After the Lugou Bridge Incident in 1937, Japan launched an all-out war of aggression against China, facing a frenzied attack by the Japanese army. The Kuomintang Central Army was gradually defeated and retreated. Cities such as Beiping, Taiyuan, Jinan, and Xuzhou fell one after another, and in just one year, nearly half of China's country was occupied by the Japanese.
Also in this year, a Kuomintang general named Zhu Peide died of illness at the age of 49. For a time, the whole country was shaken, and even overseas media reported the news of Zhu Peide's death.
Zhu Peide was also the first general to enjoy a state funeral during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. Who is Zhu Peide? Why can he enjoy the treatment of state funerals, and how important is he to the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek? Why does Zhu Peide have the wind evaluation of "the first talent of the Kuomintang"?
I. Zhu De in the Kuomintang, Chiang Kai-shek's right and left arm
Like Cao Mengde more than 2,000 years ago, Chiang Kai-shek regarded Zhu Peide as a figure like Guo Jia. Be the first think tank around you.
Friends who are familiar with the modern Kuomintang know that during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Kuomintang was full of famous generals, but compared with those people, Zhu Peide did not even have time to fight with the Japanese Kou and died in a hurry. But even so, in the Kuomintang at that time, there was no half inferiority in trust and reverence for Zhu Peide.
In the Kuomintang, Zhu Peide was definitely an elder, and even Chiang Kai-shek was not as good as him. During the Xinhai Revolution, Zhu Peide was an aide-de-camp under Cai Yi, and in the Patriotic War, Zhu Peide relied on his military achievements to rise from regimental commander to division commander. It was also from this time that Zhu Peide began to follow Sun Yat-sen and became the military leader and supreme commander of the Kuomintang.
In the Kuomintang, Zhu Peide was also known as "Kuomintang Zhu De", and before his death, all the military strategy formulation of the Kuomintang had to go through Zhu Peide's hands. To some extent, Zhu Peide is a military strategist, and at the same time a general who can fight in battle!
The reason why Chiang Kai-shek valued Zhu Peide was that he regarded him as his right and left arm. It was also because Zhu Peide was a concubine, and Xue Yue, Bai Chongxi, and Li Zongren were not in the Central Army. Chiang Kai-shek needed a concubine to add glory to himself, which also explained why Chiang Kai-shek was so sad when Zhu Peide died of illness.
On the one hand, Zhu Peide is a rare handsome talent in the Kuomintang, that is, a strategic planner. On the other hand, with the death of Zhu Peide, Chiang Kai-shek no longer had anyone to consult on the military side. Although there was gu Zhutong after Zhu Peide, General Manager Gu was not worth several orders of magnitude from Zhu Peide in formulating strategic guidelines. To some extent, it was Zhu Peide's death that made the Kuomintang begin to decline.
Second, the factional bridge within the Kuomintang once formulated an anti-Japanese strategy for Chiang Kai-shek
In the author's opinion, Zhu Peide is indeed very similar to Guo Jia, a strategist of Cao Wei. At that time, Guo Jia planned to set up Liaodong and help Cao Cao unify the north, laying the foundation for reunification after the division of the Three Kingdoms. Zhu Peide also played a similar role within the Kuomintang. To put it simply, in the Kuomintang, Zhu Peide was on the one hand a bridge between various factions, and on the other hand, he was the formulator of the anti-Japanese strategy.
As early as 1930, a year before the Events of September 18. Zhu Peide was already keenly aware that Japan was going to carry out aggression, so in his New Year's Day speech that year, Zhu Peide hoped that all factions within the Kuomintang would unite to deal with external threats. It is a pity that many people at that time did not take the Japanese threat seriously, so Zhu Peide's armament war was resisted by many people. It ended in failure.
Six years later, in 1936, a year before the July 7 Incident broke out, seeing that Japan was about to invade China in an all-round way, the factional struggle within the Kuomintang was serious, and even some warlords wanted to collude with the Japanese as traitors. It was Zhu Peide who ran between the various factions and gathered the armies of the various factions to form a joint force to resist Japan.
In terms of anti-Japanese resistance, Zhu Peide also did a lot of things for the anti-Japanese resistance, first of all, providing Chiang Kai-shek with an "anti-Japanese strategy." Zhu Peide believes that with the current Chinese military strength to resist Japan, it is bound to fail at the beginning. Therefore, we must be prepared for the big defeat at the beginning, exchange space for time, and then find a way to defeat the Japanese Kou.
Third, the cause of death of Kuang Shixiong is strange, and the Japanese Chiang Kai-shek is the real murderer
It is also because Zhu Peide has talent, or a rare handsome talent. Therefore, this wizard has also become the target of many people, and the first to target it is the Japanese.
Since 1930, Zhu Peide has been actively preparing for the japanese invasion, running combat training courses, training troops, and strictly practicing. Even the elite German mechanics of the Kuomintang in the early days of the Anti-Japanese War were set up by Zhu Peide.
It is also for this reason that the Japanese have always wanted to put Zhu Peide to death. In particular, the Japanese secret service organization "Matsu Organ" listed this Kuomintang general as the number one assassination target, between Zhu Peide's death from blood poisoning, and the cause of poisoning seems to be the contamination of imported drugs. Such a strange cause of death also made his death suspicious, after all, Zhu Peide's death to the Japanese was the first beneficiary, and the reason for saying that they killed General Zhu Peide was very good.
Compared with the Japanese, Chiang Kai-shek was suspected of being the culprit in killing Zhu Peide. This is mainly because the two men have different political views, because after the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, Zhu Peide has always advocated that "the armed forces of the whole country put aside factional struggle and unite with the outside world." This made Chiang Kai-shek, who liked to exclude dissidents, very dissatisfied.
In Chiang Kai-shek's view, killing the Japanese is an exception, and the local armed forces are killed to eliminate civil unrest. This is the best way to consolidate the rule of the Kuomintang, but on this issue, Zhu Peide strongly opposes it, because Zhu Peide is a person who does not know much about politics and does not have any thick black studies. From the perspective of the War of Resistance, he believes that as long as he fights devils, he is a good comrade. It was also for this reason that Chiang Kai-shek was dissatisfied with him in his heart.
In addition, Zhu Peide had a high prestige in the Kuomintang and was once Sun Yat-sen's right and left hand. With him in chiang kai-shek unable to complete his own dictatorship, so getting rid of Zhu Peide to the throne may be the real idea of Chiang Kai-shek's heart.
Since Chiang Kai-shek has such a secret agent leader as Dai Kasa, even if Dai Kasa gets rid of Zhu Peide, I am afraid that many people will not know. Therefore, it is not unreasonable for modern historians to suspect that Chiang Kai-shek is the murderer, after all, he has motives.
Text/Slash Youth
Resources:
1. "Zhu Peide and the Preparation for the War of Resistance", Xiao Ruping and Chen Hongmin
2. "Suspicion of the Sudden Death of Kuomintang Army General Zhu Peide", Wu Hongmei