In the Battle of Huaihai, who was the top general of the Nationalist army captured by the People's Liberation Army? How did it end?
In the Battle of Huaihai, the top general of the Nationalist army captured by our army was Du Yuming, whose position at that time was deputy commander-in-chief of the Xuzhou Bandits and director of the Forward Command.
It is worth mentioning that Du Yuming is also the only person who is both a war criminal and a prisoner of war.
So how did he get captured?
On December 17, 1948, the day after the Huang Wei Corps was annihilated, Chiang Kai-shek sent a telegram to Du Yuming: "I hope that my brother will not act alone, and tomorrow he will send personnel to Fly to Beijing to teach him the plane." Du Yuming sent Comfortable Cun, chief of staff of the Xuzhou "Suppression General" Forward Command, to Nanjing by plane.
On December 19, he went to Nanjing to receive Chiang Kai-shek's "face-to-face instructions" and returned to Chen Guanzhuang, and at the same time brought Chiang Kai-shek's handwritten letter, which explained that for the rescue of Du Yuming's clique, the troops who had no assistance for the time being could only break through forcibly under the cover of the air force, and how much they could break through.
That evening, Du Yuming convened a meeting of personnel above the commander level at the headquarters of the Second Corps, and after careful study with his subordinates, on the one hand, he agreed to the plan of surviving the breakthrough under the cover of the air force and prepared for the breakthrough; on the other hand, on how to break through, he put forward three strategies of "up, middle, and down":
The best strategy: Xi'an and Wuhan (if necessary, Wuhan can be abandoned) to mobilize the main forces of Hu Zongnan and Bai Chongxi, concentrate all the forces that can be concentrated, and fight a decisive battle with the communist army in the Huaihai area.
Middle strategy: The corps still insist on sticking to it and buying time, that is, hoping to solve the problem by using the method of peace talks when the crisis cannot be saved militarily.
The next strategy: Risk breaking through according to Chiang Kai-shek's plan, but this can only be a helpless move, and it will definitely not achieve the expected purpose.
However, Chiang Kai-shek took the next step, that is, to ask Du Yuming to make an unsure risky breakthrough.
This made Du Yuming clearly feel the arrival of the moment of destruction.
Because he understood that in the Kuomintang army, due to the contradictions between the command, the forward commander, and the unit commander, and because of the contradictions between the troops and the troops, if a breakthrough is ordered, the inevitable result will definitely be to take care of each other, unable to act in a unified manner according to the orders issued in advance, and under the powerful attack of the Platon Army, it will inevitably collapse rapidly. He is about to become the second Huang Wei.
On the evening of January 9, Du Yuming came to the headquarters of the Fifth Army, which was the strongest army in the encirclement at the time, at Chen Zhuang to study the breakthrough operation the next day, and under the protest and threat of his subordinates, he decided to break through, and at the same time sent a final telegram to Chiang Kai-shek, who had served in the Kuomintang army for most of his life: "The departments have been in chaos and cannot be maintained until tomorrow, only to break through separately that night. ”
Obviously, the so-called "split-headed breakthrough" means that regardless of the establishment system, do not unify the command, and escape from each other. As soon as the order was given, the encircling Kuomintang troops immediately scattered and fled.
Du Yuming did not rush out with the large troops of the Fifth Army, but took his lieutenants, guards, and a dozen other people to the west from Chen Zhuang in the night, because he saw too many troops going west, he turned to the east and north. By dawn, the People's Liberation Army was everywhere, and when he heard the sound of "lay down your weapons and surrender your guns and don't kill," he knew it was all over.
In this way, du Yuming, the most famous general in the army of the Kuomintang who had been in the limelight for a while, and then in the Central Plains battlefield after the battle with our army in the northeast battlefield, became a prisoner of our army on the morning of January 10, 1949.
Since his capture, Du has been held in solitary confinement, with little contact with the outside world, but also with no contact with other prominent war criminals. At the beginning of 1956, the Ministry of Public Security set up a war criminals management center to gather important war criminals from all over the country in Beijing for study and reform, and Du Yuming also came here. ”
Under the meticulous treatment and care of the medical staff of the management center, Du's long-term painful diseases such as stomach ulcers, tuberculosis and kidney tuberculosis were gradually improved and recovered until they were healed. Ideologically, Du Yuming was gradually able to consciously move forward on the road of regeneration. In September 1959, Du Yuming's name was prominently listed in the list of the first batch of criminals who changed from evil to good in the amnesty, and he also spoke at the amnesty conference as a representative.
In 1961, Du Yuming served as a commissioner in the Literature and History Materials Research Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Later, Du Yuming served as a member of the Fourth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and a member of the Standing Committee of the Fifth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and died in Beijing on May 7, 1981.