In the Anhui Incident, the New Fourth Army suffered heavy losses, and the New Fourth Army headquarters and directly subordinate units totaled more than 9,000 people, and the leaders of the army, including commander Ye Ting and deputy commander Xiang Ying, were either captured or sacrificed, and the command system was almost destroyed by the Kuomintang army. However, this did not affect the development of the New Fourth Army, which was soon reorganized.
On October 20, 1941, the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China issued an order to reorganize the New Fourth Army Department, appointing Chen Yi as the commander of the New Fourth Army, Liu Shaoqi as the political commissar, Zhang Yunyi as the deputy commander, Lai Chuanzhu as the chief of staff, and Deng Zihui as the director of the Political Department. On the 25th, on the basis of the General Headquarters of the Eighth Route Army of the New Fourth Army in Central China, the rebuilt New Fourth Army Headquarters was established in Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, and the troops were reorganized into seven divisions and an independent brigade, with Su Yu, commander of the first division, Zhang Yunyi, commander of the second division, Huang Kecheng, commander of the third division, Peng Xuefeng, commander of the fourth division, Li Xiannian, commander of the fifth division, Tan Zhenglin, commander of the sixth division, Zhang Dingcheng, commander of the seventh division, and Liang Xingchu, commander of the independent brigade.
Compared with the Eighth Route Army, the situation of the New Fourth Army was more dangerous, and all the units of the New Fourth Army went deeper behind the enemy's lines and were entrenched in the enemy's hinterland of east China. Although the situation was difficult, for the New Fourth Army, which had experienced three years of guerrilla warfare, this problem could not be difficult for them at all, and the various departments also developed rapidly.
The First Division of the New Fourth Army was not the largest unit among the divisions, but it was the unit with the largest number of annihilated enemies and the most brilliant results among the divisions of the New Fourth Army. As early as 1939, Su Yu led his troops south to southern Jiangsu, and Ye Fei led his troops all the way to Shanghai Hongqiao Airport, blowing up four planes, which caused a great sensation at that time.
In August 1941, the Japanese army concentrated heavy troops to sweep the central Soviet area, Su Yu commanded the troops to kill more than 1,300 Japanese troops in 42 days, and the puppet army suffered more casualties. In the spring of 1944, Su Yu launched a spring offensive, liberating 3,000 square kilometers of land, 150 villages and towns, and plotting against 1,000 puppet troops anyway. In March 1944, Su Yu commanded the Battle of Cheqiao, killing 460 Japanese troops including a Japanese soldier, 480 puppet troops, including a Japanese soldier, and fighting the entire Japanese army in central China.
From 1938 to 1944, Peng Xuefeng led his troops to fight against Japan with a total of 3,760 men and annihilated 48,000 enemy troops. In 1942, the cavalry regiment of the Fourth Division of the New Fourth Army encountered the Japanese army, and Peng Xuefeng led the troops to attack the Japanese cavalry, cutting down more than 200 Japanese troops in nine minutes.
The Second Division of the New Fourth Army was initially very poor, and the cadres of the unit could not even afford to smoke, so the division commander Zhang Yunyi tried to set up a tobacco factory, and the military commander Chen Yi personally named the tobacco factory "Pegasus Brand." The Shanghai underground party helped buy six cigarette machines and helped with printing, anyway, they did not dare to use the printing press to print leaflets during the day, and the machine was idle and idle, and could be used to print cigarette boxes. What no one expected was that after the establishment of the tobacco factory of the New Fourth Army, it immediately received unanimous praise from consumers, and businessmen in enemy-occupied areas such as Ninghuhang risked their lives to come to purchase. Due to the shortage of supply, the New Fourth Army later expanded its production scale.
After the Second Division of the New Fourth Army developed, the number of people expanded rapidly, and it also handed over 300,000 yuan of french currency to the military department every month. In 1944, when there was a major drought in North China, the Second Division of the New Fourth Army took out 16 million yuan to support the disaster areas, and stunned the Tuba Road, which had been frugal all day. In addition, everyone in the Second Division of the New Fourth Army is a brand-new 38-type rifle, and if it is not enough, they will buy it from various channels from the Japanese puppet army and the Kuomintang army; the officers and men of the Second Division of the New Fourth Army still have 10 yuan of pocket money per person, the staple food is rice, and there is also a toothpaste and three cigarettes, which is unimaginable to the tuba road in the north.
In fact, the New Fourth Army understands that operation is on the one hand, on the other hand, the officers and men of the New Fourth Army are equal, and there is very little embezzlement of military salaries and deduction of food expenses of officers and men, so everyone can take care of it. However, the Kuomintang army was seriously corrupt, and it was not a strange thing to eat empty salaries, and ordinary soldiers could not eat enough to eat, so what morale and combat effectiveness could such a contingent have.
In order to develop, the New Fourth Army also collected "anti-Japanese donations" on various rivers, and also drove Japanese man-made steel steamboats, looked for Japanese businessmen to collect taxes, and finally took the taxes paid by Japanese businessmen and bought guns and cannons to beat the Japanese. The Japanese army had sent motorboats to attack the New Fourth Army, but Zhang Aiping thought of a way, that is, to arrange hidden piles in the river, the Japanese army chased several times, frequently stranded, and was also hit by the New Fourth Army, and later did not dare to rush to attack. In the later period of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, some units of the New Fourth Army dared to engage in an evenly matched artillery battle with the Japanese army due to their rapid development.
The Seventh Division of the New Fourth Army was also a particularly wealthy unit at that time, and this unit was only a few hundred people when it was first formed, and was compressed by the Japanese puppet army in a small mountainous area. Like the Second Division of the New Fourth Army, the idea of this unit was also to develop, so they found several economic experts within the New Fourth Army at that time to come to help, and the use of the rich resources in the Anhui River area soon developed. In 1944, the Seventh Division of the New Fourth Army paid 44 million yuan in military expenses to the military headquarters, which was the sum of the military expenses of the 20 divisions of the Kuomintang Army at that time. When the Seventh Division of the New Fourth Army was abolished, all the assets were converted into gold, 500,000 taels, the strength reached 30,000, and the local armed forces and militia reached hundreds of thousands.
In fact, at that time, the Kuomintang army also had a lot of troops in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui and other areas behind enemy lines, but the factional struggle within the Kuomintang was very fierce, embezzling military funds, and killing the local masses often occurred, resulting in the final death and scattering. In 1944, when the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was about to be won, the Kuomintang army also suffered a crushing defeat to the Japanese army in the Battle of Yuxianggui, which made China's international status and international influence fall to the bottom.