Looking back at history, we can know that at the beginning of the founding of our party, the Kuomintang army already had a certain scale, and they not only had advanced weapons and equipment, but also military academies and schools specializing in personnel training. Of course, there were also many excellent generals in the Kuomintang army, such as Wei Lihuang, Bai Chongxi and others. But there was such a person, who had a high prestige in the Kuomintang army, who worshiped the general and was deeply valued by Chiang Kai-shek. But in the two civil wars, he has never fought with our party, and this person is Zhang Zhizhong, whom we are going to talk about today, so let's get to know him together!
Zhang Zhizhong was born in a poor family in Cao County, Anhui Province, his father was a craftsman, although the family was poor, but his father was convinced that knowledge could change his destiny, so he insisted on sending Zhang Zhizhong to study. After he finished his private school, he insisted on sending him to study, and he also lived up to expectations, was admitted to the army primary school, and gradually became a policeman from a concierge. Zhang Zhizhong's mother once taught him that he could not forget his roots no matter what, and he put this sentence in his heart and used his life to practice.
Because he knew that it was not easy to study, Zhang Zhizhong cherished every opportunity to study, at that time, when the Xinhai Revolution broke out, Zhang Zhizhong was assigned to Shanghai, and later got the opportunity to study at the Baoding Military Academy. Zhang Zhizhong attached great importance to this opportunity, so he studied very hard, and even when he was resting, he never stopped studying, and he also laid a very solid military theoretical foundation, which played a very important role in his future military battles.
At the end of his studies, Zhang Zhizhong was assigned to an old army for an internship, but when he saw the corruption of the old warlords, he did not hesitate to choose to leave, and after many turns, he came to Sun Yat-sen's command. Later, on battlefields large and small, Zhang Zhizhong always took the lead and fought with the enemy with the momentum of seeing death as a homecoming, and he also showed his sharp edge. Zhang Zhizhong was also sun yat-sen's most loyal admirer, and he gave up his great prospects in order to support sun yat-sen and went to the Whampoa Military Academy to start as a student, and it was also here that Zhang Zhizhong met his close friend Zhou Enlai.
After Sun Yat-sen's death, Chiang Kai-shek came to power, and he was not willing to divide the power between the two parties, so he tore up the treaty of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists and wantonly killed the Communists. Zhang Zhizhong was very opposed to the split between the two parties because of the influence of Sun Yat-sen. He knew that he could not dissuade Chiang Kai-shek, but he did not want to harm the harmony between the two parties, so he chose to leave, and even later preferred to be the chief education officer rather than support Chiang Kai-shek.
In Zhang Zhizhong's heart, the tip of the sword could never face his own people, so he never shot during the civil war, but when Japan invaded China in an all-round way, he stood up again. When Zhang Zhizhong went to the front line, Chiang Kai-shek was also preoccupied with how to eliminate the Communists, so that Zhang Zhizhong was often in a passive position because he did not receive assistance.
Due to the disunity of the people's hearts in the country, the Momentum of the Japanese Invasion became more and more vigorous, and the subsequent outbreak of the Xi'an Incident forced Chiang Kai-shek to temporarily put aside his ambition to unite against Japan. When Zhang Zhizhong fought against the Japanese in Shanghai, everything had been arranged, but Chiang Kai-shek had to wait for international regulations and explicitly forbade Zhang Zhizhong to send troops privately, thus delaying the fighters, and although the war situation was finally stabilized, he also suffered heavy losses.
Later, Chiang Kai-shek and Zhang Zhizhong completely renounced, not only disregarding his merits, but also transferring all his henchmen, so Zhang Zhizhong also asked himself to be transferred away from Shanghai. After the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Zhang Zhizhong once again campaigned for the peace of the Kuomintang and the Communists, but still without results. From the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression to the Civil War, Zhang Zhizhong persuaded Chiang Kai-shek several times to seek peace and negotiated with our Party on behalf of the Kuomintang side on many occasions. However, Chiang Kai-shek had already made up his mind and never listened to his advice, and finally ended up fleeing to Taiwan.
After the founding of New China, Chairman Mao proposed to award Zhang Zhizhong the rank of marshal, but he did not accept it, but he was later elected vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, and the official rank of vice-state. At the last moment of his life, he was calling on the people of Taiwan to return to the embrace of the motherland, and Chairman Mao once commented that he was a man who truly hoped for peace. Although the kuomintang-communist cooperation that Zhang Zhizhong hoped for in the revolutionary years was not realized, with the efforts of countless people in our party, we achieved real peace.