On November 16, 1934, Xu Haidong led the Red 25th Army to evacuate the Eyu-Anhui Soviet Region and begin the Long March. At this time, the Red Army left behind in the Dabie Mountain base area was only the Red 28th Army led by Gao Jingting, with a total strength of only more than 1,100 troops. Old Chiang thought that the time had come to "retake" Dabie Mountain, so he mobilized more than 100,000 heavy troops to "encircle and suppress" the Red 28Th Army, but after fighting for more than three years, he successively changed three commanders-in-chief, not only failed to eliminate the Red 28 Army, but was wiped out by the Red 28 Army more than 30,000 people, and even famous generals like Wei Lihuang could not do anything with Gao Jingting and his Red 28 Army.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the two parties began to cooperate in the anti-Japanese resistance, and the Red 28th Army was reorganized into the 4th Detachment of the New Fourth Army and withdrew from Dabie Mountain, which was thus occupied by the Kuomintang army. After Japan's surrender, the War of Liberation broke out, and in the second half of 1947, in order to complete the strategic task of passing through the Central Plains, Nakano's 120,000 troops crossed the Yellow River and leapt thousands of miles into the Dabie Mountains, opening the prelude to our army's strategic counteroffensive. However, only half a year later, Nakano withdrew from Dabie Mountain, and only more than 60,000 troops were left. So the same is the battle in The Dabie Mountains, the Red 28Th Army insisted on three years, why nakano could not withstand it for half a year? The main reasons are as follows.
First of all, the Red 28 Army and Nakano face different opponents. At that time, the opponents of the Red 28Th Army were mainly the Kuomintang 11th Route Army, the 25th Route Army, and some of the Northeast Army, which were not the concubines of old Chiang Kai-shek, and were unwilling to fight for old Chiang Kai-shek's strength, and the Northeast Army was even more unwilling to fight for old Chiang Kai-shek. At the same time, these troops also have a common disadvantage, that is, they are not accustomed to mountain combat, and once they enter the mountains, they cannot play around; and Nakano's opponents are either the concubines of old Chiang Kai-shek or the elite of the Gui clan, of which the Gui army takes the mountainous road like a flat road, which is even more difficult to fight, which creates a lot of difficulties for Nakano to gain a foothold in the Dabie Mountains.
Second, most of The warriors in Nakano's 120,000-strong army were northerners and were very uncomfortable with the southern climate. In the summer and autumn, the Dabie Mountains were particularly rainy, and the soldiers' cloth shoes broke in a few days. Wearing straw shoes was very unaccustomed, and many soldiers had blood blisters on their feet, and some simply marched barefoot. Reasons such as unaccustomed diet and disease have also caused a lot of non-combat attrition, and these factors have affected the combat effectiveness of the troops to a certain extent. The Red 28 Army was different, and the fighters were all natives and completely unaffected by these problems.
Finally, Nakano was a rear-no-one. The reason why the Red 28th Army was able to persist under the heavy siege of the Nationalist army for three years was inseparable from the strong support of the people of Dabie Mountain. When Nakano marched into Dabie Mountain, the Katsura army had been stationed here for nearly ten years, and many Gui officers and soldiers even married and had children in the local area, and had a certain relationship with the local people. Bai Chongxi took advantage of this and set up many small security teams in Dabie Mountain to deal with the wounded and sick who remained in the homes of the people in Nakano, and at the same time to take cruel revenge on those who supported our army. As a result, Nakano had to march with the wounded and sick, the mobility of the troops was greatly reduced, and the supply of food and ammunition was also in trouble.
The best way to solve these difficulties is to win more battles, but Nakano's heavy weapons are discarded a lot when crossing the yellow pan. The opponent, on the other hand, was the elite of the national army, well-equipped, and had several times more troops than our army, so every battle was fought particularly difficultly, and more than 30 counties and towns that had been liberated were successively occupied by the enemy. Faced with an increasingly serious situation, in early February 1948, Liu Deng's army began to move out of Dabie Mountain. Although he only persisted in Dabie Mountain for more than half a year, Nakano pinned down hundreds of thousands of elite national troops, greatly reduced the pressure on Huaye, and made extremely important contributions to the overall situation.