The title was awarded in 1955, which combined the military achievements and seniority of the generals of our army in various periods and their contributions to army building, and the factors considered were very comprehensive. There was a well-known general who made great contributions in the early days of the Liberation War, and was one of the main generals of our army in marching and developing the northeast, helping our army gradually grasp the initiative in the national battlefield, but in the end he only obtained the rank of major general. This rank may seem a little low, but a closer look will reveal that it is actually reasonable to award a major general, who is this person?
This famous player is Zeng Kelin. After the defeat of the Japanese army in 1945, the most developed military industry in the country, the best agricultural foundation and the weakest strength of the Kuomintang army were undoubtedly the vast black land in the northeast. The forces of the Kuomintang and the Communists in various theaters of the country were staggered and competed, but the northeast, due to modern historical factors, was the largest treasure land in the country at that time, and it was also a vacuum zone between the Kuomintang and the Communists. The Central Military Commission made a keen decision to seize a favorable position in the northeast before the Kuomintang army, and at the same time take over the weapons left over by the Japanese Kwantung Army, so as to establish a national strategic counter-offensive base. To a large extent, whether or not we can smoothly seize the northeast as soon as possible is related to the final outcome of the liberation war.
Zeng Kelin was an old Red Army soldier who participated in the Long March, and his loyalty and loyalty were tested for a long time, and he won the trust of the Central Military Commission. When our army decided to march into the northeast in August 1945, it was necessary to quickly draw troops from all over the north. North China is the closest to the northeast, and at this time Zeng Kelin was serving as the commander of the Sixteenth Military Subdistrict of our army. The central part of the Anti-Japanese League, followed by 1.5 million Soviet Red Army, has already returned to the northeast in advance, but the number of troops is limited and a large number of troops are urgently needed to be quickly stationed. Zeng Kelin was ordered to lead two regiments of more than 2,000 people to the northeast urgently, which obviously became a timely rain. In just two months, Zeng Kelin led the cadres out of the customs to develop a team of nearly 20,000 people in Jiliao, becoming one of the main forces of our army in the northeast in the early days. Our army was able to develop such a strategic army as the Northeast Field Army later, which was greatly related to the early contributions of General Zeng Kelin, who made indispensable contributions in the northeast.
However, objectively speaking, 45 years of leading the army into the northeast is already Zeng Kelin's greatest credit in the liberation war, and since then, his military career has been relatively ordinary compared with the famous generals of our army in the northeast. When Zeng Kelin's troops entered the northeast, the Soviet Union's attitude toward the Kuomintang and the Communists was not clear, and the relationship with our army was far and near, and the urgently needed Japanese weapons were not provided to the northeast troops in the early days. Zeng Kelin's report to the Central Military Commission was too optimistic, holding that other troops should leave the customs as soon as possible, and that there were sufficient Japanese weapons to use in the northeast, and suggested that other troops rushing to the northeast should be lightly armed and obedient, and did not need to bring backward weapons and equipment. As a result, due to the repeated attitude of the Soviet Union, most of the more than 100,000 officers and men of our army who arrived in the northeast did not have weapons, and the embarrassing situation of "bare-handed soldiers" appeared, which caused difficulties in the early operations in the northeast.
In terms of military command ability, Zeng Kelin is not good at mobilizing large-scale troops for combat, and his record is very average. Although nearly 100,000 troops were commanded at the most in the northeast (military power was equivalent to the rank of corps commander in the later period), during the Northeast Liberation War, Zeng Kelin was demoted to a lower post by his superiors five times, and successively became the commander of the 3rd Column, the deputy commander of the 7th Column, the division commander, and the mixed brigade commander of the Air Force. Therefore, when the title was awarded in 1955, it was reasonable for Zeng Kelin to be awarded major general from many factors. The veteran general died in 2007 at the age of 94.