In March 1947, Hu Zongnan, the "first protégé of Tianzi" and Chiang Kai-shek's beloved general, "double happiness came to the door".
On March 19, Hu Zongnan captured the city of Yan'an, and Chiang Kai-shek awarded him a "River Map Medal" and promoted him to the rank of second-class general in the army.
"Add officials to the throne", this is a joy;
Four days later, 51-year-old Hu Zongnan finally got married, and the bride was 35-year-old Ye Xiazhai, and Hu Zongnan decided ingenuity that the wedding would be held in a cave in Yan'an.
"Cave house flower candle" is for the second joy.
However, Hu Zongnan had not had a few days of happy days, and there was trouble coming to the door.
After a telegram from the Ministry of National Defense of the National Government, with the special approval of "Chairman Jiang," the "Kuomintang District" organized a huge group of reporters to come to Xi'an to observe the achievements of the battle and cover the news of the "Yan'an Victory."
It is reasonable to say that Hu Zongnan's occupation of Yan'an made a "great contribution to the world" for the "party-state", and there are so many reporters who "hold the scene" for him, Hu Zongnan should be ecstatic.
However, Hu Zongnan was not happy at all, but scratched his ears and scratched his cheeks, and his eyebrows were not raised.
Hu Zongnan began to regret that he had blown the "cow" too big, and at this time it had become a "disaster".
In a previous war report sent to Nanjing, Hu Zongnan claimed that "our unit conquered Yan'an, killed and captured more than 50,000 enemies, and captured countless weapons and ammunition." ”
First of all, although Hu Zongnan led his troops into Yan'an, he did not fight a decent battle with the People's Liberation Army, so the word "conquer" could not be said;
Secondly, the People's Liberation Army in northern Shaanxi has a total of more than 40,000 people, even if one does not leak, it is not enough to make up 50,000;
As for the other seizures, Hu Zongnan found nothing except the cleaned cave dwellings and some waste paper.
However, Hu Zongnan personally received a gift from the head of the Ccp - a note with the following lines written on it:
"Hu Zongnan went to Yan'an, and he was bound to become a tiger, and he could not advance, and he could not retreat. how! ”
After seeing the chairman's "ink treasure", Hu Zongnan "laughed" and instructed his subordinates to "put it away well and keep it as a souvenir." ”
According to Xiong Xianghui, Hu Zongnan's confidential secretary, Hu Zongnan would laugh in two situations, one was when he was embarrassed, and the other was when his heart was guessed by others.
As soon as the press corps arrived, all the lies were very likely to be exposed, and now Hu Zongnan is really "bound to become a tiger", and he cannot go up or down.
In a hurry, Hu Zongnan used his last move- "Fooling Dafa."
Let's briefly introduce the background of the "event".
During the Liberation War, the Kuomintang's civil war strategy went through four stages - all-out offensive, key offensive, all-round defense, and key defense.
Among them, the so-called "key offensive" means that the Kuomintang side had no choice but to carry out strategic readjustment in the event of the failure of the "all-round offensive."
The Kuomintang pointed the spearhead of the "key offensive" at our base areas in northern Shaanxi and Shandong.
However, with the defeat of Zhang Lingfu's reorganized 74th Division to Meng Lianggu, the Kuomintang was completely defeated in the Shandong battlefield.
Northern Shaanxi was another strategic offensive focus of the Kuomintang, and Yan'an was the most important.
At the behest of Chiang Kai-shek, Hu Zongnan personally led hundreds of thousands of troops to raid Yan'an.
Saying that it was a "raid" is actually a big joke.
Shortly after the military conference of Hu Zongnan's raid on Yan'an, the "raid plan" had already "flown" to Yan'an and appeared on the chairman's desk.
This mysterious "messenger" is Hu Zongnan's confidential secretary, Xiong Xianghui, an underground member of the Ccp.
Hu Zongnan's coming is menacing this time, and the garrison of our army is weak, how will the Chinese Communists respond?
"Where there is land lost, everyone loses land; where people lose land, everyone exists."
The CCP's decision was very decisive: to withdraw from Yan'an in order to preserve the living forces!
Therefore, on March 19, 1947, Hu Zongnan easily "occupied" Yan'an.
For the first time since the all-out civil war, the Nationalist army achieved such a "great victory," and Chiang Kai-shek was happy for several days when he saw Hu Zongnan's war report.
So, there was a matter of war interviews by the press corps.
Previously, Hu Zongnan's false war report had already "fooled" Chiang Kai-shek, so how would Hu Zongnan "fool" the press corps?
He immediately called an emergency meeting to agree on a response.
First of all, Hu Zongnan changed the location of the reporter's interview from Xi'an to Yan'an.
Second, Hu Zongnan demanded that his men immediately start to set up a performance showroom.
Since it is a "great victory", of course, there must be loot.
They drew a large number of rifles and submachine guns from the Nationalist 17th Division, and some light and heavy machine guns from the garrison.
All firearms are required to be labelled indicating the time and place of capture.
Early every morning, the relevant troops will send these guns to the battle record room, and then return them to the troops after dark.
The "docents" in the battle record room are served by some staff officers, who are required to prepare the "explanatory words" in advance and memorize them by rote.
Third, the "war report" claims that the Nationalist army has captured a large number of PLA prisoners.
The staff set up 10 prisoner-of-war camps around Yan'an, captured 500 villagers, and selected two or three thousand soldiers from the nationalist troops to act as "mass actors" and "prisoners."
They also temporarily piled up a lot of fake graves, erected monuments, wrote the names of the PLA troops, and then made up a name.
They conducted strict "training" for "extras" and set such a rule: Whoever slips his mouth and says the wrong thing will be shot!
However, Hu Zongnan obviously underestimated those reporters, and being good at finding clues and traces was the basic skill of their profession, and the reporters were not so good at fooling.
When visiting the battle record room, the reporter stared at the American machine gun, submachine gun, and medium-sized rifle, and asked the "explainer": "Is this the equipment of the communist army?" ”
The "explainer" laughed awkwardly and said for half a moment: "These guns were originally ours, and later they were disarmed by the communist army, and this time they were taken back..."
The more doubts the reporters saw, the more difficult the questions they asked were to answer, and the "explainers" were really overwhelmed and had to constantly change the topic.
In the first camp, a British journalist was taking pictures of some of the "captives" when he suddenly saw a familiar face.
The reporter tentatively asked, "Didn't we meet yesterday in the second camp?" How did you get here? ”
This "prisoner" knew that "the stuffing was exposed", and he was afraid that his superiors would know that he would be straightened out, and even shot, so frightened that he did not say a word, and his whole body trembled.
A "captive" next to him whispered, "There are not enough captives, we have just been transferred from there." ”
The British reporter felt fooled and asked the accompanying Nationalist officer on the spot: "What is going on?" ”
The officer, "Wang Gu said about him left and right", he was on his feet for half a day, and he didn't say a reason.
Among the "extras" was a Nationalist officer who "played" the role of a captured PLA brigade commander.
When the reporter first talked to him, he was full of revolutionary principles and shouted a few revolutionary slogans from time to time.
However, after a few minutes, the content of the reporter's conversation went beyond the scope of the "script" and deviated from the "script", and the officer of the Nationalist Army could not continue to act, and finally the original form was revealed.
Hu Zongnan was self-defeating and had difficulty riding a tiger, and he scolded several of his subordinates in charge of the matter.
However, it was too late, and the reporters not only knew the truth that Yan'an was an empty city, but also knew the inside story and illusions of the so-called "great victory."
A few days later, a batch of articles that Hu Zongnan was most afraid of seeing appeared in the newspapers...
As a result, the truth of the "Yan'an Victory" came out, and Hu Zongnan's farce of "self-editing, self-directing, and self-acting" was widely disseminated, becoming a rare joke in the history of war.
Looking back at this matter, Hu Zongnan's lie about his achievements was not an isolated incident.
Throughout the period of the War of Liberation, Chiang Kai-shek's "good news" was frequently reported, and the Nationalist army could report "small victories" into "big victories" and "defeats" into "victorious battles."
Over time, a routine has been formed within the national army: what can fight is not as good as what can be reported, and what can be reported is not as good as blowing; the timid is not as good as the bold, and the bigger the blow, the more rewards.
Correspondingly, at the beginning of the civil war, Chiang Kai-shek was hot-headed and shouted out the wild words of "eliminating the Communist Party in three months".
This is indeed chiang kai-shek's diligent goal.
As a result, "if something is good at the top, it will be very good at the bottom," and the Kuomintang army has released many "satellites" up and down, and He Yingqin, Chen Cheng, and others are all masters in this regard.
Hu Zongnan is just one of the "unlucky eggs", he "wrote, directed, and acted" a farce, and finally "acted" and made a big joke, and so on.