After the Battle of Wuhan in 1938, the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression in North China also entered a stage of strategic stalemate, and in the Zhongtiao Mountain Defense Zone north of the Yellow River, the First Theater still retained nearly 200,000 troops of two group armies, directly holding the main force of the three divisions of the Japanese army. And in the following three years, with the cooperation of the Eighth Route Army behind enemy lines, the Zhongtiao Mountain defenders repelled seven large-scale attacks of the Japanese army in a row, and the Japanese Kou North China Front was like a man, calling it "the blind intestine of North China", but suffering from insufficient troops, it was helpless for a while.
Ye Ting, commander of the New Fourth Army
However, by May 1941, the Japanese were able to concentrate more than 100,000 troops in six divisions and two and a half mixed brigades to launch an unprecedented attack on the Nakajō Mountain Defense Area, and under the unified command of Lieutenant General Tada Jun, commander of the Japanese North China Front, and Lieutenant General Yoshio Shinozuka, commander of the 1st Army, the enemy adopted the tactic of "penetrating in the middle and encircling on all sides" to carry out a fierce attack. In just a few days, the zhongtiao mountain defensive line quickly collapsed, of which more than 42,000 were killed and more than 35,000 captured, most of the other parts collapsed, and the forward positions north of the Yellow River in Wei Lihuang's first theater of operations no longer existed.
The Battle of Zhongtiao Mountain was then called "the most humiliating battle of the Anti-Japanese War" by Chiang Kai-shek, and the fact that the Japanese army was able to mobilize heavy troops in North China was entirely the result of the "Anhui Southern Incident" at the beginning of that year. Originally, since July 1940, in view of the continuous development and growth of the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, the Chongqing government had relapsed from an old illness, and in the name of He Yingqin, the chief of staff, the issue of "the combat area of the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army" was raised to the Yan'an side, accompanied by an almost command-style demand: "All the units of the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army shall be dispatched to Hebei and Chahar Provinces and the northern shanxi region within a limited time, and the New Fourth Army shall be included in the combat sequence of the 18th Group Army."
Xiang Ying, political commissar of the New Fourth Army
He Yingqin's order also included that in the future, the units of both the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army must not go out of the "prescribed areas" without authorization unless ordered by the Military Commission; at the same time, "in addition to being organized into three armies and six divisions (two brigades and four regiments) and three supplementary regiments, the 18th Group Army may add two additional supplementary regiments, and no detachments shall be allowed to form, and the New Fourth Army shall be organized into two finishing divisions." This means that the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, which have formed a favorable situation behind the enemy lines, are required to abandon the large areas of anti-Japanese base areas that have been exchanged for arduous struggle and bloody sacrifice, retreat from the entire line, and shrink themselves.
From a strategic point of view, this is equivalent to greatly relieving the japanese army invading China of the empty force and military pressure faced by the invading Japanese army on the rear battlefield, which is no different from helping the enemy and abusing it. Even the Japanese intelligence departments were greatly surprised by this order, and the staff departments at all levels of the "China Dispatch Army" in Nanjing and the "North China Front" in Beiping studied the real intentions of the Chongqing side day and night, but still failed to judge: The Chongqing government dared to risk the world's great disobedience and would really order the Chinese anti-Japanese army to kill each other.
Zhou Zikun, chief of staff of the New Fourth Army
However, the military deployment of the Chongqing side was in full swing, not only mobilizing the southern Huzong of the Eighth Theater to blockade the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, but also secretly ordering Gu Zhutong of the Third Theater to draw troops from the anti-Japanese front to encircle the southern Anhui region, and at the same time ordering Tang Enbo's 31st Group Army and Li Pinxian's 21st Group Army (formerly part of the Fifth Theater) to move eastward, preparing to cooperate with Han Deloitte in northern Jiangsu to launch an attack on the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army in central China.
On December 9, 1940, the Chongqing Military Commission issued an ultimatum order: the New Fourth Army south of the Yangtze River is limited to the area north of the Yangtze River on December 31 of this year, and will sail to the area north of the Yellow River by January 30 of the following year; all the troops of the 18th Group Army south of the Yellow River are now limited to December 31 of this year, and will be driven to the area north of the Yellow River. At the same time, a special route was set for the New Fourth Army to move north, which was both an unfamiliar route and a dangerous route.
He Yingqin
In order to take into account the overall situation of the Anti-Japanese Resistance, the Headquarters of the New Fourth Army led a teaching regiment, a special task regiment, and two regiments of the first, second, and third columns, totaling more than 9,000 people, and began to move north under the leadership of Ye Ting and Xiang Ying on January 4, 1941. Two days later, on January 6, when the troops of the New Fourth Army arrived in the Maolin area of Jing County, Anhui Province, they were suddenly attacked by more than 70,000 people from eight divisions under Gu Zhutong's unit of the Third Theater of Operations (Shangguan Yunxiang of the 32nd Group Army was the commander-in-chief), and most of the New Fourth Army, except for more than 2,000 people who successfully broke through and a few were captured, most of them died heroically.
The Chongqing side and Jiang Ren took it for granted that their shameless behavior would inevitably be "tacitly coordinated" by the Japanese army invading China, and that the Japanese army would not launch an offensive against the Chongqing government forces on the frontal battlefield in a short period of time. However, the fact was a serious blow in the face, because the New Fourth Army in the battlefield behind the enemy in central China was seriously injured and temporarily unable to continue to contain the enemy, the Japanese army quickly seized this opportunity to increase troops from central China to north China, and the target was aimed at the Zhongtiao Mountain Defense Area north of the Yellow River.
Gu Zhutong
Originally, there were only three garrison divisions near Zhongtiao Mountain, the 35th (Northern Henan), the 36th (Jincheng), and the 37th (Yuncheng), as well as the 41st Division in the direction of Linfen, and these four divisions and regiments also had to allocate considerable troops to deal with the Eighth Route Army troops, so they were unable to attack the Zhongtiao Mountain defense area on a large scale. However, the occurrence of the "Anhui Southern Incident" enabled the Japanese army to draw the 33rd Division from Nanchang, the 21st Division from northern Jiangsu, and a large number of special forces, and the Japanese troops gathered on the front line of Zhongtiao Mountain suddenly increased to more than 100,000 people.
After breaking through the main force of the Zhongtiao Mountain Defense Zone in the First Theater, the Japanese army was able to concentrate its forces on "sweeping" the anti-Japanese base areas of the Eighth Route Army in North China, and the situation of China's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression entered the most difficult period. The deeds of the Chongqing government and Chiang Kai-shek belonged to the outright lifting of stones and dropping them on their own feet, and such an act of "harming others and harming oneself" also left an extremely disgraceful page in the history of the War of Resistance Against Japan.
Wei Lihuang