On August 15, 1949, the Six-Year-Long Second World War came to an end, and for 40,000,Chinese, a 14-year-long and arduous war of resistance was finally won, and the sword blade of Japanese imperialism was ultimately unable to defeat China, the "weak opponent".
In this arduous 14-year War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Chinese people have pinned down a large number of Japanese troops on the global battlefield at the cost of more than 35 million casualties, and exchanged the hottest blood of the Chinese military and people for the final victory of the world anti-fascist war.
But the War of Resistance is not only a triumphant song of victory for the Chinese people, it is also a tragic epic of resistance against the invaders, in 14 years of the chinese land broke out of the battle battle countless, according to incomplete statistics, the entire period of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression as many as 40,000 small battles, large battles also more than a thousand times, of which the classic battle examples are also innumerable, then this program we will take stock of the 10 classic battles in the War of Resistance, many of them have a small victory and more weak victory over the strong, but also have a tragic lesson worthy of wake-up reflection of posterity.
First: The Battle of Pingshiguan
Since it is necessary to take stock of the classic battles in the War of Resistance Against Japan, it is impossible to avoid the Battle of Pingxingguan in any case, when the War of Resistance Against Japan has just begun, the Japanese army is trying to rely on advanced mechanized equipment to advance rapidly, trying to quickly occupy the major cities to force the warlords and the Nationalist government in Nanjing to surrender to end the war, of which the first enemy faced by the Japanese army in north China, and the most difficult enemy is the Jin warlord Yan Xishan, who has been entrenched in Shanxi for more than 20 years, and if they want to force Yan Xishan to surrender, they must take his old nest, Taiyuan.
At this time, the Japanese army has occupied Datong in the north of Shanxi, and between Taiyuan and Datong, at this time, only the two natural barriers of Pingxingguan and Yanmen Pass are each other's horns, if the Japanese army crosses here, their mechanized army will quickly expand and then capture the whole territory of Shanxi The situation is very critical, it can be said that these two passes are the only battlefield where the backward Chinese army can gain some advantage, in this context, the 115th Division of our Eighth Route Army was ordered to go to the front line to cooperate with friendly forces.
However, contrary to what most people think, the 115th Division of our Eighth Route Army actually did not block the enemy at the Pingxingguan Pass, and the order received by the front-line troops of our army was to ambush and reinforce the Japanese army at Pingxingguan, that is, a variant of the tactics we are accustomed to call "encircling the point and fighting for assistance." According to the plan formulated before the war, after the ambush achieved results and annihilated the Japanese reinforcements, they cooperated with the Kuomintang troops from the other direction to complete the encirclement of the main forces of the Japanese army's Pingxingguan offensive, and then ate the invading enemy.
However, the plan could not catch up with the changes, and the night before the battle at Pingxingguan, heavy rain fell in the sky, and our army braved the risk of flash floods to enter the designated position waiting for an opportunity to launch an ambush, but the Kuomintang troops at the Pingxingguan Pass were defeated and withdrew from their positions without reporting, and the friendly forces that were scheduled to join our army in encircling the main force of the Japanese army no longer existed. Although the situation was very critical, the main force of our Eighth Route Army was determined to fight, and in addition, the Japanese army received a successful report from the front line at the Pingxing Pass, and the follow-up reinforcements were not at all prepared, and they were immediately caught off guard by our army from several ambush points.
But the rout battle is not what our army expected, in order to complete the purpose of annihilation operations against this Japanese army, the two warring sides competed for the position of Laoye Temple, which was dominant in the city, and finally ended with our army occupying Laoye Temple and completely annihilating the Japanese army in the ravine, our army annihilated more than 1,000 Japanese troops at the cost of only 600 casualties, becoming the first major victory since the War of Resistance, but this battle lost hundreds of elite soldiers along the way during the Red Army period. And it is a pity that the main force of the Japanese army did not encircle the Pingguan Japanese army with friendly forces as expected, which can be said to be a little flaw in this great victory.
Second: The Battle of Xinkou
After watching the beginning and end of the Pingxingguan Campaign, we continue to focus on Shanxi in 1937, focusing on the situation in Shanxi as a whole, as we have already mentioned earlier that the Shanxi region was operated by Yan Xishan, taiyuan has long since leapt to the core area of Yan Xishan's rule, in order to defend his own family foundation, Yan Xishan can be said to have invested all the resources that can be mobilized during the Battle of Taiyuan to try to defend Taiyuan City.
However, it is a pity that the development direction of the Battle of Taiyuan has exceeded Yan Xishan's expectations since the very beginning; although our army has won a great victory in the Battle of Pingxingguan, on the whole, the Japanese army has occupied the pass, the Chinese defenders have also been forced to withdraw to Wutai, the Japanese army has occupied Yanmen Guanning Wuguan one after another, there is no danger to defend between the front line and Taiyuan, and whoever can take Xinkou can take Taiyuan.
In order to defend Xinkou, the Nationalist government did not hesitate to draw the main force of the central army to support Shanxi, of which the total number of troops invested exceeded 200,000 people, and the Japanese army also invested 70,000 main forces to try to break through the defensive line, although in terms of numbers, the Japanese army was not as large as the Chinese side, but the advantage occupied by its equipment could not be underestimated, for well-trained Japanese soldiers, one enemy two or even three enemies were more than enough, so the two sides of this battle can be described as equal.
In this campaign, the three main divisions of our Eighth Route Army were all thrown into the battlefield, and the Central Army also dispatched wei Lihuang's main force to defend Xinkou, and at the beginning of the campaign, our army took every step forward as a battalion, and every step of the Japanese army was very difficult, but as the war situation became more and more intense, the disadvantage of our army's lack of firepower gradually became obvious, among which General Hao Mengling led his troops to compete with the Japanese army for the Huaihua position many times, and it was fierce to kill 3,000 Japanese troops on one day, but in the end General Hao Mengling failed to hold the position, and he himself sacrificed his life for the country on the position.
Other fronts also became more and more powerless after fighting for half a month, while the Japanese army continued to send new fresh troops and heavy weapons such as artillery and tanks, and finally the fierce Battle of Xinkou ended with 100,000 Japanese casualties and 20,000 Casualties on the Chinese side, although it still failed to defend the important town of Taiyuan in Shanxi, but still set a record for annihilation in the North China Theater and encouraged the morale of the military and civilians throughout the country.
Third: The Battle of Kunlun Pass
After watching the two fierce battles in the early stage of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, we may wish to shift our attention from Shanxi to Guangxi, and the time will be shifted from 1937 to the end of 1939, because the previous Battle of Changsha was victorious on the frontal battlefield, the Japanese army in Changsha after The First World War was seriously injured and had to enter a period of recuperation, and the War of Resistance Against Japan also entered a stalemate stage.
However, the top brass of the Chongqing government believed that the Japanese army was now in a weak period and should launch more attacks to expand the results, and that Nanning had just fallen and the Japanese army was unstable, so the plan to retake Nanning was put on the agenda, and the Battle of Kunlun Pass was about to start.
In order to be able to achieve rapid results, Chiang Kai-shek sent his own general Du Yuming and the Fifth Army, the only mechanized army in the Kuomintang army at this time, to the battlefield, and after a head-on confrontation, Du Yuming ordered his subordinate "Qiu Crazy" Qiu Qingquan to lead a detour to try to encircle the Japanese army.
But "Qiu Crazy" is a little crazy after all, he actually ordered the main force of the Japanese army into the position without authorization, and then led the armored troops to cut off the retreat of the Japanese army, because the fifth army departments are all legitimate armored units, Qiu Qingquan's troops are also armed to the teeth, in the face of the Chinese army's steel torrent The Japanese army is unable to resist, had to retreat as Qiu Qingquan expected, and finally joined forces with the Japanese army at Kunlun Pass, the Japanese army organized several death squads to try to break through but were all repelled, and finally with the cooperation of many troops, The Fifth Army annihilated eighty percent of the living forces of the Japanese 21st Brigade and killed its supreme commander, which can be said to have completely destroyed this Japanese ace.
Game 4: Battle of the Hundred Regiments
After seeing the Chinese soldiers on the frontal battlefield throwing their heads and spilling blood for the motherland, we may as well turn around and look at our battlefield behind enemy lines. At this time, a full three years have passed since the outbreak of the all-out War of Resistance, and in these three years, the Japanese offensive has no longer had the sharpness of the past, the Kuomintang army on the frontal battlefield has no longer been caught off guard as at the beginning of the outbreak of the War of Resistance, and the units of the New Fourth Army of our Eighth Route Army have also quietly infiltrated into the rear of the enemy and started a guerrilla war in the battlefield behind the enemy's back.
In the face of the infiltration of our army layer by layer, the Japanese North China Front adopted a bunker strategy similar to that of the Kuomintang during the Red Army period, building one pillbox after another on the vast North China Plain, forming one blockade line after another, and also giving them the name of "cage policy", in an attempt to rely on layers of blockade to imprison the infiltration and development of the Eighth Route Army, and rely on the sweeping and suppression of the anti-Japanese base areas that have already taken shape.
In order to get rid of the predicament and seek development, Mr. Peng and General Zuo Quan formulated a combat plan for the Eighth Route Army to collectively carry out a sabotage war, and initially estimated that the size of twenty-five regiments would be invested to carry out a large-scale attack on the Japanese army's supply line of communication and the bunkers along the line.
With the order of the headquarters, all the units of the Eighth Route Army launched an offensive at the same time, directly paralyzing the supply line of the Japanese army throughout the country, and the high-level deployment of the Japanese army fell into chaos for a while, seeing this situation, General Peng immediately decided to expand the results of the battle, and finally the investment strength of the campaign exceeded 100 regiments and 400,000 people, becoming the largest battle in north China in the years since the fall.
After the end of the first two stages of the active attack, the Japanese army began to counterattack wildly, but due to the combat experience accumulated before and the weapons and equipment captured, the strength of our Eighth Route Army was greatly enhanced, and several counterattacks of the Japanese army did not achieve remarkable results, and the Japanese army had to gather more troops to clear and suppress our base area, which directly declared that the time when the Japanese army gathered a squadron and could run amok in the base area became history.
Fifth: The Battle of the Hundred Divisions
The Eighth Route Army, which lacked clothing and food, was able to assemble more than 100 regiments behind the arduous enemy lines to carry out a hundred regiments war, so what did the Kuomintang army, which was more superior in terms of strength, do on the front line of the frontal battlefield? In fact, the Kuomintang troops on the frontal battlefield were not idle, and they had just launched a Hundred Divisions War more than half a year before the outbreak of the Hundred Regiments War.
At that time, the Kuomintang army had just undergone a year of rectification training, and the performance of its troops in the frontal battlefield was gradually stabilized, no longer a rout army or a scattered army that collapsed at a touch, and this enhanced combat strength was certainly to be applied to actual combat.
Since most of the battles on the frontal battlefield before were launched by the Japanese army to meet the battle of our army, so our army has never been able to grasp the initiative on the battlefield, and now the Japanese army has slowed down, and our army has begun to form a combat effectiveness, the Chongqing government immediately realized that now is a good time to launch an offensive, and immediately gathered troops to launch a counter-offensive against the Japanese army, because the four months before and after the battle were almost winter, so this offensive was called "winter offensive".
In this offensive, in order to completely reverse its long-term passive state, the Nationalist government did not hesitate to mobilize more than 120 divisions across 7 theaters and all of them into battle.
After the battle began, Kaifeng, Shangqiu, and parts of Shanxi were restored one after another, and the Battle of Guinan on the southern front, which had not been given high hopes, also achieved the kunlun pass victory mentioned earlier.
In the face of the Large-scale Simultaneous Attack of the Japanese Front Line Troops by the Chinese Army, many weak areas were immediately conquered by our army, because it was a full-line operation, the Japanese Army simply could not draw troops to focus on which specific battlefield, although the final result of the campaign still failed to meet the expectations of the Chongqing government top level, and exposed the common shortcomings among the Kuomintang generals, the more cowardly the Vietnam War, the more they could not let go of their hands and feet, but his end marked the end of the War of Resistance Against Japan into a stalemate stage. The Japanese were no longer able to organize a full-scale offensive after this blow, so the battle was still a classic example.
Game 6: The Battle of Changsha
The Battle of Changsha was fought three or four times before and after, and the time span also lasted for five years from the beginning of the First Battle of Changsha in 1939 to the end of the Fourth Battle of Changsha in 1944, and the Japanese army alone fell under changsha city with as many as 110,000 people.
Before we talked about many great victories and victories, we may as well talk about the fourth Battle of Changsha, the only defeat, in the Battle of Changsha.
As a result of the victory in the first three Battles of Changsha, the officers and men of our Changsha garrison developed the idea of a light enemy when they were facing a great enemy, so they made preparations for this battle in imitation of the deployment of the previous three Battles of Changsha, but the Japanese army had already thoroughly eaten Xue Yue's moves in the first three Battles of Changsha, and targeted the deployment of three lines of troops to attack changsha city at the same time, and many peripheral positions such as the Yuelu Mountain position, which had made outstanding contributions in the previous battles, were quickly attacked by the Japanese army, and were conquered by the Japanese army only at the beginning of the campaign. With the key defensive areas of the periphery being conquered, Changsha City was also in danger of being tired, and within a few days the Japanese army was approaching the city.
At the same time, the Japanese army learned lessons and scattered the troops, part of the siege of Changsha City, the other part of the time ready to cut off the retreat of the troops supporting Changsha, for a time Xue Yue was in a dilemma, advancing, then the main force and the Changsha defenders were all surrounded, retreating, then sitting back and watching Changsha be conquered, and finally Xue Yue ordered the Changsha defenders to break out and abandon Changsha, and his "Heavenly Furnace Tactics" were also broken by the Japanese army, and Changsha City was conquered after only three days of siege.
Race Seven: The Great Victory of Ren'an Qiang
The Chinese Expeditionary Force went out to Burma with the mission of the motherland, defending the southwestern lifeline, the Yunnan Burma Highway with the most arduous conditions, and each of them was a hero, and among the many heroic stories of the expeditionary force, the most talked about was the great victory of Ren'an Qiang, which was bound to be a victory of less than more.
Since the purpose of the expeditionary force to fight abroad was itself to cooperate and support the deployment of Allied forces in Burma, many of the expeditionary forces' battles were cooperated by allied forces, but this partnership was not as pleasant as we thought, and most of the time the expeditionary force officers were used by the Allies as a bridgehead to carry out the most dangerous places and perform the most difficult tasks, and the Battle of Nyan Jangyaung was no exception.
At that time, the British troops were attacked by the Japanese army on the way to retreat, in order to help their troops get out of trouble, the British commander sent a telegram to the Chinese army to support, most of the troops of our army have been put into battle, and only one regiment can really help them break the siege, while the Japanese army has half of the company's nearly 3,000 troops.
In order to complete the task Liu Fangwu led the whole regiment of more than 1,000 soldiers to carry out a life-and-death battle with the Japanese army, and supplemented by the artillery carried by the British army to bombard the Japanese army, for a time let the Japanese army confused the size of the Chinese troops they were facing, in order to put on a counterattack posture of large troops, Liu Fangwu ordered the troops to carry out a feint attack in large characters, for a time frightened the Japanese army retreated one after another, after the british main force completed the retreat, Liu Fangwu directly entered the Ren'an Qiang oil field area with the support of the British army's armored artillery, and the Japanese army collapsed in its entirety. Our army killed more than 1,200 enemy casualties with more than 500 casualties, creating the first victory of our army since entering Burma.
Session 8: Taierzhuang Victory
If you ask what was the greatest victory won by our army in the early stage of the all-out War of Resistance, I believe that many people will answer the question of the great victory of Taierzhuang.
The Battle of Taierzhuang killed and wounded 20,000 Japanese troops before and after the Battle of Taierzhuang, creating the greatest achievement in the early stage of the all-out War of Resistance, but in fact, the arrival of this result was very accidental, the commander of the Nationalist army who was originally responsible for the deployment of the north of Xuzhou, Han Fuyu, fled without a fight, and was later executed by the State Government in the name of the unfavorable resistance to the War of Resistance, so the Japanese army also drove straight into the Yellow River without effort to break through the natural dangers of the Yellow River and then capture strategic places such as Jinan Tai'an, the original deployment of the Battle of Xuzhou was disrupted, Li Zongren had to readjust the deployment, and finally chose Taierzhuang as the decisive battle site.
In order to lure the Japanese Fifth Division into the encirclement, Li Zongren ordered a unit to create a posture of step by step and fighting and retreating, while sending Zhang Zizhongchi to aid Linyi, creating the illusion of internal emptiness.
The Japanese Fifth Division regiment did hook the lone army and went deep into Taierzhuang, in order to encircle and annihilate the Japanese army, Li Zongren ordered Zhang Zizhong's troops to return to Taierzhuang and Pang Bingxun to jointly surround and annihilate the Fifth Division, it is worth mentioning that Pang Bingxun betrayed Zhang Zizhong during the warlord melee, and the two of them formed a grudge, and it was this history that made the Fifth Division believe that Zhang Zizhong's department would not help Pang Bingxun's troops, so he dared to go deep alone, even Li Zongren also had doubts about whether Zhang Zizhong would carry out this order.
However, what is gratifying is that in the face of the great national righteousness, General Zhang Zizhong immediately returned to the aid regardless of his previous suspicions, and finally won a great victory in Taierzhuang and annihilat Chinese ed nearly 20,000 Japanese troops.
Match 9: Battle of Songhu
Having talked about the victories and triumphs we achieved in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, at the end of this program, we might as well talk about the battles that were singable but ended in failure, and among the many battles that were bloody and defeated, the Battle of Songhu was the most important and at the same time the most tragic.
Before the Battle of Songhu, the Nationalist government evaluated the attack strategy of the Japanese army, and the government believed that China had no danger at all outside the Yellow River and Qinling Mountains of the Yangtze River from north to south, and that once the Japanese army made a breakthrough, it would be a big stride to occupy China's territory, and if the Japanese army drove straight into the Area of Henan and Hebei, it was very likely that the Chinese army would be divided into two with east and west as the boundary, thus encircling and annihilating it, and the Nationalist Government immediately remembered the national defense idea put forward by the warlord Jiang Baili, that is, the direction of attack of the enemy in the future would be forcibly pulled from east to west.
In order to complete this deployment, the Nationalist government immediately gathered the elite of the three armies of the navy, army and air force to prepare for a general battle with the Japanese army in Shanghai, but due to the early leakage of intelligence, the Japanese fleet along the Yangtze River withdrew in advance, and it can be said that the battle was gone at the beginning.
In the land operation, our army also fell into a dilemma, and the German mechanized division, which the Nationalist government was proud of, also had many problems such as the lack of coordination in steps and the more rapid firepower of the Japanese army, and finally had to mobilize a large number of troops from various warlords to rush to Shanghai.
But the fatal thing is that these troops rushing to Shanghai from all over the country have no effective means of transportation, and even some troops are rushing to the front line on foot, our army, which originally occupied the main battlefield with sufficient support, could not catch up with the rapid reinforcements of the Japanese army coming by sea, although our army fought tenaciously in Sihang Warehouse, Wusongkou and other places, but finally lost to the Japanese army, although the Battle of Songhu was ultimately defeated, but he stuck the Japanese army dead in Shanghai for 3 months, directly breaking the arrogant cry of the Japanese army "three months to destroy China". It has also left a profound lesson for the Chinese armed forces to do a good job in the construction of troops in the future.
Race 10: The Battle of Nanjing
The last battle we are going to take stock of in this issue is the vigorous but lamentable battle of The Defense of Nanjing, in which we do not elaborate on the course of the campaign, but focus on why the battle for the defense of Nanjing ended in a crushing defeat.
First of all, we must know that the Nanjing government always followed the line of "Annei" before the Xi'an Incident, and chiang Kai-shek's government focused a lot of military development on how to fight the Red Army and how to subdue the warlords, and that the Yangtze River fortress that was originally guarded against the Japanese attack was also stopped after the end of the Songhu War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.
Coupled with the fact that the Chinese government underestimated the Japanese army in the previous Battle of Songhu, it was not expected that the Battle of Songhu would be able to damage most of its elites, and most of the combat troops that could be thrown into the nanjing defense battle had just experienced the baptism of the Battle of Songhu, and they had to throw themselves into a new round of the general battle without rest and replenishment, and there were not many garrisons in Nanjing, and even if the tax police troops were pulled together, there would not be many people, so the garrison forces in Nanjing City were actually very empty.
What is even more unimaginable is that not all of the governments support the garrison of Nanjing, and even many generals gaosan believe that Nanjing should be abandoned directly, so the military mentality of the defenders in the city is actually unstable.
When the enemy soldiers approached the city, Chiang Kai-shek was afraid of breaking his own family into it, and then issued an order to abandon the city and break through, and the troops who originally had fighting spirit also lost the idea of fighting, and finally the city of Nanjing was broken, and the garrison commander Tang Shengzhi issued a retreat order and then left the city of Nanjing, and at this time the Nanjing garrison only received an order to retreat, from where and how to withdraw, the most always effective force of the defenders was not well preserved, and the action to defend the city of Nanjing was a failure.
In connection with the ten battles we have taken stock of today, it is not difficult for us to find a truth, that is, under the same bad level of equipment, our army can win victories, and the battles that have won victories must be the unity of officers and men from top to bottom, and the fraternal units to resist the enemy together. And the defeated battles are also the commanders who are afraid of their heads and tails and even have their own ghosts and lose their victories.
The victory in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was bought with the lives of the martyrs, and it is also the product of the unity of the brothers and sisters of the Chinese nation in the War of Resistance.
I would like to dedicate this article to all the surviving soldiers who died in the War of Resistance Against Japan, as well as to the ordinary people who made contributions in the War of Resistance Against Japan, it is your efforts that have exchanged for the glory of China today, and it is your sacrifices that have bought the courage of future generations to stand up and be human, and you will be immortal!