Some people say that there have been two unification processes from south to north in Chinese history, one of which was zhu Yuanzhang's northern expedition and the other was the famous Chiang Kai-shek's northern expedition.
After the Northern Expedition, Chiang Kai-shek carried out drastic political reforms to eliminate the drawbacks of factional struggle, whether it was career or military, Chiang Kai-shek's life seemed to be very smooth.
However, after the Northern Expedition, Chiang Kai-shek began to decline, from 1929 until 1949, although the Kuomintang ranks grew stronger and stronger. However, Chiang Kai-shek became worse and worse in combat, and even after the end of the War of Resistance Against Japan, he launched a fierce anti-communist civil war, and in 1949, when the Kuomintang was completely defeated and Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan, how much military strength was still in his hands?
After the first and third major battles, the Kuomintang was completely defeated
For Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Kuomintang who once held a million elite troops, he really had a huge advantage over the Communist Party, but even so, after experiencing the War of Resistance Against Japan and the Civil War of the Kuomintang, the Kuomintang was defeated at the hands of the Communists.
Some historical experts have analyzed this and held that although the defeat of the Kuomintang was a "joint force of history," the most important reason was the military defeat, especially Chiang Kai-shek became the leader and core of the Kuomintang very early on, and as the center of gravity of the trinity of the party, the state, and the army, Chiang Kai-shek bore the greatest responsibility for this military defeat.
Soon after the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, a vigorous and all-out civil war broke out in the country.
According to limited data, the total strength of the Kuomintang at that time was about 4.3 million, of which about 2 million were in the regular army, 360,000 were special forces, 160,000 were in the air force, and 30,000 were in the navy, plus about 1.01 million in the rear headquarters and their organs.
There are about 3.56 million of these regular troops who are directly subordinate to Chairman Chiang Kai-shek. In addition, there were 740,000 well-equipped and strong irregular troops, and the Communist army at that time had no navy or air force except for 1.27 million army, so the Kuomintang crushed the Communist Party in terms of the number of troops, weapons and equipment, and in the sphere of influence.
Although the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communists lasted for ten years, the Kuomintang started the war with great superiority, and even until the beginning of 1949, compared with the Communists, the Kuomintang still had a considerable advantage in terms of the number of troops, weapons, equipment, ammunition and food, etc., so to some extent, the key to the two sides' real victory or defeat was the three major battles of this year.
On September 12, 1948, the Liaoshen Campaign broke out and lasted for 52 days, the result of which laid the foundation for a subsequent battle between the two sides, and the 550,000 Kuomintang troops with uniform American equipment and mobile corps were defeated by the Northeast Field Army, marking the successful liberation of the three eastern provinces by the Communists.
Soon after the Pingjin Campaign broke out, the Communist Party in order to speed up the pace of liberating the whole country, the Communist Party sent the Northeast Field Army, which had just won the war, to the battlefield of the Pingjin Campaign, so the Communist Army faced by the Kuomintang in the North China Military Region totaled more than one million troops, and although the Communist Party was comparable to the Kuomintang in terms of strength, after a long period of ideological work, the two sides reached a demand for peaceful liberation, and the Pingjin Campaign came to an end.
In the Battle of Huaihai, the Communists were inferior in both the number of troops and the number of weapons, but the Communist side invested in luxurious commanders, the think tank was quite strong, and Chiang Kai-shek invested 800,000 troops in this battle, and finally only 200,000 were left.
After a decade of civil war, the Nationalist army that had once sat on millions of troops was crushed in one fell swoop, and after the end of the three major battles in 1949, the Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek, knowing that he was powerless to return to heaven, made a major decision to change China's future, and led the remaining remnants of the army to retreat to Taiwan.
When they finally left the mainland, the once invincible Kuomintang army was only left with more than 600,000 troops in the army, more than 30,000 in the navy, more than 50 ships and more than 400 fighters in weapons and equipment, of which more than 100,000 people had been beaten to the point of collapse by the Communist army, losing the fighting spirit of the Kuomintang, and the Kuomintang was almost collapsing.
Mao Zedong said at the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China that "Chiang Kai-shek's subjugation of the country is to forget the army", so in a certain sense, the main reason for the defeat of the Kuomintang lies in the military, in addition, the key to the defeat of the Kuomintang is also inseparable from the combined effect of the following factors.
Second, Chiang Kai-shek has gone astray: The various factions in the Kuomintang party are mixed
As the Kuomintang continued to grow and develop, the various factions within the Party also began to develop their own forces, although nominally they all belonged to Chiang Kai-shek's staff, and the army nominally obeyed his command, but in fact had its own considerations, each pregnant with a ghost fetus.
The continuous growth of the various factions within the party directly divided the strength of the Kuomintang, not only could not carry out the orders within the party well, but sometimes because they wanted to preserve their own strength, they tried their best to let other factions go to the battlefield, which directly affected the overall military strength of the Kuomintang.
In addition, although the Kuomintang has been developing and growing, its grass-roots organizational and political power system is not complete enough, the efficiency is relatively low, and it is even unable to carry out normal manpower mobilization and allocation and the supply of financial resources, resulting in its seemingly powerful forces being unable to fully exert themselves.
This lack of political leadership and the defects in the system make the number of the Kuomintang more numerous, but it will bring more drawbacks, and the continuous intensification of inner-party struggles and contradictions has seriously affected the strength of foreign wars.
Third, after the Northern Expedition, Chiang Kai-shek gradually expanded and went astray
As some experts have said, Chiang Kai-shek, as the center of gravity of the Kuomintang and has long led an increasingly large contingent as a one-party leader, is bound to be responsible for the Kuomintang's military defeat.
Compared with Our Party leader Chairman Mao, Chiang Kai-shek has never formed a military ideology with concepts, and although Chiang Kai-shek has his own strategic vision and control of the situation, there are too many factions within the Kuomintang and too complicated, and his subordinates have provided too many voices, and sometimes Chiang Kai-shek cannot strengthen his judgment and does not know who to choose.
As a huge party leader, Chiang Kai-shek was confined to the narrow situation of "defending the city and defending the territory," and was very concerned about the gains and losses of one city and one place, and even cared very much about the international perception, which eventually led to the Kuomintang often taking into account one or the other when facing the attack of the People's Liberation Army, and it was difficult to take into account the overall situation.
Moreover, Chiang Kai-shek was a decent graduate of the Japanese Non-Commissioned Officer School, and to some extent, the dogmatism of Chiang Kai-shek's army was very serious; although he possessed similar tactical theories, the situation in the actual combat war was ever-changing, mechanically rigid, and unable to make a timely and flexible response to the changing strategic and tactical policies of the Communist Party.
Finally, when we look back at past history, we often say that "those who win the hearts and minds of the people will win the world, and those who lose the hearts and minds of the people will lose the world." The Reason why the Kuomintang eventually lost the hearts of the people was because the subsequent rebellion and civil war had already deviated from the wishes of the people.
In the later period, for the sake of victory in the war, for the sake of the interests of one party and selfish desires, the Kuomintang did not hesitate to go against the will of the people and sacrifice the interests of the people, and naturally only received condemnation from the people.
Abandoned by external allies: The Kuomintang lost U.S. aid
In addition to the internal reasons of the Kuomintang, another major factor leading to the eventual defeat of the Kuomintang is also due to the disappearance of external support. The U.S. government's assistance to Chiang Kai-shek began during the War of Resistance Against Japan, and until the early stage of the war between the Kuomintang and the Communists, the United States has been providing military and economic assistance to the Kuomintang, but at the critical moment of the decisive battle between the two sides, the United States refused Chiang Kai-shek's request for assistance.
Although the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communists at that time was mainly a confrontation and war between the two sides, it was also influenced by the great powers from the world, the United States long helped and dominated the will of the Kuomintang, and the Communist Party, as a supporter of socialism, also received help from Soviet communism.
At that time, the reason why the United States had long aided the Kuomintang was mainly because of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the United States could not allow social communism to develop and grow in the world, so it hoped that the Kuomintang would win the civil war and prevent China from becoming a socialist country.
However, the Soviet Union's surprise military operations on the European continent and the "blockade of Berlin" made the United States very panicked, and the United States at that time could only make a choice between Europe and China, and naturally had no time to take into account the combat situation and situation of the Kuomintang in China.
Therefore, in the later civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, without the support of the United States, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, which were still aided by the Soviet Union, coupled with the actual situation of the respective development of the two sides, the victory or defeat was already known.
To sum up, from the perspective of history, we often say that the defeat of the Kuomintang is taken for granted, and this reason is manifold, but no matter how much after experiencing the victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan, the Kuomintang, which has shown a crushing situation in all aspects, has beaten more than 4 million troops to less than 600,000 in just four years, and has lost a fiasco to the mainland and retreated to Taiwan.
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