On September 18, 1931, Japanese officers who were originally stationed on the northeast border of China falsely framed the Chinese army on trumped-up charges, and then suddenly launched a surprise attack on the Chinese Northeast Army battalion, and the September 18 Incident broke out. In the next five months, the Japanese army occupied the entire three northeastern provinces with only a few thousand troops. The "918 Incident" has become the greatest pain in the hearts of countless Chinese people.
What we are familiar with is that Chiang Kai-shek issued an order not to resist the Northeast Army, which enabled the Japanese army to capture the entire northeast in such a short period of time. But in fact, at the time of the September 18 Incident, there was a general in the Northeast Army who, in spite of the orders of his superiors not to resist, resolutely fired the first shot of the anti-Japanese resistance and saved the last dignity of the Chinese nation, he was Wang Tiehan!
Hot-blooded iron man
Wang Tiehan was born in 1905 in a small village in Panshan, Liaoning. Wang Tiehan loved to study since he was a child, and later entered the preparatory department of Peking University, but because of his family's poverty, he was forced to drop out of school after only two years of school and turned to the road of joining the army. In the army, because Wang Tiehan was solid and hardworking, he was appreciated by many generals of the Northeast Army at that time, and was later promoted to a close confidant by Zhang Zuolin, the "Grand Marshal of Zhang" at that time.
Under Zhang Zuolin's arrangement, Wang Tiehan later entered the Northeast Army Lecture Hall for in-depth military training, and after completing his studies, he served as a regimental commander of the Independent Brigade and was ordered to garrison the North Camp of the Northeast Army. On the night of September 18, hundreds of Japanese troops stationed outside the Peking University camp suddenly came and tried to enter the North Camp to search on the grounds that the Japanese-built South Manchuria Railway had been blown up by Chinese soldiers. This act was naturally resisted by the soldiers of the Northeast Army, and then the Japanese deliberately opened fire and attacked the North Camp
However, the senior generals of the Northeast Army in the North Camp at that time received the order of the Kuomintang government to "not resist" and could only watch the Japanese army approach step by step and have no choice. At this time, Wang Tiehan, who was full of anger, did not care so much, he saw the aggression of the Japanese army, so he rushed up with his own guards and fired the first shot of the anti-Japanese resistance. But Wang Tiehan's strength was weak after all, and he alone could not really repel the Japanese army. Not long after, Wang Tiehan was forced to retreat due to running out of ammunition.
Southern conquest of the Northern War
Afterwards, although Wang Tiehan's act of resisting the Japanese army was severely criticized by the Kuomintang government, under the protection of Zhang Xueliang, Wang Tiehan was not really punished, and the entire army of the Northeast Army moved to the Hebei region to continue to garrison. At that time, the Northeast Army, as Zhang Zuolin's concubine army before his death, was well-equipped and strictly disciplined, and it can be said that it was the top military armed force in China at that time. Such a powerful army was also greatly feared by Chiang Kai-shek, and Wang Tiehan's "anti-Japanese" behavior this time made Chiang Kai-shek even more worried about this "Zhang family army."
Subsequently, Chiang Kai-shek transferred the senior generals around Zhang Xueliang to other posts or persecuted him for various reasons, but wang Tiehan was not implicated under Zhang Xueliang's protection. After that, the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression broke out, and under Chiang Kai-shek's "intentional arrangement", Wang Tiehan led the Northeast Army as the vanguard of the Southern Expedition to the Northern War, and successively participated in many battles such as the Battle of Songhu, the Battle of Nanchang, and the Battle of Zhejiang, making great contributions to resisting the Japanese army, recovering lost land, and winning the final victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan.
Often defeated generals
After Japan's surrender in 1945 and the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, Wang Tiehan, as one of the spokesmen of senior Kuomintang generals, personally went to Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, to accept the surrender of the Japanese army. In the same year, Wang Tiehan was placed in the Jiangsu region, and the former Northeast Army led by him was reorganized into the Forty-ninth Army of the Army, with Wang Tiehan as its commander.
When the civil war broke out, Wang Tiehan belonged to the staunch "anti-communist faction" in the Kuomintang camp. Wang Tiehan's Forty-ninth Army was ordered to garrison the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, and engaged in many battles with the East China Field Army of the People's Liberation Army, but each time ended in Wang Tiehan's fiasco. In 1946, in the Battle of Suzhong and the Battle of Fort Li, Wang Tiehan was even more defeated, the Forty-ninth Army suffered casualties and few victors, the "undefeated myth" of Wang Tiehan's Forty-ninth Army was completely destroyed, and the original Northeast Army lineage of the Forty-ninth Army also disappeared.
Chiang Kai-shek's government was greatly outraged when it saw the fiasco of Wang Tiehan's forces in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions. Subsequently, Wang Tiehan was transferred to the northeast region for a change of defense. In the northeast, Wang Tiehan still did not avoid the result of being "crippled" by the People's Liberation Army: just over twenty days after arriving in the northeast, Wang Tiehan was surrounded by the northeast field army, and once again fled into the wilderness, and then collapsed.
epilogue:
In 1949, after the victory of the Liberation War, Wang Tiehan came to Taiwan with Zhang Xueliang. Here, Wang Tiehan completely abandoned the affairs of the military and turned to the study of military science and political science, and wrote a number of famous military and political books based on his own personal experience. Summarizing Wang Tiehan and his people, we find that he made extremely outstanding contributions to the War of Resistance Against Japan, but actively responded to the war during the civil war, and Wang Tiehan's "undefeated myth" was completely broken, which may be the true meaning of "justice will triumph over evil". In 1995, Wang Tiehan died peacefully in Taiwan.