After the Japanese surrendered in 1945, their puppet armies, which had defected to Manchukuo, lost their support and scattered. According to incomplete statistics, after the Soviet Red Army entered the northeast, they disarmed 170,000 puppet troops in succession. After disarming, these people still adhered to the tradition of "eating food as soldiers" and joined the ranks of our army and the national army that entered the northeast at that time. But most of these people are basically wall-headed grass, and although they have a certain combat ability, military discipline is loose and free, and there is no faith or loyalty to speak of.
They are not only the common people in the northeast, but even the army that has absorbed them is difficult to discipline them. So how did these puppet armies who surrendered to join the camp of the Kuomintang and the Communists in the War of Liberation "dig a pit" for our army and the Nationalist army?
Our army has suffered greatly from it
After our army entered the northeast, it was on the occasion of employing people, and in addition to using those "old policemen" in the cities to maintain law and order, some puppet army units were also recruited in order to expand the army. In fact, compared with our army, although some of these puppet armies are neutral, they are more inclined to join the "orthodox" national army. However, because our army was the first to enter the northeast, these people played a slippery slope and "first threw eight roads, then the central authorities."
From this, we can see that these people have no consciousness as soldiers at all.
In the first to enter the northeast, Zeng Kelin and Li Yunchang's department summed up the conscription from 1945 to 1946:
The Jireliao troops adopted the method of recruiting new recruits on the basis of the old troops, and expanded the company into battalions and regiments, and the regiments into brigades. Most of the recruits were miners, factory workers, and young students with patriotic ideas, as well as captured personnel and laborers who had been captured in the northeast of Kannai, and at the same time, a number of puppet Manchukuo soldiers and police teams were also recruited and added... In the process of expanding the army, due to our hasty mood to expand the troops, the examination of the reorganized puppet army was not strict, and the lack of vigilance against the conspiracy of the Kuomintang first eight roads and then the central authorities, some new troops later defected and some cadres were sacrificed. Historical source "Decisive Battle: Northeast Liberation War 1945-1949" (Liu Tong)
And just as Li Yunchang said, our army really suffered a lot of losses in the beginning of the integration of these puppet armies.
For example, in the previous report to Li Yunchang, the new unit under him, the Jidong 31st Regiment, was a unit composed of many puppet troops, and the new unit had no combat effectiveness to speak of, and when it encountered the vanguard of the 13th Army of the Nationalist Army, it collapsed at a touch. Similarly, in the Battle of Shaling, when our army besieged Liao Yaoxiang, these recruited puppet troops were not resolute in their attacks, and often managed the company commanders and battalion commanders who fought against each other, and even fired black guns. Coincidentally, in the process of Zeng Kelin's defense of Jinzhou, in the face of the elite expeditionary force led by Du Yuming, these defective puppet troops had no determination to defend at all, and after the first wave of attack, they began to disarm, so that Du Yuming could easily occupy Jinzhou. Therefore, at the end of the First Siping Campaign, our army retreated to the Songhua River, and these puppet armies, who thought they could see the situation clearly, were instead incorporated by Bai Chongxi and Du Yuming.
And these puppet army ranks not only have no credibility to speak of in terms of "loyalty," but also have the audacity to act recklessly and cause disaster to the township.
At that time, the masses divided our army into the "New Eighth Road" and the "Old Eighth Road," and the Old Eighth Road was divided into the "Eighth Road in Gray Clothes and the Eighth Road in Yellow Clothes), which referred to the veteran soldiers of our army who went from eastern Hebei and Shandong. However, these new eighth roads are often "forced to buy and sell", requisitioning land without giving money, hoarding land in the name of land reform, and colluding with landlords to suppress poor households, which has played a negative role. So much so that the leader of the Northeast Bureau said at the meeting at that time
"Our army claims to have 44,000 troops in Northern Manchuria, but only 11,000 are reliable... The new troops in eastern Hebei all used new weapons, but when they started fighting, they were about to collapse. Among these troops, the soldiers who were recruited from the puppet army also went everywhere to plague the people and ruin the reputation of our army."
In view of such hastily formed new troops, only quantity is sought, not quality. As a result, the composition of the army is complex, the interior is impure, and some are even controlled by landlords, bandits, and pseudo-officers. After the first large-scale reorganization of the army, our army "thought bitterly about the pain", and when it came to the reorganization and expansion of the army, priority was given to the reformed national army units, and then to the mass youth who were innocent and had undergone land reform. And those puppet army units were basically sent home to undergo reform, and it was difficult to enter our army again.
Chen Cheng didn't want to
Similar to our army, which has just entered the northeast, the Nationalist army is also mainly absorbing these puppet army units.
At that time, although the large units of the Nationalist army had not yet arrived, the intelligence personnel of the Nationalist army who adhered to the "orthodoxy" were still quite active in various parts of the northeast, and they were active everywhere, and a large number of pseudo-Manchu officials, soldiers, and policemen who were not optimistic about our army all embraced the nationalist army one after another, and these people all took a clear-cut stand against our army, and even wanted to attack our Northeast Democratic Coalition Army as a sign of submission to win victories.
Among these people, the pseudo-elite "Iron Stone Troops" are the most arrogant. In 1946, a force of less than 4,000 men dared to attack Harbin. In the words of "Bright Sword", "Less than 4,000 people dare to fight Harbin, and give him 1 division to dare to fight Yan'an..."
The leader of the Tieshi army was Jiang Pengfei, a scum in the Northeast Army, who had long been in a bad situation with chongqing before the Japanese surrendered, and in 1946, he led the elite "Tieshi troops" to Changchun in January, and then dispersed to Siping, Jiutai, Harbin, and Qiqihar. Here, they used their previous strength to win over the bandits Xie Wendong and Li Huatang and others, and also rewarded these rabble-rousers as 16 divisions, each leader of which was a division commander (in fact, 1 division was only a few hundred people). However, "the good times did not last long", in the process of our army's attack on Changchun, Jiang Pengfei's troops suffered heavy losses and could only go underground.
After the defeat, Jiang Pengfei's puppet army saw that the Nationalist army fighting head-on was victorious, and also wanted to burn a fire in Harbin behind our army to salvage the battle achievements. So he recruited more than 1,000 old Japanese soldiers in Harbin, as well as some bandits and scattered puppet troops, to prepare for the insurrection inside and outside.
But he did not know that all 4,000 people he had entangled were under the control of our army, and taking advantage of their gathering and discussion, our army suddenly came out and captured all the puppet army led by Jiang Pengfei...
Of course, among the ranks recruited by the nationalist army, the iron and stone troops can still be regarded as "conscientious", and at least they can persist in fighting with our army. Most of the others are "wall-riding factions", who are only committed to the battlefield, but they are heavy on the people. Even Chen Cheng, who has always been "eclectic" in recruiting troops, cannot bear to look down and scold him as a soldier.
These pseudo-Manchu old soldiers were initially recruited by Xiong Shihui and ran amok in the townships, bullying and oppressing the people, causing great public indignation. These guys falsely reported the establishment, ate empty salaries, and demanded military salaries, which also caused a heavy burden on the northeast of the Nationalist army. At that time, in order to win over these puppet troops and bandits, Xiong Shihui opened up 3 "army commanders" and 158 "division commanders", Liu Depu, who came out of the iron stone unit, was the commander of the provisional 56th Division, and Xu Damabao in "Lin Hai Xueyuan" was the brigade commander of the Third Security Brigade. These people do not look at the absence of a letter of appointment, but the first thing they do after becoming a division commander is not to fight, but to find the central government to get paid, and it is also according to the standards of a division or a general, and sit properly on the ground.
Chen Cheng, who could not bear the northeast puppet army, said at the meeting of Du Yuming and Xiong Shihui at the DISS, "What is the use of these guys who have not achieved enough and have more than enough failures to raise?" ”
Therefore, in order to rectify these puppet armies, Chen Cheng, on the one hand, asked the remaining officers to form two officer corps, one with the words "Nationalist Officers' Corps" and the other with the words "Puppet Army Officers' Corps" written on it, so that these pseudo-Manchu officers would have no place to look at themselves. These puppet soldiers who were angry said directly: "There is no grandfather here, there is a place to stay for the grandfather; everywhere there is no grandfather, and the grandfather goes to throw the eighth road." He also said, "The Jiang family doesn't want the Mao family, captain here, major over there." ”
But don't look at these people screaming very fiercely, but basically no one wants to go to our army, or to be screened, most of them are sent back to their hometowns, and these people can no longer eat and drink as wall grass.
Yu Tian Jun said
In the northeast battlefield of the Liberation War, there were indeed many puppet troops who joined our army and the national army. However, these puppet armies are accustomed to bullying the townships in ordinary days, and they are also used to turning against the wall grass in combat, and they are quite repulsive to such a contingent not only our army, but even the national army. So that in the end, it can only be disbanded on the ground and become history.
Therefore, an army without pursuit and faith cannot become a strong army at all, and these puppet armies are the best proof...
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