The Battle of Taiyuan was recognized as the most difficult battle in the Liberation War, and it basically started at the same time as the three major battles, and when our three major battles were completed, Taiyuan City was still untaken.
In the case of Jinzhou City only resisting for 7 days, Nanjing only defending for 2 days, and Tianjin only defending for 29 hours, Yan Xishan was able to defend Taiyuan City for half a year, which is really a miracle.
Looking at the entire battle, our army dispatched two marshals and 300,000 troops, which should have been invincible, but the result was a difficult victory after paying more than 32,000 casualties.
Why did Yan Xishan, who was originally inactive in the War of Resistance Against Japan, let our army fight this battle with the greatest casualties and the longest duration? Why is Taiyuan so difficult to fight?
4 stages that take a very long time
The Battle of Taiyuan officially began on October 5, 1948, and ended on April 24, 1949, with a total war duration of more than half a year, and the accumulation can be divided into four major stages.
The first phase was from October 5 to October 25, 1948.
During this period, Marshal Xu Qianqian, who had recovered from illness, was ordered to lead 80,000 troops to attack Taiyuan, Shanxi, and because General Xu used his troops like gods and the morale of the People's Liberation Army was extremely high, in just over 20 days, our army quickly achieved three major strategic goals.
First, it broke through the preliminary defensive line laid out by Yan Xishan and initially opened up the situation in the Taiyuan area of Shanxi.
Second, it achieved great military achievements, accumulatively eliminating two divisions and three regiments of Yan Xishan and annihilating nearly 12,000 enemy personnel.
The third was to capture the Wusu airport in the southern area of Taiyuan City, cutting off Yan Xishan's foreign aid supply and eliminating the possibility of Yan Xishan's head.
The second phase lasted from October 26 to November 15, which was also the most anxious phase of the war between the enemy and us.
It seems that this stage has only been fought for nearly 20 days, but in fact, in these 20 days, Yan Xishan has completely sounded the clarion call of counterattack, and it can be said that he will not give in to the four major fortress battles of Taiyuan's defensive position.
Because yan Xishan's troops organized counterattacks many times, our army had to be forced to fight with the enemy, although at this stage our army successfully annihilated 22,000 enemy troops and occupied an important stronghold, but the casualties were also quite heavy.
The third stage was from November 16 to April 19 of the following year, when the war situation eased slightly, and political negotiations between our army and Yan Xishan began.
Since Taiyuan's communication with the outside world at that time had been completely cut off by our army, Yan Xishan could be said to be difficult to fly, so I gave up attacking the city by force and instead chose to liberate Taiyuan by peaceful negotiations.
In this process, our army even instigated the people in the city to directly revolt with the army, which did play a certain role.
Unfortunately, Yan Xishan's roots in Shanxi are extremely deep, and Taiyuan is his base camp, so that the negotiations eventually failed, the uprising was suppressed, and there was local friction between our army and Yan Xishan's part in the surrounding areas, and the overall situation gradually eased.
The fourth phase was from April 20 to April 24, 1949.
During this period, the total strength of our army deployed outside Taiyuan City has exceeded 320,000, which has overwhelmed the enemy in terms of numbers, in order to end the battle as soon as possible, our army began to launch a fierce attack on the enemy army, and after 4 days of offensive battles, Taiyuan was successfully liberated.
But the Battle of Taiyuan was able to last so long that it surprised everyone.
The core reason why Taiyuan City was difficult to attack
At the beginning of the Taiyuan Campaign, it was commanded by Marshal Xu Qianqian, and then the war lasted too long, and Marshal Xu Qianqian was not in good health, so Mr. Peng joined the command team, and even if there were two marshals sitting in the town, the Taiyuan Campaign was still fought for so long, and the core reason was one: Yan Xishan did not obey.
Many people are curious about why Yan Xishan, an old-school warlord, did not perform well in the War of Resistance Against Japan, and why he showed such a strong defensive ability in the Battle of Taiyuan.
In fact, it is nothing more than that this battle involves his core interests.
Because after the defeat of the War of Resistance, he could continue to retreat, retaining his wealth, position and army, but the defeat in the War of Liberation would be different, he would have nothing.
With this realization, Yan Xishan was naturally extremely desperate in the Battle of Taiyuan, and coupled with the fact that Taiyuan in Shanxi was his base camp, he had been entrenched there for many years and successfully cultivated local forces that were almost completely under his control, so the war situation was naturally extremely anxious and tragic.
This can be seen from the battle for cattle and camels belonging to the second stage.
On the night of October 17, 1948, the 7th Brigade of the Seventh Column of our army traveled more than twenty miles at night and launched a surprise attack on niutuo village, because our army's action was sudden and well-trained, in a very short period of time, it conquered the enemy position with small casualties, but this was only the beginning.
As soon as it was dark, Yan Xishan organized his troops to start a counter-offensive, first carrying out artillery suppression for more than three hours, cutting off our army's position by one layer.
After the artillery fire was suppressed, the enemy launched a fierce attack, and because the enemy was too numerous, the position was lost that afternoon, and our army was forced to withdraw.
Soon the Seventh Column spliced together 31 heavy artillery pieces again, igniting the flames of the second round of fierce fighting, but unfortunately, Yan Xishan's resistance was too resolute, and the strength of the troops was superior, so that after the second round of confrontation, our army was forced to withdraw again.
On October 21, the 7th Column's 3rd Brigade joined hands with the 12th Brigade to conduct a joint attack, engaging Yan Xishan's army for a full day.
After the bloody battle on that day was fruitless, on the second day, the 2nd Garrison Brigade took over the 3rd Brigade and continued to fight, and it was another day of bloody fighting, which captured nine of the 12 bunkers, but the remaining 1,000 elites of the enemy and some Japanese officers and men still did not give up resistance.
Not only did it repel our army's attack several times, but it also launched 5 counterattacks cumulatively, directly dragging the war situation into a stalemate, and finally if the surrounding areas had not gradually fallen, I am afraid that it would have been more difficult to take down the cow and camel village.
After accumulating many days of fighting, our army finally succeeded in conquering the cow and camel village, but when we looked back at the battlefield, we saw that the local area was full of scorched earth, and even the veterans who had been in the battlefield for a long time sighed.
"Corpses fill every ravine in the area."
It is precisely because of this fierceness that this battle is known as the "Verdun meat grinder" in the Battle of Taiyuan, and although the battles in other places are not as fierce as the cattle and camel villages, most of them also follow the will of Yan Xishan, stubbornly resist and repeatedly attack the stronghold, which is the most fundamental reason why the Battle of Taiyuan will last for so long.
Side-by-side that cannot be ignored
The reason why Taiyuan is so difficult to fight, in addition to the above core reasons, there are also some side points that cannot be ignored, such as Taiyuan's geographical advantages, external support, and the impact of the situation at that time.
As the capital of Shanxi Province, Taiyuan has been an important town in Shanxi since ancient times, with high walls and strong gates, coupled with easy to defend and difficult to attack, it is not too much to say that it is a natural defensive fortress, not to mention that Yan Xishan has long built extremely strong fortifications.
It has to be said that although Yan Xishan and the Jin Sui army could not attack, they were extremely good at defense, and as early as the victory of the War of Resistance and the first time Yan Xishan returned to Taiyuan from western Jin, a military meeting was held on the garrison personnel in the Taiyuan area, studying the defensive plan of Taiyuan, and finally formulating the famous "Hundred Mile Circle" plan.
It is to build 5,000 to 6,000 pillboxes within a hundred miles around Taiyuan City to form a perfect defense network.
These pillboxes were not only loaded with strong firepower inside, but also equipped with food, water, and rest facilities, and Yan Xishan had mastered the "geographical advantages.", and it would naturally be difficult for our army to fight.
In addition to Yan Xishan's intention to hold on to and occupy Taiyuan's geographical advantages, Chiang Kai-shek's support was also the main reason why Yan Xishan was able to support it for so long.
Although our army seized two airfields in the Taiyuan area early on, one of the airfields was right in front of the Taiyuan City Gate and our army was unable to capture it, which directly led to Chiang Kai-shek sending a large amount of materials and equipment to Yan Xishan.
In fact, long before the pingjin campaign began, our army could launch a fierce attack, and there was a high probability that it could conquer Taiyuan, but once this plan was implemented, Fu Zuoyi, who was guarding the Peiping area, was very likely to feel isolated and helpless, so he chose to retreat, which was not conducive to the development of the Pingjin campaign.
Therefore, from the perspective of the overall situation, our Party finally decided not to attack Taiyuan first, but to strive for peace negotiations in the region first, which is the main reason why the third phase of the Taiping Campaign will last so long.
Although it has experienced nearly half a year of struggle and paid a very high price, fortunately, the Battle of Taiyuan finally ended in the victory of our army.
On April 24, 1949, the Battle of Taiyuan officially ended, and what made people feel overwhelmed was that if yan Xishan and these warlords could exert this momentum in the Liberation War in the War of Resistance Against Japan, I am afraid that the Japanese army would be defeated earlier.
Unfortunately, these warlords are doomed not to do so, because they value their vital interests above those of the people, so they cannot be willing to make such senseless sacrifices.
Therefore, they will not fail to understand that it is precisely this kind of "meaninglessness" that determines that they are bound to usher in defeat and that our Party is bound to march toward victory.