In January 1941, the Kuomintang diehards besieged the Headquarters of the New Fourth Army in the north with the strength of 8 divisions, and detained Ye Ting, the commander of the New Fourth Army who had gone to negotiate, creating the Southern Anhui Incident that shocked China and foreign countries. This event marked the arrival of a second anti-communist upsurge created by the diehards.
▲ The Eighth Route Army fought with the enemy
On the night of March 2, 1941, shortly after the Anhui Incident, the Kuomintang 57th Army colluded with Zhu Xinzhai, commander of the Independent Battalion of the 2nd Detachment of the Shandong Eighth Route Army, who was hiding inside our army, to instigate him to defect to the revolution. As a result of Zhu Xinzhai's collusion with the recalcitrant army inside and outside, more than 200 party members and cadres, staff members, and anti-Japanese activists were arrested in just a few days. Zhu Xinzhai then killed more than 100 people, including Dong Zhencai.
As a result of Zhu Xinzhai's rebellion, the grain passes, Huangdun, Dongwangzhuang, and other places where he was stationed were successively under the control of the recalcitrant army, and this base area with a population of 200,000 people was lost, causing our army in Shandong to suffer great losses. Zhu Xinzhai was reorganized by the diehards into the so-called "Lusu Theater Guerrilla Independent 1st Brigade", and soon changed its name to "Rusu Theater 35 Detachment". Zhu Xinzhai's rebellion caused the situation of the struggle in the Huangdun area of Rushan to change to an extremely unfavorable change for our army, which changed from a base area to an enemy-occupied area; since then, although our army has launched several attacks on Zhu Bu and the two sides have repeatedly tug-of-war around this area, they have not been able to achieve decisive results.
▲ In 1944, the Shandong Eighth Route Army was strong and strong
By January 1944, as the situation of the War of Resistance Behind enemy lines continued to develop in a favorable direction for our side, Luo Ronghuan, commander of the Shandong Military Region, saw that the time was ripe, so he ordered the Coastal Military Region to concentrate its forces to annihilate this rebel army, and at the same time open the connection between the north and south base areas separated by the Taishi Highway controlled by the enemy. After receiving the order, the Coastal Military District immediately began to dispatch troops, and decided to destroy this rebel army in one fell swoop and completely annihilate it.
Beginning on January 21, the Old 6th Regiment, the main force of the Coastal Military Region, was responsible for carrying out the main attack on Zhu Xinzhai's stronghold, while the local troops and militia guerrillas were responsible for guarding and blocking the Japanese puppet army and recalcitrant troops that might be reinforced in the surrounding area. The people in the base area hated Zhu Xinzhai and his gang so much that in order to concentrate their forces to annihilate them in one fell swoop, even the cadets of the Shandong Military Region's Kang Da Yi Branch School took part in the battle.
Cadres of the Eighth Route Army took advantage of the simple conditions to mobilize the troops
At dawn on 22 January, the 6th Regiment launched a surprise attack on Shigou Cliff, an enemy stronghold. Zhu Xinzhai knew that he would undoubtedly die if he fell into the hands of our army, and he personally supervised the battle, and the command headquarters launched a fierce battle with our army by virtue of its strong fortifications and dangerous terrain, and personally killed the officers and soldiers who escaped from the battle. After several hours of assault, our army blew open the outer wall of the stronghold and broke into the village. At the same time, it controlled the commanding heights outside the village and the streets inside the village, and divided and surrounded the enemy who were surrounded.
At dusk, our army launched an attack on the last stubborn army's last stubborn southern and northern weizi, and held out until 4 a.m. on the 23rd, when our army finally broke into the northern weizi, and the 1st battalion and 2 companies of the 6th regiment carried out continuous blasting under the leadership of the company commander, blowing up all the barbed wire and obstacles on the outside of the northern weizi, and destroying 6 dark bunkers, and finally successfully taking the northern weizi. The enemy in Nanweizi saw that the general trend had gone, and hurried to break through, but was stopped by our army, and eventually the entire army was destroyed in the field battle.
▲ The cavalry unit of the Eighth Route Army in Shandong
In the end, only the main artillery tower that Zhu Xinzhai was trapped, and the 6th Regiment concentrated its forces to attack it from all sides, and the artillery tower was finally conquered by our army, and Zhu Xinzhai and his cronies were all captured. Our army won a complete victory against the rebels. In this battle, 2 Japanese troops, 123 puppet troops, 9 enemy prisoners, 163 long and short guns, a large number of ammunition and other military supplies were captured. Our army lost 57 dead and 298 wounded. Zhu Xinzhai was taken to the base area after the war and shot after a trial.
Author/Zhou Hongxin