China's modern history is an extremely complex history, in which all the Chinese people rose up in resistance and joined in a torrent of resistance against foreign aggression and the search for internal revolution.
As for foreign invaders, of course, only by relying on the common hatred and hatred of all the people of the country can we win the independence of the nation and the integrity of the country. After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Nationalist government, which was on the opposite side of the people, was finally abandoned by the people, and millions of soldiers and civilians followed Chiang Kai-shek and retreated to Taiwan.
In the National Government, there were not all opportunistic careerists and traitors, but there were also many loyal and courageous people, who were wrapped up in the liberation war, fought to maintain the Chiang family dynasty, and became the public enemies of the people. Speaking from the heart, they are still heroes of the War of Resistance, and their merits cannot be erased.
The return of the Tiger General
After the founding of New China, Hong Kong and Macao could have been recovered in one fell swoop, but the far-sighted great man left a hand, and the facts have proved that Hong Kong and Macao controlled by the colonial government are one of the few foreign windows of New China and have played an important role in promoting China's progress.
On March 15, 1955, the Gongbei pier was crowded. A small boat from Macau slowly docked.
After the boat was anchored, several serious-looking people stepped down from the boat, and they walked to the dock surrounded by a young couple and quickly entered the interior.
Due to the lack of information at that time, many people on the docks saw the couple who were not idle people, but no one recognized them. If anyone knows their identity, they will be shocked and even shout that they should not.
The couple, the man is the Kuomintang Five Tigers General Wei Lihuang, and the woman is his wife Han Quanhua. Wei Lihuang was one of the Five Tiger Generals of the Nationalist Army (the other four were Chen Cheng, Liu Zhi, Gu Zhutong, and Jiang Dingwen), and was one of the 43 war criminals announced by Xinhua News Agency.
At a time when the mainland and Taiwan were in a tense situation, what was the purpose of Wei Lihuang, one of the five tiger generals of the Kuomintang, entering the interior?
Soon, a notice from Xinhua News Agency dispelled everyone's doubts. On the evening of the same day, the Xinhua News Agency published Wei Lihuang's signed article "Letter to Taiwan's Friends in Robes," in which Wei Lihuang emphasized the fact that Taiwan is Chinese territory.
This means that The tiger general Wei Lihuang, who was once the commander-in-chief of the Kuomintang's northeast bandit suppression, has returned to the embrace of the motherland.
A well-deserved tiger general
Wei Lihuang was one of the five generals of the Kuomintang troops, but compared with the others, Wei Lihuang's tiger general name was more authoritative. His reputation for good war is not only in the japanese army, but also in the international military history, and his influence is also unmatched by others.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Wei Lihuang had defeated Okamura Ningji, and as an opponent, the supreme commander of the Japanese army in North China, Kiyoshi Kazuki, also admired Wei Lihuang and called him "General of the Tiger of China"; the four-star american general Stilwell praised him in his memoirs as the most capable general in the Nationalist army; and the "Dictionary of Chinese Names" published by the United States called him "General of Constant Victory".
When it comes to Wei Lihuang's experience, it really accompanied the entire revolutionary period. In 1886, Wei Lihuang was born in Hefei, Anhui Province, and at the age of 7, his father, a TianFu official of the Qing government, died of plague, and Wei Lihuang was raised by his eldest brother.
Wei Lihuang went to school, read a lot of historical books, could compose poems and fill in words, and was a typical cultural person. However, when the tide of revolution surged forward, Wei Lihuang chose to throw his pen into rong.
After the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution, Wei Lihuang resolutely cut off the whip on his head. Braids are not cut out of personal beauty needs, but are a symbol of revolutionary status. Wei Lihuang participated in the military struggle against Yuan Shikai, and also led people to fight Duan Qirui, until he knew Sun Yat-sen, he found his way.
After Sun Yat-sen established a military government to protect the French in Guangzhou, Wei Lihuang was elected to Sun Yat-sen's guard and directly served Sun Yat-sen. During the conquest of Duan Qirui, the ranks of the National Revolutionary Army were scattered, and it seemed that they were already invincible. Wei Lihuang, who was not a general, stepped forward, gathered the remnants to counterattack the enemy, and finally turned defeat into victory.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Wei Lihuang was one of the few sober-minded generals in the Nationalist Army; other generals ignored the fact that the united front of the All-People War of Resistance had been concluded, and from time to time they sneaked up on the eighth route army troops.
In the spring of 1938, he resisted the pressure above and allocated 1 million rounds of ammunition and 250,000 grenades to the Eighth Route Army at a time. In the frontal battlefield during the period of the All-People War of Resistance, there were such generals of the Nationalist Army who understood the great righteousness, and coupled with the Eighth Route Army's resistance behind enemy lines, why worry that the war would not be won! This is also the reason why his opponents praised him so much.
When Wei Lihuang was in charge of Henan, he had very close relations with the Communist Party, and when the top level of our Party went to the Luoyang office, he greeted him many times, and the content of the discussions between the two sides was, of course, how to resist the Japanese Kou.
Wei Lihuang and the great man
At the end of September 1941, Okamura Ningji attacked Zhengzhou in three ways and occupied this important town in the Central Plains. Wei Lihuang did not flee like other nationalist generals, but fought with the Eighth Route Army and successfully recaptured Zhengzhou. The Battle of Zhengzhou was also one of the 12 battles during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
Because of his repeated failure to carry out Chiang Kai-shek's policy of "foreign affairs must first be at home," Chiang Kai-shek simply deprived him of his military power and placed him under residential surveillance. A generation of tiger generals who can fight well have been abandoned.
Went to Burma to fight
It's gold that always shines! The Japanese invasion of Burma threatened the only supply line of the southwest international community in the Chinese battlefield, and Chiang Kai-shek, who had no one to use, had to use Wei Lihuang again and send him to fight in Burma.
In Burma, Wei Lihuang's opponent was General Yamashita Bongwen, known as the "Tiger of Malaysia". The two tigers competed, and the main target of the competition was the Yunnan Burma Highway.
Wei Lihuang in Burma
The Chinese expeditionary force led by Wei Lihuang conquered one stronghold after another, pushed the front line in the direction of Burma, and finally successfully recovered all the fallen territory in western Yunnan, completed the strategic task of opening up the Sino-Indian Highway, and realized the Nankan Division between The Chinese Army and the US Army in India and the Chinese Army in India, and preserved the life-and-death artery of the Yunnan Burma Highway.
The Chinese Expeditionary Force left many stories of song and tears in the jungles of Southeast Asia, and the heroic chinese boys in the jungles of Southeast Asia were not unrelated to the consistent style of their general Wei Lihuang.
Abandon the dark and cast the light
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, Wei Lihuang saw that civil war was inevitable, and simply took his wife to Europe, not wanting to be involved in this tragedy of fratricide. After a year of inspection in Europe, Chiang Kai-shek took a fancy to Wei Lihuang's military ability and sent an urgent telegram urging him to return to China and take part in the civil war.
After Wei Lihuang returned to China, he was immediately sent by Chiang Kai-shek to the northeast to serve as the commander-in-chief of the northeast bandit suppression, in an attempt to firmly control the northeast.
Wei Lihuang was not an ordinary person, but he had dealt with Yuan Shikai, a revolutionary general who had conquered Duan Qirui, and had been a soldier all his life, and he was very clear about the nature of the revolution, and he also knew what it meant to win the hearts and minds of the people. Wei Lihuang repeatedly disobeyed Chiang Kai-shek's orders in the Northeast Theater and fought passively, of course, with the aim of avoiding the northeast becoming a bloody land of fratricide.
In the later stage of the Liaoshen Campaign, Wei Lihuang, who saw the situation clearly, was even more reluctant to fight to the death, and he continued to disobey Chiang Kai-shek's orders many times, causing the Nationalist army to be defeated many times.
As a tiger general, his troops could fight the Japanese until the last drop of blood was shed, but if they wanted to fight with the PLA, which was also a Chinese, he would rather give up the high-ranking official Houlu or even be dealt with by military law. In the face of great right and wrong, it is the most able to test a person's conscience.
Angry and demoralized, Chiang Kai-shek removed Wei Lihuang from his post and wanted to investigate and punish him. Wei Lihuang and his family planned to break away from the Kuomintang, but unfortunately they were arrested by Kuomintang agents and imprisoned, and li Zongren was not released until after he came to power.
After his release, Wei Lihuang took advantage of the slack of the agents to escape from guardianship, escape the cage, and arrive in Hong Kong via Shanghai to live a life of seclusion.
After Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan, he always thought of counterattacking the mainland, and Wei Lihuang, as a tiger general, naturally had to be reused. No matter how much the Nationalist government tempted him, he was unmoved.
As a Chinese, of course, he wants to return to the mainland, Taiwan is only a part of China, can return to the mainland, why should it be a corner of peace? But he also feared liquidation, as he was one of 43 war criminals. He cautiously and tentatively sent a message to the mainland, testing the effect.
Soon, the positive response of the central leaders reassured him. For this famous anti-Japanese general, the brother of the Eighth Route Army who fought side by side, how could the people's government let him be wronged? That's why there is the scene at the beginning of the article: Wei Lihuang returned to the mainland with his family.
After Wei Lihuang arrived in Guangzhou, the great man specially sent him a welcome telegram, hoping that he could go to Beijing and take a look along the way. Wei Lihuang did indeed start from Guangzhou, passing through Hangzhou and Shanghai before heading to Beijing.
Wei Lihuang conquered the whole of China, and when he fought in the past in the north and south, his heart was full of the grief of the great rivers and mountains falling into the hands of the enemy, but this time he went to Beijing, but it was a scene of prosperity, and his heart was of course very pleased.
When he arrived in Beijing, his old friends during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and others, personally greeted him at the station, and the great man specially invited him.
Wei Lihuang was successively elected as a deputy to the National People's Congress, a member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a member of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee of the Kuomintang Revolutionary Committee, and later succeeded Long Yun as vice chairman of the National Defense Commission.
On January 17, 1960, Wei Lihuang died of illness, and the party and the state held a public ceremony for him at the Zhongshan Hall in Zhongshan Park and buried him in the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery.
Wei Lihuang's experience fully illustrates the people's government's style of seeking truth from facts, and also fully explains the mindset of the older generation of revolutionaries. Of course, it is also inseparable from his own merits in the neutrality of the War of Resistance Against Japan and his profound righteousness during the civil war.