In the mid-to-late 1930s, the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army led by the Communist Party of China successfully ended the Long March and reached the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region. With the peaceful settlement of the "Xi'an Incident", in January 1937, the Party Central Committee began to enter Yan'an one after another. Yan'an, a small city on a high slope of the loess soil, quickly became the command center and the seat of the CCP leader leading the CCP's anti-Japanese armed forces. At the end of the same year, due to the defeat of the Nationalist army on the battlefield of Songhu and the danger of nanjing, the "capital" of the Nationalist government, the Kuomintang began to organize the relocation of government agencies to Chongqing in the southwest hinterland. From 1938 until the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the mountain city of Chongqing served as the temporary capital of the Nationalist government, leading and directing the Nationalist army to fight against the Japanese army on the frontal battlefield.
Chongqing and Yan'an belonged to the core command centers and summit stations of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. It is reasonable to say that it should become a key target of the Japanese army invading China. But in fact, the intensity of the Japanese army's blows on these two cities was simply a world of difference.
One sentence can be summed up: Chongqing is in deep water, and Yan'an is a paradise.
The Japanese launched bombers on a large scale to bomb Chongqing
According to the incomplete statistics of the "Chongqing Air Defense Chronicle", in the nearly five years from 1938 to 1942, the Japanese army invading China bombed Chongqing 203 times, dispatched 9,166 planes, dropped about 17,812 bombs, caused more than 20,000 deaths and injuries, destroyed more than 20,000 houses to varying degrees, and lost countless assets, and the direct economic losses of the industrial and commercial circles in the urban area alone amounted to 5 million US dollars.
In addition, after the brutal bombardment of the Japanese army, the plague in Chongqing was rampant, countless dead remains and refugees filled the streets, the entire city stopped work and production, traffic was paralyzed, public security deteriorated, and prices soared...
Why is the main statistic here the data before 1942? Mainly after the outbreak of the Pacific War, on the one hand, the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union's aid to China aviation forces effectively prevented the further bombing of Chongqing by the Japanese army; on the other hand, the Japanese army was busy dividing its troops in the Pacific and was no longer able to carry out large-scale air raids on Chongqing. Therefore, after 1942, the Kuomintang "accompanying capital" Chongqing was rarely bombed by the Japanese army.
Houses that were still burning after being bombed by the Japanese
In Yan'an, on the other hand, the situation is much better than in Chongqing. According to statistics, from 1938 to 1941, Japanese aircraft attacked Yan'an 17 times, dropping about 1690 bombs. More than 400 soldiers and civilians were killed and injured in Yan'an, and more than 1,000 houses were destroyed, in addition to killing and injuring more than 200 cattle and sheep in Yan'an farmers. Although the numbers did not look large, for the people of Yan'an, who were already poor at that time, the losses were not small.
They are also military command centers, why are the Japanese forces attacking Chongqing and Yan'an so differently? Could it be that the Japanese were blind? Obviously not, the Japanese army is not blind, but the vision is too high!
In the eyes of the Japanese army, Chongqing and Yan'an were not one-level targets. For the Japanese army, the main opponents of the Chinese battlefield were the millions of Nationalist troops led by the Kuomintang and the hundreds of thousands of people's troops led by the Communist Party, which were at best "miscellaneous bandits" . To bring China to its knees, the Japanese army's primary goal was to get the Nationalist government to surrender. However, China has a vast territory, and by attacking the front-line nationalist forces alone, it is obvious that it will not be able to complete the goal of annihilating the enemy for a while and a half. The way to get the Nationalist government to abandon resistance as soon as possible is to strike at the core of the Kuomintang: Chongqing. Through large-scale indiscriminate or even decapitation bombing, the will to resist of the National Government was psychologically destroyed. Therefore, Chongqing will inevitably be "taken care of" by the Japanese army.
The caves inhabited by military and civilians in Yan'an are not only difficult to find at high altitudes but also have certain air defense capabilities
And Yan'an? For the Japanese army, even if Yan'an is blown up, it will not reduce the anti-Japanese strength of the national army, and it will not play much role in the pressure of the Japanese army in the frontal battlefield. Therefore, the Japanese army will certainly not spend too much energy to attack Yan'an, and this can only be thankless.
Taking a step back, even if the Japanese wanted to focus on bombing Yan'an, it would not be as easy as they bombed Chongqing! Chongqing, the characteristics of the mountain city is that the land is small and densely populated, and a bomb can be dropped to put down a large piece; Yan'an is just the opposite, the land is sparsely populated, the housing is mainly cave dwellings, and a bomb dropped may explode at most a bunch of loess.
Yan'an after being bombed by the Japanese
And the Japanese are not stupid, the original materials are not abundant, no matter who it is replaced, they will choose to bomb Chongqing to "make a battle merit", and they will definitely not bomb Yan'an to play with yellow mud, from the cost point of view, bombing Chongqing is much more cost-effective than Yan'an.
Not only that, but the implementation of bombing missions generally requires the guidance of ground targets, so that the bombing effect will be good. Although Chongqing has the geographical and climatic characteristics of high mountains and forests and dense fog, the architectural characteristics of the ground are also very obvious, which is convenient for the Japanese army to distinguish the target. Yan'an, on the other hand, looks down from a high altitude, a loess that makes it difficult to distinguish between effective bombing targets. In addition, Chongqing's personnel are complex, and many traitors and japanese spies are mixed in, which can provide identification guidance for bombing, while the people of Yan'an are simple and the personnel structure is simple, and the Japanese army wants to send people to guide targets, which can be said to be extremely difficult. This is also the main reason why although the bombing of Yan'an has been carried out more than a dozen times, there have been few casualties.
Chongqing is more likely to be bombed than Yan'an, and the densely packed houses burn down in large areas
On the whole, they are also military command centers and summit stations, and the main reason why the Japanese army focused on bombing Chongqing instead of Yan'an: on the one hand, the Nationalist government that moved the capital to Chongqing was the big problem for the Japanese army, and the red Yan'an could not enter the eyes of the Japanese army; on the other hand, from the perspective of the cost of the task, bombing Chongqing would be lower than bombing Yan'an, and the strike effect would be better.
But then again, on the battlefield of China's War of Resistance Against Japan, the National Government was a regime uniformly recognized by the international community, and almost all international aid was given to the Kuomintang, and since it took more, it would certainly have to bear more responsibility for the war of resistance, and it would bear more burdens in terms of carrying and beating. Isn't it?
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