With the decisive victory in the Battle of Huaihai, Hua Ye gathered the captured senior Kuomintang generals and carried out reforms, and among these nationalist generals, a major general named Li Hanping confessed that before launching the Battle of Xu Beng, lao Jiang had issued a heart-wrenching order, that is, to blow up the Yellow River embankment in an attempt to prevent our army from assembling in the Xuzhou area.
In the Battle of Eastern Henan in 1948, our army annihilated about 90,000 Nationalist troops, and HuaYe gradually gathered in the southwest of Lu, and when the two major armies of the east and the west were integrated, they conquered Jinan in September, when Wang Yaowu was captured when he broke through to Shouguang territory due to Wu Huawen's uprising.
At the end of September of the same year, Su Yu put forward a strategic plan for Xiaohuaihai, preparing to divide and encircle the enemy on the outer line and not give the enemy the opportunity to fight a decisive battle in Xuzhou, and after the situation changed, Su Yu changed his thinking and suggested to the central authorities that he be prepared to suppress the enemy's main force in the northern part of the Jiangsu Province and annihilate it in one fell swoop.
After the central government agreed to Su Yu's "Great Huaihai" plan, the first phase of the Huaihai Campaign was officially launched, and Nakano's main force, under the command of Liu Bocheng, Deng Xiaoping, and Chen Yi, successively conquered Xuchang and Zhengzhou, preparing to move towards Xuzhou.
The Kuomintang side also sensed that something was wrong with the abnormal movement of the Central Plains Field Army and Huaye, and Chiang Kai-shek initially wanted to withdraw the main force around Xuzhou to Bengbu, but changed his plan, and he decided to fight a decisive battle with the communist army in Xuzhou, and took the initiative to abandon the positions on the outskirts of Xuzhou.
At that time, Qiu Qingquan received orders from Old Jiang and led the Second Corps to the east to approach Xuzhou.
Speaking of which, Qiu Qingquan's Fifth Army claimed to be one of the five main forces under lao Chiang Kai-shek, and he was known for being good at fighting hard battles, but in the battles of Eastern Henan, Shatuji, and Jinan, Huaye became stronger and stronger, while Qiu Qingquan had lost the courage to fight hard with Huaye.
When the 46th Division of the 5th Army encountered Huaye Yi near Huangkou, the division was powerless before it could fight much, and Qiu Qingquan, the commander of the Fifth Army, personally commanded the troops to counterattack, otherwise he would take his military law.
Seeing the slow and weak behavior of Qiu Qingquan's troops, the Xuzhou General Department was quite dissatisfied, but there was nothing to do about this grumpy Qiu madman, so he had to report the situation truthfully to the Ministry of National Defense; Chiang Kai-shek was worried about the great defeat in the northeast, and when he heard about Qiu Qingquan's affairs, he could not help but scold Niang Xipi and bluntly say that Qiu Qingquan had misled the country, but Huaye's large army suppressed the situation, and he did not dare to change generals on the spot, which was a big taboo for soldiers.
Chiang Kai-shek, who had always liked to control the troops, suddenly had a wild idea, that is, to replace the soldiers with rivers.
As early as 1938, in order to prevent the Japanese from launching a large-scale attack on Henan, the Kuomintang did not hesitate to blow up the Huayuankou levee in Zhengzhou, although to a certain extent it achieved the purpose of preventing the Japanese army from entering Henan and Hubei, it caused millions of ordinary people to drown and starve to death, and indirectly caused the more tragic 1942 Henan famine.
Did Chiang Kai-shek not know the tragic lessons of that year? He knew that the good villains had an excuse in order to stop the Japanese, but now that the Kuomintang and the Communists were in civil war, he could not ignore the pressure of public opinion, and once this matter was made public, he would be pointed out by thousands of people, so Chiang Kai-shek secretly sent a telegram to Qiu Qingquan, asking him to personally send troops to blow up the Yellow River embankment in Dongkou, Shandong, so that the whole territory of Luxi would fall into the flooding ocean of the Yellow River.
When Qiu Qingquan received the order, his heart was like five thunderbolts, although he was extremely vicious in fighting the People's Liberation Army, but he was born as a human being, he still had a minimum bottom line and moral outlook, and it was inevitable that people would die in battle, but it was an act of disaster to the country and the people by breaking the Yellow River, which was to be cursed by eternity and would certainly be engraved on the pillar of shame of history.
But Chiang Kai-shek's secret is unquestionable, as a soldier, Qiu Qingquan did not dare to refuse in one breath, and in desperation, he found Li Hanping, chief of staff of major generals in the corps, to discuss countermeasures, and later Li Hanping was captured, and the truth of this matter also surfaced.
After the discussion, Neither Qiu and Li dared to be criminals of history, and it was not appropriate to send their men down, and he did not dare to send people from other units to the bottom, but time was not allowed to delay, so Qiu Qingquan asked Li Hanping to come forward and appoint a military commander with deep qualifications and outstanding command ability to carry out this task, and it was Gao Jiren, the commander of the 70th Army, who was responsible for this task.
Gao Jiren was Du Yuming's old subordinate, although he had served in the Fifth Army, but he and Qiu Qingquan often broke out in contradictions, when he received this order, he could not help but have doubts about the order of his superiors, to know that it was difficult to stop the army by breaking the river, the effect was not good, and the lesson of the garden mouth breach was still vividly remembered.
After a little thought, the Gaoji people knew that this was Qiu Qingquan digging a pit for him, and now almost all of southwest Lu was conquered by the People's Liberation Army, and the garrison of the Second Corps to Dongkou was also three hundred kilometers, they did not even dare to send cars to transport soldiers, for fear of attracting the attention of the Communist Party, give them a pot end, and the troops marched on foot, it was easy to be surrounded by Huaye, and the Gaoji people who figured this out could not sweat in their heads, did not send him to the tiger's mouth? There is still the one that never goes back.
But this was an order personally issued by Chairman Chiang Kai-shek, and how could he resist as a small military commander? I can only promise to come down first.
Gao Ji and Qiu Qingquan and others discussed that the 70th Army would not carry any heavy weapons, all lightly armed, reach Dongkou within three days, and quickly evacuate after opening the river embankment, and in order to keep secrets and guide the direction of public opinion, it could be planted to the Communist Party.
In order to cover up this attempt, after blowing up several embankments with explosives, the air force could be dispatched to bomb them with bombs, creating the illusion of accidentally injuring the embankments during the engagement.
Just as the plan was being made to prepare for the operation, the Xuzhou General Held a meeting to study the next move, at which Qiu Qingquan reflected on the situation that the lack of freedom of action led to successive defeats in the war situation, and Gu Zhutong agreed that he could have a certain degree of arbitrary power.
Later, Qiu Qingquan forced Gu Zhutong to agree to the withdrawal of the Second Corps to the south on the grounds that Gu Zhutong could not refute, and moved the headquarters to Su County, because the main force of the nationalist army in Xuzhou shrank to the south, and the north of Xuzhou was naturally abandoned, so it was not very significant to stop the Plaster in southwest Lu from moving to the southeast.
Qiu Qingquan pretended to be confused and never mentioned the bombing of the Yellow River levee, even if Chiang Kai-shek asked, he had reason to refute it.
As a result, a disaster concerning the border of the four provinces and millions of people, because of the unevenness within the Kuomintang, finally succeeded in avoiding the past.