History has its own life, it is like a person, both easy-going and self-respecting. ——Yu Qiuyu
In fighting against the Japanese army and the Kuomintang army, our army has always adhered to the principle of defeating the masses strategically and tactically by the masses, and winning victories in specific battles with absolute superiority in troop strength.
But the Battle of Jinzhong was an exception. In this battle, our army fought a decisive battle with less than 60,000 troops and an elite corps of more than 100,000 people in Yan Xishan, and the strategic, campaign, and tactical levels were all outnumbered, and they were able to annihilate most of the enemy and achieve a complete victory. What is the mystery of this?
I. Pre-war situation: 2:1 ratio of enemy and enemy forces
The Battle of Jinzhong was the most crucial battle for our army to liberate Shanxi.
The strength of our army in Shanxi is mainly the First Corps of the North China Field Army, with Xu as the former commander and political commissar, and Zhou Shi as the deputy commander and deputy political commissar. The total strength of the army is about 60,000 people.
The central government asked Xu Xiangqian to lead troops to liberate Shanxi, on the one hand, because Xu Shuai was a native of Wutai, Shanxi, and Yan Xishan, the emperor of Shanxi Tu, was a fellow villager and knew his roots. On the other hand, it is to be assured of Xu Shuai's ingenious and superb command. At that time, the major battlefields in the northeast, east China, north China, and northwest China were all in intense battles, and penglinluo, Liu Deng, Chen su, and other high-ranking commanders who were on their own were all unable to come out of the country, and indeed they could not find high-ranking generals who could shoulder more important responsibilities. Although Xu Shuai was suffering from severe tuberculous trochitis at that time, and everyone was thinned into a bamboo pole, he still helped the sick and asked for war, and went to the land of Sangzi to relieve the people from hanging upside down.
The disparity in strength between the enemy and ourselves in Shanxi is not only seriously smaller than that of the enemy army--the Yan army has about 130,000 people, but it is also very disadvantageous in terms of geographical advantages. Yan Xishan operated in Shanxi for more than thirty years, and the feudal rule was strict and cruel, not to mention, and a lot of military preparations were made.
The railways in Shanxi are all narrow gauges, and the normal railways commonly used in other provinces cannot be driven in, which greatly limits the speed of the enemy forces to advance.
Yan Xishan also built a number of fortress defense lines along the Fenhe River valley, along the mountain graben valley, from the south of Taiyuan, artificially set up obstacles, and divided Shanxi into three large strategic blocks of northern Jin, central Jin, and southern Jin, during which they were connected with the Pu Railway.
Yan Xishan boasted that chiang kai-shek could not defeat the People's Liberation Army in other battlefields, but Shanxi was more than enough to meet the People's Liberation Army and could definitely support it until the outbreak of the third world war.
On the other hand, our army, the units to which the First Corps belongs, except for the main forces of the Eighth Column and the Thirteenth Column, the rest are armed in local military regions and have no experience in fighting large-scale battles. However, Xu Shuai was not afraid at all, and in October 1947 and May 1948, he launched the Battle of Yuncheng and the Battle of Linfen, compressing Yan Xishan's sphere of influence to Jinzhong.
At the end of May 1948, Xu Xiangqian began to plan the Jinzhong Campaign despite the continuous combat of his troops. Taking into account the fatigue of the first corps, the central government proposed to annihilate the enemy targets of 1-2 divisions. However, Xu assured the center that the target of annihilation could be expanded to 4-6 divisions. At this time, yan Xishan still had 130,000 troops available in his hands. Fight less and more, but also eat 6 divisions? People thought Xu Xiangqian was not crazy!
Second, the first time to transfer the tiger away from the mountain: annihilate Yan Xishan's personal trainer
Xu Xiangqian has always been cautious in his words and deeds, let alone revising the central authorities' goal of annihilating the enemy. Since he can say it, he can do it.
Xu Xiangqian knew Too much about Yan Xishan, a fellow countryman. Although Yan Xishan had already become an overseer as early as the Xinhai Revolution and was a well-informed person, the shrewdness in his bones (to say that the ugly point was a little cleverness) had never changed. He has no principles, is mercenary, and is calculating. Ruling Shanxi for more than thirty years from invincible, but also made him stuck in his own way, his vision became more and more narrow. This kind of characteristic of being good at calculation but hidden in the overall situation, Xu Xiangqian has long been able to touch the door.
If the division directly attacked Taiyuan, Yan Xishan would inevitably shrink and hold on, and the 130,000-strong army would certainly not be able to fight the fortified city of Taiyuan. It is necessary to think of ways to continuously transfer the Yan army out of the city and gradually divide and annihilate it in the movement. How to adjust it? Xu Xiangqian's countermeasure was to show weakness to induce him.
In early June 1948, Xu Xiangqian commanded the troops to build ships and collect grain at the Fengling Ferry Port, making a appearance of crossing the river to the northwest battlefield.
On 11 June, Xu Xiangqian ordered another division to bypass Yan Xishan's strong defensive lines around Zihongkou and Baishiling and attack Fenyang and Xiaoyi.
The intention of this set of combined fists was to induce Yan Xishan to believe that the Shanxi communist army was anxious to cross the Yellow River in the west, so it sent a partial division to contain the main force of the Yan army to ensure the westward advance of the main force; at the same time, this partial division had Taiyuan Jiancheng in front and a Zihongkou defense line in the back, and it was trapped in the Jedi and looked very easy to fight. In order to quickly swallow this small force, Yan sent a blitzkrieg regiment, led by Gao Qizhi, commander of the 34th Army, to advance towards the first line of attacks on Fenyang and Xiaoyi.
Since the enemy is coming, let's surround and annihilate, right? Not busy, Xu made a detour forward, the enemy was in the west, but he took the opportunity to lead the main force to the east, and successively took the three cities of Pingyao, Jiexiu, and Qixian that lacked heavy defense.
The three cities of Pingjie Qi were already very close to Taiyuan, and Yan Xishan thought that Xu Xiangqian's main force had already crossed the Yellow River and gone to the northwest, but he suddenly appeared here. The panicked Yan Xishan, fearing that Taiyuan would be lost, urgently ordered the blitzkrieg corps to quickly withdraw to the east to rescue the emergency. Gao Qi, in a hurry, abandoned the Fen and Xiaoyi army's partial divisions, and gu touu
What Xu xiang wanted was for the enemy to scurry back and forth. The main force of the first corps was clothed in a pocket formation in the area of Qi County, waiting for the Yan Army Blitzkrieg Corps to drill. Our Fenxiao holding troops also actively launched a pursuit regardless of the disparity in strength.
On June 21, Xu Xiangqian's main force surrounded Yan Xishan's pro-trainers and pro-training artillery regiments in Pingyao. The so-called pro-trainers are the elite of Yan Xishan, and the commanders of their divisions are all hardcore compatriots and confidants of Yan Xishan, who are well treated and equipped. The division has always been arrogant and arrogant, and the anti-communists are particularly active, and the operations are often fought hard. At this time, Xu Qiangqian's ambush was called Tian Tian Should not be, and the ground was not spirited, and finally he was punished, and was completely annihilated by Xu Qiangqian with a double strength advantage, killing more than 3,000 people and capturing more than 4,000 people. Subsequently, another main force of our army surrounded and annihilated more than 3,000 people in two regiments of the provisional 19th Army.
Third, the second time to transfer the tiger away from the mountain: Zhao Chengshou, the first general of the Jin army
Yan Xishan was so enraged by the overthrow of the pro-trainer that he immediately ordered Zhao Chengshou, deputy director of the Taiyuan Appeasement Office and commander-in-chief of the Jin Provincial Field Army, to go south of Taiyuan city and unify the command of all troops to counterattack Xu Xiangqian. Yan Xishan learned the lesson of the division of the pro-trainers who were cut off and annihilated, and ordered Zhao Chengshou to command the various military divisions to close to the railway and act intensively, without giving Xu xiangqian the opportunity to annihilate. Zhao Chengshou shrunk to the south of Taiyuan City, and did not dare to attack south for a long time.
Xu Xiangqian had originally planned to fight Zhao Chengshou on the Ping, Jie, and Qi fronts, but he did not expect that they would not dare to go south. After careful consideration, Xu Xiangqian revised the campaign attempt, pushed the attack line northward, entered the Yuci and Taigu fronts, narrowed the distance with Zhao Chengshou, and lured him out of Taiyuan and fought a decisive battle on the Yutai front.
Sure enough, this relatively small distance greatly eased the vigilance of Yan Xishan and Zhao Chengshou. On June 30, Zhao Chengshou led his army across Taigu County and attacked the area around Qi County to the south, and Zhao Chengshou unconsciously left Taiyuan and successfully transferred the tiger away from the mountain.
Xu Xiangqian ignored the Yan army's southern attack, took advantage of the enemy's southward advance, and instead infiltrated the enemy's rear flank with a force, cut off the Qitai railway line, and left the main force of the Taiyue Military Region forty-one regiments at Dongcun, north of Taigu, to prepare to intercept Zhao Chengshou. In addition, the main force set up an ambush between Xugou and Yuci in the east. Xu Xiangqian's intention was to mobilize Zhao Chengshou to retreat north and then annihilate him in the movement. So why not just deploy a pocket array on the Dongcun railway line instead of moving east? Let's sell it first.
Zhao Chengshou was shocked to hear that the back road had been cut off, and he ignored three seven twenty-one and immediately turned around and retreated north. As a result, as Xu Xiangqian expected, he crashed headlong into the blocking position of the Forty-first Regiment of Dongcun. Zhao Chengshou was anxious to withdraw and launched an attack desperately, and Yan Xishan also sent aircraft to bomb our army's positions. Forty-first regiments fought continuously in the early stages, the casualties were not replenished, the troops were already very tired, but they still fought to the end at all costs, and some companies fought only a few people. Xu Xiangqian gave the order to die, and the light must also be resisted, and at this time, the fight is the will.
As a result, Zhao Chengshou, who had the superior strength, could not resist first, and the Yan army attacked for four consecutive days, with more than a thousand casualties, and Zhao Chengshou mistakenly thought that Xu Qiangqian's main force was here, so he abandoned the attack and turned to Xugou and Yuci Road to retreat north. This just happened to drill into Xu Qianqian's real main force resistance position.
Xu Xiangqian saw that the enemy did come, while encircling the enemy army of 30,000 people with the main force of more than 20,000 people - yes, you did not see the flowers, Xu Xiangqian was so bold, with a weak force to surround the enemy. Then he urgently ordered the main forces to quickly move closer and thicken the "pockets".
The flustered Zhao Chengshou didn't know how many xu xiangqian's main forces there were, and he was already a little flustered at this time. He did not take advantage of the fact that Xu's main force was not concentrated, but divided his troops into three tentative attacks in an attempt to find out the virtual reality of Xu's troops. As a result, once the two armies met, it was difficult to get out again, and the first general of the Jin army lost the opportunity to break through in vain.
For three whole days, Zhao Chengshou failed to break through, and at this time, all the units in Qi County and Taigu were surrounded, and the situation was reversed, the main force of our army reached more than 50,000 people, and all the heavy artillery was pulled up. Despite the extreme difficulties of more than 5,000 casualties being unsupplied and fighting for more than a month in a row, the various units of the First Corps fought to the death with Zhao Chengshou's troops with a fearless revolutionary spirit. Yan Xishan urgently ordered the Taiyuan troops to go south to break the siege, but at this time the Yan army was hit hard, and it was already a sound of wind and cranes, grass and trees, and our army only left a small force in the south of Taiyuan to contain it, and the Taiyuan reinforcements retracted in horror.
From 10 july to 16 July, our army finally completely annihilated more than 30,000 people of Zhao Chengshou, including a regiment of The Former Quanfu Of the Invading Japanese Army that Yan Xishan "retained" in spite of the scorn of the world (formerly Quan fu was the commander of the Lieutenant General Brigade of the Japanese Army invading China in Changzhi, Shanxi, formerly known as Yuanquan Xin). Yuan Quanfu, a war criminal full of evil, escaped war interrogation and helped Yan in Shanxi, but at this time he was finally killed by the shells of the People's Liberation Army.
At this point, the Jinzhong Campaign was basically over, and our army successively annihilated a total of more than 100,000 people in 9 divisions in a series of battles, including more than 80,000 prisoners, exceeding the campaign objectives entrusted by the Central Military Commission.
Fourth, the insider looks at the doorway
Looking at military history, we must not only look at the bustle, but also look at the doorway. The key factor for our army's victory lies in Xu Shuai's command, and there are several reasons for the victory:
First, the strategic vision is extremely broad. Although Xu Shuai was only in charge of the battles in the Shanxi battlefield, his eyes were fixed on the national war situation. The premise for the first stage of operations to achieve the transfer of tigers and mountains is that there has been a stalemate in both the North China Battlefield and the Northwest Battlefield, and both battlefields need to increase their troops. Yan Xishan also knew this situation, so Xu Shuai seized on the mentality of both the enemy and us, and created the illusion that Shanxi's troops were evacuating and leaving, causing Yan Xishan to seriously misjudge and mistakenly send a small number of troops out of the city to attack, providing Xu Xiangqian with the opportunity to divide and annihilate.
Second, the psychology of the enemy general is extremely accurate. This point is concentrated in the battle to annihilate Zhao Chengshou. Let's explain why Xu Shuai was able to pinch Zhao Chengshou and throw himself into the net.
The general strategy formulated by Yan Jun is to connect the dots with the line, and the line is the railway line. The various units of the Yan army deployed, attacked, retreated, and supplied, and all relied heavily on the railway line. Therefore, when Zhao Chengshou withdrew his troops, his instinctive reaction must be to withdraw north through the railway line. If the main force was gathered in Dongcun to intercept Zhao Chengshou, Zhao was anxious to break through, and taiyuan on the northern front was convenient to come to the aid, and it was very difficult to encircle and annihilate Zhao in Dongcun. After the fierce battle in Dongcun, Zhao Chengshou did not want to dwell too much, and would inevitably choose another road to retreat north. The road between Xu Yu is the first choice, and Xu Shuai has set up an ambush here, which can be described as waiting for work. Moreover, after the consumption of the First World War of Dongcun, Zhao Chengshou was suspicious of the gods and ghosts, and his sharpness was lost, and it was easier to surround and annihilate him.
Third, the deployment of troops is highly flexible. Although the strength of our army is small, Xu Shuai, with astonishing courage, dares to divide the troops in four places, and in every direction of the campaign, our army is actually weaker than the Yan army. If there are high-ranking people in the Yan army who see through the falsehood of our army and carry out a stalking and fighting, it will undoubtedly lead to heavy losses.
Therefore, this style of play, whether it is Lin Biao, Su Yu, or Liu Bocheng, dare not use it easily. The reason why Xu Xiangqian dared to use it was that he was familiar with the skills of the generals of the Jin Army, and Yan Laoxi and his group of brain-dead generals did not have such a vision.
Looking at the series of battles in jinzhong, in the four or five directions of Fenglingdu, Fenxiao, Yuci, and Jinzhong, there are suspected soldiers of our army in the movement. The advantage of such a division of troops is that the enemy will not be able to predict our falsehood, listen to the police everywhere, and run for his life everywhere. And once it is necessary to concentrate forces to fight the annihilation war, Xu Shuai's command is extremely sharp and sharp, and he can always concentrate the largest troops at the first time, resulting in the superiority of troops on the local battlefield - of course, the advantage is mostly very weak, after all, Xu Shuai's capital is too limited.
With 60,000 people dying and more than 100,000 people on Yan Xishan, he was able to defeat them in battle, defeat the masses with fewer people, and eat more enemy troops than himself, Xu Shuai's talent was so high that he could not praise it too much.
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