On September 18, 1931, Japan blew up the South Manchuria Railway near Shenyang's Wicker Lake and blamed the Chinese army as an excuse to attack the Shenyang defenders, creating the famous "918 Incident" at the epicenter of the earthquake, and also began a 14-year-long War of Resistance Against Japan.
With excellent equipment, the Japanese went all the way south, but when they attacked the Hunan area, they suffered a big loss, hundreds of thousands of troops were damaged in Hunan, and the general who was stationed in Hunan at that time should have obeyed the military orders to retreat, but he violated the military orders and stubbornly defended Xiaoxiang and became famous.
He is Xue Yue, Xue Yue is a Guangdong native, he also has a nickname called "Tiger Boy", Xue Yue is a military general who graduated from the Baoding Military Academy, after graduation, he joined Sun Yat-sen's newly established Fujian-Guangdong Army, he served as a guard in the presidential palace, and was known as one of the "Three Musketeers" of the Cantonese Army.
In order to severely frustrate the Chinese army's will to resist Japan, the 11th Group Army of the Japanese Army formulated the "Guidelines for Operations in Jiangnan", marched south from Yueyang and the area east of it, and surrounded and annihilated the Chinese 15th Group Army in the area around the Pingjiang River on the banks of the Weiluo River.
On August 15, 1939, Okamura Ninji, in an attempt to confuse the Ninth Theater by attacking the east and west, and hyped up the occupation of Yichang and Fujian, thus covering up his ambitions to capture Changsha, Okamura Ninji concentrated the main forces of the 33rd Division, the main force of the 6th Division, the Uemura Detachment of the 3rd Division, the Nara Detachment of the 13th Division, and the units directly under the group army to launch the first campaign against Changsha.
In the face of the confused intelligence of the Japanese army, although the Ninth Theater formulated the basic policy of guarding northern Hunan and northern Jiangxi, in order to prevent the Possibility of the Japanese Army attacking Changsha, the Ninth Theater adopted a "scorched earth policy", which will be able to destroy roads, destroy all bridges, and leave a wasteland for Japan.
The Nationalist government even issued an order to retreat to the mountains of western Hunan to preserve the elite, but Xue Yue could not understand the order to retreat, and this time in solidarity with the anti-Japanese resistance, their "scorched earth policy" even the people around Changsha actively mobilized and demolished various buildings.
If the Japanese army attacked Changsha, the mechanized troops would certainly not be able to reach the battlefield smoothly, they still had the strength of a battle, Xue Yue only mobilized the strength of twenty-one corps and fifty-two divisions, respectively, deployed in northern Gan, southern Hubei and dongting Lake, and sure enough, japan attacked Changsha in September.
But just as Xue Yue predicted, the heavy mechanical units of the Japanese army did not rush to the battlefield, the Japanese army only had more than a hundred aircraft as cover, in early October, after more than 20 days of resistance, the Japanese army was defeated, with 40,000 casualties, Xue Yue's bold move was encouraged by the National Government.
In the subsequent Second Battle of Changsha and the Third Battle of Changsha, Xue Yue created his own "Heavenly Furnace Tactics", and in the three battles of Changsha, he annihilated 110,000 enemies and became a generation of "gods of war".