Admiral Li Zhimin fought with his political battles

"Source of this article: Learning Times"

From successive anti-"encirclement and suppression" campaigns to the Western Expedition, from the Northwest Battlefield to the South of the 38th Parallel, from the political commissar of the Squadron to the political commissar of the Military Region, General Li Zhimin has traveled thousands of miles and galloped on the battlefield for 60 years, accumulating rich political work experience. His compilations of "The Crucible of Revolution" and "Summary of the Political Work of the Chinese People's Volunteer Army in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea" are valuable assets for the study of the army's political work and party history. And being good at fighting political battles is a beautiful chapter in his well-known military. Li Zhimin, a soldier who surrendered without a fight, was born in July 1906 to a poor peasant family in Liuyang County, Hunan Province. In 1928, he carried out armed struggle in his hometown, and was later transferred to the 5th Army of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, and participated in all the anti-"encirclement and suppression" operations in the Central Soviet Region. In May 1936, Li Zhimin was transferred to the post of director of the Political Department of the Red 81st Division. At the end of August, the troops received orders from the field army headquarters to attack Liwangbao, which was garrisoned by the cavalry regiment of the 35th Division of the Nationalist Army's Ma Hongbin Department. After analyzing the terrain and the situation between the enemy and ourselves, the leaders of the division unanimously held that Liwangbao should only be outsmarted and should not be attacked by force. At the operational meeting, Li Zhimin analyzed that although Ma Hongbin's troops obeyed Chiang Kai-shek's orders, they were inclined to resist Japan, and they had a lingering feeling in our army, coupled with the fact that they were trapped in an isolated city and were afraid and uneasy, and then proposed that "a soldier who yields without a fight" should do a good job in united front work, turn the enemy into a friend, and strive to peacefully occupy Liwangbao. With the consent of the divisional party committee, Li Zhimin summoned the political commissars of the 242nd and 243rd regiments and the propaganda teams of the division headquarters, asking them to actively mobilize the masses and take the initiative to launch a political offensive against the enemy. Under the leadership of Li Zhimin, the officers and men of the whole division joined hands to tie the anti-Japanese leaflets on the tail of the kite and under the Kong Ming lantern, and the anti-Japanese leaflets fell like snowflakes in the city, making the defenders of LiWangbao at their fingertips, so that they could further understand the communist party's stand of unity and resistance against Japan. At night, the propaganda team shouted into the city: "Chinese don't fight Chinese!" "The muzzle of the gun is outward, unanimously resisting Japan!" The thirteen- and fourteen-year-old "little red devils" also sang anti-Japanese songs. Suddenly, the city wall said, "Here comes the dog," followed by two gunshots. It turned out that the Kuomintang secret service organs had installed "Blue Jacket Society" agents to monitor the non-concubine troops. After the agent left, another voice came from the city wall: "The dog has run away, keep singing!" After several days of propaganda, Li Zhimin felt that the conditions were ripe, so he wrote an "open letter" to the defenders of Liwangbao. The gist of the letter is: "Brothers are on the wall, and they are insulted from outside.", looking forward to jointly resisting Japan with your army, I hereby ask your army to withdraw from Liwangbao and return to the garrison, and our army will ensure the safety of your army and send a warm farewell. Li Zhimin handed the letter to Yuan Lin, the head of the destruction section, and instructed him to bring a few fat sheep as gifts. On the same day, the defenders of Fort Liwang took the "open letter", took the fat sheep, and the next day sent representatives to negotiate and agreed to evacuate Fort Lee Wang. In the early morning of the day when Ma Hongbin's cavalry regiment was preparing to withdraw, Li Zhimin on the one hand sent some troops to wait for the cavalry regiment with their bare hands, and at the same time ordered the company commanders to be on standby. On the other hand, in order to prevent changes, Li Zhimin has already made the troops ready for battle. As soon as the cavalry regiment left the city, our military band blew a solemn and friendly salute to show farewell. In this way, the Red 81st Division entered Liwangbao without a single soldier, creating a successful example of the Red Army defeating the enemy with a political offensive. In December 1936, Li Zhimin's Red 81st Division was ordered to block the 129th Division of wang Yizhebu of the Northeast Army near Liwangbao in order to delay its attack on the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia base area. According to the instructions of the Party Central Committee on "striving for the northeast army to resist Japan in unison," the Red 81st Division, on the one hand, organized troops to build fortifications and prepare to block the attack; on the other hand, Li Zhimin, who was experienced in political work, was responsible for the preparation of the political offensive. Under the initiative of Li Zhimin, all commanders and fighters copied anti-Japanese slogans and anti-Japanese songs, and posted and distributed leaflets such as letters to all the officers and men of the Northeast Army, so that the Northeast Army could be placed in an anti-Japanese atmosphere and create a warm atmosphere of unity between the Red Army and the Northeast Army to resist Japan. On December 6, the vanguard of the 129th Division of the Northeast Army approached our division's position. Both sides were very cautious, the Northeast Army first fired a few shots and then marched slowly, Li Zhimin immediately ordered the soldiers to shoot at the air and shouted: "Chinese do not fight Chinese!" "The muzzle of the gun is out, fight back to the hometown, and recover the lost land in the northeast!" After the Northeast Army retreated, our army found that the Northeast Army had fired a lot of guns, but our army did not suffer any casualties. That night, Li Zhimin sent a propaganda team to emotionally sing the anti-Japanese songs "On the Songhua River" and "Fight Back to His Hometown" near the northeast army's positions. There was silence, and the tragic song echoed over the Northeast Army's position. The next day, the Northeast Army's gunfire decreased and it pretended to rush to the front of our army. When Li Zhimin saw this, he immediately ordered the soldiers to shout: "Brothers of the Northeast Army! Thirty million compatriots in the northeast are in the depths of the water, and the Northeast Army and the Red Army have united to fight back to their hometown! Seeing the Northeast Army creeping in front of our army's position to listen to the soldiers of our army shouting, Li Zhimin took the opportunity to ask the soldiers to invite the Northeast Army to come to our army as a guest. In the night, more than 20 people from the Northeast Army came, including officers of the school rank. Everyone sat together and talked about their hometown in the northeast, talked about who was left in the family, and the officers and men of the northeast army were in a deep state of emotion, and they couldn't help but weep with sadness. Fellow villagers asked the Northeast Army: "The Red Army specializes in fighting devils, why do you fight the Red Army?" The officers and men of the Northeast Army immediately explained: It was not that we wanted to fight, but that Chiang Kai-shek forced us to fight... Through such unfettered conversations, Li Zhimin led the soldiers and the masses to do their political work in the hearts of the officers and men of the Northeast Army. In this way, the Red 81st Division and the 129th Division of the Northeast Army talked at night, "fighting" and "fierce fighting" for five or six days during the day, and no casualties were inflicted on either side. In the early morning of December 13, our army found that the 129th Division of the Northeast Army had all withdrawn. In Li Zhimin's own words: "This is really a strange blockade battle! In February 1951, Li Zhimin participated in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea and served as the political commissar of the 19th Corps. In the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, the issue of prisoners of war was one of the difficult problems that took a long time between the two sides in the negotiation stage. In December 1951, near Christmas, Li Zhimin planned to use homesickness to fuel the war weariness of the US military, considering that the US military had gone to the Korean battlefield to serve as cannon fodder and was now captured. So, under his personal deployment, the 19th Corps launched a Christmas political offensive against American prisoners of war. By arranging Christmas trees, giving away greeting cards, gift bags, cakes, and broadcasts, the various armed forces further publicized to the US prisoners of war the propositions of China and the DPRK for the peaceful settlement of the Korean issue, conveyed the situation of the armistice negotiations, and informed them that if the US side had not been sincere in negotiating, the war would have ended long ago, and everyone could return to China to reunite with their relatives, and so on. According to statistics, during the Christmas period in 1951, the 63rd Army of the 19th Corps sent 5 Christmas trees, 153 gift bags, and more than 500,000 Copies of Christmas propaganda materials. After receiving the gifts, some of them directly pinned the peace dove medal on the brim of their hats to show their friendship; some directly scolded Truman for not being able to return home. Hurd, then British Secretary of State of War, publicly stated: "From the more than six thousand letters we know of them [prisoners of war] to their relatives, it is almost unanimously said that their treatment was quite good." Before Christmas 1952, Li Zhimin, who had been transferred to the political department of the Volunteer Army, arranged a political offensive against the enemy. He commanded our army to reach a temporary ceasefire agreement with the enemy through the radio and hold a fire line party, so that the enemy could feel the volunteers' insistence on humanitarianism and their yearning for peace from the heart. In July 1953, after the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement, although strictly prohibited by the enemy commander, there were still enemy soldiers and volunteers in the forward positions to celebrate, and said that "in the future, they will not be enemies of the Chinese." In 1955, Li Zhimin was awarded the rank of general. In 1987, Li Zhimin died of illness in Beijing at the age of 81.