Beginning in the autumn of 1944, the center of gravity of the Invading Japanese Army on the Chinese battlefield had shrunk to the southeast coastal area, and the Zhejiang-Gansu Railway became a key target for a period of time.
In order to win the initiative of our army in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, and other areas, Su Yu, under the instructions of Chairman Mao, went to the border of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui to establish a revolutionary base area. This place has always been regarded by Chiang Kai-shek, who was born in Ningbo, as the "dragon vein" and "national foundation", and the stationing of the New Fourth Army has undoubtedly poked Chiang Kai-shek's lung tube.
In order to eliminate Su Yu and the New Fourth Army, Chiang Kai-shek repeatedly sent stubborn troops in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions to encircle and suppress the New Fourth Army, thus giving birth to the Battle of Tianmu Mountain, the beginning of the legend of Su Yu's turn to war, and chairman Mao issued an exclamation that "Su Yu can command four or five hundred thousand troops in the future."
Battle memorial of Tianmu Mountain
The Japanese army's invasion of China began in 1931, when Chiang Kai-shek was still busy eliminating various warlords in the country, while at the same time pursuing the Red Army in the Soviet Union and vigorously pursuing the unification of the World by the Kuomintang.
After the fall of the entire northeast territory, the claws of the Japanese Kou extended to Guannei, and seeing that the people in the Central Plains were not happy, Chiang Kai-shek repeatedly went to the vicinity of the Soviet zone to urge the "commanders of the bandits" to speed up the pace of besieging the Red Army and realize "Chinese reunification" in the places where the Japanese Kou had not yet fallen.
After the second cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists, the Eighth Route Army insisted on fighting the Japanese army in a broader battlefield behind enemy lines, and the revolutionary contingent expanded rapidly. Chiang Kai-shek, who was in a corner of the southwest of Anhui, repeatedly launched an "anti-communist upsurge," creating the Anhui Incident that shocked China and foreign countries, and the New Fourth Army, which had nearly 10,000 anti-Japanese troops, was scattered in one fell swoop, and Xiang Ying and Ye Ting were arrested one by one.
Southern Anhui Incident
In 1944, China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression had developed into a worldwide anti-fascist war, and Chiang Kai-shek, the supreme commander of the Chinese theater, never gave up the dictatorial idea that "outside the country must first be at home," and passively resisted Japan and actively suppressed the Communists.
After the Japanese army expanded the scope of occupation in Wenzhou, Fuzhou and other places, the Kuomintang army ran away after firing two shots, but instead formed a tacit understanding with the local Japanese puppet army.
At the same time, the Nationalist army gathered local bandits and hooligans to form the so-called "Loyal and Righteous National Salvation Army" to nominally protect the Chinese people in the occupied areas, but in fact they still engaged in collusion and adultery and oppression of the people.
At the end of the year, the central authorities instructed the Central China Bureau to go south to strive for control in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian, and other areas, and to establish the Jiangsu-Zhejiang Military Region, with Su Yu as commander, leading the troops to cross the Yangtze River south to meet Wang Bicheng of Changxing, Zhejiang.
Su Yu
After the 1st Division led by Su Yu and Wang Bicheng's 16th Brigade formed three columns, where to set up the military region headquarters became Su Yu's first consideration. Through the comprehensive consideration of the distribution of enemies and enemies in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, the terrain and terrain, su Yu set his eyes on Tianmu Mountain in Lin'an District, Hangzhou.
The Moganshan branch of Tianmu Mountain can directly connect Pudong and Haibei, allowing the New Fourth Army to gradually develop from western Zhejiang to eastern Zhejiang. At that time, Tianmu Mountain was currently under the management of Gu Zhutong, deputy commander of the Third Theater, and the Third Theater had always been passive in resisting the war, and Gu Zhutong, nicknamed "Gu Congee Barrel," even openly put forward the slogan of "rather give way to Japan than to the communist army" and shook hands with the Japanese Kou in eastern Zhejiang to make peace.
Gu Zhutong
The Nationalist army withdrew large troops from the Japanese-occupied areas, leaving only heavy guards near Tianmu Mountain, apparently in order to regain the initiative in the southeast region. Gu Zhutong was nominally the boss of the New Fourth Army, but the Anhui Incident at the end of 1941 had completely severed the connection between Gu Zhutong and the New Fourth Army, and the New Fourth Army gritted his teeth in hatred against Gu Zhutong, the main criminal of the same room, and Gu Zhutong always wanted to recreate the Fourth Army to ask Chiang Kai-shek for credit.
In early February 1945, the first column of the New Fourth Army opened up an anti-Japanese base behind enemy lines at Moganshan, and the third column also carried out an operation to clear the nearby Japanese troops, but recruited the Kuomintang 62nd Division stationed at Tianmu Mountain.
Su Yu delivered a speech
After Gu Zhutong heard that the New Fourth Army was advancing into Moganshan, he suspected that the New Fourth Army wanted to cooperate with the US troops landing on the southeast coast to fight, so as to obtain the blue eyes and assistance of the United States, and he immediately sent a telegram to Tao Guang, commander-in-chief of the Suzhou-Zhejiang-Anhui Advance Army, and ordered the 62nd Division and the "Loyal National Salvation Army" mixed with fish and dragons to go to Moganshan to surround and suppress the New Fourth Army.
Even though the weapons and equipment of the Kuomintang diehards are far superior to those of the New Fourth Army, which can be described as a world of difference, the recalcitrant troops have learned lessons from the course of many years of fighting with our army and directly dispatched the strength of seven regiments.
The result of the battle was unsurprisingly, the vanguard of the recalcitrant army was directly defeated by the New Fourth Army, and the follow-up troops had already fled before they arrived at the battlefield, and as a result, they were surrounded and suppressed by two other detachments that Su Yu had ambushed in advance, annihilating more than 1,700 people in total.
Battle of Tianmu Mountain
The first battle between the New Fourth Army and the Recalcitrant Army at Tianmu Mountain began with a complete victory, and Su Yu, who has always been low-key, wrote a letter to his nominal commander Gu Zhutong, thanking him for generously donating 3 mortars, 12 heavy machine guns, submachine guns, light machine guns and other weapons to the New Fourth Army, hoping that Gu Zhutong would continue to work hard to provide more weapons and ammunition for the New Fourth Army.
Gu Zhutong was furious when he saw the letter brought back by the captives, and the soldier who delivered the letter was also shot by him in anger. Later, Gu Zhutong gathered more troops according to Su Yu's vision to launch the second battle of Tianmu Mountain in an attempt to retake the Xiaofeng region.
This time, the enemy learned Su Yu's tactics, separated the 12 regiments, and attacked the New Fourth Army from different directions. However, the enemy army was far from the New Fourth Army in terms of mobile warfare, and after being surrounded by the New Fourth Army, it again lost more than 1,700 people and a lot of food and ammunition.
Two successive victories in the Battle of Tianmu Mountain were won, the ranks of the New Fourth Army were replenished, Lin'an was also liberated, and the entire Tianmu Mountain was fully included in the scope of the Jiangsu-Zhejiang Military Region.
In order to consolidate the results of the victory, Su Yu sent a report to the central authorities, applying for the addition of some troops in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang Military Region in order to resist the enemy's next fiercer attack. Chairman Mao agreed to Su Yu's request and allowed Ye Fei's column in northern Jiangsu to go south, becoming the fourth column under Su Yu, and the strength of the New Fourth Army reached 20,000 people.
Fei
At this time, the nationwide War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was about to be won, and Chiang Kai-shek was naturally unwilling to hand over the Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Fujian regions to the Hands of the New Fourth Army, and Gu Zhutong also understood the importance of the battle for Tianmu Mountain. He removed Tao Guang, commander-in-chief of the Advancing Army, and Li Jue served as the commander-in-chief of the former enemy. In addition to the 65,000 nationalist troops directly commanded by Li Jue, Gu Zhutong colluded with the traitors and dispatched a part of the puppet army to assist, with a strength of more than 70,000 troops.
Li Jue had defeated Deng Xiaoping, He Long, Xiao Ke and others during the agrarian revolution, and after the reunification of the War of Resistance, Li Jue never left the front-line battlefield, and in the "August 13" Campaign and the Battle of Changsha, he severely defeated the prestige of the Japanese army, and his 19th Division was named Zhenluzhong and Eastern Henan.
Li Jue was cautious and cautious, and adopted the tactic of taking steps as a battalion and advancing hand in hand, and built a large number of fortresses on the outskirts of Tianmu Mountain in an attempt to replicate the brilliant achievements of the Fifth "Encirclement and Suppression" of the Red Army.
Li Jue
At the end of May 1945, the 70,000-strong army was coming, and Su Yu stared at the battle map for more and more time. Su Yu has always been good at conducting large-scale and large-scale annihilation warfare, but his talent in mobile warfare is not weak after training from the guerrillas.
On May 29, Su Yu took advantage of the fact that the enemy was not yet completely stable, and suddenly attacked Xindeng, directly annihilating the enemy's 79th Division in the city, causing the enemy who had already lost twice to be confused in an instant.
However, when the enemy organized more troops to counterattack, Su Yu did not have any resistance at all, directly led the army to withdraw from Xindeng, and even handed over the newly liberated Lin'an, leaving the enemy confused for a while.
The People's Liberation Army is in the mountains
After withdrawing from Lin'an, Su Yu again ordered his troops to withdraw directly from Tianmu Mountain to the Xiaofeng area, making it appear that he wanted to abandon Tianmu Mountain. In fact, Su Yu was preparing to engage in a mobile battle around Tianmu Mountain and Xiaofeng and the enemy, so that the enemy could break away from the cover of the fortress and constantly deplete their living forces.
After Su Yu made the decision to evacuate Tianmu Mountain, the New Fourth Army, which had been without grain for several days, had a rare scene of haste and nowhere, in addition to the soldiers who were in a hurry and chaotic, there were also a lot of personal supplies on the ground.
In order to win the enemy's trust, Su Yu made a plan and decided to use the retreat of the New Fourth Army to lure the enemy deeper. So the New Fourth Army not only took the initiative to give up several towns in the Liberated Areas and formally bid farewell to the local people, but also specially threw torn military uniforms, military hats and rotten straw shoes on the way to retreat, and even rice bags and cauldrons were scattered on the side of the road.
Su Yu pretended that the rupture and the strategy of luring the enemy deep did not directly deceive Li Jue, and he cautiously ordered his men to investigate everywhere, and as a result, he saw the "strange" scene that Su Yu had deliberately created.
Except for the main force of the New Fourth Army, which rushed to the Xiaofeng area with all its might, the uniform factory, the ordnance factory, and the logistics medical team of the accompanying army were all scattered and retreated to different places such as western Zhejiang and southern Jiangsu. The clothes, shoes and hats thrown on the road could not fully convince Li Jue, and Su Yu asked the New Fourth Army to pretend to be angry and demoralized in front of the prisoners, and there were many "fights".
These prisoners were released by soldiers pretending to be lax guards, and li jue was reported to Li Jue about the New Fourth Army's advance with a big red coffin and other defeated troops, which made him believe that the New Fourth Army was really tired. Li Jue relaxed his vigilance and sent a report to Gu Zhutong saying that "the East and West Tianmu Mountains have been invincible, and the battle of sweeping up has ended in Yan."
Nationalist forces in battle
Under the order of Gu Zhu to attack and annihilate Su Yu's main force, Li Jue led more than 70,000 people into the Xiaofeng battlefield that Su Yu had already planned. Although the enemy army still adheres to the tactic of "advancing hand in hand" at this moment, the gap between the elite troops and the "Loyal and Righteous National Salvation Army" and the puppet army has opened up nearly 40 miles.
The main force of the enemy army on the western road was the 52nd Division, which was also the main force in the Anhui Southern Incident, and they shouted during the attack that "one more Maolin would be fought and the unfinished work of southern Anhui" was directly ignited, which directly ignited the burning anger in the hearts of the New Fourth Army. Under the call of Su Yu to "avenge the martyrs who died in the Anhui Southern Incident", the soldiers of the New Fourth Army were like Wolverine possessed, and the 500 artillery pieces concentrated were frantically fired at the enemy's positions without money, annihilating the main force of the enemy army in just a few days.
The New Fourth Army in battle
At this time, the enemy who was backward on the East Road also rushed to Xiaofeng, and was directly chaotic under the blows of the collapsed nationalist army and the fierce artillery fire of the New Fourth Army. The 12 detachments arranged by Su Yu to appear last annihilated the enemy's first commando team in the canyon southeast of Xiaofeng, the enemy commander was killed, the two battalion commanders were captured, and the other enemy troops had completely lost the will to resist, surrendering their weapons and fleeing innumerable.
As many as 6,800 enemies were annihilated and surrendered in this battle, and the momentum of 70,000 troops was also lost in front of 20,000 people. After the war report was transmitted to the Central Committee, Liu Shaoqi said that the First Division commanded by Su Yu was a unit that "had the most battles and the greatest achievements in the whole army," and Chairman Mao even predicted that "Comrade Su Yu could command half a million troops in the future."
General Su Yu
Su Yu verified Chairman Mao's words in the later Liberation War, and "being good at large-scale battles" became the same characteristic of Su Yu's military command as "winning more with less"; he annihilated enemies several times larger than himself in the Seven Victories of the Seven Battles of Central Jiangsu, the Battle of Eastern Henan, and the Battle of Huaihai, and the troops commanded by Su Yu also changed from 100,000 to 600,000, making him the well-deserved first general of New China.