Feng Xiaogang once made a movie "1942", which recreated the tragedy that occurred in the Central Plains in 1942.
In 1942, a large-scale sustained drought occurred in the provinces of Shaanxi, Jinji, And Luyu, especially in Henan, and the great famine caused by the drought ensued, causing millions of people to starve to death.
Readers familiar with modern history will know that this year of 1942 is also the most arduous period of the War of Resistance Against Japan, because Japan preemptively launched the Pacific War, once swept through a large number of countries and regions in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and quickly "defeated" a series of old colonial empires such as Britain, the United States, and the Netherlands, which have always been regarded as "dominant" by the world, and the aggressive ambitions and aggressive momentum of Japanese fascists have reached their peak.
In particular, the Japanese army quickly captured Yangon, Burma, cutting off the Burma Highway, the only passage for China's War of Resistance to receive external material assistance, forming a momentum of encirclement of China's strategy, and making China's great cause of the War of Resistance even more severe!
At the same time, the Japanese in China also launched a new round of powerful offensives, and even Chiang Kai-shek's determination to resist the war was shaken for a time, and there were more and more small moves of secret "peace talks" with Japan, and the Kuomintang troops also surrendered in a systematic manner, becoming the "vanguard" of the japanese army's attack on the liberated areas of north And Central China.
In view of the anti-Japanese base areas of the Eighth Route Army in North China, the Japanese army carried out a brutal "campaign to strengthen public security" in 1942 and formulated the "three-light policy" of "burning the light, killing the light, and robbing the light." The anti-Japanese base areas in North China suffered huge losses, the area of the base area was greatly reduced, and a large number of outstanding cadres of our army, such as General Zuo Quan, also made heroic sacrifices in this year, and the anti-Japanese situation was very critical!
Under the repeated devastation of a series of natural and man-made disasters, our party's Jin-Cha-Ji anti-Japanese base areas are also facing unprecedented difficulties; on the one hand, the Japanese army dispatched 70,000 elite troops to sweep up the land, on the other hand, the red land caused by the drought is thousands of miles, and all the serious problems are placed in front of Nie Rongzhen, commander of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region.
How serious was the situation at the time? The troops of the Eighth Route Army not only had no grain, but even no wild vegetables, so they could only go up to the trees to collect leaves to make grain, and each soldier could only receive a "leaf dumpling" of 3 taels and a bowl of "leaf soup" for a "meal".
If you think about it, such a "meal" does not have much nutrition, so the soldiers are seriously malnourished, puffy and weak, and they cannot train normally at all, and when they are not fighting, everyone has to go out to look for leaves, and the leaves of a tree that is decades old are only enough for a platoon to "eat" for a day.
Moreover, nie Rongzhen soon found a problem that made him even more worried: the existing leaves were not enough for the warriors to eat, so what about more hungry people?
Since ancient times, which of the various feudal dynastic armies did not take advantage of the fire and loot to snatch food from the mouths of the hungry? Being able to achieve the yue family army's "starvation without plundering, freezing to death without demolishing houses" is already valuable enough for the common people to burn incense to pay tribute, and the kind and weak Chinese people dare not imagine in their dreams, and what army would rather starve itself than give up the only remaining "grain" to the people.
However, the Eighth Route Army under the leadership of the Communist Party wanted to do this, and Nie Rongzhen soon formulated the "Leaf Instructions", which was unprecedented in Chinese history, which clearly stipulated that all troops of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region were not allowed to pick leaves near the villages, but could only go to the barren mountains and wild mountains more than a dozen miles away to pick them, and moreover, they also had to leave wild fruits and other "palatable" things to the common people.
In a word: "I'd rather go hungry than fight with the people!" ”
This "Leaf Instruction" was posted in many villages in Jinchaji, and the people were very shocked and very moved after reading it, where had their ancestors heard of such an army that loved the people?
Ordinary people came to the headquarters of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region and begged Nie Rongzhen to retract this order, because only the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army could eat first to protect the people from being bullied by the Japanese.
Nie Rongzhen received them, but the order was not only not withdrawn, but also more resolutely demanded that the soldiers perform it, and this practice of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region was also affirmed and appreciated by the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army.
In this way, with the unity and mutual assistance of the military and the people in the Jin-Cha-Ji base area, the Eighth Route Army and the ordinary people of Jin-Cha-Ji survived this catastrophic natural disaster, and the death toll was much lower than that in Henan.
You must know that the great famine in 1942 was actually more serious in Shanxi and Hebei than in Henan, but the Eighth Route Army of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region and the Kuomintang troops occupying the Central Plains were very different in their treatment of the common people. ”
The Kuomintang, which was fair and comfortable in the hearts of the people, thought that the soldiers were more important than the common people, was finally driven out of the mainland by the common people, and the Communist Party, which thought that the ordinary people were more important than the soldiers, won a big China with the support of the common people!