As a very important neighbor of China, the relationship between Japan and China has always been extremely complicated. In fact, since the beginning of the Purple Han Dynasty, China and Japan have already had exchanges at the national level, and this exchange reached its peak during the Tang Dynasty.
To a large extent, we can say that culturally, Japan wants to be the "son" of China, but this cultural subordination was completely changed with the success of Japan's Meiji Restoration, and the Japanese army was completely changed in one fell swoop.
Since then, Japan has rapidly changed from learning from China to wanting to conquer China. Japan was no longer satisfied with its three islands, and began to covet China's vast and fertile land.
In fact, Japan's coveting of China did not occur after the Meiji Restoration, as early as the Tang Dynasty Emperor Yonghui years, the Tang Dynasty and Japan had the Battle of Baijiangkou, which was an overwhelming victory for the Tang army, and since then the peace between China and Japan has been maintained for more than a thousand years.
But the balance of national power between China and Japan after the Meiji Restoration was no longer the time of the Tang Dynasty. The victory in the Sino-Japanese War gave Japan more confidence in invading China, and Japan made meticulous and lengthy preparations for this.
After the September 18 Incident, Japan invaded and occupied northeast China, but the wolf's ambitions could not be satisfied, and it was swallowed by the whale, and finally provoked the Qiqi Lugou Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937. Since then, the all-out War of Resistance has completely broken out.
It is generally believed that the War of Resistance Against Japan is divided into three stages: strategic defense, strategic stalemate, and strategic counteroffensive. During this stage of strategic counteroffensive, the Nationalist army launched several large-scale battles with the Japanese army on the frontal battlefield, which greatly dealt a blow to the arrogance and effective strength of the Japanese aggressors.
In this battle, especially the Battle of Wuhan is the most important.
The purpose of the Japanese army was to annihilate the main force of the Nationalist army in Wuhan, Guangzhou, Anhui and other places after the failure of capturing and annihilating the main force of the Nationalist army at the Battle of Xuzhou, and to open the Pinghan and Guangdong-Han railways to force the Nationalist government to surrender as much as possible.
From June 11, 1938 to October 27, 1938, during the four-month battle, the Nationalist army killed and wounded more than 257,000 Japanese troops at the cost of more than 400,000 casualties, and since then, the War of Resistance Against Japan has entered a stage of strategic stalemate.
After the Battle of Wuhan, Chen Cheng, an important commander of the Battle of Wuhan, commander of the Ninth Theater and commander of the Wuhan Garrison, made a series of summaries of the gains and losses of the Wuhan Station, which stated the two major shortcomings of the Nationalist army. Let's analyze it.
First, the coordination between forces is extremely poor
In order to achieve victory in combat, the coordination between the various units is crucial, which is a truth that has not changed from ancient times to the present. However, the coordinated operation of the Nationalist army is very unsatisfactory, and Chen Cheng's summary of this point is:
"There are many gaps caused by prevarication, and it is especially easy to be taken advantage of by the enemy."
Although it is only a sentence, it is to the point. But this shortcoming is even more frightening if it is realized by the enemy. And this characteristic of the Japanese nationalist army is indeed well understood, and they ridiculed "the Chinese army for having only one division."
That is to say, when the Nationalist army fights, it is often a separate operation of one division and one division, and it is extremely lacking in the sense of coordination, while the Japanese army needs to break through each one.
The solution to this problem is that we must establish the idea of coordinated operations among the armed forces, and only by unifying the thinking of the armed forces can we unify operations. However, there are many factions within the Kuomintang and there are inherent deficiencies, and this problem has never been solved.
The second point is the issue of the unity of strategy and tactics
The War of Resistance Against Japan was essentially a war in which the weak must prevail over the strong. Then, under the war environment at that time, under the huge gap in overall national strength and military strength, the overall situation of the war will inevitably be dominated by defense for a long time, and in this strategic environment, the choice of tactics is particularly important.
According to Chen Cheng, the War of Resistance Against Japan "is essentially a passive war in which the weak enemy is strong and the enemy is strong, so strategically we cannot but take the defensive position, but in order to gain the initiative, we have to take the offensive tactically.
Chen Cheng's statement is not unreasonable, but he has not realized how to win the tactical initiative in the vast frontal battlefield, in fact, on this issue, the CHINESE communists have broken the insight, which is very worthy of reference and even application:
"Our strategic approach should be to use our main forces to fight on a long and fluctuating front. For the Chinese army to win, it must conduct a high degree of movement warfare on the vast battlefield, advancing rapidly and retreating rapidly, concentrating rapidly and dispersing rapidly. This is a large-scale mobile warfare, not a trench warfare with high fortifications, layers of fortifications, and fortifications. This does not mean that all important military sites should be released, for which position warfare should be arranged. However, the strategic policy of changing the overall situation is bound to be a movement war. ”
But in fact, the tactics of the Nationalist army have always been very rigid, and there are very few examples of battles that can combine mobile warfare and position warfare very well. However, Chen Cheng's insight was very accurate, and the subsequent operations of the Nationalist army and the rapid defeat of the Liberation War confirmed the accuracy of Chen Cheng's views.