After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, there were two main armies in our country fighting in different battlefields, namely, the army led by the Kuomintang fighting on the frontal battlefield and the New Fourth Army of the Eighth Route Army led by the Communist Party of China fighting in the battlefield behind enemy lines.
However, many people simply understood the battlefield behind enemy lines led by the New Fourth Army of the Eighth Route Army as the anti-Japanese rear and did not really participate in the battle against Japan. It may not be clear at all what is the battlefield behind enemy lines, what is the anti-Japanese rear, and what is the frontal battlefield.
What is a battlefield behind enemy lines?
After the outbreak of the all-out War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Kuomintang-Communist united front jointly sent troops to drive out the Japanese army invading China, the Kuomintang-led army fought on the frontal battlefield, the Communist-led Eighth Route Army New Fourth Army fought in the battlefield behind the enemy's back, the area from which the Japanese army resisted the Attack from the front was called the frontal battlefield, and the area where the enemy occupied areas established anti-Japanese base areas to carry out the battle was called the battlefield behind the enemy's rear.
The anti-Japanese rear area refers to the place that has not been occupied by the Japanese army, mainly to collect materials and provide necessary support for the anti-Japanese front. After understanding the meaning of the frontal battlefield, the battlefield behind enemy lines, and the anti-Japanese rear, we should understand that the battlefield behind enemy lines and the anti-Japanese rear are two words with completely different meanings, and they cannot be confused at all.
Both the frontal battlefield and the battlefield behind the enemy's back belong to the anti-Japanese front, they are mainly concentrated in north China and east China and other regions, while the anti-Japanese rear area is mainly concentrated in the southwest region, such as Sichuan, which is the anti-Japanese rear area with the largest anti-Japanese troops exported for the anti-Japanese front in the War of Resistance Against Japan.
Since the battlefield behind the enemy lines is the anti-Japanese front, the role of the anti-Japanese rear is completely different from that of the anti-Japanese rear, and compared with the Nationalist army in the frontal battlefield, the role played by the New Fourth Army of the Eighth Route Army in the deep battlefield is as important as that of the Nationalist Army.
The role played by the battlefield behind enemy lines
After the July 7 Incident, the Japanese army had made wild claims that it would take three months to occupy China, so it quickly moved from North China to East China and occupied many Chinese cities. The Kuomintang-led army actively engaged in a frontal confrontation with the attacking Japanese army to resist the pace of Japanese aggression.
The Battle of Songhu, the Battle of Nanjing, the Battle of Wuhan and the Battle of Changsha were all battles fought in the frontal battlefield of China's anti-Japanese resistance. Among them, the Wuhan Huiguo National Army lost about 250,000 troops to the Japanese army at an extremely heavy cost, slowing down the pace of Japan's strategic offensive, and the War of Resistance Against Japan entered a stage of strategic stalemate.
Japan had consumed a large number of troops in the frontal battlefield in China, and its domestic resources were also in short supply, unable to support the Japanese army to continue to expand the war. So Japan dispatched troops to Southeast Asia to plunder oil resources to support the war, but the strategy of raising war also made Japan suffer pressure from the United States, which was not conducive to continuing to expand the battlefield in China, so Japan decided to consolidate the area occupied by the rear and temporarily slowed down the pace of attack.
At this time, the battlefield behind The Chinese enemy lines became the main force of the anti-Japanese resistance. The frontal battlefield blocked the rapid japanese occupation of all of China, and the battlefield behind the enemy was a bombshell that destroyed the Japanese army's consolidated occupation area.
Whenever the Japanese army invaded and occupied a certain place in China, the New Fourth Army of the Eighth Route Army would go deep into the enemy-occupied areas to establish a base area and call on the people to carry out anti-Japanese activities. It is precisely because the New Fourth Army of the Eighth Route Army continues to organize anti-Japanese activities in the enemy-occupied areas that the people's anti-Japanese forces can be gathered together and the Japanese army's plan to consolidate the occupied areas can be completely smashed.
If it were not for the Fact that the New Fourth Army of the Eighth Route Army was actively raising anti-Japanese armed forces in the battlefield behind enemy lines, it would have been extremely difficult to completely drive out the Japanese army once these places occupied by the Japanese army were strictly controlled.
In fact, those who resisted the Japanese army on the frontal battlefield and those who resisted the Japanese army in the battlefield behind the enemy lines also made a lot of contributions to the Chinese War of Resistance, no matter which battlefield was missing, China's victory against Japan would not be so smooth. Therefore, we should not equate the battlefield behind the enemy with the anti-Japanese rear, because the environment of the war of resistance it faces is as difficult as the frontal battlefield, and it is not so leisurely.