In September 1946, on the night of Zhangjiakou, Nie Rongzhen, commander and political commissar of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region, was about to fall asleep in his ordinary bungalow when he suddenly heard a fierce quarrel outside the courtyard. Nie Rongzhen hurriedly put on his coat and left the bedroom, and when he came to take a closer look, it turned out to be Yang Shangde, chief of the operations section of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region.
Yang Shangde's appearance surprised Nie Rongzhen.
Although Yang Shangde was the chief of the operations section of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region, his job was to be dispatched by Ye Jianying at the Beiping Army's Adjustment Department, and at this time he suddenly appeared at Nie Rongzhen's residence in Zhangjiakou, which made Nie Rongzhen have a premonition that something important must have happened.
Nie Rongzhen hurriedly took Yang Shangde into the room, and as soon as the door was closed, he asked in a Sichuan dialect, "Why did you come back?" In front of the old chief, Yang Shangde never said bluntly: "I came back in a special AMERICAN plane to send intelligence." ”
Nie Rongzhen patted Yang Shangde's shoulder with one hand and pointed to a chair in the room: "Sit down and say." After Yang Shangde sat down in the chair, he asked, "What kind of intelligence?" Yang Shangde stood up again, he felt a pack of cigarette boxes from his jacket pocket, drew a cigarette from it under the light on the table, carefully broke the cigarette into two pieces, and drew a small note from one of them and handed it to Nie Rongzhen: "This is the information provided by our comrades working in the Kuomintang 11th Theater, and the intelligence says that the enemy will attack Zhangjiakou." ”
Nie Rongzhen took this small note, he approached the light to look carefully, but he couldn't see clearly, because the words on it were too small, he hurriedly ordered the secretariat people to sort it out immediately. After a while, the information sorted out was sent to Nie Rongzhen's hands.
Nie Rongzhen read the information compiled, felt that the matter was very important, and could not care about sleeping, so he immediately notified the important cadres to hold a meeting and asked Yang Shangde to make a detailed report at the meeting.
First, how did Jin-Cha-Ji, which was originally in a very good situation, suddenly face a crisis?
At this time, in the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region, the roof leaked during the overnight rain.
In June 1946, the War of Liberation began to be fought in full swing, and as far as the situation was concerned, Nie Rongzhen's Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region was in a very good situation, not only because it had Zhangjiakou, the first large city in the Liberated Area, but also because his Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region was connected to Helong's Jinsui Military Region in the north and Liu Deng's Jin-Ji Luyu Military Region in the south, which made the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region have a lot of room for maneuver. Nie Rongzhen also had extraordinary talent in building base areas, and his Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region was not only able to meet its own requirements, but also sent a lot of troops and materials to other military regions, especially the support of Liu Deng's Central Plains Army and Lin Biao's Northeast Army, so that many soldiers in these two large armies were from Jin-Cha-Ji.
Although the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region had a good situation at the beginning of the war, it did not start well.
At the beginning stage of the war, the Central Military Commission demanded that the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region go south to Pinghan Road and Zhengtai Road to annihilate the effective forces of the Kuomintang troops in this area, but Nie Rongzhen, considering that the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region's southward operations would not be cooperated by Liu Deng, Jin, Ji, Luyu Military Region, but could get the cooperation of the Helong Jinsui Military Region to the north, so he proposed to fight Tongpu Road to the north , and datong north of Pu Road.
At Nie Rongzhen's insistence, the Central Military Commission agreed to the jin-Cha-Ji Military Region's battle plan, that is, to fight Datong first, but the result of the campaign was unexpected by the Central Military Commission and the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region, and not only did not take Datong, but lost the important town of Jining on the Pingsui Line.
The attack on Datong was a joint operation between the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region and the Jin-Sui Military Region, fighting from July 31 to September 16, 1946, although it annihilated nearly 20,000 Kuomintang troops, but the People's Liberation Army also injured 20,000 people, and lost the strategic town of Jining, which made the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region face strategic passivity.
Just as the so-called trees wanted to be quiet and the wind was not stopping, when the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region was preparing to take a defensive position, the Kuomintang army began a new round of attack.
Second, at the critical moment when the situation was very good, an accident occurred
Zhangjiakou is located at the foot of the Great Wall, at the junction of Shanxi, Hebei, Inner Mongolia and Rehe, to the north is Inner Mongolia, can lead to the Soviet Union, to the east is the northeast, is an important channel for the transportation of personnel and materials from Guannei to Guanwai, so zhangjiakou's geographical location is very important, so Zhangjiakou has become a military town in modern times, it has always been the capital of Chahar Province, and at this time it is also the capital of the Jin-Cha-Ji Liberated Area.
After the Kuomintang army captured the military town of Jining on the outskirts of Zhangjiakou, it put the capture of Zhangjiakou on the agenda, and at this time the Kuomintang and the Communists in the northeast were in a stalemate and were accumulating strength, while the strength of both the Kuomintang and the Communists in the northeast came from North China in Guannei. In order to cut off the material and personnel supply channels of the Northeast People's Liberation Army and sever the links between the People's Liberation Army inside and outside Guanguan, before the Battle of Datong Jining ended, the Kuomintang army began a strategic operation against Zhangjiakou.
On August 21, 1946, when the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region was caught in the bitter battle between Datong and Jining, a total of 7 divisions of the three armies in the northeast direction of the Kuomintang attacked Rehe under the command of Du Yuming, and the 13th Army was particularly brave, occupying Chengde in one fell swoop, cutting off the strategic passage from the Liberated Area of North China to the northeast.
The loss of Chengde triggered a series of chain reactions, and Sun Lianzhong, who was on the Pinghan Road, saw the opportunity and immediately commanded 14 divisions to attack the liberated areas of eastern Hebei. A large part of the troops in the Liberated Area of Eastern Jidong went to the northeast, thus leaving the eastern Jidong troops empty, and in addition, the eastern Hebei troops were good at guerrilla warfare, but had no experience in position warfare, so they had to take the initiative to retreat, so That Sun Lianzhong occupied 15 counties. As a result, the connection between the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region and the northeast is even more fragile, which also makes the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region more and more isolated. Zhangjiakou, the capital of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region, was facing a severe danger of the Kuomintang army attacking from the east and west.
West of Zhangjiakou: Jining fell into the hands of Fu Zuoyi.
East of Zhangjiakou: Chengde and Jidong counties fell into the hands of Du Yuming and Sun Lianzhong, respectively.
To this end, the strategic objectives of the Kuomintang army:
"Destroy the Jin-Cha-Ji base area, occupy Zhangjiakou, open the Pingsui Road, and thus occupy the whole of Northern China"
With full probability of achieving:
1. In the eastern section of the Pingsui Line, with Sun Lianzhong's 16th Army and 53rd Army in the 11th Theater of Operations as the main attack, attack from Nankou along Pingsui Road to Zhangjiakou, assisted by Du Yuming's 13th Army, attack from Chengde to Fengning, Guyuan, with the 94th Army as the general reserve;
2. In the western section of the Pingsui Line, Fu Zuoyi's ace 35th Army was the mainstay, supplemented by the newly formed 4th Cavalry Division, and Yan Xishan's provisional 38th Division, assembled in Datong, Jining, and Fengzhen, and entered Zhangjiakou at any time.
With regard to the enemy's large-scale two-way attack, the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region's opinion was to retreat to Zhangjiakou on its own initiative, but this opinion was not agreed by the Central Military Commission. The Central Military Commission believes that it is entirely possible to crush the Kuomintang army's attack on Zhangjiakou, so the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region must first resist the enemy with all its strength and consider abandoning Zhangjiakou when the conditions are really unfavorable.
In accordance with the instructions of the Central Military Commission, the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region abandoned the plan of taking the initiative to evacuate Zhangjiakou and began to make preparations for fighting. Since the PLA's tradition of annihilating the enemy is to concentrate superior forces to annihilate the enemy, it is necessary for the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region to correctly allocate its troops, and correctly allocating troops is another major test of the military capabilities of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region.
The reason why it is said to be another time is because in the Battle of Datong Jining, the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region showed weakness in this regard.
At the same time as attacking Da, due to the "blocking" rather than "fighting for reinforcements" tactics against the Fu Zuo rebels who came to help, the result was that Fu Zuo's volunteer reinforcements advanced all the way.
In the face of Fu Zuoyi's three-way reinforcements, the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region made another mistake in judging the direction in which Fu Zuoyi's main force would come to the aid, resulting in the defeat of the Battle of Datong Jining.
In view of this kuomintang army's attack on Zhangjiakou from the east to the west, the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region raised the contradiction between Fu Zuoyi and Chiang Kai-shek to an important height.
They judged that Chiang Kai-shek was bound to gain zhangjiakou, that he must occupy Zhangjiakou by his own central army, and that Fu Zuoyi was a tyrant; although he made a gesture of going east to Zhangjiakou, he suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Datong Jining due to a hard fight with the Plaster, and he also saw the combat effectiveness of the PLA, so he did not dare to deplete his strength any longer, and he would cleverly wait for the opportunity to attack again, and this opportunity must have been after Chiang Kai-shek's central army captured the town of Huailai, southeast of Zhangjiakou.
Based on the judgment of the contradiction between Chiang Kai-shek and Fu Zuoyi, the Jin-Cha-Ji formulated various strategies for annihilating the enemy, and they used only the incomplete Chen Zhengxiang 4th Column to monitor Fu Zuoyi's troops, and used heavy troop groups to deal with the Central Army in the eastern section of the Pingsui Line.
In the PLA Heavy Army Group on the Eastern Front, with Xiao Ke as commander and Luo Ruiqing as political commissar, there were Yang Dezhi's 1st Column, Guo Tianmin's 2nd Column's 4th and 5th Brigades, Yang Chengwu's 3rd Column's 7th Brigade, and Chen Zhengxiang's 4th Column's 10th Brigade, supplemented by the Independent 5th Brigade and a large number of militia.
On September 29, 1946, the Battle of the Eastern Section of Zhangjiakou officially began, and four divisions of the Kuomintang Army's Li Wen Corps launched an attack on Huailai. On October 7, the 8th day after Li Wen's attack was blocked, the 2 divisions of the 94th Army stationed in Beiping detoured from Mapaoquan and Hengling City, 20 kilometers southeast of Huailai, to Huailai's flank, but they did not know that Yang Dezhi and the other 2 brigades and 1 regiment of the 1st Column had already set up an ambush at Mapaoquan, and as a result, 1 regiment and 3 artillery companies were annihilated.
The Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region fought well in Huailai' blockade battle, and Yang Chengwu's 3rd Column and the independent brigades of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region also launched a sabotage battle on the northern section of Pinghan Road, conquering 4 county towns in succession and controlling 124 kilometers of railways.
The battle in the northern section of the Huailai and Pinghan Road made the Jin-Cha-Ji People's Liberation Army's attack on the Kuomintang army appear to be crushed, but to the surprise of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region, when the situation was in full swing, Fu Zuoyi came.
Iii. How did Fu Zuoyi avoid the defense line of the 4th Column of the People's Liberation Army?
In July, the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region and the Jin-Sui Military Region jointly attacked the isolated city of Datong.
Datong City was in danger under the brave attack of the People's Liberation Army, while Fu Zuoyi, who was nearly in Guisui (Hohhot), watched from the sidelines and coldly watched the imminent fall of Datong, only because Datong belonged to the second theater of Yan Xishan, and he Fu Zuoyi never made a wedding dress for others. In order to preserve Datong, Chiang Kai-shek had to assign Datong to Fu Zuoyi's Twelfth Theater of Operations, and Fu Zuoyi immediately pounced on Datong with a horse and gun, and as a result, he not only saved Datong, but also seized Jining in the Jin-Cha-Ji Liberated Area.
Almost a replica of the Battle of Datong Jining, when Chiang Kai-shek's Central Army's attack on Zhangjiakou on the east side of Pingsui Road was thwarted, Fu Zuoyi only made an appearance in the west and did not throw in a single soldier, and as a result, Chiang Kai-shek had to assign Zhangjiakou to his twelfth theater of operations.
However, the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region placed a column in the west, the 4th Column, and fu Zuoyi wanted to seize Zhangjiakou, first of all, to pass the 4th Column, which was also one of the main forces of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region, and had already let Fu Zuoyi understand the strong lesson in the Battle of Jining, and the shrewd Fu Zuoyi did not intend to fight hard with this column.
Fu Zuoyi knew that his intelligence system could not decipher the PLA's telegrams, so he judged the main force of the PLA by monitoring the radio direction of the PLA and the strength of the signal, and found that the radio signal of the PLA north of Zhangjiakou was very weak, while the radio signal in the direction of Xinghe County was strong, so he judged that the main force of the PLA was in Xinghe, while the strength of the troops in Zhangbei was empty.
After judging where the main force of the 4th Column of the People's Liberation Army was, Fu Zuoyi used a strategy of attacking the west with a single move, he first used a small number of troops to attack Xinghe County west of Zhangjiakou to firmly attract the main force of the 4th Column, and with his main force, the 101st Division, the newly organized 32nd Division, and the 1st Brigade of the Provisional Cavalry, more than 20,000 people attacked from Jining to Zhangjiakou.
Fu Zuoyi knew that his intelligence system was not as developed as the People's Liberation Army, and that his men and horses were moving toward Zhangjiakou to easily expose the targets; in order to achieve surprise, he did not use the unified code prescribed by Chiang Kai-shek, but adopted the indigenous method, that is, Chiang Kai-shek's regular code was deliberately turned upside down, completely violating the format, and mixing time and signature in the content, so that the Platon Could not decipher it for a while.
As a result, Fu Zuo's rebel army broke into Zhangbei in only one day.
Zhangbei's Plaguel garrison consisted of only 1 company, and although Zheng Weishan, commander of the Zhangjiakou garrison, temporarily sent a battalion to strengthen Zhangbei's defenses, it was unable to resist the attack of Fu Zuo's rebels and was forced to withdraw from Zhangbei.
As soon as Zhang Bei was lost, Zhangjiakou was no longer in danger, and in order to delay the attack of Fu Zuo's rebels on Zhangjiakou, Nie Rongzhen had to dispatch Li Xiang's brigade, who had just returned from the Battle of Jining, to build a defensive line at wolf's nest ditch to cover the retreat of Zhangjiakou's leading organs. Li Xiang instructed the brigade to faithfully carry out the order, and they fought fiercely with Fu Zuo's rebels for a day, waiting for the leading organs at all levels in Zhangjiakou to withdraw before taking advantage of the night to withdraw from their positions.
4. Incident evaluation
The loss of Zhangjiakou, in addition to the objective factors of the strength of the Kuomintang army, subjectively also lies in the strategic mistakes made by the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region.
Before the war, the Opinion of the Central Military Commission was to first fight the "three roads," that is, the Kuomintang troops on Pinghan Road, Zhengtai Road, and Tongpu Road, because the Kuomintang troops along these three major railway lines were long, their troops were scattered, and there was no fortified city defense, and once the communication lines were destroyed, they would form the isolation of the various Kuomintang armies and facilitate the division and annihilation of the Platon Army, which was good at field combat, but the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region believed that it was necessary to attack the cities first, that is, to fight Baoding, Shijiazhuang, Taiyuan, and Datong in the "four cities." In the early days of the Liberation War, the People's Liberation Army lacked experience in attacking fortified cities and heavy weapons for sieges, and the result of attacking the other side with its own short blows was naturally defeat.
There are also tactical deficiencies in specific campaigns.
According to the theory of contradictions, primary and secondary contradictions can be transformed, and in different situations, the original main contradiction will also become a secondary contradiction, and the secondary contradiction will rise to the main contradiction.
The Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region regarded the contradictions between Fu Zuoyi and Chiang Kai-shek too greatly, believing that the contradictions between them were irreconcilable, and that it was absolutely impossible for fu Zuoyi's army to make a difference until the Central Army took huailai; this was the conclusion drawn by the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region from past experience, but it did not expect Chiang Kai-shek to take the initiative to back down and assign Zhangjiakou to the Fu Zuoyi Theater.
The Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region did not expect that the internal contradiction between Fu Zuoyi and Chiang Kai-shek would become secondary in the face of the external contradiction of the People's Liberation Army, and that the external contradiction of the People's Liberation Army would be the mainstay.
There are strategic and tactical mistakes, and the loss of Zhangjiakou has become inevitable.