Welcome to The History column No. 1105. In 1949, the Kuomintang army was completely defeated, and Huang Wei was the most stubborn among the senior prisoners of war of the Nationalist army, and also created a record for the longest period of detention and reform: from capture to release, it spanned 27 years, except for a very few diehards, the other prisoners of war were pardoned before 1975, and the longest detention time among the main captured generals of the Kuomintang was Huang Wei, commander of the 12th Corps. So did this most "die-hard" corps commander admit his mistake and repent when he was finally released?
At the end of the Liberation War, many of the stubborn Nationalist generals were captured, and later they were uniformly imprisoned in the Beijing Gongdelin Management Center for reform. Those who have a good attitude of repentance can be freed in 1959 at the earliest, and people like Wang Yaowu, Du Yuming, and Song Xilian were all released in 1959. But there are also some who refuse to admit their mistakes, such as Huang Wei, Wen Qiang, and Liu Zhenxiang are all listed here, of which Huang Wei is the most. How stubborn was Huang Wei after he was captured? In the management office because of the problem of learning attitude and the inmates to fight, the entire history of Gongdelin (group beating of Japanese prisoners of war not counted for the time being) is only once, the "warring" sides are Huang Wei and Dong Yisan. The two were once members of a study group, Huang Wei was disgusted by Dong Yisan and others because he was not inferior to the construction of new China, and asked him to write a review book, and as a result, Huang Wei not only did not write, but also wrote poems scolding Dong Yisan, "The dragon trapped in the shallows was played by shrimp, and the tiger fell in Pingyang and was bullied by dogs", comparing these former comrades-in-arms to dogs. As a result, Dong Yisan was furious and directly went forward to slap Huang Wei, and the two of them fought.
In order not to participate in the collective discussion, Huang Wei also proposed to the organization to engage in scientific research and develop perpetual motion machines in the management office, and the result naturally ended in failure. Huang Wei's real purpose is to evade the time of study and transformation in the name of "engaging in scientific research projects". In this way, more than twenty years have passed, and everyone else has been granted amnesty in batches, and only a few people such as Huang Wei have been locked up in Gongdelin. Huang Wei was such a stubborn person, and his former subordinate Yang Botao, commander of the 18th Army, was very disgusted with Huang Wei, and in an interview in his later years, he said that if Huang Wei had not stubbornly stood by his own opinions and did not listen to advice, tens of thousands of officers and men of the 12 corps would not have been killed or injured in the Battle of Huaihai that year, and Huang Wei would have been a sinner in history. In fact, Yang Botao himself was captured in Shuangduiji with Huang Wei, but Yang Botao knew the current affairs and the transformation speed was very fast, and he was the first to be released in 1959.
So when Huang Wei was finally pardoned and released from prison in 1975, did he really repent? After all, the last batch of amnesties was the release of all employees, and there were no other hard requirements. Judging from Huang Wei's actions when he received the amnesty notice in 1975( above), and the words he said in front of the tomb of his old friend Fang Zhimin shortly after his release from prison, Huang Wei, who was once extremely stubborn, finally became impressed and gradually repented of what he had done in the first half of his life. At the tomb, he personally said, "I have done things for the reactionaries for half my life and caused suffering to the country and the people.", which shows that even stubborn people are likely to turn back in the face of full education and indoctrination. In his later years, Huang Wei lived to the age of 85 and eventually died in Beijing.