During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the three Battles of Changsha commanded by Xue Yue could be described as extremely harmful to the Japanese army, and at that time, the Japanese army invested a total of about 700,000 troops in the three battles, originally intended to thwart Xue Yue's Kuomintang troops, but what they did not expect was that the three battles of Changsha not only did not hurt Xue Yue, but also caused the Japanese army to suffer huge losses, with casualties as high as 140,000, and what was worse was that after the three battles of Changsha, the morale of the Japanese army was seriously affected and began to stagnate.
Many people are very interested in the three battles of Changsha, although Xue Yue achieved a record of one draw and two victories, and made mistakes in decision-making in the second Battle of Changsha, causing great losses, but on the whole, the command ability shown by Xue Yue in the Battle of Changsha was already quite excellent, so how did Xue Yue resist the three Japanese attacks and stick to Changsha?
The three Battles of Changsha
In 1939, the Japanese army launched the first Battle of Changsha, the purpose is very clear, that is, to besiege the 15th Group Army in three ways, when the commander of the 15th Group Army was Guan Linzheng, who performed prominently in the Battle of Taierzhuang, known in the army as the "Guan Iron Fist", and Sun Lianzhong.
It can be said that the 15th Group Army was the living force of the Nationalist Army at that time, and once the Japanese army achieved the purpose of besieging and annihilating the 15th Group Army, the impact on the Nationalist Army and even the anti-Japanese resistance was enormous, and the Japanese army was divided into three roads, attacking the 15th Group Army from the direction of northern Jiangsu, southern Hubei and northern Hunan respectively.
At the beginning, the Japanese army advanced very smoothly, and almost their plot was about to succeed, but at the critical moment, Xue Yue saw through the Japanese army's attempt and established the strategic policy of "protecting the base area of Mugao Mountain". The main reason was that Mugao Mountain was the connection point between xiang and Gansu at that time, and only by preserving this place could the two armies of Xianggan and Gansu be kept in constant contact, and as long as the xianggan and Gansu armies did not lose contact, it would be difficult for the Japanese army to encircle and annihilate the 15th Group Army.
As Xue Yue saw through the Japanese conspiracy and began to correctly lay out the battlefield, the Japanese army began to retreat one after another, and the 106th Division and the 33rd Division, which were responsible for the encirclement, were besieged, and eventually the Japanese army suffered heavy losses, and there was no way but to take the initiative to retreat, and the first Battle of Changsha ended with Xue Yue's victory.
The Second Battle of Changsha took place two years later, in 1941, when the Japanese army had learned the lessons of the First Battle of Changsha and did not adopt the previous offensive plan, but concentrated the main force in the northern Hunan region and dealt a unilateral and heavy blow to the Nationalist army.
After all, there is still a certain gap in weapons and equipment between the two sides, once the Japanese army concentrates its firepower to simply attack a certain direction, the situation will be very bad, at that time Xue Yue made a mistake in the strategic prediction of the Japanese army, he felt that the Japanese army would still adopt the same strategy as the First Battle of Changsha, so that Xue Yue deployed a lot of troops in the direction of northern Jiangsu, so that the strength of troops in the northern Hunan region was reduced a lot.
However, the Japanese army mainly concentrated its firepower to attack the northern Hunan region, so Xue Yue in the early stage of the Second Battle of Changsha, can be described as a heavy loss, fortunately, after Xue Yue realized the seriousness of the problem, he adjusted his strategy in time, and only in the later stage did he reverse some situations, prompting the Second Battle of Changsha to end with no victory or defeat.
In December 1941, after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, they launched a third attack on Changsha again, this time the Battle of Changsha, Xue Yue had already learned the lessons of the Second Battle of Changsha, invented the "Heavenly Furnace Method of Warfare", the Nationalist army used the four vertical and horizontal rivers between Yueyang and Changsha, blocked the Japanese army step by step, and after achieving results, retreated into the mountains on both sides to hide, sneaked attacks on the Japanese army, and fought the Japanese army along the way, waiting until the Japanese army entered Changsha, and then was besieged by various units, which caught the Japanese army by surprise. In the end, only retreat can be made.
Why was Xue Yue able to withstand three attacks by the Japanese army?
Presumably, after the general understanding of the three Battles of Changsha above, we must have some understanding of the main reasons why Xue Yue was able to withstand the three attacks of the Japanese army, and it can be said that the achievements achieved in the three Battles of Changsha have a huge relationship with Xue Yue's own command ability.
Whether it was the First Battle of Changsha or the Third Battle of Changsha, it was only by relying on Xue Yue's accurate strategic layout that the key victories were achieved, and only the Second Battle of Changsha, because of Xue Yue's strategic mistakes in the initial stage, led to heavy losses.
We can imagine that without Xue Yue's accurate strategic deployment, perhaps the Japanese army would not have needed to carry out three attacks on Changsha at all, and perhaps at the time of the first Battle of Changsha, after the Japanese army successfully surrounded and annihilated the 15th Group Army, the blow to the Nationalist army would be large enough, so that the Nationalist army had no morale and did not have enough confidence to fight with the Japanese army.
It was precisely because of Xue Yue's correct strategic deployment that even if there was a mistake in judgment in the initial stage of the Second Battle of Changsha, which led to heavy losses, it was later able to correct it in time, make up for the dead sheep, and fight a draw with the Japanese army.
Of course, in the Battle of Changsha, in addition to Xue Yue's command level, there were two other important factors that were also the key to determining the defeat of the war, one of which was that Xue Yue's training level of the army was very high, and a high-quality army was trained, which was in stark contrast with the rest of the Kuomintang army, which was most evident in the Second Battle of Changsha.
Judging from the consistent performance of the Kuomintang troops on the battlefield, once many armies encounter setbacks, their morale will quickly decline, and even the army will directly collapse, and the Kuomintang troops have such shortcomings in many battles, but they are completely different in the Battle of Changsha.
When the Second Battle of Changsha fell into crisis at the beginning of the stage, these soldiers did not scatter and flee, but showed the spirit of unswerving death, always insisting on confronting the Japanese army on the front line, and it was this spirit that reversed the situation of the Second Battle of Changsha.
Another factor was that in the Battle of Changsha, the people of Hunan and Xue Yue's army showed a high degree of integration.
When the soldiers of the army were killed, the local people would quickly make up for it, and not only that, those who did not join the army also spontaneously organized themselves to confront the Japanese army, and they set up various obstacles on the road that the local Japanese army had to pass, or directly cut the road to hinder the advance of the Japanese army.
It is precisely in the case of military-civilian integration and joint combat that the three Battles of Changsha can be successfully persevered and eventually achieve unexpected results, but whenever there is a gap in any link, the consequences are unimaginable, from a historical point of view, the achievements made in the Battle of Changsha are exciting, after the end of the Third Battle of Changsha, Britain and the United States and other members of the Allied Powers took the initiative to abrogate the unequal treaties signed by the Qing government since 1840.
epilogue
History has warned people more than once that "backwardness is to be beaten", the three battles of Changsha are the most direct proof, at the beginning the Japanese army always felt that Chinese good bully, so they constantly challenged, but after three battles of Changsha, the Japanese army tasted the terrible, no longer dare to act rashly, and the three battles of Changsha achieved the battle, but also let China's image in the world have changed, I have to say that General Xue Yue's move is very inspiring!
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