The Yellow River is called the Mother River and has a great influence on the development of the Chinese nation and Chinese civilization, but the temper of the Yellow River mother is not too good. Historically, because the yellow riverbed was too high, whenever the flood season, there would be serious floods, and the people on both sides of the Yellow River were deeply affected. Successive dynasties and dynasties have set up special institutions to control the Yellow River, but during the War of Resistance Against Japan, Chiang Kai-shek dug up the Yellow River levee, causing the Huayuankou levee to burst.
Battle of Lanfeng
After the outbreak of the All-out War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, after two large-scale battles in the Battle of Songhu and the Battle of Nanjing, the Chinese army suffered heavy losses, the Japanese army burned and plundered everywhere it went, and all kinds of evil deeds were committed.
From March to April 1938, Li Zongren commanded the officers of the Fifth Theater to crush the main forces of the 5th and 10th elite divisions of the Japanese army in Taierzhuang, annihilated more than 20,000 Japanese troops, captured a large number of weapons and ammunition, seriously dampened the arrogance of the Japanese army, inspired the spirit of resistance of the whole nation, and strengthened the belief of the Chinese people in the victory of the War of Resistance. After the Battle of Taierzhuang, Chiang Kai-shek
The Fifth Theater of Operations was ordered to concentrate its forces near Xuzhou and prepare to gather and annihilate the Japanese army again.
The Japanese army used some troops to contain the other side on the front, and the main force detoured to the west, trying to encircle Xuzhou from the flank and rear, annihilating the main force of the Fifth Theater, and the Chinese army suffered heavy losses. for
In order to avoid the total annihilation of the main force of the Fifth Theater, Chiang Kai-shek ordered Li Zongren to lead the main force of the Fifth Theater to break through.
On May 19, 1938, Xuzhou fell.
Although Xuzhou fell, Li Zongren methodically withdrew the 600,000 troops of the Fifth Theater from the encirclement of the Japanese army, avoiding the threat of total annihilation. At this time, kenji Doihara, commander of the Japanese 14th Division, led the 14th Division
Rushing to the first line of Lanfeng in Henan, the position is very prominent.
The fall of Lanfeng surprised Chiang Kai-shek, and he ordered Xue Yue, commander-in-chief of the 19th Group Army of the First Theater, to command Yu Jishi's 74th Army, Li Hanling's 64th Army, Song Xilian's 71st Army, and other units to march from east to west, and ordered Hu Zongnan, commander of the 17th Army, to encircle the Japanese 14th Division around Lanfeng, Luowangzhai, Sanyiji, and Quxingji from west to east, and to annihilate the 14th Division of Tufei Yuanxian II and take another great victory at Taierzhuang.
The 14th Division was one of the first 17 standing divisions of the Japanese Army.
Well-trained and extremely powerful, Kenji Toihara, although his main business is intelligence work, he has learned command, has experience in leading troops, and is not a mediocre talent.
Before the Battle of Lanfeng, the Japanese First Army temporarily reinforced 3 heavy artillery companies, armored vehicles, anti-aircraft artillery brigades, etc. for the 14th Division, and the artillery of the 14th Division was very strong.
At that time, Xue Yue mobilized 12 divisions to surround the 14th Division of the Japanese Army, most of which were central army units, and also participated in the Battle of Songhu and the siege of Nanjing, and had a certain combat effectiveness, and even the only mechanized division in China at that time, Du Yuming's 200th Division, rushed to participate in the Battle of Lanfeng.
After the Battle of Lanfeng began, Qiu Qingquan, deputy commander of the 200th Division, directly drove the tanks to run against the Japanese army, causing great casualties to the Japanese army. However, due to the numerous struggles between the Kuomintang factions, Gui Yongqing and other Nationalist generals did not obey the orders, resulting in the disastrous defeat of this battle with absolute superiority in troops, and Xue Yue had to order the troops to retreat.
Kaifeng was lost
After the defeat at the Battle of Lanfeng,
The Japanese 14th Division and the 16th Division continued to advance westward towards Kaifeng, which was guarded by only one brigade, with a thin force and difficulty resisting the Japanese attack. If Lanfeng is lost, Zhengzhou will also be precarious, and if Zhengzhou is lost, the Great Plain north of Wuhan will have no danger to defend.
According to the speed of the Japanese army' advance, if Zhengzhou is conquered, it will hit Xinyang in a few days, and then hit the three towns of Wuhan.
Wuhan is a transportation hub and a strategic town, if Wuhan is lost so quickly, then Chiang Kai-shek's prestige will be swept away, and world public opinion and domestic public opinion will be very unfavorable to him.
At this time, the headquarters of the commander of the First Theater of Operations in Zhengzhou was already in disarray. The operations staff officer was sorting out the documents, packing and bundling them to the car, the attendants were packing up the things in the house and moving them outside the house, and even the brother-in-law kept stuffing pots and pans into the baskets on the back of the mules and horses. In the war room, Cheng Qian, commander of the First Theater, was blue in the face, and he was listening to the reports of Chief of Staff Yan Xunfu and Deputy Chief of Staff Zhang Xuxing.
Chiang Kai-shek also needed time at this time, and he needed to replenish the grain, grass and soldiers of the 50 divisions that broke out from the Battle of Xuzhou, and recover his vitality in order to participate in the subsequent Battle of Wuhan.
After the fall of Nanjing, most of the organs and units of the Nationalist government, schools, factories and other units did not move to Sichuan, or moved into Wuhan, and Chiang Kai-shek needed to relocate and evacuate the important materials around Wuhan, as well as the rear organs, social organizations, and factories.
On June 4, the Japanese 14th Division and the 16th Division jointly attacked Kaifeng, and the defenders of Kaifeng desperately resisted. In the early morning of the 5th, the Japanese army added more than 3,000 troops, and under the cover of dozens of heavy artillery and dozens of aircraft, launched a fierce attack on Kaifeng. Song Kentang, the division commander guarding Kaifeng, sent five telegrams to Cheng Qian, saying that the battle in Kaifeng was fierce and that it would be difficult to hold it if it fought again on the 6th.
On the evening of June 5, the Japanese army attacked the city from the east gate and the north gate of Kaifeng, and the defenders and the Japanese army engaged in a fierce street battle, Cheng Qian ordered the defenders and Kaifeng to coexist and die, but the division commander Song Kentang was unwilling to fight the Japanese army to the end in this place, and ordered a retreat without authorization, leading the troops to evacuate Kaifeng. In the early morning of June 6, Kaifeng was lost.
At dusk on June 7, more than a thousand Japanese troops, under the cover of more than 40 artillery pieces and more than a dozen tanks, attacked Zhongmu from Kaifeng, and a battalion of the defenders desperately resisted. The battle was fought until the early morning of the 9th, the Zhongmu defenders were completely destroyed, and after the Japanese army captured Zhongmu, it continued to advance towards Zhengzhou.
The garden mouth bursts the embankment
Chiang Kai-shek was also impatient at this time, and he thought of a report written by Chen Guofu a month ago, which said that the Japanese army in north China had reached the banks of the Yellow River, and that the water of the Yellow River was a great threat to both the Chinese troops guarding the south bank and the Japanese troops on the north bank, and that if the Japanese army first blew up the levee on the south bank, then hundreds of thousands of soldiers of our army would be destroyed.
At that time, Chiang Kai-shek had not yet taken this report seriously, but he did not expect that the offensive of the Japanese army in North China would be so fierce, and now he had the idea of replacing the army with water. Chiang Kai-shek found out the report again, and gave instructions on the report: "The chief of the electric range is to check the office." After Cheng Qian received the report, he immediately understood Chiang Kai-shek's meaning, and Chiang Kai-shek wanted to push this troublesome thing that was difficult to comment on him for thousands of generations.
After Cheng Qian received the telegram, he did not express his position, but pretended to be confused. In the early morning of June 4, Chiang Kai-shek called Cheng Qian: "
Chief Cheng, you must hold Zhengzhou no matter what. Cheng Qian said, "Commission, I have withdrawn to the west of Pinghan Road according to your orders, and the zhengzhou garrison is weak, how do you say you are law-abiding?" ”
Cheng Qian still did not mention the matter of bombing the Yellow River land, and Chiang Kai-shek hung up the phone in anger.
In the end, Chiang Kai-shek really couldn't bear it anymore, so he let Lin Weimi, the director of the attendant room, dive in and blow up the Yellow River embankment.
After Xue Yue learned of this incident, he said angrily: "The generals are incompetent, and they can only let the Yellow River resist the war!" In the end, this errand was handed over to Shang Zhen, commander-in-chief of the 20th Army. In the early morning of June 6, Shang Zhen called Jiang Zaizhen, commander of the New Eighth Division.
After discussion, Jiang Zaizhen initially sent a regiment to excavate Zhao Kou on the south bank of the Yellow River. At that time, the officers and men of the Kuomintang army thought that it was easy to dig the yellow river embankment, but only later did they find out that it was not at all, the water level of the Yellow River in mid-June was relatively low, and the foundation stone on the south bank was hard, and it took a day to dig a small hole. The sappers used explosives to blast, but after the explosion, the originally small opening was blocked by the collapsed earth.
Finally, after discussion by the expert group, Jiang Zaizhen led two regiments to excavate the garden mouth east of Zhengzhou
At this time, the Japanese army was approaching, the Central Military Commission inquired about the excavation every hour, and Chiang Kai-shek telecommunicationed the progress of the embankment three times a day
！ The 20th Army also sent pork and flour to treat everyone, and the Field Service Regiment of the First Theater of Operations also sang and danced to boost morale.
On the morning of the 9th, the mouth finally came out of the water, but the water flow was relatively small, and Jiang Zaizhen called in two flat-firing shells to target the gap and bomb fiercely. The billowing yellow water roared, rushed, rushed like a tide, overwhelmed the mountains and the sea, pounced on the village, pounced on the town, and pounced on the vast and unobstructed thousand-mile flat domain.
The losses were heavy
On June 12, the floodwaters reached the Baisha Railway Station on the Longhai Line, and the waves were more than a meter high, after that
Gushing yellow water,
Through more than 60 counties in Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces, Huaihuai was seized into the sea, 890,000 people were buried in Huangshui, and nearly 20 million people were displaced
The Chinese people, who suffered greatly in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, suffered a new and tremendous disaster.
After the garden mouth broke the embankment, the world was shocked and the international impact was huge.
Chiang Kai-shek was also deeply guilty and terrified, and did not dare to admit that he had ordered it.
Cheng Qian immediately sent a telegram to Chiang Kai-shek, suggesting that it be claimed by the Japanese army. After receiving Cheng Qian's telegram, Chiang Kai-shek decided to adopt Cheng Qian's suggestion and put the blame on the Japanese, so he sent a telegram to Cheng Qian, unifying his voice, saying that it was caused by the Japanese bombing.
On June 12, Chiang Kai-shek asked the Central News Agency to send a special telegram: "
More than thirty enemy planes flew to the Zhaokou area on the south bank of the Yellow River in the early morning of 12 December, bombed on a large scale, dropped dozens of bombs, but only the mouth of the Yellow River, and then the Japanese army expanded its bombing, causing the flood to soar and could not be saved.
”
This tragic catastrophe was exchanged for it
The Japanese 14th and 16th Divisions were besieged by floods, and heavy weapons were trapped in the flood.
According to the "History of The Operations of the Chinese Incident Army", 7,200 Japanese troops were killed during this period.
The flood delayed the Japanese attack to a certain extent, but it did not change the fate of the fall of Wuhan, but also caused great casualties to our country, due to the breakthrough of the garden mouth embankment, the Yellow River water carried a large amount of sediment, farmland could not be cultivated, resulting in Henan's agriculture stagnation, but also led to the great famine in 1942.
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【Guanshan】Complete Record of China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression [1931-1945]
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