In the Liberation War, as soon as the name of a senior Kuomintang general appeared, he would always be ridiculed by the crowd, and this person was Liu Zhi, the commander-in-chief of the Xuzhou Bandits at that time. When this person is mentioned, many people will think of his famous self-deprecation: "Xuzhou is the gate of Nanjing, and a tiger general should be sent to guard it." If you don't send a tiger, you should also send a dog to guard the door. A pig was sent to the present, and the gate could not be guarded. Liu Zhi was also nicknamed "General Pig" by people.
However, in his later years, Liu Zhi expressed a lot of dissatisfaction with the original Huaihai Campaign, believing that the defeat of the Xu Beng War was not caused by him, but by the blind command of the Ministry of National Defense. So what was the reason for the defeat of the Kuomintang army in the Battle of Huaihai?
Old Jiang's confidant
In 1892, Liu Zhi was born in Ji'an County, Jiangxi Province, and the family conditions were not bad. Liu Zhi received a good education from a young age, and when he grew up, he also studied in Japan, although he could not continue to stay in Japan for various reasons, but it also greatly broadened Liu Zhi's horizons. After that, Liu Zhi entered the Hunan Army School, and then was admitted to the Baoding Officers' Military Academy in Hebei Province. After graduation, Liu Zhi participated in the Northern Expedition led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen.
In 1924, Liu Zhi was invited by He Yingqin to serve as a tactical instructor at the Whampoa Military Academy. After the establishment of the Whampoa Military Academy's teaching group, Liu Zhi served as the commander of the second battalion. After the teaching regiment was expanded to the division level, Liu Zhi was also promoted to deputy division commander.
In the "Zhongshan Ship Incident" that broke out in 1926, Liu Zhi was loyal to Chiang Kai-shek, and it was he who read out the personnel of our Party to be arrested, and commanded the troops to control and detain our Party personnel in the Navy.
In shock at home and abroad "four. During the "One Two" incident, Liu Zhi once again followed Chiang Kai-shek into an treacherous act, wantonly slaughtering progressives of our Party and suppressing the revolutionary movement launched by our Party. And it is also because of these things that Chiang Kai-shek attaches great importance to Liu Zhi and regards him as his confidant.
In the struggle for control of the country, Liu Zhi also made great contributions to Chiang Kai-shek. During the Great War of the Central Plains, Liu Zhi led his army to fight for chiang kai-shek's control of the Central Plains, and made great contributions to defeating and defeating the armies of Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang and others several times. In the Jiang-Gui War, Liu Zhi also made a great contribution to the victory of Chiang Kai-shek's side, and it was at his instigation that Yang Hucheng sent troops to cut off Tang Shengzhi's back road, and Tang Shengzhi was also defeated.
Huaihai was defeated
After the outbreak of the War of Liberation, the PLA troops were first in an unfavorable situation. However, after the party's command, the PLA troops slowly changed from inferior to superior. By the end of 1948, the Kuomintang army was at the end of its mighty crossbow, and Chiang Kai-shek was only holding on.
In November 1948, one of the three major battles, the Battle of Huaihai, broke out, a battle that was extremely important to both sides, and Chiang Kai-shek knew that if this battle was lost, Nanjing would already be in the pocket of the People's Liberation Army. Therefore, Chiang Kai-shek gathered a large number of troops and decided to fight to the death. At that time, there were already many senior generals in the Kuomintang army leading the uprising, and Liu Zhi, as Chiang Kai-shek's confidant and beloved general, was one of the few remaining senior generals in the Kuomintang, and was naturally entrusted with a heavy responsibility by the old Chiang Kai-shek.
After being appointed by Chiang Kai-shek as the commander-in-chief of the Xuzhou Bandits, Liu Zhi was very excited and assured Chiang Kai-shek: If I want to be an official, I cannot obey orders; if I want to work hard, I cannot resign! But it was clear that even with Liu Zhi's assurances, the Kuomintang army would not be able to escape defeat. In the Battle of Huaihai, the People's Liberation Army became more and more courageous.
In 1949, our army launched a general offensive against the Kuomintang troops, annihilating 550,000 Kuomintang troops and capturing Du Yuming, a senior Kuomintang general.
After this battle, the Kuomintang army had no room to counterattack, and Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan afterwards. Liu Zhi, however, did not dare to face Chiang Kai-shek because of his defeat in battle, so he fled to Indonesia. After China and Indonesia established diplomatic relations, Chiang Kai-shek was afraid that Liu Zhi would return to the mainland, which led to liu zhi's recall to Taiwan.
Because of a command mistake in the Battle of Huaihai, Liu Zhi was criticized by many parties. Liu Zhi himself was even more self-deprecating: Xuzhou is the gate of Nanjing, and a tiger general should be sent to guard it. If you don't send a tiger, you should also send a dog to guard the door. A pig was sent to the present, and the gate could not be guarded. Liu Zhi was therefore regarded as the culprit of the defeat in the Battle of Huaihai.
The truth of the matter
However, in his later years, Liu Zhi recalled the defeat in the Huaihai War, but indignantly said that the main reason for the defeat in the Huaihai Campaign was not on him, but on the decision of Chiang Kai-shek and the command. In fact, what Liu Zhi said was not unreasonable, and the Kuomintang command did make many unreasonable decisions during the Huaihai Campaign.
Liu Zhi believed that many people had wronged themselves at that time. First, many people at the time accused him of ordering Huang Baitao's army to die. In fact, this was not the case, and it was Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalist headquarters who gave the order to Huang Baitao's troops. On November 11, Huang Baitao was surrounded at Nianzhuang, and on November 9, Chiang Kai-shek's first order at the operational meeting was to ask Huang Baitao to die.
The second accusation against Liu Zhi is that even if Huang Baitao's legion is surrounded, you still have so many legions under Liu Zhi, why don't you support Huang Baitao? Liu Zhi's own explanation for this incident was that although his men still nominally had many corps at that time, in fact they could not be mobilized at all. Therefore, he watched as Huang Baitao's troops were completely annihilated. And at the beginning of Huang Baitao's siege, Liu Zhi had thought of transferring Qiu Qingquan's troops to break the siege, but Du Yuming denied his decision.
The third point is about the issue of Su County, which was very critical in the Battle of Huaihai and was a place where soldiers and families had to fight. Even if Liu Zhi was stupid, he would not give up Su County, but at that time, Liu Zhi's corps were all mobilized, and there were no extra troops left behind. In fact, at that time, Liu Zhi explicitly asked Liu Ruming, who was under his command, to leave at least one regiment of troops to stay in Su County. But what everyone did not expect was that Zhang Weiji, the regimental commander who liu Ruming ordered to stay in Su County, fled. In the end, the Central China Field Army of the People's Liberation Army took less than a day and a night to take this place where soldiers and families must fight.
These points are roughly Liu Zhi's dissatisfaction with the Battle of Huaihai. In 1982, Liu Zhi's memoirs were published, which contained some criticism of Chiang Kai-shek's command, but the war was over, and Liu Zhi, as the losing party, could not change this fact under any circumstances, not to mention that in the Huaihai Campaign, Liu Zhi's command was also improper.