On July 7, 1937, the Lugou Bridge Incident broke out, and the ambitious Japanese aggressors began to launch an all-out war of aggression against China, intending to develop China into its own logistics base, so that it could have the capital to compete for world hegemony on an international scale. However, at that time, the Japanese army invaded the northeast of China, and the series of acts of the Chinese army in the northeast region can only be called a regional conflict, and the real escalation of the military operation between China and Japan into a full-scale war was the Battle of Songhu that occurred in August. The Battle of Songhu was the first large-scale battle between China and Japan after the official launch of the War of Resistance Against Japan, and the total number of troops invested by both sides on the Shanghai battlefield was as high as more than one million. The war lasted for three months, and the Chinese army had 800,000 troops, but the number of casualties after the war was 300,000. The Japanese army invested more than 200,000 elite troops on the battlefield, and the final casualty number was more than 40,000.
Looking at these data, many people will have quite a lot of doubts, the Chinese army in the strength of the troops can be said to occupy an absolute superiority, in the course of the campaign also emerged a lot of heroes and martyrs who held their positions and did not retreat, why not only did not win the battle, but even the overall number of casualties of the troops exceeded the total strength of the Japanese army? Today, let Xiaobian take you to understand the specific situation of the Battle of Songhu and explore the answers behind these questions.
Battle of Songhu
Japan launched a war of aggression against China
Japan is only a small island country, but the Japanese leadership firmly believes that "ambition is not high, success or failure is not in height", and put forward the strategic goal of making japan increasingly powerful among the world powers. The first problem Japan needs to solve to achieve this ambition is to get its country out of the predicament of insufficient resources. After seeing the wanton military activities of the Western powers to seize territory, Japan also began to expand to the outside world and launched a war of aggression. Because the previous industrial reforms laid a good operational foundation for the Japanese army, the Japanese army in the early stages of the battle was always smooth sailing, and soon turned the Korean Peninsula and some other neighboring areas into its own colonies. After successive great victories, the ambitions of the Japanese army, which felt strong and strong, became more and more inflated, and the target of aggression was China, which was also an Asian country and had a land area that was very different from its own.
On September 18, 1931, the Japanese invaders brazenly launched an offensive against the northeast region of our country, and the Chinese troops stationed there did not make any preparations for combat, but could only take up the weapons in their hands and rush to the battle, and were soon defeated and retreated by the menacing Japanese invaders. It took the Japanese army little effort to occupy the northeast region of our country, and thus established a wrong perception of the Chinese army, believing that all Chinese soldiers were equally weak and incompetent, and their combat ability was low. The Japanese army was full of confidence in whether it could occupy all of China, and in 1937 conducted many military exercises in the northeast region, and then planned to forcibly enter the city of our country under the pretext of searching for missing soldiers, but the local Chinese garrison refused. Of course, the search for the missing soldier was just a pretext, and the Japanese army soon launched an armed attack and officially launched a war of aggression against China.
Lugou Bridge Incident
Because of their perfect preparations for war, the Japanese army soon succeeded in taking the northeast region of our country. The Victorious Japanese Army was satisfied with its victory in the first battle and set an arrogant operational goal: to occupy China within three months. Hearing the big words released by the Japanese army, the Chinese people were excited and expressed their desire to let the invaders see the real strength of the Chinese army. However, the Japanese army did not take the words of the Chinese people to heart, but instead formulated a new round of combat plans, planning to take china's northeast region as a breakthrough point and go all the way south along the railway line to attack China's inland hinterland. The Japanese army initially selected the key target of attack nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, and the Japanese leadership believed that as long as it was taken here, it would be able to strike hard at the operational confidence of the Chinese army and achieve substantial victory in the war of aggression against China.
However, what the Japanese aggressors did not expect was that since they learned that the three northeastern provinces had been occupied by foreign enemies, the anti-Japanese fighting spirit of the sons and daughters of China had been thoroughly aroused, and they not only established an anti-Japanese national united front in the shortest possible time, but also actively contributed money and strength to cooperate with the army in counterattacking. In order to effectively stop the Japanese army, the Kuomintang leaders began to carefully study the operational situation on the domestic battlefield, and also launched many battles one after another, but unfortunately did not achieve much success. Seeing that the troops were not in a good position, the Kuomintang leaders began to adjust their strategic policy, intending to transfer the main forces originally distributed in the north to the east, forcing the Japanese invaders to the south to change the direction of their troops.
Chiang Kai-shek
The Kuomintang leaders intended to send troops to block the Japanese army in bustling Shanghai, and wanted to use the dense and criss-crossing river network in Shanghai and the surrounding areas to effectively strike at the Japanese invaders who did not understand the terrain. In order to enable the Chinese army to occupy a more favorable position on the battlefield, and in order to show the importance they attached to this battle, the Leaders of the Kuomintang directly sent the troops of the Concubine clan that they had single-handedly supported and built to the battlefield. The initial operational goal set by the Kuomintang leadership and other top brass was to annihilate all three thousand Japanese marines and to attack the Japanese warship army stationed in the Yangtze River Valley. But what everyone did not expect was that before the battle officially began, the battle plan of the Kuomintang army had been learned by the spy agents sent by the Japanese army, and the Japanese fleet originally stationed along the Yangtze River received the information and quickly withdrew and fled the combat range of the Chinese army.
After that, the Japanese army also organized a provocative campaign to force an officer into Shanghai's Hongqiao airport without permission. Although the Japanese officer was soon discovered and killed by the Chinese troops stationed there, the incident also became the trigger for the outbreak of the Battle of Songhu. The Leaders of the Kuomintang quickly issued a circular solemnly stating that China's territory was inviolable and that if the Japanese army made any more inappropriate moves, they would certainly launch a counterattack.
War broke out
The battle begins
Seeing the resolute attitude of the Chinese military, the Japanese army also began to make corresponding combat preparations, sending the mobilizable air force units to Shanghai and waiting in a strict position. On August 13, 1937, the Chinese troops stationed in Shanghai took the initiative to attack and sent dozens of aircraft to bomb the barracks of the Japanese Marine Corps, and the Battle of Songhu officially began. In order to gain a favorable position on the battlefield, the Kuomintang leaders used two divisions and a brigade of the Central Army under their command as the vanguard commando and let them rush to the front line as fast as they could march. Later, he called the 56th and 98th Divisions stationed in other theaters and asked them to stop their work and cooperate with the Shanghai front.
At the beginning of the battle, the Chinese army had the upper hand, after all, these participating units were all elite divisions with a good reputation in the country at that time, while the Japanese army opposite was only 300 people. The Japanese invaders also knew that the situation on the battlefield was not favorable to them, so they began to send more personnel to Shanghai, and mobilized more than 4,000 experienced veterans to replenish the strength of the Japanese army stationed in the Shanghai area. The Japanese army made frequent moves in Shanghai, and the Kuomintang leader was overjoyed, because his original goal of attracting the focus of Japanese firepower had been achieved.
Central Army
The Japanese built a large number of fortifications on the positions and launched a counterattack against the attacking Chinese army. Although the Chinese army had the advantage in terms of troop strength, it was still unable to directly take down the invader's well-equipped modern army, and the war was in a stalemate for a while. On August 15, the Japanese superior leaders saw that the troops had not achieved any substantial results in the campaign, so they dispatched an officer named Matsui Ishigen to serve as the commander of the front-line troops and formulate a suitable combat plan according to the battlefield situation.
Matsui Ishigen arrived at the battlefield with a large number of reinforcements, opened the way with artillery fire, and drove straight into the outer positions in the Shanghai area, which also further expanded the scale of the Battle of Songhu. After that, Matsui Ishigen's troops broke through the strategic defensive line placed by the Chinese army in the rear of the Shanghai flank, successfully relieved the dilemma of the Japanese Marines being surrounded, and the Chinese army lost its combat objectives and began a new strategic deployment.
In fact, part of the reason why the Kuomintang leaders chose to launch an offensive against the Japanese invaders in Shanghai was that it was rich in materials and convenient transportation, and even if a war began, the logistical conditions would be stronger than that of the North China Plain. What the Kuomintang leaders did not expect was that while Shanghai had superior conditions, there were also huge threats and hidden dangers. At the very last moment when the Chinese army was about to formally launch a general offensive, the Kuomintang leaders suddenly issued an order to all the participating troops to suspend the attack first. The reason is that not long ago, the United States, Britain, France, Italy, and other countries that established public concessions in Shanghai sent telegrams to China's diplomatic departments, expressing fear that China and Japan would harm their own interests if they started a war in Shanghai, so they proposed to cancel the local military defense and military facilities and directly set up Shanghai as an undefended city.
Shanghai Concession
Naturally, the Kuomintang leaders did not intend to heed the advice of these "international friends" and give shanghai, a splendid modern city, to the Japanese in vain, but Britain, the United States, and other countries did not spare and always wanted to intervene in the development of the war, and the Kuomintang leaders, under pressure, never issued the final battle orders, which also made the Chinese army miss the best opportunity to attack. The Japanese invaders took advantage of this period of combat preparations, not only formulating a new round of strategic plans, but also contacting the army stationed in northeast China and the navy on the Japanese mainland, allowing them to provide support as much as they could in the subsequent battle process.
The distance between Shanghai and Nanjing was not far, and the Japanese army had long coveted Nanjing, so it had long regarded Shanghai as an excellent offensive position, and planned to use the Yangtze River as a transportation route to provide logistics for the troops on the front line. The situation on the battlefield was quite critical, and once the Japanese army conquered Shanghai, it could not only take Nanjing directly, but also cut off the road of communication and connection between the Chinese armies in the north and south, so that the two sides could not quickly support.
On the 19th, the Kuomintang leaders finally ordered the troops to launch a general offensive, and the 36th Division of the Central Army was also transferred to the Shanghai front, together with the previous Shanghai defenders, to form the Ninth Army, and appointed Zhang Zhizhong, a senior general of the Kuomintang army, as the supreme commander. After the Japanese side formally began to fight, the Kuomintang Army General Zhang Fakui also led his Eighth Army to Pudong, Shanghai, to block the invaders' attack on the north bank of Hangzhou Bay.
Japanese fleet
On August 12, Japanese reinforcements arrived in the Saddle Islands, southeast of the Yangtze River, in a convoy of warships, and incorporated the Japanese defenders stationed here into the army, forming a force of more than 10,000 people, and marching towards Wusongkou and other places in Shanghai. On the 23rd, Matsui Ishigen, who was the commander-in-chief of the front line of the Japanese military operation, also led the troops of two divisions to the Lion Forest, intending to land in Shanghai from here.
When the Kuomintang leaders learned of this incident, they immediately sent four divisions and regiments to block the Japanese army. At this time, the Battle of Songhu had been officially launched for 10 days, and tens of thousands of elite divisions of the Chinese army in Shanghai were constantly attacking the enemy army. On the 24th, the Japanese troops planning to land in Shanghai from the Lion Grove were repulsed by the Chinese army, and the troops also suffered thousands of casualties. The Luozhuang position, which had previously been occupied by the Japanese army, was also snatched back from the rain of bullets by the brave soldiers who bravely killed the enemy. The Japanese Navy, which was not in a position to fight, was embarrassed and once again asked for support from the rear base camp, and the Japanese leadership immediately sent a variety of weapons of mass destruction to the front-line troops, such as tanks and heavy artillery, with the intention of annihilating the Chinese troops stationed in Shanghai in one fell swoop.
The two sides fought fiercely in the Luozhuang area, and the fighting lasted until September. The Japanese invaders launched an artillery attack on the Chinese army along the Songhu Highway, and the soldiers on the front line did not have the slightest fear, and always held their positions and fought to the death with the charging enemy troops. On September 11, the positions of the Nationalist 15th Army were breached by the Japanese army, and the troops suffered heavy casualties, and the surviving soldiers retreated under the command of their superiors to the area south of Luodian to continue fighting.
The warriors stubbornly resisted
After several days of fighting, the actual possession of the Luozhuang position changed hands many times between the enemy and us, and the Kuomintang leader saw that the situation was unfavorable and ordered the Ninth Army to fight in a roundabout way, and the war was in a stalemate for a while. At this time, Huang Wei, a senior general in the Kuomintang army, also learned of the domestic situation, rushed back to Shanghai from Germany, and threw himself into the front-line battlefield as quickly as possible. However, it is a pity that huang Wei led the Nationalist Sixty-seventh Division and the Japanese invaders to engage in a fierce battle, leading the soldiers to charge in blood, but the outcome of the battle was still unsatisfactory, did not cause much loss to the Japanese army, and Luozhuang's position was completely occupied by the Japanese army.
After the fall of Luozhuang, the superiority of the Chinese army on the battlefield was also completely lost, and more than a dozen divisional and regimental-level officers were sacrificed in various units, and the grass-roots leading cadres were even more damaged one after another. At this point, the Chinese defenders in Shanghai changed from active attack to passive defense.
At the beginning of the campaign, the Kuomintang leaders felt that their troops had absolute superiority over the Japanese invaders on the other side, so they were always complacent. But in fact, in the formal process of combat, the man-sea tactics do not necessarily work, and in places like Shanghai, where the terrain is flat and the defense bunkers are insufficient, no amount of troops does not mean that the final victory can be won directly. Before the official outbreak of the Battle of Songhu, the Kuomintang leaders specially purchased a batch of German-style equipment from abroad, but there were too many monks and few porridges, and only the Kuomintang leaders could really get these advanced equipment into their hands, which was the Central Army of the Concubine Lineage, which the Kuomintang leaders attached the greatest importance to. In some other places, the army not only did not receive any attention from the superior leaders, but also the uniforms on their bodies were all old, the weapons and equipment in their hands were very poor, some troops were still fighting the Japanese invaders with rifles and large knives, and the entire brigade could not see a cannon, and they had no ammunition and could only fight with the enemy in close combat. Moreover, the soldiers of these units have not undergone any special training, and they fight wars with enthusiasm, there is no tactics to speak of, and they are often countered by the enemy on the battlefield.
Soldiers of our army
Because of the poor strength of the local troops, the Battle of Songhu was initially launched by the Central Army as the vanguard commando, but even if the strength of the Central Army far exceeded that of other Chinese troops, it was a small witch compared with the modern military units of the Japanese army. The Japanese invaders' troops were strong and well-equipped, with more than 22,000 troops in each division, as well as a large number of light and heavy machine guns, armored vehicles, and transport vehicles. The reason why China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was extremely arduous and tragic was precisely because the armies of China and Japan had a considerable gap in strength, and in the course of fighting the Japanese army, the Chinese army always had to dispatch several times the strength of the enemy army to have the possibility of winning the victory over the aggressor.
Later in the campaign
In late September, the Japanese army again sent additional troops to the Shanghai front, and the strength of the Japanese troops on the Songhu battlefield was as high as 200,000, and there were still some air and naval units here. The enemy army is increasing, the Chinese army is also sending more manpower, and local troops from all over the country are constantly pouring into Shanghai to join the battle situation of the Battle of Songhu. At this time, the strength of the Chinese army in Shanghai also reached 700,000, and countless Sons and Daughters of China threw their heads and spilled their blood on the frontline battlefield to contribute their strength to defending the country.
However, even if the Chinese army resists so hard, our army has been in a passive state on the battlefield, and the casualties of the troops have continued to increase. In order to increase their strength, the Kuomintang leaders thought twice and added the Gui army to the battle team. Although the Gui Army was born in a local area, its strength was comparable to that of the Kuomintang Central Army, and it has always been known for its bravery and good fighting, and has made great achievements on the battlefield. When the Gui army received the kuomintang-led requisition order, it immediately rushed to Shanghai without stopping, preparing to show its skills and let the Japanese invaders understand the strength and backbone of the Chinese soldiers.
On October 21, six divisions of the Gui Army arrived in Shanghai and began to fight the Japanese. Unfortunately, the Gui army went in the wrong direction because it was not familiar with the terrain, and was soon surrounded by the swarms of Japanese invaders. The Japanese army sent air force units to carry out indiscriminate bombardment of the Gui army, and the soldiers of the Gui army could not find a favorable cover for a while, and the troops suffered heavy casualties, so they had no choice but to withdraw. On the 22nd, the Gui army successfully captured positions in Taoyuanbin and other places, using this as a base to attack the Japanese army. However, because the strength of the enemy and us was too great, the stubborn resistance of the Gui army was eventually defeated, and the original 50,000-strong team was beaten by the Japanese army to only 20,000. However, although the Gui army did not win the battle, it still bought more strategic deployment time for other combat troops.
Gui Jun
The performance of troops in other places in the Battle of Songhu was also very remarkable, hoping that the Northeast Army, which had been humiliated by the snow, would fight a bloody battle on the battlefield, and the commanders would rush to the front line with their soldiers. The Sichuan Army, which was incorporated into the 19th Group Army, adhered to the combat tradition of "strong soldiers going out of Sichuan to protect their homeland, not breaking the Japanese and never returning", and used their bodies to resist the enemy's attack after the weapons and ammunition were exhausted. At this time, the total strength of the Chinese army on the battlefield had reached 800,000.
In November, when the Japanese army was not ready to occupy Jinshan, Shanghai, the Kuomintang leaders were anxious to make another move, so that all the Chinese troops withdrew from their positions, and the troops retreated from Nanjing and Suzhou in two ways to the rear. However, there were too many troops participating in the war, and the Kuomintang leaders did not make unified plans and did not arrange for the rear troops, resulting in the army being attacked by the Japanese air forces during the retreat process. At that time, hundreds of thousands of troops were crowded in the narrow mountain paths, and could only endure the enemy's bombardment, and the casualties of the troops were innumerable. On November 12, the Chinese army, blocked by the Japanese army, was no longer able to counterattack, Shanghai fell into the hands of the enemy, and the fierce Battle of Songhu finally came to an end.
Post-war Shanghai
However, looking back at the entire course of the campaign, although our army suffered a crushing defeat, it inspired the anti-Japanese enthusiasm of the domestic soldiers and civilians and completely shattered the Japanese army's dream of March. The Battle of Songhu was also the most united battle in the whole country since the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, fully demonstrating the indomitable integrity of Chinese soldiers.