In April 1949, a million troops of the People's Liberation Army crossed the Yangtze River graben and broke through the defense line of the Kuomintang army, and 5 armies of the Shanghai-Hangzhou Garrison Headquarters of the Kuomintang Army were annihilated in the Langguang Mountains, and most of the rest withdrew to Shanghai, together with the troops under the jurisdiction of the former Songhu Garrison Headquarters, a total of 8 armies, 25 divisions and more than 200,000 people.
The 200,000 troops of the Kuomintang army entrenched in Shanghai attempted to rely on the strong fortifications of Shanghai's abundant resources to continue to resist and buy time for them to transport Shanghai's materials and resources. Tang Enbo, commander-in-chief of the Beijing-Shanghai-Hangzhou Garrison, with 6 corps, including the 21st, 51st, 52nd, 54th, 75th, and 123rd Armies, had a total of 20 divisions, equipped with tanks and armored vehicles, to garrison the urban area west of the Huangpu River and the outskirts of Taicang, Kunshan, Jiaxing, jinshan, and other places; with a total of 5 divisions of the 12th and 37th Armies, garrisoning the area east of the Huangpu River. The naval and air forces of the Nationalist army were responsible for assisting in the defense.
At that time, Shanghai, with a population of 6 million, was China's economic center and the main forward base for imperialist aggression against China, with a very important strategic position and great influence in the international community. Before the battle began, the Central Military Commission and the Huaye Command all issued orders to the front line: In order to keep the city from being destroyed and to avoid casualties among the masses, the troops resolutely refrained from using artillery and explosives, and seized factories and buildings from the enemy at the cost of blood and lives!
At that time, whether or not this great city could be liberated intact was a very difficult and complicated task. Fighting in Shanghai, especially in downtown Shanghai, is like fighting rats in a porcelain shop, and if Shanghai is destroyed, then the economic construction of new China will suffer huge losses. If our military does not take over the work well, resulting in a shutdown of work and power in Shanghai, and chaos, then it will not work.
On April 27, 1949, Chairman Mao instructed Su Yu, acting commander of the General Front Committee and Sanye, and Zhang Zhen, chief of staff of Sanye: "You must not only deploy to attack Hangzhou, but also be prepared to accept Shanghai, so that when the enemy in Shanghai joins and retreats quickly, when the people of Shanghai ask you to enter, you will not be unprepared, hastily rushed, and fall into passivity!" ”
Chairman Mao reminded him very promptly, because after Liu Bocheng, Deng Xiaoping, and Chen Yi entered Nanjing, they witnessed with their own eyes some of the events that happened after our army entered the big cities, and they felt the urgency of educating the troops on urban policy. This education was carried out before the Battle of the River Crossing, but after entering the big city, many soldiers still made a lot of jokes out of curiosity.
After entering Hangzhou, the 68th Division of the 23rd Army, because it was not accustomed to the life of the city, would not use electric lights, tap water, and destroy electric lights, and the phenomenon of tap water was very common, and more than 40 light bulbs were damaged in a few days. Soldiers of the 203rd Regiment of the 68th Division broke three flush toilets at Chiang Kai-shek's official residence and used water from the flush toilets to wash the bowls. The soldiers standing guard in the middle of the road stopped the car to inquire, affecting the traffic, some soldiers saw women wearing skirts, they scolded not good people behind their backs, some soldiers saw that the businessmen were exquisite in life, and behind their backs they called them parasites, vampires.
After Chen Maohui, the political commissar of the 68th Division, entered the city, he found that some soldiers had tied mules and horses to a small bungalow to, and immediately criticized the cadres who led the team. Many cities are not accustomed to life in the city, and they will make mistakes at every turn, and after a battalion moved from the city to the countryside, everyone said happily: "This can be liberated." ”
Before the liberation of Shanghai, Sanye spent a lot of time educating the officers and men of the troops on policies, so that the training time was delayed, and later Ye Fei said: "The preparations for the liberation of Shanghai in all aspects, especially how to take over the city, were very sufficient, but they neglected military preparations and operational arrangements. In addition, the officers and men of the unit also had a serious idea of light enemy, believing that the enemy was vulnerable to a blow, and some people also said: "Crossing the river and crossing the river, not firing a shot; pursuing and pursuing, it is vulnerable to a blow." ”
On May 12, 1949, the campaign to liberate Shanghai officially began, and the 28th Army and the 29th Army of Sanye rushed all the way and occupied Liuhe, Taicang, and Jiading without encountering any resistance. That night, Ye Fei moved the corps headquarters to Jiading, and the progress went smoothly to everyone's surprise.
Ye Fei was also very confused: "Even if the Kuomintang army can no longer fight, it is still a unit with combat experience, and this place in Liuhe should always be defended, this is the first line of defense in Shanghai." If the defenders stationed in Shanghai wanted to revolt, why didn't anyone contact us? ”
On 13 May, the second battalion suffered heavy losses. Since the Liuhe River had been easily occupied the day before, our army's light enemy mentality became even more serious, and the 86th Division and the 87th Division of the 29th Army advanced side by side along the road and launched an attack on Yuepu. At that time, the 52nd Army of the Kuomintang Army was stationed in Yuepu, which was the only army that retreated from Yingkou during the Liaoshen Campaign, and its structure was complete. Military Commander Liu Yuzhang graduated from the Huangpu Ivy Stage and has rich combat experience in dealing with our army.
The various units of the 29th Army suffered heavy losses during the attack, and the enemy disguised the bunkers as grave bags, and the attacking troops of our army did not find out and were caught off guard. When the 253rd Regiment of the 87th Division of the 29th Army attacked Yuepu, it organized three attacks and lost more than 500 people, but none of them took the position.
On the 13th, 14th, and 15th consecutive days of fighting, the 28th Army and the 29th Army all suffered huge casualties, the battle was in a stalemate state, and it was very difficult for the troops to advance. Ye Fei decided to change his tactics and adopt the method of close-forced operations during the Huaihai Campaign, pulling out points one by one and fighting steadily. However, there are too many paddy fields on the outskirts of Shanghai, and you can see the water by digging a meter, and the difficulty of close operation is much more difficult than that of the Battle of Huaihai.
The situation of the Ninth Corps was better than that of the Tenth Corps, capturing Chuansha and Zhoupu, annihilating the 51st Army in the Bailonggang area, compressing the 12th Army in the Gaoqiao area, and cutting off its contact with the 37th Army in Pudong City, forming a pinch with the 10th Corps to attack Wusongkou. After ten days of peripheral fighting, Sanye finally annihilated the 20,000 Kuomintang troops on the outskirts.
On May 23, Su Yu mobilized the 25th Army of the Eighth Corps, the Ninth Corps, the Tenth Corps, the Ten Corps, 30 divisions and the Special Forces Column with a total strength of 400,000 troops to launch a general attack on the Shanghai defenders. In order to reduce the losses in shanghai, Sanye once again ordered the troops not to use artillery and explosives when fighting in the urban area. At this time, the Kuomintang army also collapsed a bit, and a commander of the Kuomintang Songhu Garrison Headquarters actually drove the order to the position of the 27th Army in a jeep.
In the early morning of the 25th, the 27th Army had attacked the main block south of the Suzhou Creek, and on the north bank of the Suzhou River, the Kuomintang army blocked the bridges of the Suzhou Creek with dense stacks with high-rise buildings such as the Broadway Building and the Post and Telecommunications Building. The 27th Army organized several attacks, all of which were hit by enemy fire.
Faced with the enemy's condescending machine guns and artillery fire, the front-line cadres of the 27th Army rushed around and strongly demanded that the military department allow the use of artillery preparations.
Nie Fengzhi, commander of the 27th Army, asked the Sanye Command to use artillery fire, but was refused, and finally Nie Fengzhi personally arrived at the front line to observe the enemy's fire points and commanded the attack of the regiments and battalions on the front line. Just when the two armies were at a standstill, Liu Changyi, deputy commander of the Songhu Garrison District of the Kuomintang Army and commander of the 51st Army, sent people to contact the 27th Army.
On the night of the 24th, Liu Changyi called all the senior officers of the 21st Army, the 51st Army, and the 123rd Army to a meeting and called on everyone to revolt. In fact, the officers of the Kuomintang army did not want to fight for a long time, and Tang Enbo ran away on a warship, and they wanted to defend, and how long they could hold on. But everyone has no reliable contact information, afraid that the People's Liberation Army will not believe, at this time, an underground party member lurking in the 51st Army Headquarters risked killing his head, said his identity, and said that he could come forward to contact the People's Liberation Army. Liu Changyi and the other Kuomintang officers were very happy and sent people to the Continuous Liberation Army.
At noon on the 25th, under the matchmaking of an underground party member, Liu Changyi and others came to the headquarters of the 81st Division of the 27th Army on the south bank of the Suzhou River and met with Luo Weidao, the political commissar of the division. Luo Weidao explained his policy to him, asking the Kuomintang army to lay down its weapons first and stop resisting. At dusk, Liu Changyi was received to the headquarters of the 27th Army, and Nie Fengzhi, commander of the 27th Army, was also very happy.
After Liu Changyi saw Nie Fengzhi, he had to ask Nie Fengzhi to issue an order stamped with Chen Yi's seal before agreeing to surrender. Nie Fengzhi would have the Great Seal of Elder Chen, but he was afraid of worrying about the course of the campaign, so he asked the director of the Political Department to pluck a radish in the field and carve a "Chen Yi" Guan Defense Great Seal. Liu Changyi saw this order, and only then did he put his mind at ease.
In the early morning of the 26th, Liu Changyi led the 51st Army and more than 40,000 Other Kuomintang troops to surrender, and when the 51st Army revolted, it was attacked by the 54th Army, but was repelled by our 26th Army and the rebel troops. After Tang Enbo learned of Liu Changyi's uprising, he immediately issued an order to retreat, and when he retreated, there was chaos on the docks and chaos on the Kuomintang army.
On May 27, Shanghai was completely liberated. In this battle, the Third Field Army annihilated 150,000 enemy troops, of which 23,000 were killed or wounded, while Sanye suffered more than 30,000 casualties, accounting for more than half of the total number of casualties in the Battle of the River Crossing.
In the early hours of May 27, it was raining in Shanghai, and when the people of Shanghai opened their homes after the gunfire subsided, they found that the damp cement floor on both sides of the road was full of PLA soldiers in yellow cloth uniforms. Many ordinary people invited PLA soldiers to live in the house and brought them boiling water and food, but they were all rejected by the PLA, and the troops did not boil water for three days, and could only eat cold rice sent from 30 miles away. In order not to affect the lives of the people in the city, every morning before dawn, the company commander took the whole company to the Huangpu River for convenience, because they could not find a toilet, coupled with the long distance, many soldiers pulled in their pants halfway.
In this way, all the fighter cadres insisted on not entering the houses, insisting on not buying things in the market, and insisting on not going into the public toilets, and after three or four days, when the takeover work was ready, the troops began to move into the idle barracks and warehouses of the Kuomintang army one after another.