The Battle of Huaihai (Battle of Xu beng) was a key battle that determined the fate of our country more than 70 years ago, and the Kuomintang and the Communists invested a decisive battle of more than one million troops together, which ended in the victory of our army, and our army annihilated more than 550,000 nationalist troops, which was also the battle in which our army annihilated the largest number of enemies, had the greatest political influence, and had the most complicated war style.
As far as the Kuomintang is concerned, as long as it defeats the People's Liberation Army in the Battle of Huaihai, it will be able to stabilize the situation that is getting worse every time, and strive to ensure that the southern half of the jiangnan and our army will form a confrontation and then try to counterattack. Before the war, however, the Nationalist top brass wavered from troop deployment to commander selection, thus sowing the cause of defeat.
Under the recommendation of He Yingqin and Gu Zhutong, Chiang Kai-shek originally intended to unify the command of "Little Zhuge Ge" Bai Chongxi in the two major battles of Xuzhou and central China. They all believed that Bai Chongxi was resourceful and had strong command ability, and was the most suitable candidate, and even Lin Shuai of our army once said: "Bai Chongxi is the most capable one of the Kuomintang generals." During his military career, Lin Shuai was twice defeated by Bai Chongxi at the Battle of Siping Street and the Battle of Qingshuping.
However, after Bai Chongxi listened to the briefing and the discussion with relevant people, he actually resolutely disobeyed and refused to command the Battle of Huaihai, and there was a lot of speculation in the outside world over the years. There is even a saying that Bai Chongxi wants to see Chiang Kai-shek's jokes, and Chiang Kai-shek wants to blame Bai Chongxi for the defeat.
In 1966, someone privately asked Bai Chongxi why he refused to command at that time, and Bai Chongxi replied: "There are difficulties that are not easy to overcome, and there is no right to unify command." Bai Chongxi believed that there were difficulties that would be difficult to overcome, and that Chiang Kai-shek might interfere with his command.
Bai Chongxi's son, Bai Xianyong, revealed in his book that he had discussed this sensitive issue with his father, and Bai Chongxi proposed three reasons for refusing to command, which are briefly described as follows:
1: The deployment was completely wrong, when the war was imminent, and it was impossible to readjust hundreds of thousands of troops.
2: Many of the generals of Xuzhou Suppression have no connection with Bai Chongxi, and they are the generals of Chiang Kai-shek and Huangpu, and it is not easy to command.
3: Chiang Kai-shek will cross the command level, making it difficult for him to perform.
It can be seen that Bai Chongxi could not agree with the deployment of troops in the Huaihai Campaign, and was full of concerns about Chiang Kai-shek's possible intervention in command at that time, in short, Bai Chongxi believed that even if he took office, he could not change the situation of the battle, and he had no confidence in victory at all.
To be fair, the three points put forward by Bai Chongxi are all facts, and Bai Chongxi's concept is that "guarding the river must defend Huaihuai," that is, the Kuomintang army will rely on the Huai River as a defense and the main force will be concentrated in Bengbu, which is also the most appropriate strategy of the Kuomintang at that time, rather than blindly confidently fighting a decisive battle with our army in Xuzhou, where there is no danger to defend.
The actual situation was that within the Kuomintang, there was uncertainty and debate about the deployment and withdrawal of troops, and it was too late to withdraw, until before the war, their hundreds of thousands of troops were still distributed on the Longhai Railway and the Jinpu Railway centered on Xuzhou, and they could not take care of each other at the beginning and end, forming a situation of passive beating, which was very different from Bai Chongxi's conception, how could he be willing to command?
Even Du Yuming, who had just taken over as the deputy commander-in-chief of Xuzhou, was also greatly surprised, and at the beginning of the outbreak of the battle, he could not help but ask Gu Zhutong, chief of staff: "Why didn't the main force of our army near Xuzhou retreat to Bengbu as soon as possible according to the plan for the Battle of Xu Beng?" "In the face of our army's fierce offensive, the Kuomintang troops fell into a passive situation at the beginning of the battle, and Coupled with the fact that Liu Zhi, who was the commander of Xuzhou and had mediocre ability, misjudged the direction and intention of our army's main attack, they were gradually defeated and retreated.
Moreover, in the past, there were factions and mountains within the Kuomintang, and in addition to miscellaneous generals like Huang Baitao and other miscellaneous generals, the Nationalist army near Xuzhou was mostly Chiang Kai-shek's Central Army, and even his concubines were love generals, and these Chiang Kai-shek's concubines were indeed not necessarily under the command of Bai Chongxi. The inability of the Kuomintang departments to unite with the outside world was one of the defeats of their civil war.
The last defeat was also as Bai Chongxi predicted; during the Battle of Huaihai, Chiang Kai-shek continued to remotely command the front-line army in the rear, and the front-line commanders did not have enough autonomy, but Chiang Kai-shek liked to command at a higher level when he did not know the enemy's situation, so it was inevitable that he would repeatedly make wrong decisions.
For example, Huang Wei's 12th Corps rushed north to Xuzhou and fell into the encirclement of the strip positions of our army's Central Plains Field Army, Chiang Kai-shek still issued a strict order to move north rapidly without grasping the actual situation, and Huang Wei did not dare to disobey, and naturally the whole army was destroyed in the end.
Another example is that Du Yuming's clique retreated from Xuzhou to Yongcheng, Henan, and retreated to the middle of Chiang Kai-shek and ordered Du Yuming to turn back to save Huang Wei's army, Chiang Kai-shek's wording was harsh, and Du Yuming and others also did not dare to disobey the order. This ridiculous decision took the initiative to send the Du Yuming clique into the encirclement of our army's East China Field Army, and after more than 20 days of siege and hunger and cold, more than 100,000 people of Du Yuming's clique were all annihilated after our army launched a general offensive.
Judging from the course of the Huaihai Campaign, due to the mistakes in the deployment of troops, it was difficult for the Kuomintang army to win. Coupled with the decay and inclination within the Kuomintang, those who were ostracized by the non-Chiang Kai-shek generals revolted one after another, so that our army knew their battle plans very well, and under the general trend of the times, it was indeed not something that Bai Chongxi or anyone could save by personally taking command.
Du Yuming described his mood before taking office in Xuzhou in his memoirs: "At this time, my fear psychology has been rising, and I feel that the Xuzhou battlefield is like a execution ground, and as soon as I arrived in Xuzhou, I was either killed or captured. Ideologically, the problem of whether to go to Xuzhou or not is lingering: if you go, the general trend has gone, and you will be beaten passively everywhere, and there is no way. Du Yuming also believed that the situation deployed by the Nationalist army in the Huaihai Campaign was more fierce and less auspicious.
Objectively speaking, Du Yuming's overall judgment in the Huaihai Campaign was not bad, and he deliberately released false news in the third stage of the Huaihai Campaign so that our army misjudged the retreat route of the Nationalist army. Unfortunately, in the end, Chiang Kai-shek's trick of interfering in the command made Du Yuming dare not disobey, and the result was defeat and capture. Chiang Kai-shek's preference for interfering in command in the rear area was precisely what Bai Chongxi was most worried about, and it turned out that his fears were correct.
Even if Bai Chongxi had the courage to disobey his orders at the front and could refuse to accept the wrong orders from the top, it was only to let them not lose so quickly. Once the front line was defeated, even if Bai Chongxi himself retreated from the battlefield, he still had to bear the relevant responsibilities afterwards, and Bai Chongxi's reluctance to go to the front line to command the Huaihai Campaign was logical.
As for Bai Chongxi's statement that he had the heart to watch Chiang Kai-shek's downfall in the Battle of Huaihai, Xiao Yan felt that it was too biased. Although Bai Chongxi and Chiang Kai-shek had all kinds of contradictions and unhappiness in the past, with Bai Chongxi's military acumen, it is impossible not to know the seriousness of the annihilation of the main forces of Chiang Kai-shek's clan in the Huaihai Campaign.
In this way, the PLA will arrive on the north bank of the Yangtze River, and the Kuomintang will have no strength to fight back in the civil war and lose its bargaining chips. Unless Bai Chongxi deliberately abandons the dark and throws himself into the light and joins our army, not to mention Chiang Kai-shek, the entire Gui clan and Bai Chongxi's central China troops will face the disaster of annihilation, cold lips and teeth, difficult to fight, and difficult to reconcile. Even if Bai Chongxi was dissatisfied with Chiang Kai-shek, he should not have such an attitude of watching jokes coldly.
After that, the enmity between Chiang Kai-shek and Bai Chongxi did not end because they fled to Taiwan, Bai Chongxi later only held an insignificant virtual post, and did not show special ambition in politics, but Chiang Kai-shek still could not rest assured of him, and also sent a special pragmatic time to monitor, which made Bai Chongxi have been unable to understand, and a generation of famous generals died in their later years.