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▲ Reports on the liberation of Xi'an
▲ Chiang Kai-shek and Hu Zongnan
On May 20, 1949, xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi Province, the largest city in the northwest, was liberated, and Hu Zongnan, director of the Xi'an Appeasement Office of the Kuomintang army, saw that the general situation was gone and the army's morale was shaken, so he led more than 200,000 troops to retreat west along the north bank of the Wei River, preparing to withdraw to Baoji first, and if it was still unable to stop the advance of the People's Liberation Army, he would directly retreat into Sichuan along the Sichuan-Shaanxi Highway through Hanzhong, and stubbornly resisted. The southward retreat of Hu Zongnan's clique not only enabled our army to successfully seize the Guanzhong region, but also opened a passage for the next large-scale westward advance and the seizure of Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, and other provinces.
▲Qinghai Ma Bufang
Qingning Erma took the initiative to send troops to counterattack
Ma Bufang, chairman of Qinghai Province, and Ma Hongkui, chairman of Ningxia Province, had just been appointed as the chief of the Northwest Army And The Chairman of Gansu Province, and were able to join forces to enter Lanzhou and control Gansu Province, but when they saw the PLA soldiers approaching the Longdong region, they felt deeply cold and cold, and believed: "Xi'an must be recaptured, and the provinces of Ning, Gansu, and Qingdao can only be safe." However, in order to avoid fighting alone, they decided to drag Hu Zongnan and urgently telegraphed Chiang Kai-shek, proposing that as long as Hu did not retreat, the two of them would send troops to "coordinate the counterattack and promise to make all-out efforts" to retake Xi'an and ensure the safety of the entire northwest.
Ma Bufang and Ma Hongkui were warlords occupying the northwest from the end of the Qing Dynasty, and later continued to develop in the chaotic world, gaining military and political power in Qinghai, Ningxia and other provinces, but unlike the warlords of the Sichuan Army and the Gui Army, who repeatedly went out to fight in the provinces, they were unwilling to send troops in a big way even during the period of the all-out War of Resistance, and always guarded their own territory; later, during the Liberation War, under Chiang Kai-shek's repeated strict orders, they also participated in the army to besiege Yan'an and rescue Yulin, but most of the time they were on errands, and they demanded a large amount of military pay and equipment each time. As soon as there was a battle, he retreated.
▲Ningxia Ma Hongkui
The Kuomintang army concentrated more than 200,000 troops
This time, these two guys who had preserved their strength were willing to bleed against the People's Liberation Army, and Chiang Kai-shek naturally couldn't ask for it, so he immediately sent a telegram to Hu Zongnan, asking him to negotiate with Erma to attack and retake Xi'an. At this time, Hu Zongnan, because of his repeated defeats in battles, had already made up his mind to retreat to Sichuan, and organized the more elite units of the 1st Army, the 38th Army, the 65th Army, and the 90th Army under his command into the 18th Corps; the local security forces in Shaanxi Province were also formed into several new formations, formed the 5th Corps, and prepared to transfer them all to Sichuan.
Although his confidence in the counter-offensive was seriously insufficient, Hu Zongnan did not dare to disobey Chiang Kai-shek's orders, and at the same time he regretted that he had run too fast and easily abandoned Xi'an, calculating that if Erma could really send troops to Guanzhong, perhaps it might really be able to reverse the defeat in the northwest, or at least let them be cannon fodder, temporarily dragging the main force of the People's Liberation Army, so that he could calmly enter Sichuan, replenish his troops, and build a defensive system. Therefore, he sent people to Lanzhou to meet with Erma for consultation, and decided that the Ningxia side would dispatch 40,000 horses and horses of the 11th Army and the 128th Army to form the "Shaanxi Aid Corps", and the Qinghai side would dispatch its main force, the 81st Army, the 82nd Army, the 119th Army, and other 50,000 horses to form the "Longnan Army", and cooperate with Hu Zongnan's 18th Corps to jointly counterattack Xi'an.
▲ Qingning Erma once killed the Red Army's Western Route Army
The attack on Xi'an was met with a head-on attack by the People's Liberation Army
At the beginning of June, the three enemy concentrated more than 30 divisions and 200,000 men and counterattacked from Changwu, Yingxian, Lingtai, and Fengyang in an attempt to retake Xi'an. But what they did not expect was that the CPC Central Committee had already transferred the 18th and 19th Corps of the North China Field Army from the Pingjin area to support the northwest operation, and these two corps had just finished the Pingjin Campaign, captured a large number of US weapons and equipment, and greatly increased their firepower. After learning of the enemy's large-scale counterattack on Xi'an, the two corps marched westward to reinforce, and the 61st Army, the vanguard unit, marched rapidly for 11 consecutive days, and finally arrived in Xi'an on June 7, severely damaging the enemy's forward 82nd Army and the 8th Cavalry Brigade, and killing and wounding more than 2,000 people under Han Youlu, commander of the 248th Division of the 82nd Army, which bought time for the main force of the corps to assemble.
In late June, the various units of the 18th and 19th Corps arrived one after another, increasing the total strength of the PLA in the northwest region from the original 150,000 to 400,000, completely changing the situation in the northwest battlefield where the enemy had been outnumbered for a long time.
Peng Dehuai, commander and political commissar of the Northwest Field Army