A few days ago, I saw an article on Baidu to the effect that the defeat of the Kuomintang in the Liaoshen Campaign was not defeated by Chiang Kai-shek but by Wei Lihuang, because he did not resolutely carry out the order of the old Chiang Kai-shek to withdraw from Jinzhou. What the article said is indeed in line with historical facts, and naturally many people have followed the comments and accused Wei of improper command, but they are afraid that they do not know the second. I personally believe that the victory or defeat of any battle cannot be decided by a single person alone, and I would like to interpret the Liaoshen Campaign with limited historical knowledge.
Interpretation of the Liaoshen Campaign (1): The Kuomintang seized the northeast, and the Communists gave way to the road to occupy the two compartments
To talk about the Liaoshen Campaign, we must start from 1945, the year before the outbreak of the civil war.
After the end of the war in Europe, a million Soviet Red Army marched into China to fight the Japanese army. After Japan's surrender, there was a political vacuum in the northeast, and both the Kuomintang and the Communists also noticed the importance of the northeast.
Mao Zedong's reason was that our current little bit of base area was quite scattered by the enemy, and the hills and base areas were not consolidated, there was no industry, and there was a danger of extinction. Therefore, we must fight for such a whole place, and as long as the northeast is under our leadership, the Chinese revolution will have the basis for victory. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Communist Party organized the Northeast Anti-Japanese League in the northeast, and a number of anti-Japanese heroes such as Zhao Yiman, Zhao Shangzhi, and Yang Jingyu emerged. After the defeat of the Anti-Japanese Coalition, many officers and men withdrew to the Soviet Union, and most of them participated in the Great Patriotic War with the Soviet army, and also followed the Soviet army back to the northeast. Old Chiang Kai-shek regarded the northeast as the "home of the revolution", he "revolutionized" from Guangzhou, as long as he occupied the northeast, he would be considered a complete "victory".
But the difference in the deployment of troops between the two sides immediately became apparent: Chiang Kai-shek's main force was located in the great southwest, which was the opposite pole of China's territory in the northeast. The communist army's Hebei-Reliao Border Region Li Yunchang was only more than 100 kilometers away from the northeast, and the communist army was able to preemptively enter the northeast. At this time, Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek's Chongqing negotiations were underway, and Liu Shaoqi, who was in charge of the work of the central authorities, immediately ordered the main forces of our army in northern Jiangsu and Shandong to travel by land and by sea to Liaoning, and a total of 100,000 troops and 20,000 local cadres were dispatched to the northeast. At the same time, a decision was made: the first step was to abandon the base area in southern China; the second step was to abandon the base area in Jiangnan; and the third step was to abandon the base area in northern Jiangbei. On the one hand, this is a certain gesture of the Chongqing negotiations, and on the other hand, it is also to fill the gap in Shandong's troops after the main force has left.
Chiang Believed that there was no kuomintang-communist armistice in the northeast, only the nationalist government received sovereignty from the Soviet army, so he refused to negotiate with the Communists on the northeast. Since the communists occupied the middle part of the railway line, it was impossible for Chiang Kai-shek to enter the northeast by car. Also because the northeast is an outpost fortress to contain the Soviet Union, so the United States and Chiang Kai-shek married, the United States spent 600 million US dollars to help the old Chiang Kai-shek, maritime weapons to attack the northeast, resulting in the early stage of the liberation war in the northeast of our army in a difficult situation, Lin Biao's main force has been driven to the north of the Songhua River.
It must be said realistically that at that time the Communist Party was not prepared for a full-scale civil war with Chiang Kai-shek's army. Because at that time, the communist army was still very weak, with only 1.2 million troops in full count, while the kuomintang's military strength had reached 4.3 million. Therefore, the only ideal was to first thwart several rounds of attacks by the Kuomintang, and then the two parties would compromise and strive for a new future of peaceful and democratic nation-building, which seemed to be a very pragmatic attitude at that time and now. The Communist Party has even been worried that once the premise of a common confrontation with Japan disappears, the flames of civil war will be rekindled. For this reason, Mao Zedong once asked the US military observation group visiting Yan'an: Is it possible for the United States to set up a consulate in Yan'an? Because Chiang Kai-shek "had long decided to destroy us," if it wanted to avoid civil war, the Communist Party must have a certain ability to defend itself, and at the same time it must look at the restraint of other forces on the Kuomintang. Mao Zedong valued the attitude of the Americans.
The final outcome of the Chongqing negotiations, the signing of the Double Tenth Agreement, gave the Communists some hope, but the signing of the Sino-US Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation between the United States and Chiang Kai-shek and the Agreement on the Disposal of Leased Materials, which aimed to fully supply the Nationalist army, completely angered Mao Zedong. The Treaty stipulates that the capital of the two countries can freely invest in each other, and the ships and aircraft of the two countries can freely sail and anchor each other. In addition to the money looted by the four major families in the United States, what capital can be invested in the United States? What ships and planes can China sail to the United States? This is a traitorous treaty that is literally equal and in fact the greatest inequality ever made, and undoubtedly facilitates the control of China's national economy by American capital. The "Agreement" is an outpost war between the capitalist camp and the socialist camp between the capitalist camp and the socialist camp at the expense of the United States and the old Chiang Kai-shek. At the same time, the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance signed by the Kuomintang and the Soviet Union stipulated that only Chiang Kai-shek's army could take over the northeast, and these three treaties were enough to give "the government the confidence to eliminate the Communist army in eight to ten months." It was not easy for the Communist Party to face "two ruptures" with the Kuomintang and the United States at the same time, and Mao Zedong was also caught in a dilemma. But in the end, he still believes that if he wants to fight for national liberation, he must struggle his own, and cannot expect the mediation of the United States. It was also the courageous decision made by Mao Zedong that put China's new-democratic revolution on the road to victory!
As the territory occupied by Chiang Kai-shek's army became larger and larger, the battle line became longer and longer, and the deployment of troops began to be stretched. Our Party, on the other hand, reformed the land in the northeast, mobilized the masses, suppressed bandits, and increased rapidly in economy and military strength. In addition to holding Harbin and other Cities in Heilongjiang, it also occupied some cities and vast villages in Kyrgyzstan and Liao.
After more than two years of tug-of-war, the Nationalist army was only able to shrink into the three large unconnected strongholds of Changchun, Shenyang, and Jinzhou and parts of the area near the railway line, controlling only three percent of the land and fourteen percent of the population in the northeast. Land ties between them had been severed, making it difficult for soldiers to supply food and ammunition. Especially after the siege of Changchun, it has reached the point where there is no rice to cook. Except for the new thirty-eighth and 182 main divisions, which have four or two soybeans per day, the remaining four divisions can only rely on boiling vegetable soup. Wei Lihuang did his best to carry out airlift for Changchun, but the Changchun garrison could not be maintained from the ratio of capacity to consumption until the beginning of spring next year, and the heating fuel needed in winter was not yet taken into account. After the large-scale airfield was captured, there was no possibility of air transport, and it could only rely on airdrops. Due to the fierce fire of the communist army against the air, the transport aircraft were forced not to fly low. Due to the extremely poor accuracy of the limited airdrops, nearly one-third fell outside the city and became the supply of the communist army. In addition to scavenging for food in the homes of citizens, the defenders also demolished houses, cut down trees, and even dug up the asphalt on the road and burned it as fuel. The whole corps lived in hunger and cold.
Author: Jiao Feng, thank you to the author for authorizing the use of the article