In 1940, before the "Hundred Regiments War", the Eighth Route Army had been known for its small-scale guerrilla warfare in the anti-Japanese battlefield.
In the anti-Japanese base areas behind enemy lines, due to the growing development of the anti-Japanese armed forces led by the Eighth Route Army in North China, a strategic area for Japan's invasion of China, in the summer of 1939, the Japanese army concentrated some troops scattered on the Great Wall, North China, and Northeast China, relying on railways, highways, and other lines of communication, to continuously launch large-scale sweeps of the anti-Japanese forces in North China, and dug ditches and forts in the wasteland in an attempt to hinder the anti-Japanese forces' attack, and implemented the "cage policy" of "taking railways as pillars, highways as chains, and strongholds as locks," so as to control and gradually reduce the anti-Japanese forces.
In the summer of 1939 and 1940, the two sweeps concentrated on more than 300,000 Japanese troops in North China and the distribution points of the puppet Manchukuo army were increasing, and the strength was scattered, and the Japanese army had about 700 people per brigade. The strength density of the Japanese army in North China was 0.37 people per square kilometer, and the strength of each division and regiment was evenly dispersed in about 200 places, which provided favorable conditions for the Eighth Route Army in North China to concentrate its superior forces to launch a large-scale attack.
Why launch the "Battle of the Hundred Regiments"? The reason is simple:
The first is to curb the countercurrent of compromise surrender and division. In the face of the Japanese army's use of coercion and inducement to win chiang kai-shek and Wang Jingwei, the heroic resistance of the Eighth Route Army will stimulate the enthusiasm of the military and people throughout the country and reduce the possibility of the surrender of Chiang Kai-shek's regime.
The second is to break the "cage policy" of the Japanese army. The Japanese army isolated the anti-Japanese base areas from other areas, between the base areas and the base areas, and the Eighth Route Army was blockaded by the Japanese army in various poor rural areas, and its survival and development were extremely difficult.
Before the "Hundred Regiments War" began, the Eighth Route Army was originally scheduled to mobilize 22 regiments (10 regiments in Jin-Cha-Ji, 8 regiments in the 129th Division, and 4 regiments in the 120th Division), with the main target being the Zhengtai Railway, followed by the Pinghan Railway, the Northern Section of the Tongpu Railway, and the Baijin Railway. However, in order to achieve the suddenness of the attack, without the approval of the superiors, after the battle began, each department invested a large number of troops, a total of 39 regiments of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region, 46 regiments of the 129th Division (including the 1st and 3rd columns of the Death Squad, etc.), 20 regiments of the 120th Division (including the 2nd and 4th Columns of the Death Squad, etc.), a total of 105 regiments and more than 200,000 people, and many local guerrillas and militias participated in the battle. In the end, the total strength of the battle reached 105 regiments and hundreds of thousands of people, so the history called the "Hundred Regiments War".
The Japanese army participated in the battle with all the 110th division and the 25th division, two companies each of the 26th, 36th, and 41st divisions, one each of the 35th and 37th divisions, all the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, and 9th mixed brigades, one independent mixed brigade of the 6th and 15th, and a large number of puppet troops, about 200,000 to 300,000 people.
From August 15 to December 5, 1940, the three-and-a-half-month Battle of the Hundred Regiments ended with the Japanese army sweeping up. The entire combat area of the campaign included the whole territory of Jicha, most of Jinsui and most of Renan, and the areas that cooperated with the operation extended to Lu, eastern Anhui, eastern Henan, and northern Jiangsu.
According to the "Summary of the Battle of the Hundred Regiments" dated December 10, 1940, "the Eighth Route Army killed and wounded 20,645 Japanese troops and 5,155 puppet troops; captured 281 Japanese troops and 18,407 puppet troops, 47 Japanese surrenders, and 1,845 puppet troops (a total of 46,380 people); destroyed 2,993 strongholds, destroyed more than 900 railways and 3,000 miles of highways; destroyed more than 260 bridges and stations; and captured a large number of weapons and military materials." The Eighth Route Army suffered more than 17,000 casualties, and the anti-Japanese base areas in North China under its control were greatly expanded to 10 of the 437 counties in North China. ”
After the victory of the "Hundred Regiments War," the central authorities affirmed this and gave them many commendations and supports. Mao Zedong called Peng Dehuai and said: "The Battle of the Hundred Regiments is really exciting, can such a battle be organized once or twice?" The Nationalist government also sent congratulatory messages. But soon after the "Hundred Regiments War", Peng Dehuai began to be criticized, why?
First, He Yingqin, minister of national defense, stopped paying the Eighth Route, especially ammunition supplies, at the end of that year, that is, in December 1940, on the grounds that the Eighth Route Army had a registered strength of 45,000 people in 15 regiments and was now "expanding without authorization" and had captured the Japanese army's territory and "no need for central supplies." Prompted the Eighth Route Army to build its own arsenal, make crude weapons, and forced the development of 5 rounds of ammunition per person, after rushing up to fight with the Japanese bayonet tactics. The Eighth Route Army began to suffer from material hardship and the reduction of its military resources.
Second, the troops in the base areas of the Eighth Route Army after the war were exposed to the sight of the Japanese army. The Battle of the Hundred Regiments prompted the Japanese army to expand the "public order rectification" into a "public security strengthening campaign", and transferred about 200,000 troops to carry out "sweeping" from 1941 to 1943, and further promoted the "three lights" policy of "killing, burning, and robbing the light". As a result of the sweep, the main force of the Eighth Route Army withdrew almost completely from Shanxi, while the militia regiments that had been expanded locally were reduced to zero and adjusted back to a minimum of guerrilla warfare.
Third, the Hundred Regiments War in the second stage used more offensive battles, resulting in the Eighth Route Army's own casualties, which caused criticism from Liu Bocheng, Nie Rongzhen and others. But at the same time, everyone also believes that although the loss is large, it has also trained the team.
Looking back at history, in any case, the "Hundred Regiments War" eighty-one years ago was the largest and longest-lasting active offensive operation launched by the Eighth Route Army during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, destroying transportation, blowing up bridges, pulling up strongholds, and seizing passes on a total of nearly 1,000 kilometers of breaking line. In this campaign, the anti-Japanese soldiers and civilians behind enemy lines in North China made concerted efforts to fight bloody battles with the Japanese aggressors, fully demonstrating the indomitable fighting spirit of the Chinese nation, seriously damaging the main communication lines of the Japanese army in north China, recovering some areas occupied by the Japanese army, dealing a powerful blow to the Japanese army invading China, and writing a glorious page in the history of China's War of Resistance Against Japan.