During the period of the War of Liberation, our Party was very lenient toward the Kuomintang uprising generals, and those like Fu Zuoyi and Chen Mingren, who fought bloody battles with our army in those years, received great preferential treatment after the uprising.
However, one of the rebel generals became war criminals a year after the founding of the people's republic, so that when he entered Gongdelin, Du Yuming, Wen Qiang and others were very surprised.
This person's name is He Wending, and some of his experiences are actually not big problems, but some things he did in Yan'an in 1947 were turned over.
He Wending was born in 1903 in a peasant family in Zhouzhi, Shaanxi Province, and most of the people in that era wanted to change their fate only to join the army, so he entered the Shaanxi Army Mixed Brigade Sergeant Training Institute after reading high school, and it did not take long to study here before he became a trainee officer of the cavalry regiment of the First Division of the Shaanxi Army.
In 1924, He Wending was sponsored by Yu Youren, a fellow villager in Shaanxi and a Kuomintang leader, to enter the Whampoa Military Academy and become a first-term student, during which he participated in the suppression of the rebellion of the Shang Regiment and the Eastern Crusade, and after graduation, he returned to the north to enter the Jin army of Yan Xishan as a company commander.
On the eve of the Central Plains War in 1929, He Wending saw that the situation was not right and ran to Wuhan to defect to Chiang Kai-shek, which made Chiang Kai-shek very pleased: It is worthy of being a good student of loyalty to the party and patriotism that I have cultivated, and I can still rely on it at the crucial moment. After that, He Wending was reused by Chiang Kai-shek, and he served in the Central Army, becoming the commander of the Xi'an Garrison before the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War.
After the all-out anti-Japanese resistance, He Wending showed great enthusiasm, he formed a Shaanxi Anti-Japanese Volunteer Army, appointed himself commander, and has been looking for opportunities to fight against the Japanese. In July 1938, the Japanese invaded Yongji, Shanxi, hoping to cross the Yellow River into Shaanxi. When He Wending learned the news, he immediately led his troops into Shanxi.
However, the weapons and equipment of the Shaanxi Anti-Japanese Volunteer Army were far inferior to those of the Japanese army, so the casualties were very large, and some people suggested to He Wending that it would be better to return to Shaanxi and make plans. He Wending was furious after hearing this: Shaanxi Lengwa will not go out of the breed, who said that withdrawing immediately shot, big deal to die in Shanxi!
After that, he let the volunteer army fight bare-chested, very 'barefoot is not afraid to wear shoes' kind of momentum, as long as someone retreats from the battle he will be shot on the spot.
With this fierce momentum, the Japanese army once felt difficult, and their battle in Shanxi also supported the war in Shaanxi, making it impossible for the Japanese army to attack Tongguan and protect the safety of Shaanxi.
In February 1940, the commander of the Japanese Kuroda Shigetoku Division led more than 30,000 people to attack the Hetao area and occupy Wuyuan, and He Wending, then the commander of the newly formed 26th Division, was ordered to cooperate with Fu Zuoyi in attacking foreign enemies.
After He Wending arrived at the front line, he fought with the enemy, did not eat a meal for two days and two nights, and his subordinates advised him to eat a little, but he pushed it away and said: Let's talk about it after the battle is over, if you lose and eat it, it will be in vain.
On the night of March 20, Fu Zuoyi's forces concentrated on launching a fierce attack on Wuyuan City. He Wending also attacked together in Xishanzui, Wuyuan County, and he led 600 death squads to rush to the Japanese puppet army desperately, eventually killing and wounding more than 3,000 enemies.
The entire Gohara Victory killed more than 300 Japanese troops, including Lieutenant General Yves Mizukawa and Shosa Ohshi, completely annihilated the secret service led by Kuwahara, and annihilated two divisions of Wang Ying's puppet army, and obtained a lot of booty.
More importantly, the Great Victory of Wuyuan set a precedent for the Kuomintang theater to recover lost land, so Fu Zuoyi was awarded the Kuomintang's highest honor medal, the "Order of the National Glory". In fact, in this credit, He Wending also has a share.
However, every time he fought against the Japanese, He Wending would write a suicide note, he never engaged in specialization, and he led the charge in almost every battle, so he was unanimously loved by his subordinates, and the officers and men bluntly said that the war was for the great cause of the nation, and even more to repay Commander He.
After the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Jinsui Military Region and the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region cooperated in launching the Pingsui Road Campaign, hoping to conquer Fu Zuoyi's Guisui and Baotou. He Wending, who was already the commander of the 67th Army, led his troops to reinforce Fu Zuoyi, and after several months of bloody battles between the two sides, our party troops failed to achieve their combat objectives, and because the weather was cold and unsuitable for combat, they had to withdraw and rest.
This battle was the first major defeat fought by our Jinsui troops since the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and many military cadres could not accept it; some of them cried bitterly when they collected the troops, some cursed their mothers, and some people who were emotional even started to beat Zhang Jingwu, chief of staff. Therefore, this battle had a great impact on the hearts of the officers and men of our army, and there were many reasons for the defeat of our army; Fu Zuoyi was indeed able to fight, and He Wending's rush to help was also a major factor.
Of course, later, even after fu Zuoyi's uprising, he was not investigated, let alone because of this war that caused He Wending to become a war criminal, in the final analysis, it was still in 1947.
He Wending's 67th Army was almost exhausted at the Battle of Pingsui Road, and he was dismissed from his military post not long after the war, but his old superior Hu Zongnan thought of him and transferred him back to Shaanxi as the commander of the 17th Army. Later, the Kuomintang troops were reorganized, and the name of the 17th Army was changed to the integrated 17th Division. In March 1947, Chiang Kai-shek ordered an attack on Yan'an, and He Wending's integrated 17th Division was one of the main forces.
Later, Hu Zongnan's hundreds of thousands of troops were defeated in northern Shaanxi, so he adjusted the deployment and let He Wending lead the reorganized 17th Division to garrison Yan'an, and He Wending concurrently served as the commander of the Yan'an garrison.
After assuming this post, He Wending did a lot of propaganda work in Yan'an, desperately smearing the merits of our party's anti-Japanese period, slandering our party's policies, and even attacking our party leaders. In addition, he also killed the masses who supported the revolution. Yan'an is the revolutionary holy land of our party, and the impact of his actions is very bad, so it has been remembered by many people.
He Wending was also in Yan'an for a short time, and in April of the following year, he received orders from Hu Zongnan to flee. As a result, He Wending behaved too poorly on the way to flee, and he lost troops along the way, so he was once again stripped of his military power by Chiang Kai-shek and served as the commander of a garrison area to garrison his hometown, Zhou Zhi, and the garrison, which was full of new soldiers, had difficulty even dealing with the guerrillas.
In May 1949, there were not many people around Chiang Kai-shek, so he thought of He Wending again. He Wending, who had re-emerged from the mountain, immediately built a defensive line on the Wei River, which was nothing more than a dying struggle and was soon broken through by the People's Liberation Army. He Wending had no choice but to lead the remnants to retreat to Guangyuan.
In October 1949, after the founding of New China, Chiang Kai-shek saw that he was unable to return to heaven, so he appointed He Wending as the deputy commander of the Seventh Corps, and handed over the command of the Kuomintang army from Qinling to Wenjiang in Sichuan and the Xi'an Sui Bureau, which existed in name only. After doing all this, Chiang Kai-shek ran to Taiwan on his own.
Chiang Kai-shek could see clearly, and He Wending certainly understood that after the uprisings of Liu Wenhui, the "King of Xikang," Lu Han, and others, He Wending was unwilling to accompany the Kuomintang regime to the funeral. On December 25, 1949, He Wending electrified an uprising in Deyang, Sichuan, and then sent a telegram to persuade Xu Economic to lead the New Fifth Army to revolt, and his final actions were still meritorious for the rapid liberation of the great southwest by our party.
Originally, according to He Wending's rank and contribution, he could still get a good position in New China, but the crimes he committed in Yan'an were more serious, so in October 1950, He Wending was sent to Gongdelin. He was also the only one to become a war criminal after the uprising.
In the process of transformation, He Wending was still more active, winning the third batch of amnesty, and after leaving Gongdelin in 1961, he was arranged to work in Xi'an Scissor Factory, and died in Xi'an in 1968.
In April 1985, after investigation, the Supreme Court found He Wending to be an insurgent and revoked He Wending's status as a war criminal, which was also a kind of compensation.
Other time periods are not very good to evaluate, but He Wending's anti-Japanese period is still worthy of our admiration, if the Kuomintang could be so fearless of death, perhaps the War of Resistance would not be so difficult.