On September 18, 1931, the Japanese Kou launched the "918 Incident" and occupied all of northeast China within 100 days. In 1937, the "Qiqi Lugou Bridge Incident", the Japanese attacked the Pingjin area from the Lugou Bridge, and soon North China fell, and China and Japan went to war in an all-round way. On August 13, Chiang Kai-shek published a letter of self-defense and launched the Battle of Songhu, which lasted for several months in and around Shanghai. On December 13, the capital Nanjing fell. Until Japan announced its surrender on August 15, 1945, China waged an arduous fourteen-year War of Resistance.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the frontal battlefields, mainly undertaken by the kuomintang-led troops, successively took place in the Jiangqiao War of Resistance, the 128 Songhu War of Resistance, the Great Wall War of Resistance, the Suiyuan War of Resistance, the Pingjin War, the Battle of Songhu, the Battle of Sixing Warehouse, the August 14 Air Battle, the Nanjing Defense War, the North China Battle, the Battle of Taiyuan, the Battle of Xinkou, the Battle of Xuzhou, the Battle of Taierzhuang, the Battle of Lanfeng, the Battle of Wuhan, the Battle of Wanjialing, the Battle of Changsha, the Battle of Zhejiang, the Battle of Western Hubei, and other battles against the Japanese and Koukou.
In the battlefield behind enemy lines, with the communist-led units as the main burden, the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army let go of the masses to create anti-Japanese base areas, and they themselves gradually developed from small to large and from weak to strong, and gradually developed into the backbone of winning the victory of the War of Resistance. The frontal battlefield and the war behind enemy lines were relatively independent and coordinated with each other, constituting the overall situation of China's War of Resistance Against Japan.
Before the beginning of the National War of Resistance, Chiang Kai-shek made it clear that he would gradually retreat to the south of the Yellow River and west of the Guangdong-Han Line. This strategic layout means that the vast territory of North China and Jiangnan will become the rear base of the Japanese Kou.
Guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines must be strong and we are weak, the enemy is so strong that we cannot use other tactical tactics to confront it, or use tactical tactics to make our losses too great, so large that we cannot continue to use them, precisely because the enemy is strong and has large troops, so guerrilla warfare is mostly carried out on the rear bases of the Japanese Kou, and because the weak side is familiar with the terrain of the area, it has the advantage of firepower and numbers.
It was in addition to this seemingly logical strategic layout that Mao Zedong discovered a new world. As far as the Eighth Route Army, which had only a few tens of thousands of troops when it entered the battlefield, if it was not laid out rationally, it would not only be unable to play a role, but would also be "caught in a passive situation, coping, beaten, and broken by the enemy." The strategic direction planned by Mao Zedong was: to advance in the opposite direction of the Japanese offensive and to open up anti-Japanese base areas behind enemy lines. This new strategic layout was later summarized as "the enemy is advancing and we are advancing."
On November 8, 1937, when Taiyuan fell, Mao Zedong sent a telegram saying that after the fall of Taiyuan, the regular war in North China with the Kuomintang as the main body had ended, and guerrilla warfare with the Communist Party as the main body had entered the main position, and that the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army should quickly divide the troops behind the enemy in North China, occupy the countryside, mobilize the people, shelter the defeated army, expand itself, and establish a base area.
In November 1937, Nie Rongzhen founded the first anti-Japanese base area, the Jin-Cha-Ji base area, in Wutaishan, Shanxi. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the New Fourth Army of the Eighth Route Army, surrounded by strong enemies, created countless anti-Japanese base areas of all sizes, of which 8 were major base areas of a large scale. Including: Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia, Jin-Cha-Ji, Jin-Sui, Jin-Ji Luyu, Shandong, Central China, South China and Northeast China Anti-Japanese Coalition Army.
Guerrilla warfare in the Eighth Route Army usually takes small, self-sufficient units, uses the terrain as cover, attacks around in the terrain that they are familiar with, and uses a small number of troops to create a local advantage at one point, that is, although you have ten thousand people and I only have a thousand, I can slowly eliminate your strength with time. In short, it is a zero-hit, so that the enemy will not lose a lot at first, but this number will slowly accumulate until the enemy army's morale collapses and there is not enough food, and then launch a deadly total attack.
The Japanese and Kosovars concentrated regular and puppet armies to repeatedly "sweep" the anti-Japanese base areas behind enemy lines under the leadership of the Communist Party and implemented the "three lights" policy of burning, killing, and robbing the light. In view of the frenzied attack of the Japanese army, the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army led the army and the people to adopt the strategy and tactics of "the enemy advancing and advancing, and the enemy retreating and retreating," and launched an extremely arduous struggle against "sweeping" and "clearing the countryside."
Guerrilla warfare, while not enough to crush the Japanese forces, could create a military stalemate. The Anti-Japanese Armed Forces behind enemy lines of the Eighth Route Army put forward the "enemy enters and we advance" flipping tactics of "the enemy strikes me, I fight to the enemy," and has created many extremely effective, flexible, and diverse tactics to win more with less. They practice sparrow warfare in the mountains, tunnel warfare in the plains, mine warfare is widely used in the mountainous and plain areas, sabotage warfare is carried out according to local conditions, guerrilla warfare is waged along the railway line, and the destruction of railway lines of communication deals a heavy blow to the Japanese army.
The rapid development of the battlefield behind enemy lines, in coordination with the frontal battlefield, formed a strategic attack on the Japanese army invading China, and played an important role in attacking, attrition, containment, and harassment of the enemy, destroying facilities, and blocking transportation. This was an important condition for the transition of the War of Resistance Against Japan from strategic defense to strategic stalemate.