At the beginning of May 1938, the Japanese army secretly ordered that the 13 elite divisions of the Japanese army invading China in North China and East China with a total strength of 300,000 troops were divided into six roads and rushed to the Xuzhou area. In order to ensure that the order was carried out in place, The Japanese Minister Sugiyama ordered Major General Hashimoto Qun, director of the War Operations Department of the Japanese Army, to select senior staff officers of the General Operations Department to form a "base camp dispatch squad" and fly to China to supervise the operations.
The Japanese moved quickly, and by May 5, 300,000 Japanese elites had basically completed the encirclement of the 600,000 Kuomintang troops stationed in the Xuzhou area. However, the large number of heavy weapons and hundreds of aircraft they equipped with the troops were not yet in place. In the face of the japanese army's elite iron barrel-like encirclement, the Nationalist troops who had just fought the Battle of Taierzhuang were exhausted, and their ammunition was not replenished in time, and they could not resist at all.
What to do? Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi, who were commanding the battle in Xuzhou at that time, believed that if they continued to defend Xuzhou, it would inevitably lead to the destruction of the entire army. In this regard, Lao Jiang also thought so. But it is not easy to break through from the encirclement of 300,000 Japanese elite iron barrels.
After study, Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi believed that although the Japanese army formed a siege, 300,000 people were still small after all, and the 600,000 troops of the nationalist army were scattered, and in the vast area where the land was sparsely populated, the Japanese army could not achieve a dragnet attack. Therefore, the two decided to survive in danger and break out from the most dangerous vortex river. Why did you choose this breakthrough point? Because although the Vortex River is guarded by the elite Japanese army, there are no reinforcements, as long as this Japanese elite is destroyed, the breakthrough can be successful. In other places, the Japanese army has set traps, you rush over, the Japanese army is a hundred responses, all kinds of reinforcements will flock to it.
On May 21, Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi used the main division of the Gui army to defeat the Japanese garrison on both sides of the Vortex River, successfully covered Li Zongren, Bai Chongxi, and the commander's headquarters of the Fifth Theater to cross the Vortex River, and Li, Bai, and the commander's headquarters broke through, marking the success of the Nationalist army's 600,000 troops in Xuzhou and the successful breakthrough from the Encirclement of the Japanese Army's iron barrel. ”
At this time, the Japanese army also thought that the 68th Army of the Nationalist Army, which covered the breakthrough of the theater and pretended to be the main force, when the Japanese army understood, the 68th Army also left the battlefield, 600,000 Nationalist troops, disappeared, and the entire breakthrough process, which was only a week, can be called a legend in military history, but for this period of history, for well-known reasons, few people mention it.