddenly published a list of 43 first-class war criminals who had committed the most heinous crimes, of which Fu Zuoyi ranked 31st.
At the same time, Chiang Kai-shek successively sent Zheng Jiemin and his second son, Jiang Weiguo, to Beiping for activities, and even wrote a letter to Fu Zuoyi in his own handwriting, expressing his respect for Fu Zuoyi with the phrase "a thousand armies are easy to get and one will be difficult to seek," so that Fu Zuoyi had some unusual careful thoughts.
On January 14, 1949, Fu Zuoyi negotiated with Nie Rongzhen, Ye Jianying, and Lin Zong in Beiping City, including the peaceful liberation of Tanggu, Beiping, Tianjin, and Suiyuan.
However, Fu Zuoyi's attitude wavered again, and he still could not make up his mind on whether to stick to Beiping and stubbornly resist, and the final result of the negotiations was obvious, and Fu Zuoyi did not give a clear answer.
250,000 troops went out of the city to accept the reorganization, and Peiping was peacefully liberated
The next day, the former enemy headquarters of the People's Liberation Army in the Pingjin Campaign formally issued an order to launch a general offensive against Tianjin. Liu Yalou, former chief of staff of the Fourth Field Army in Northeast China, personally took command of the battle, completely liberated Tianjin in only 29 hours, and captured Chen Changjie, commander of the Tianjin garrison, alive.
At the same time, a letter written by Chairman Mao himself was also sent to Fu Zuoyi's hand, warning him not to make senseless resistance, as long as the troops were handed over within the specified time, all of them were driven out of the city to accept the reorganization of the People's Liberation Army, and they surrendered their weapons and surrendered, then our party and our army could not be blamed for the past. But if we do not cooperate, then our army will solve it through the means of military force.
After Fu Zuoyi received the letter, he finally stopped fantasizing and made the most difficult, but also the most correct, decision in his life. On January 21, the Supreme Military Conference of the North China Suppression General Was held, and the peaceful liberation of Peiping was publicly announced.
All 250,000 troops in the city were sent out of the city to accept the orders for reorganization, and sent a telegram to the whole country: to completely break the line with Chiang Kai-shek's reactionaries. The next day, Fu Zuoyi began to evacuate Peiping in accordance with the peace agreement signed with our party.
It also transferred all the nationalist troops in Beiping City to designated locations, accepted the reorganization and reorganization, and welcomed the millions of male divisions of the People's Liberation Army into the city, and the thousand-year-old cultural and historical city of Beiping was officially liberated peacefully.
On January 31, the People's Liberation Army officially entered Beiping, and everywhere it went, there was a red flag fluttering, laughter, and citizens from all over the city spontaneously took to the streets to welcome the People's Liberation Army into the city. At such a critical moment, Fu Zuoyi, who had peacefully revolted and made great contributions to the liberation of Peiping, did not show his face.
A few days later, Chairman Mao instructed Luo Ronghuan to write an article in his own handwriting in the People's Daily, clearly listing the major mistakes that Fu Zuoyi had committed, but also praising to a great extent Fu Zuoyi's righteous act of taking the initiative to clearly understand the situation and uprising and surrendering sincerity, which was of great significance to the history of the liberation of the whole nation of the whole country.
As the minister of water resources was unanimously elected, Fu Zuoyi wept with excitement
After the liberation of Peiping, when Nie Rongzhen and Marshal Ye Jianying personally hosted a banquet for Fu Zuoyi to dinner, Fu Zuoyi once again made a profound reflection and repentance for the mistakes he had made, and put forward a request to meet with Chairman Mao.
After Ye Jianying reported it, Chairman Mao happily agreed to come down and personally met Fu Zuoyi in the revolutionary base area of Xibaipo in Hebei province on February 22.
As soon as they met, Fu Zuoyi tightly held the hands of Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou, repented bitterly, and felt uneasy and ashamed that he had been obsessed with ghosts and stood in the wrong line, and Chairman Mao saw that Fu Zuoyi's attitude was so humble, and his heart was also full of mixed feelings.
General Fu, our party has always been well aware of the great righteousness, and we have paid attention to merit and deeds. You did make mistakes in the past, but it is a great credit for you to have a clear understanding of the situation at a critical moment, take the initiative to electrify a nationwide uprising, and peacefully liberate Peiping.
Your contribution is significant, even if it is more than enough to make up for it. General Fu, you were once a famous anti-Japanese general, and now you should be a good general for the people of the whole world to remember.
In mid-to-late September 1949, after the peaceful liberation of Suiyuan, Fu Zuoyi returned to Beijing to attend the new CPPCC meeting and was elected as a member of the CPPCC And a member of the people's government.
On October 1, Fu Zuoyi, as a high-ranking leader of New China, followed Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou to the founding ceremony. At the meeting of members of the people's government held on October 19, premier Zhou publicly announced the appointment of Fu Zuoyi as the first minister of water resources of New China, and the presidium unanimously approved it, and no one opposed it.
Fu Zuoyi, who was attending the meeting below, couldn't help himself for a moment, wept bitterly, stood up with tears in his eyes, and shouted with his arms raised: Long live the Communist Party, long live Chairman Mao. The audience echoed: Long live the Communist Party.
The meeting was forced to abort, and after Fu Zuoyi calmed down his excitement a little, he said with great emotion: This is something that I never thought of before, and no matter how many great achievements I made under Chiang Kai-shek, no matter how much money I gave, I could not exchange them for a word of approval.
Unexpectedly, now the party and the state are willing to give me such an opportunity to serve as minister of water resources, thank the party, thank the chairman, thank the people, long live Chairman Mao, long live the Communist Party, and long live the people.