In 1946, with more than 4 million elite troops, the Nationalist army brazenly tore up the armistice agreement and attacked the liberated areas. At that time, many people may not be optimistic about the number of people only more than 1 million, only millet plus rifles of our army, will achieve a great reversal of the Jedi in less than 3 years, with a thunderous momentum to liberate all of China.
So, how exactly did our army reverse in these 3 years, and where was the inflection point between the two sides of the war?
Liu Deng entered the Dabie Mountains
Many people may first think of Liu Deng's thousand-mile battle against Dabie Mountain, or the "three major battles" that began in 1948. It is true that Liu Deng's transfer to the outside line allowed our army to enter a strategic offensive posture, and the three major battles completely annihilated the last 1.5 million elites of the Nationalist army. But there was one battle whose influence was no less than Liu Deng's march into the Central Plains, and that was the "Battle of Eastern Henan", which was rarely mentioned. This battle, which only annihilated 100,000 enemy troops, turned the battlefield of the whole country alive in one fell swoop, and it was precisely because of this battle that our army officially entered the counter-offensive stage, according to the words of the chairman:
"The Liberation War is like climbing a mountain, and now (after the Battle of Eastern Henan) we have passed the pass of the mountain, and the most arduous climbing stage has passed."
Why, then, would such a battle of eastern Henan, which annihilated the enemy and was inferior to That of Jinan, become a watershed for our army to begin its counterattack?
Su Yu, who commanded the battle in eastern Henan
Before exploring why the chairman highly valued the Battle of Eastern Henan, let's first understand what the Battle of Eastern Henan is.
Even in 1947, Liu Dengqian leapt into the Dabie Mountains and burned the flames of war to the Kuomintang area. However, the life of our army in Guannei was not good, not to mention that Liu Deng was surrounded by Bai Chongxi at Dabie Mountain, and the number of personnel who lacked clothing and food was reduced by half. Even Hano, who had been winning in Kannai, suffered consecutive defeats in the second half of 1947. First, after the division of troops in July, the large army led by Su Yu lost successively in the battles of Nanma and Linqu, and the situation was not opened up in the Central Plains, but the Jiaodong Peninsula was broken through by the central government of the Nationalist army, and for a time the large rear area of the Shandong Liberated Area almost became an enemy-occupied area.
According to the words of the reporter accompanying our army at that time:
“...... The entire Shandong Liberated Area, except for the Bohai Sea area north of the Yellow River, was ravaged by Chiang Kai-shek's army. In the past, no brigade or division of Chiang Kai-shek's army dared to act alone, fearing that we would encircle and annihilate them. Now, one company and one platoon of Jiang Jun dared to go out in a frenzied attack day and night. The broad masses of the people are in a state of panic. .........”
Our army in the Liberated Areas of Shandong
Based on the defeat of our army in 1947, the Central Military Commission at that time was also very pessimistic, and may have thought that the war of liberation would be delayed for at least 5-10 years. He even asked Su Yu to take 1 corps to Jiangnan to fight guerrilla warfare and harass the Kuomintang area. Therefore, at the end of 1947, not only Liu Deng, but also Hua Yedu's "darkest hour" in Kannai.
Huaye Army in 1947
However, the more adversity became, the more heroic his true colors became, and at that time, Su Yu took the initiative to issue a famous "child raising order" to the Central Military Commission in response to the dilemma. Insisting on fighting in Jiangbei, after receiving the "reluctant consent" of the Central Military Commission, Huaye under the leadership of General Manager Chen and Su Yu conducted a rectification training in Puyang, and this reorganization training was also Huaye's longest ideological, educational, and army reorganization. After being rested, Huaye, as well as Nakano, who jumped out of the Dabie Mountains and received supplies from the second-level military regions, also began to unite in the Central Plains to fight a big battle. And this is the "Battle of Eastern Henan".
In recuperation and commendation of the Huaye troops
The first phase, the Battle of Kaifeng
After the reorganization, Su Yu led Huaye west out of Eastern Henan and attacked Kaifeng, the capital of Henan Province at that time, and on June 16, 1948, the 3rd and 8th Columns of Huaye Shandong Corps completed the encirclement of the Kaifeng garrison, which was mostly defended by the nationalist reorganized 66th and 68th Divisions. On the 17th, our army basically solved the Kaifeng Chengguan troops, and on the 18th, it invaded the city of Kaifeng from the south gate and the west gate respectively, and braved the difficulties of the enemy's air force to carry out fierce street battles with the defenders, until the occupation of the provincial office building on the 20th, the declaration of the occupation of Kaifeng on the 21st, and the total annihilation of the 30,000 defenders.
This battle mobilized the major corps of the Central Plains Nationalist Army, and at the same time isolated the Ou Shou Nian Corps.
Capture the open Huaye soldiers
Stage II: The Battle of Suiqi.
After the Battle of Kaifeng, our army immediately withdrew after a short rest and continued to search for occupation in the movement, and after withdrawing from Kaifeng, Qiu Qingquan led the Fifth Army to venture forward and directly enter Kaifeng, thus separating it from the Ou Shou Nian Corps, which created space for our army to completely annihilate Ou Shou Nian. After this short space appeared, Su Yu immediately made a decision, and immediately surrounded the Ou ShouNian Corps (reorganized 72nd and 75th Divisions) with the 1st, 4th, 6th and 11th Columns of Nakano, the number one aces in Huaye, and blocked the Fifth Army with the 3rd and 8th Columns that had contributed to the Battle of Kaifeng.
Marching troops of the Nationalist Army in the Central Plains
On June 27, 1948, our army began a general offensive, on the 29th our army occupied Guotun to eliminate the first part of the reorganized 75th Division, on the 30th captured the village of Qiutun, and on July 1, the corps headquarters of Ou Shounian was completely annihilated. At this time, Su Yu's "bold" side was displayed again, and he began his own "encirclement point attack and reinforcement" tactic, he hung the remaining 72nd Division without fighting, and used a small number of troops to contain it, aiming at the two troops that came to aid Huang Botao (Yanzhou departure) and Qiu Qingquan.
After weighing the pros and cons, on July 4, a large number of troops mobilized by Su Yu secretly moved to the vicinity of Huang Botao's troops, risking the bombing of the enemy air force, and rushed straight to Huang Botao's main line, when the troops brought by Huang were basically exhausted and began to burn documents. However, considering that Qiu Qingquan's Fifth Army was too fierce in its offensive, it had no choice but to decide to abandon the annihilation of the Yellow Army. Therefore, on July 6, our army took the initiative to withdraw from the battlefield and the Suiqi Campaign ended.
The entire campaign annihilated more than 50,000 enemy troops and captured Ouyang Shounian.
A map of the situation of the second phase of the campaign
In the Battle of Eastern Henan, our army walked a tightrope between 4 enemy corps, and even if the strength was inferior, it occupied the battlefield initiative and wanted to fight which one to fight, but this kind of battle was also good at fighting the "Immortal War" Su Yu dared to fight. Throughout the Battle of Eastern Henan, our army mobilized 4 mobile corps of the enemy, annihilated 1 corps, 2 integrated division headquarters, 4 regular brigades, and 2 security brigades of the enemy in the course of the operation, and annihilated more than 90,000 enemy personnel in total, including the blockade operation.
The captured Ou Shou Nian and the commander of the reorganized 75th Division
Although Su Yu has always described this battle as killing a thousand enemies and inflicting eight hundred self-inflicted losses after the war (more than 30,000 casualties in the entire battle of our army), there is no doubt that this battle is a big victory that our army has not seen for a long time, which directly changed the trend of the Central Plains battlefield. Even Liu Shuai of Nakano said when reviewing this battle: "I can't fight such a big battle, I don't have such courage, I don't have such courage." Although this is Chen Shuai's self-humility, it also shows that this battle has indeed won a good life.
Liu Deng, the chief of Su Yu, was highly praised
So why did this battle make Chairman Jean and Liu Shuai so highly evaluated?
First of all, this battle directly changed the pattern of the Central Plains and brought the entire Central Plains battlefield to life.
Just as Yu Tianjun said, after the division of troops and Liu Deng entered the Dabie Mountains in July, our army has been fighting a war of attrition with Lao Chiang, and both sides have been seeing red bayonets and have been tug-of-war, while our army's first battle after carrying out land reform and rectification training has a good basis in the encirclement of hundreds of thousands of nationalist troops. Moreover, it was this campaign that transferred all the nationalist troops in the Liberated Areas to the Central Plains to "play mahjong" and eased the pressure on the Liberated Areas. Liu Deng was also able to come out of the Dabie Mountains, establish a base area in the Central Plains, and rely on the transportation of soldiers from the 2nd-level military region to gradually restore his combat effectiveness.
Nakano troops that jumped out of the periphery to establish a base area
Moreover, after this battle, Chen Xie succeeded in attacking Xiangfan, and the Central China troops of the Nationalist army had to return to the defense, and the Shandong Corps took advantage of Huang Botao's departure from Yanzhou's lair to support Ou Shounian and directly copied his rear road, so that Huang Botao had to withdraw from Shandong to northern Jiangsu. On the northern Jiangsu side, Wei Guoqing and others were also recovering and establishing base areas (Lianshui and other places).
The center of Su Yu can blossom and bring the battlefield alive.
Second, our army has set a precedent for joint operations at all levels.
In this campaign, our army opened a pattern or evolved to a realm, that is, the cooperation between the two field army levels, the Battle of Eastern Henan, Nakano actually participated in the blockade, and Su Yu even reported the combat deployment to the two chiefs Liu Deng. This is different from the previous battles of Huaye and Nakano (one reason for the defeat in the 1947 external operation was the poor coordination and command of the two sides). This also made a good start for the Battle of Huaihai 4 months later, when the two sides jointly established the General Front Committee.
The two giants of Nakano and Huaye join forces
Finally, our army's mentality has regained its self-confidence.
As our army's war correspondent said a year ago, after the division of troops in July, a company and regiment of the Nationalist army entered our base area with a big wave. However, after the Battle of Eastern Henan, the nationalist army that our army was afraid of did not even dare to march alone with an integrated division, for fear of becoming the second Ou Shou Nian, which was a strategic deterrent. Moreover, after the Battle of Eastern Henan, our army changed the "burden" of the Nanma and Linqu Campaigns and began to raise morale back to the peak of the Menglianggu Campaign.
And how obvious the morale of our army is improved, Wang Yaowu after 2 months has the most say. Jinan, which more than 100,000 people have painstakingly managed for several years, was easily broken through by our army. Our army, with its high morale, has even produced many heroic and exemplary units.
Ace regiment of the Shandong Corps that conquered Jinan
In fact, according to the chairman's "climbing the mountain", our army broke the balance of confrontation between the nationalist army in Guannei, especially in the Central Plains battlefield, through the operation in eastern Henan, and from holding each other to taking the initiative, Nakano and Huaye achieved a leap forward; after this battle, the central plains battlefield initiative has been taken over by our army, Jinan has become an isolated city, and our army can cross the river to the south to fight, and can also fight a decisive battle with the enemy army in Huanghuai. In addition, Dongye had completed the revision and realized the encirclement of the northeast nationalist army, and Peng Zong in the northwest also recaptured Yan'an, and our army in north China trapped Fu Zuoyi in the area of Beijing, Tianjin, Tang and Zhangjiakou, and the situation in the whole country was bright.
The Battle of Eastern Henan can be described as a domino that overturned the National Army.
— The end —