The Lugou Bridge Incident, which broke out on July 7, 1937, ignited the flame of the Chinese nation's all-out War of Resistance. As the most important political forces in the country at that time, the Kuomintang and the Communists adopted a series of measures to launch and organize a nationwide war of resistance according to their own characteristics and judgments on the direction of future wars.
The National Government has taken a series of measures to change its course
After the outbreak of the July 7 Incident, the Nationalist government sensed that the attitude of Britain and the United States toward Japan was undergoing subtle changes. Of course, since the situation in Europe in 1937 was different from that in 1932, the frenzied expansion of the German-Italian fascists and the seizure of territory through blackmail posed a growing threat to the security and stability of Europe. For example, in the spring of 1937, after complicated negotiations, the United Kingdom decided to give priority to Europe, which was closely related to its home interests, in its future foreign strategy, while the situation in the Far East, including Singapore, took a back seat. Therefore, after Japan began to invade China in an all-round way, the United States and Britain were in a state of panic on the one hand, and on the other hand, they hoped to avoid getting involved in the War in the Far East at any cost.
Under such circumstances, the National Government must change its past attitude toward Japan's compromise and clearly defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity. On July 17, Chiang Kai-shek delivered his famous Lushan speech, declaring: "If the war begins, it will be that there is no distinction between the north and the south, the age and the young, no matter who it is, everyone has the responsibility to defend the territory and resist the war, and they should all have the determination to sacrifice everything." "If you give up the size of the land and sovereignty, you will be a sinner of the Chinese nation for eternity." ”
In July 1937, when Chiang Kai-shek was giving a lecture at Lushan, he explained the strategic deployment of the anti-Japanese resistance to the military map
On the second day after the outbreak of the August 13 Incident, the National Government issued a "Declaration of the National Government's Self-Defense and War of Resistance" through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, pointing out to all countries in the world that "all the acts of the Japanese aggressors since the Lugou Bridge Incident have been violations of China's territorial sovereignty and violations of various international treaties, and our country is in this environment, and there is really no other way but to resist violence and self-defense." "China's territorial sovereignty has been invaded by Japan" and "China will never give up any part of its territory." In the event of aggression, only the exercise of the natural right of self-defence shall be met. ”
In addition to its diplomatic efforts to establish an image of a firm resistance to the War of Resistance, from a military point of view, the Nationalist government used Mao Zedong's words to "fight against Japan relatively hard" in the frontal battlefield operations from the outbreak of the July 7 Incident to October 1938, and Zhu De commented that "a considerable number of Kuomintang troops and local troops on the front line actively resisted the enemy." After the outbreak of the July 7 Incident, on 9 July, the Nationalist government ordered Sun Lianzhong, commander-in-chief of the 26th Route Army, Gao Guizi, commander of the 84th Division, Pang Bingxun, commander of the 46th Army, and Wan Fulin, commander of the 53rd Army, to immediately concentrate their troops in Baoding and Shijiazhuang, with a view to supporting the 29th Army in the Pingjin area against Japan. The defensive battle fought by Tang Enbo's troops at Nankou greatly supported the Northwest Army in the Pingjin area.
After the outbreak of the August 13 Incident, the Nationalist Government once again transferred the well-equipped and well-trained 87th and 88th Divisions of Chiang Kai-shek to Zhang Zhizhong, Chen Cheng, and Hu Zongnan, and the 18th Army and the 1st Army successively to the Songhu Battlefield, while the local units departing from Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, and other places also showed a firm will to fight in Shanghai and other places.
However, in combat, the factional contradictions brought about by the long-term civil war have directly affected the exertion of the army's combat effectiveness. In the Battle of Nankou, Tang Enbo and other troops fought with the Japanese army for more than 20 days in the Mountains of Nankou, where the fortifications could not be excavated, paying more than 30,000 casualties, but successfully delayed the Japanese offensive. However, in the middle and late stages of the battle, Tang Enbo judged that the Pingjin Northwest Army had the possibility of retreating, so he arranged a five-man intelligence group in Beiping City in advance, but due to poor communication with the 29th Army, the intelligence team actually learned from the police near the station that the Chinese army would withdraw from Peiping.
The meaning of the frontal battlefield
The withdrawal of Chinese troops in the Pingjin area is also the result of the difficulty of different systems of troops to cooperate well with each other. On August 12, 1937, the Military Commission of the Nationalist Government decided to gather troops on the outskirts of Pingjin, and demarcated the battlefield demarcation line between the Northwest Army and the reinforcements, and readjusted the overall defensive deployment: it was stipulated that the areas along the northern section of the Jinpu Railway should be held by the 29th Army and the 53rd Army, and the areas along the northern section of the Pinghan Railway should be held by the 26th Route Army, the 3rd Army, and the 52nd Army, under the unified command of Liu Zhi, commander-in-chief of the Second Group Army of chiang kai-shek's Central Army The Cangshi (County) Shi (Jiazhuang) Line was held by the 32nd Army, the 67th Army, and was under the direct command of Xu Yongchang, director of the Shijiazhuang Battalion; the 15th Army and the 18th Army were used as the general reserves, and controlled the area south of the Cangshi Line. In the eastern section of the Pingsui Railway, in early August, the 17th Army and the 68th Army were combined into the Cha Provincial Garrison Corps, which was responsible for the operation of Suidong Chabei, and used the 1st Cavalry Army to use the Chabei side, and the 13th Army to Xuanhua and Huailai to serve as a reserve army. The above operations on the Chasui side were under the command of Fu Zuoyi, commander-in-chief of the Seventh Army. This layout fully considers the traditional scope of each faction and the complex relationship between different generals, but does not consider whether Song Zheyuan and Liu Zhi can truly grasp the troops under them, and whether the command ability and experience of the large corps of their two are sufficient to fulfill their command responsibilities.
In 1937, Chinese troops hurriedly erected barricades behind the commercial newspaper building in Shanghai's Zhabei District to resist the Japanese invasion
As a result, on September 18, the Japanese North China Front began to detour from Zhengding and other places to Baoding, the Japanese First Army advanced rapidly south along the Pinghan Road, and on the 24th, the Japanese army occupied Mancheng, and on the same day, when Chiang Kai-shek sent a telegram to Liu Zhi to hold Baoding and Mancheng, Liu actually had no reliable reserves. When the Japanese attacked Baoding and its flanks twice, the defenders of the 52nd Army retreated south. On the same day, all the defenders around Baoding retreated to the south bank of the Tuotuo River. At this point, Baoding and its north were all trapped in the hands of the enemy, and the key area of the northern section of Pinghan Road was seized by the enemy, and the war situation in North China deteriorated rapidly.
Similarly, in the August 13 Incident, the Nationalist government abandoned the unfinished Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou national defense fortification system, completely ignored the experience of the "1.28" operation in 1932, and pushed hundreds of thousands of officers and men to the cities and suburbs of Shanghai to engage in confrontation with the Japanese army in vain, bearing the superior sea, land, and air firepower of the Japanese army. If the strategy and tactics were wiser, these forces could have played a greater role. Although the Nationalist government later believed that the Shanghai Campaign bought time for the Great Inward Migration, some even claimed that the battle disrupted the rhythm of the Japanese offensive. However, the tragic battle loss ratio and the heavy losses of the Chinese army after withdrawing from Shanghai, due to the lack of large-depth defenses in advance, directly led to the rapid fall of Nanjing and the massacre of the Japanese army.
On October 26, 1937, Zhang Huarun and others of the National Government Control Yuan, believing that Liu Zhi should be responsible for the results of the fall of most of Northern China, impeached him: "Liu Zhi, the director of the Yuwan Appeasement, feared death and did not fight fiercely, so he ordered a general retreat, and once he collapsed to Shijiazhuang, causing all hebei to be lost, and the two provinces of Yu and Jin suffered the calamity; now he retreated to Zhangde (Anyang); Fu from Liuli River to Shijiazhuang Jili more than 400, Shijiazhuang to Zhangde also more than 400, is between the tenth and the japanese, defeated for thousands of miles, from ancient times to the present, The loss of the land has not been as fast as it is. This can be seen as a microcosm of the frontal battlefield battle of the Nationalist government after the July 7 Incident.
In September 1937, the cavalry unit of the Eighth Route Army prepared to go to the front
However, we should still remember that until the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in October 1938, the Nationalist government, with the cooperation of the anti-Japanese armed forces led by the Communist Party of China, successively carried out large-scale battles such as the Pinglu Operation, the Battle of Nankou, the Battle of Taiyuan, the Battle of Songhu, the Battle of Nanjing, the Battle of Taierzhuang, and the Battle of Wuhan. The initial battles of the frontal battlefield and the "space for time" strategy implemented by the Nationalist government after the fall of Guangzhou bought valuable time for the political, economic and cultural forces in the coastal areas to move to the southwest, and in industry alone, 639 industrial and mining enterprises, 116,000 tons of raw material equipment and at least 12,000 skilled workers arrived in the Sichuan-Chongqing region.
As for the significance of the frontal battlefield, the "Eighth Route Army's Military and Political Magazine" summed it up as follows: If there is "no heroic resistance of the frontal main force" and "there is no cooperation with the friendly forces behind the enemy lines, (the Eighth Route Army) cannot achieve such great results."
"Only guns and bullets grain rice"
On August 22, 1937, in accordance with the agreement reached between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the Nationalist government announced that the First, Second and Fourth Fronts of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army would be reorganized into the Eighth Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army. In October 1937, after the Nationalist government announced the name of the New Fourth Army, the Red Army guerrillas in the 15th district of the eight southern provinces were successively reorganized into the New Fourth Army. Although the Nationalist government promised to pay the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, provide equipment, materials, and ammunition, in reality, on battlefields such as Shanxi, Yan Xishan, Wei Lihuang, and other generals also provided limited materials to the Eighth Route Army by virtue of their own power.
However, the Nationalist government paid the Eighth Route Army only 300,000 yuan a month, and it was difficult to meet the food and salaries of 45,000 officers and men on paper. The New Fourth Army was even more tight, because the Kuomintang only gave the New Fourth Army 10,300 personnel, with a fund of only 80,000 yuan, and on average, one person was only more than 7 yuan a month. With the gradual expansion of the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army in the War of Resistance behind enemy lines, the actual strength of our army increased significantly, and by December 1939, the little money given by the Nationalist government was only 0.67 yuan for each soldier of the Eighth Route Army, and less than 3 yuan for the New Fourth Army. Even so, the Kuomintang side still withheld everything, and the service was completely stopped. It is no wonder that Ye Jianying used the phrase "only guns and bullets to pay grains of rice" to describe the grain paid to our army by the Kuomintang side. As for the anti-Japanese armed forces in South China, the Northeast Anti-Japanese League, and other anti-Japanese armed forces under the leadership of our party, they basically did not receive any support from the Nationalist government.
In 1940, the artillery unit of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region was preparing to be inspected by Nie Rongzhen
As a result, the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army, and the Anti-Japanese Armed Forces in South China, which had just arrived in the battlefields of North China, Central China, and South China, were almost in an unfavorable situation of lack of food and ammunition. Taking artillery as an example, the predecessor of the artillery unit of the Eighth Route Army was the artillery unit of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, and on August 25, 1937, the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army was reorganized into the Eighth Route Army, with 3 divisions and 1 rear garrison under its jurisdiction. In the course of the reorganization, the mountain artillery company of the special task force regiment of the former headquarters of the Red Army was reorganized into the mountain artillery company of the special task force regiment of the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army; the 115th, 120th, and 129th divisions each formed an artillery battalion at the rear of the Eighth Route Army. In November, due to the lack of artillery equipment, the artillery battalions of the 115th, 120th, and 129th Divisions were abolished according to the decision of the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army. The 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army was reorganized from the former 1st Army and 15th Army of the Red Army, and the artillery company of the former Red 1st Army was reorganized into the mortar company of the 343rd Brigade of the 115th Division. The artillery company of the 343rd Brigade had 2 artillery platoons, 4 mortars, 1 ammunition platoon, an infantry platoon, and a debris platoon, each with only more than 30 rounds of ammunition.
However, the Eighth Route Army, which was poorly equipped and short of clothing and ammunition, dared to take the initiative to attack the Japanese army. On September 25, 1937, the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army ambushed a unit of the 21st Brigade of the Japanese Fifth Division in the Pingxingguan area of Lingqiu County, Shanxi Province. The day before the attack, the 343rd Brigade Artillery Company sent comrades from the ammunition platoon and the sundries platoon to search for ammunition on the abandoned positions of the Nationalist troops a few kilometers away from the Laoye Temple, and accidentally found a large number of 82 mm mortar shells discarded by the Nationalist army, so they mobilized the whole company to carry them, and by dawn on the 25th, the artillery company of the 343rd Brigade had collected more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, and each mortar was stocked with more than 300 rounds. Later, the Eighth Route Army used the Yanxishan Jin Army's mountain field artillery salvaged from the Tuotuo River to establish the Eighth Route Army Headquarters Artillery Regiment in Linfen, Shanxi On January 28, 1938.
Rapidly developing anti-Japanese forces behind enemy lines
In order to unite the anti-Japanese forces to the greatest extent, the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army began to extensively mobilize the masses and absorb various anti-Japanese armed forces. Workers in northern China quickly organized workers' self-defense forces after the fall of Pingjin. According to incomplete statistics from the Workers' movement committee of the CPC Central Committee, in the early stage of the War of Resistance Against Japan, there were more than 40 workers' anti-Japanese armed forces with considerable scale and combat effectiveness, of which 26 were workers' armed forces with a strength of 200-1,000 people. Take the Tongpu Railway Workers' Armed Self-Defense Force, also known as the "Iron Workers' Brigade", as an example, which once took advantage of the enemy's empty strength to retake Ruicheng, and also wrote in the newspaper with the record of 7 members destroying and injuring 13 Japanese fake cars. In the work of hoeing and raping in the enemy-occupied areas, the "iron work team" assassinated Zhang Yuxiang and 42 other traitors. In August 1938, the "IronWorks Brigade" was officially incorporated into the 10th Guerrilla Regiment of the Eighth Route Army, and later merged into the 16th Regiment of the 386th Brigade. In addition, in late September 1937, the Zhengtai Railway Workers' Self-Defense Force, which was established in Shouyang, Shanxi, successively merged the Yangquan Miners' Guerrilla Group and the Yuci Spinning Factory Workers' Guerrilla Brigade, and raced across the Taihang Mountains to southeastern Jin, on the one hand, to crack down on enemy and counterfeiters, on the other hand, to collect and protect precious locomotives, railway equipment and other materials, and even received a 100,000 yuan bonus from the Ministry of Communications of the National Government.
The commanders and fighters of the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army triumphantly carried the captured weapons after the victory at Pingxingguan
By 1940, 19,538 workers from all over North China had participated in organized regular combat. Workers from all over the country enthusiastically joined the army and effectively supported the Eighth Route Army. For example, when the Eighth Route Army arrived in Ci County, Hebei Province, 3,500 Liuhegou coal miners alone joined the army. The quota of employees of the Tongpu Railway is only 8,000, but under the call of the party organization, more than 2,000 people joined the army at a time, and as many as 4,000 miners from Zibo Yidu, Shandong Province, joined the Eighth Route Army. In addition, a large number of workers' armed forces were directly reorganized into the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army. For example, the "Workers' Self-Defense Brigade" of more than 4,000 people and the Pingpu Railway Workers' Guerrilla Group of more than 500 people were incorporated into the regular army.
Under the leadership of the rapidly growing party, the anti-Japanese armed forces behind enemy lines soon became a strong force that made the Japanese army sleep more than the regular army on the frontal battlefield. According to Japanese records, in September 1938, the Special Forces of the New Fourth Army in Jiangbei ambushed a Convoy of more than 80 Japanese vehicles on the Anqing-Tongcheng Highway, destroying more than 30 of them, killing more than 10 Japanese officers and more than 20 soldiers. This battle led to the severe supply of the surrounding Japanese troops.
Aid from the SOVIET UNION
The rapid growth of the anti-Japanese armed forces behind enemy lines led by the CPC soon attracted widespread attention at home and abroad. The Nationalist Government's command of the regular army to carry out many large-scale battles on the frontal battlefield, as well as the rapid launch of the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army, and the Anti-Japanese Armed Forces in South China behind enemy lines, have enabled the world to see China's potential for resistance. The Japanese side also quickly realized that the anti-Japanese armed forces under the leadership of the Chinese Communists were the most important enemies after the War of Resistance entered the stage of stalemate, and proposed a strategy against the Nationalist government to "focus on political inducements and supplemented by military strikes."
At the same time, a large number of materials and donations from home and abroad began to be received through the "Eight Offices" in various localities, and eventually remitted to the base areas behind enemy lines. After the outbreak of the July 7 Incident, the Western powers such as the United States, Britain, france, and Japan began a substantive confrontation around seizing and safeguarding interests and traditional spheres of influence in China, and the contradictions between Japan and the United States and Britain gradually intensified and completely changed the trend of international relations in the Far East. In late July, Japan sent a large number of invading troops in north China, attacking Langfang on the one hand and encircling Peiping and Tianjin from three directions on the other. Japan's aggressive attitude led Britain to invite the U.S. and French governments to work together to "promote Japan not to expand the incident," but this proposal was rejected by the United States, which is still plagued by isolationism.
In view of Japan's quest for dominance over Shanghai in 1932, in August 1937 U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent 1,200 Marines to Shanghai to strengthen its defenses. Before and after the outbreak of the August 13 Incident, western countries generally feared that if China could thwart Japan's aggression, it would probably sweep the Western concessions in China and other unequal treaties into the garbage heap of history.
But Japan's increasing number of troops in Shanghai has made the West aware that Japan is the greatest opponent of the great powers on the China issue compared with China's anti-colonial ideology. But before Japan revealed its covetousness for the traditional spheres of influence of the United States, Britain, and France in Southeast Asia, the great powers were reluctant to give more support to China, so much so that China quickly felt forgotten and abandoned by the world in 1937. But at the critical moment, the Soviets were "sending charcoal in the snow".
After the July 7 Incident, the Soviet government took the initiative to contact the Nationalist government, concluded the Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact on August 21, and began to aid China. From March 1938 to July 1939, the Soviet Union provided $250 million in loans to China. In November 1937, the Soviet Volunteer Air Force for Aid to China, commonly known as the "Sword of Justice", officially came to China to participate in the war, and the arrival of Soviet pilots was much earlier than the "Flying Tigers" with greater fame in the future. Moreover, from the perspective of the depletion of China's air power in the War of Resistance, the Soviet Volunteer Air Force aided China to give decisive support to the Chinese Air Force, which was almost rapidly depleted after the August 13 Incident, and helped China rebuild the system of personnel training, ground handling and material support.
Around 1938, members of the Soviet Air Force Volunteer Corps were at Wuhan Airport
In the Battle of Nomonhan on the Sino-Mongolian border, which began in May 1939, the Soviet Red Army gave Japan a head-on blow, and in late August Japan was completely defeated. But then, as Germany launched a blitzkrieg in the European theater, the Soviet Union began to seek a non-aggression pact with Japan. Even so, in June 1939, the Soviet Union signed the Soviet-Chinese Trade Treaty with China, continuing to supply weapons and ammunition to China and supporting China's War of Resistance Against Japan. The Nationalist government, on the other hand, took advantage of the contradictions between the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain, and Japan to try to gain support. According to statistics, from July 1937 to 1940, the countries that gave loans to China were the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain, France, the Czech Republic and Belgium, with a total of 26 loans. Among them, the Soviet Union's aid was the most, borrowing up to 300 million US dollars, and in the borrowing conditions, collateral was not listed, and the interest rate was low, which was extremely favorable support for the Chinese War of Resistance. It was followed by France, which provided more than 1 billion francs of aid to China. With these aides, China's economy survived 1940 and finally received U.S. Lend-Lease bill materials and large monetary borrowings before the outbreak of the Pacific War, which can also be regarded as a major diplomatic achievement of the Nationalist government.
The United States and Britain, before the outbreak of the Pacific War, were unwilling to provide substantial support to China, but were obsessed with the Munich Conspiracy in the East. In this regard, on May 25, 1941, Mao Zedong drafted a directive to the Party under the title of "Exposing the Munich Conspiracy in the Far East", pointing out that "the new conspiracy in Munich in the East, which was compromised by Japan and the United States and sacrificed China, resulting in an anti-communist and anti-Soviet situation, is brewing between Japan, the United States and Chiang Kai-shek, and we must expose it and oppose it." Finally, on December 7, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and began to invade Southeast Asia on the same day, the United States and Britain deliberately avoided the complete bankruptcy of the small calculation of a frontal war with Japan, and China declared itself surviving the dark period of almost being abandoned by most of the world, becoming the mainstay of the eastern battlefield of the gradually formed anti-fascist front.