The Northeast Army was founded by the warlord Zhang Zuolin during the Beiyang warlord era. On December 12, 1936, Zhang Xueliang joined forces with Yang Hucheng in Xi'an to launch the Xi'an Incident that shocked the world, with the aim of forcing Chiang Kai-shek to resist Japan. Subsequently, with the joint efforts of the Kuomintang and the Communists, the Xi'an Incident was resolved peacefully, and Zhang Xueliang personally escorted Chiang Kai-shek back to Nanjing, and after getting off the plane, he was placed under house arrest, and then he was placed under house arrest by two generations of Chiang Kai-shek's father and son and Lee Teng-hui until 1990.
After Zhang Xueliang was placed under house arrest, most of the Northeast Army remained stationed in Shaanxi Province, numbering as many as 250,000 people. So, what happened to this quite large number of Northeast Armies in the end?
First, Chiang Kai-shek dismembered the Northeast Army
The Northeast Army has 5 corps, namely the 51st Army, the 53rd Army, the 57th Army, the 67th Army, and the Cavalry Army. There was also a 105th Division, which was named Shi Shi and had the strength of an army, with as many as 3 brigades and 13 regiments under its command.
Before Zhang Xueliang left Xi'an, he appointed Wang Yizhe, commander of the 67th Army, to temporarily take charge of the affairs of the whole army.
Wang Yizhe was a patriotic general who was inclined to revolution, and he made great contributions to the early planning and contact with our Party in the early stages of the Xi'an Incident, and had secretly joined the CCP before the incident.
After Zhang Xueliang was placed under house arrest, the officers and men of the Shaozhuang faction in the Northeast Army were indignant and demanded a decisive battle with the Kuomintang Central Army. Wang Yizhe adhered to the strategy of peacefully resolving the incident reached between the Kuomintang and the Communists, and vigorously suppressed the officers and men. As a result, Sun Mingjiu, Ying Detian, Miao Jianqiu and other young officers instructed the company commander Yu Wenjun to shoot and kill General Wang Yizhe.
As soon as Wang Yizhe died, the remnants of the Northeast Army were unstable, and Wang Yizhe's closest friend, Liu Duoquan, sent troops to kill Yu Wenjun and others, and for a time the swords between the various armies were tense and incompatible with each other, and the relatively good cooperative relations with the Chinese communists tended to be tense.
Chiang Kai-shek originally wanted to eliminate the Northeast Army by force, but at this moment, when he saw that there was a gap to take advantage of, he changed his mind and put forward the policy of focusing on political differentiation and supplemented by military solutions.
Chiang Kai-shek deliberately made a gesture of not considering the previous suspicions, and ordered the various armies to be transferred to the provinces to fight against the Japanese. The various armies of the Northeast Army could not reach an agreement, and they could not get Zhang Xueliang's instructions for a long time, so they had no choice but to obey Chiang's arrangement.
As a result, the 51st Army was transferred to Bengbu, Anhui, and later to Jiangsu.
The 53rd Army was transferred to Hebei.
The 57th Army and the Cavalry Army remained in Shaanxi.
The 67th Army was transferred to Fuyang, Anhui.
The 105th Division was transferred to Nanyang, Henan.
Second, Chen Cheng reorganized and dismantled the Northeast Army
Although the Northeast Army was transferred to various localities, it still retained its original establishment, and officers at all levels were still northeasterners. Chiang Kai-shek was still not at ease, so he assigned Chen Cheng to reorganize the Northeast Army.
Chen Cheng carried out Chiang Kai-shek's intentions, and initially took the plan to reorganize the strength of the six armies into ten divisions. But perhaps considering that with such an reorganization, the commanders of the Northeast Army, such as Yu Xuezhong, Miao Lingliu, and He Zhuguo, will lose their positions, which may stimulate the Northeast Army to confront the central authorities.
Chen Cheng also proposed a plan to reorganize the Northeast Army into six armies. In this plan, the Northeast Army added a new 49th Army, but the northeast army's establishment was reduced from the original third and fourth divisions of the first army to the B-type army of the "two-two system", that is, the first army had the jurisdiction over the second division, and the first division had the second brigade, and the strength of the organization declined.
Since many divisions and brigade-level units had already fallen to the central authorities, the commanders of the Northeast Army were unable to resist in the face of this kind of reorganization, so they had no choice but to knock out their teeth and swallow blood, and acceptEd Chiang Kai-shek's reorganization.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, all units of the Northeast Army also threw themselves into the war against Japan. The fates of the armies are also different.
Liu Duoquan served as the commander of the 49th Army, leading his troops to participate in the Songhu War of Resistance and the Battle of Nanchang, and his troops lost a division. Later, in the Liberation War, Chiang Kai-shek mixed sand into the 49th Army, and all the officers at the regimental commander level were Huangpu students, and the Central Department completely controlled the army, and this branch of the Northeast Army also existed in name only.
Yu Xuezhong's 51st Army, of which he was the commander, was later transferred to Shandong and had friction with our 115th Division. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the army was seriously injured. During the Liberation War, it was reorganized into the 51st Division, and when it was stationed in Zaozhuang in 1947, it was surrounded by our East China Field Army, and later surrendered.
The 53rd Army, of which Wan Fulin was the commander, fought in many places during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and suffered the greatest losses. Later, in the Battle of Liaoshen, he surrendered to the Northeast Field Army.
The 57th Army, of which Miao Was the commander, engaged in treason in collusion with the Japanese army during the War of Resistance, the 57th Army was abolished, and the 111th Division of the army was led by the division commander Chang Endo to revolt and join the Eighth Route Army.
Wu Keren was the commander of the 67th Army, participated in the Songhu War of Resistance, General Wu Keren bravely killed the enemy, led his troops to fight hard with the Japanese army, and finally spilled blood on the battlefield, many officers of the army at or above the division level died in Shanghai, the Kuomintang cancelled the number of the army, and the remnants of the 108th Division were incorporated into the Central Army.
Third, most people choose to stay on the mainland
Most of the senior generals of the Northeast Army were in cahoots with Chiang Kai-shek, and many of them, although they were not killed, did not follow them to Taiwan when the Chiang clique was defeated and retreated to Taiwan in 1949.
He Zhuguo, whose name was inferior to Wang Yizhe's, was meritorious in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and successively served as the commander-in-chief of the 15th Group Army of the Nationalist Army and the deputy commander of the 10th Theater. After the defeat of the Kuomintang in 1949, He Zhuguo remained on the mainland and sent a congratulatory message to the founding ceremony of new China, and later returned to the People's Huai Bao and served as a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. He died in Beijing in 1985.
Yu Xuezhong later left the Northeast Army and was promoted to commander-in-chief of the Fifth Army, commander-in-chief of the Lusu Theater, and vice president of the Military Senate. In 1949, he refused to go to Taiwan and lived in seclusion in the countryside of Sichuan. He later served as the director of the Hebei Provincial Sports Commission and died in Beijing in 1964.
After Liu Duoquan was suspended, he served as deputy commander of the Twelfth Theater, took refuge in Hong Kong after 1949, and then returned to the mainland at the sincere invitation of our party, serving as director of the Department of Communications and deputy director of the Standing Committee of the Liaoning Provincial People's Congress in his hometown of Liaoning, and died of illness in 1985.
Sun Mingjiu, the three men who personally captured Jiang in the Xi'an Incident, stayed on the mainland and lived until 2000, where he died in Shanghai. Miao Jianqiu fled to Japan and did not know the end. Ying Detian served as a Japanese puppet official during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, returned to civilians after the founding of New China, and died in 1980.
Lu Zhengcao, who was born in the Northeast Army, led an uprising to join the CCP in 1937, and later grew into a senior general of the People's Liberation Army and became a founding general.
Wan Yi, commander of the 333rd Brigade of the 57th Army, was imprisoned by the Kuomintang because of his revolutionary tendencies, and in 1942 he fled the prison of the Nationalist Army and defected to our party's Shandong coastal base area, where he was awarded the rank of lieutenant general after the founding of New China.