In the history of China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, there are three famous tragedies, namely: the Wenxi Fire, the Huayuankou Embankment, and the Chongqing Air Raid Shelter Massacre, which killed many Chinese people in vain. In particular, the garden mouth broke the embankment, and more than 800,000 people died in vain, and millions of people lived a life of displacement.
The direct cause of such a tragic situation was Chiang Kai-shek's order to blow up the Yellow River embankment at the mouth of the Garden in the northeast of Zhengzhou, and his purpose was to stop the pace of capturing Zhengzhou and attacking Wuhan.
So, how many Japanese troops did China drown at such a heavy price, and did it achieve its established goals?
In 1937, the Lugou Bridge Incident opened the prelude to China's all-out War of Resistance, and after the Japanese occupied Peiping by force, they did not stop and expanded the war step by step to the south.
Based on the domestic situation at that time, Chiang Kai-shek believed that if the Japanese army was followed from north to south, our army would be difficult to stop, so it was necessary to transform the rhythm of war into one from east to west, using China's vast hinterland to drag the Japanese army back and wait for the situation to change. With this understanding, Chiang Kai-shek ordered an active counterattack in Shanghai.
In Shanghai, the Chinese army fought a bloody three-month battle with the Japanese and Kosovo, with many casualties on both sides. In order to preserve our living forces, our side finally chose to retreat, but the bloodiness of the Chinese people crushed the Japanese and Kosovars' false words of "destroying China in three months" in one fell swoop.
Subsequently, the Japanese Kou fought from the south and the north, which seemed to be mighty, but it also vaguely exposed the dilemma of tense troops.
In order to change this situation, the Japanese army wanted to open up the north-south line, and as long as the army moved frequently, it could make up for the shortage of personnel.
Therefore, the Japanese army on the southern front gathered 240,000 troops to attack Xuzhou, first capturing the area around Bengbu and Fengyang, and then forcibly crossing the Huai River to continue.
When the Nationalist 31st Army and the 51st Army were unable to resist the imminent retreat, Zhang Zizhong came to the aid in time and successfully repelled the Japanese 13th Division, and the two sides confronted each other along the Huai River.
Seeing that the attack on the southern front was blocked, the Japanese army on the northern front began to move, and the Setani detachment attacked Fuji County, and although the 122nd Division of the Sichuan Army put up stubborn resistance, it was outnumbered, and eventually Fuji County fell, and Wang Mingzhang, commander of the 122nd Division, was martyred.
After the Japanese army won, its ambitions were further inflated, and 40,000 people were gathered to attack Taierzhuang, and the Chinese army held the city to the ground, even if the casualties were heavy, it still did not retreat.
After the battle fell into anxiety, Li Zongren immediately ordered Tang Enbo to lead his troops back to reinforcements, so that the Nationalist army instantly formed a counter-encirclement. Seeing that the situation had been reversed, Riko could only choose to retreat in a hurry.
The great victory in Taierzhuang killed and wounded about 20,000 Japanese troops, which was a major victory on the frontal battlefield, and the excitement it brought to the Chinese people in the early days of the anti-Japanese war when the situation was depressed was indescribable.
However, at that time, some people were blinded by the victory, thinking that the Nationalist army could quickly defeat Japan, and it was not long before the Military Commission of the Nationalist Government ordered Li Zongren to concentrate his forces and prepare to encircle the Japanese army again.
This is almost impossible for the Already Badly Wounded Fifth Theater.
Before the Nationalist army could move, the Japanese had already found it, and they changed their tactics and decided to use a small number of troops to hold it head-on, while the main force detoured to encircle Xuzhou, with the purpose of encircling the nationalist army in the entire Fifth Theater.
Their offensive was extremely fierce, and Chiang Kai-shek also found out that something was wrong, so he immediately consulted with Bai Chongxi, He Yingqin, and others. After they saw the intention of the Japanese Kou, they ordered Li Zongren to evacuate Xuzhou, and it was better to lose land than to lose both people and land.
Under the command of Li Zongren, the Nationalist forces near Xuzhou withdrew in an orderly manner to the mountains of Henan and Anhui provinces, causing no losses.
The Japanese did not give up after the action of our army, and kenji Doihara led the 14th Division to go deeper and gradually became disconnected from the other Japanese troops, which allowed us to see the opportunity. Cheng Qian, commander of the First Theater, immediately mobilized more than 120,000 troops to prepare to eat the Japanese 14th Division.
Kenji Toihara found that the situation was not good, and he seemed to be vaguely surrounded, so he decided to concentrate on capturing Lanfeng as a breakthrough point.
At that time, the 27th Army of the Central Army was responsible for garrisoning Lanfeng, which was the old Chiang Kai-shek's concubine unit, well-equipped and equipped with chariots, and it seemed that it could fight a war. However, Gui Yongqing, the commander of the 27th Army, who was deeply trusted by Chiang Kai-shek, fled in a panic in a chariot after the Japanese launched a fierce attack.
The commanders were greedy and afraid of death, and the troops under their command had no will to fight, and Lan Feng was soon lost.
As far as the situation at that time was concerned, although the Second Division of Toihara Kento jumped out of the encirclement, the Nationalist army still had an absolute numerical superiority, so it was still very possible to encircle and annihilate the Japanese army.
Subsequently, Xue Yuelai commanded the troops to besiege Lanfeng from the east and west directions, and strive to annihilate the Japanese 14th Division in one fell swoop.
Song Xilian led the 71st Army to be very fierce, and successively recaptured Lanfeng Station, Luowang Station, and even Lanfeng was recaptured, forcing the 14th Division to shrink in the area of Sanyi Village.
The 14th Division finally panicked and rushed to the Japanese high command for help. The Japanese immediately sent a large number of troops to the rescue, of which the 16th Division was the fastest and closest, only one Shangqiu City away from Sanyi Village.
The Eighth Army was stationed at Shangqiu, also Chiang Kai-shek's concubine, but the commander of the army, Huang Jie, also chose to flee, and the reason he gave was very ridiculous, saying that the radio was damaged and could not communicate with his superiors, so he retreated first.
Gui Yongqing and Huang Jie were both Huangpu I, and they did not listen to the command at all under chiang kai-shek's favor, resulting in the entire operational deployment being disrupted. The great opportunity to encircle and annihilate the Japanese 14th Division was wasted.
Shangqiu changed hands, the situation changed again, the Japanese army continued to come to the rescue, and the Nationalist army, which had been fighting bloody battles, could not resist and could only retreat. After the Japanese reoccupied Lanfeng, the soldiers pointed directly at Kaifeng, and as a result, the Nationalist 141st Division defending Kaifeng once again fled without a fight.
In the Battle of Lanfeng, a number of greedy and fearful of death appeared among the Kuomintang generals, which made Xue Yue extremely angry, and even Old Jiang himself could not look down, angrily scolding that this battle would be a laughing stock for thousands of years.
How to solve the Japanese army in front of them has become a problem that the Kuomintang top brass urgently needs to consider. The 14th and 16th Divisions continued westward in an attempt to capture Zhengzhou, where the headquarters of the First Theater of Operations was located.
At this time, there were hundreds of thousands of troops in the first theater of operations, and it was no longer possible to face the two divisions of the Japanese army, and in a hurry, Chiang Kai-shek thought of the method of the german adviser Falkenhausen - digging the Yellow River to block the Japanese army.
Old Jiang knew that this matter would be insulted, so he "cleverly" did not give direct orders, but implied that Cheng Qian, commander of the First Theater, would stop the Japanese army by any means, even if it was to dig up the Yellow River.
Of course, Cheng Qian was not a fool, and instantly guessed Chiang Kai-shek's thoughts, so he called back to ask for instructions and raised the main responsibility back. After old Jiang gave his approval, Cheng Qian asked Shang Zhen, commander of the 20th Group Army, to carry out specific matters.
Shang Zhen then took two regiments that were supposed to blow up another river mouth, but they were never successful due to the blockage of the river. Seeing that the Japanese army was getting closer and closer, all sides of the Nationalist army felt that they could not delay any longer, so under the suggestion of Jiang Zaizhen, the commander of the New Eighth Division, the blast point was changed to The Garden Pass.
On June 9, 1938, with a loud noise, the garden mouth was exploded, and the rushing Yellow River surged in, quickly flooding the nearby villages, and because it was raining heavily at that time, the water stones became larger and larger, and Zhongmu, Weishi, Fugou and other places were completely covered.
After causing such a large area of harm, the water still did not stop, rushing to the Huai River, even the banks of the Huai River were washed away, and Bengbu and Suxian in Anhui were also unfortunately affected.
With such a large water potential, the Japanese troops were naturally affected, and some people of the 14th Division were trapped in the Zhongmu area by the flood, but the nearby Japanese Second Army soon sent rescue troops, so the casualties of the division were not many. The 16th Division, which was at the center of the flood, had thousands of soldiers drowned and washed away.
In the face of such a large Tianwei, the manpower was still very small, and the Japanese army temporarily stopped attacking.
A month later, the water gradually receded, and the Nationalist troops took advantage of the fatigue of the Japanese army to launch a counterattack, successfully forcing the enemy back to the junction of Henan and Anhui. The fighting near Zhengzhou gradually eased, which was the only effect achieved.
Embarrassingly, the Japanese army did not give up the idea of capturing Wuhan, this road was not passed, the Japanese army changed to the Bengbu - Hefei - Wuhan route to continue the attack, four months later, Wuhan fell.
On the whole, Chiang Kai-shek's move had an effect, but the effect was very limited, especially compared with the harm caused, which was even more small. The breach of the Garden Mouth embankment flooded tens of millions of acres of arable land, washed away millions of homes, and caused a large number of innocent people to die and injure people due to the ensuing food shortage and plague.
According to statistics, more than 800,000 people directly drowned and starved to death in the Garden Mouth embankment, and tens of millions of people were displaced as a result.
The flooding of the Yellow River brought famine to Henan for many years, and the famous movie "1942" was adapted from a real historical event, when tens of millions of refugees went out to escape, 10 pounds of millet could change a wife, and three million people starved to death on the road, which was really unbearable.
Old Jiang spent so much effort to blow up the garden mouth, so much damage to himself, and drowned so little of the Japanese army as a result, did he feel particularly cold?
Chiang Kai-shek initially knew that he was not doing anything wrong, and allocated 2 million yuan to support the disaster areas, but the 2 million yuan was really a drop in the bucket, not to mention that Kuomintang officials had to deduct them layer by layer.
Later, Chiang Kai-shek was even more excessive, Henan was already so difficult, still had to be expropriated on a large scale, and the tragedy of 1942 also had a lot to do with this.
This year, Minister of Grain Xu Kan changed the grain collection unit from stone to a package, and every henan people had to pay one-third more grain, and anyway, the grain collection could not be levied on Xu Kan's own head, so he would be so unscrupulous.
Although many people had spoken out for Henan, Chiang Kai-shek did not take it seriously until the National Suffrage Conference in October of that year, when Guo Zhongkui, a native of Henan, displayed the tragic situation in Henan one by one in front of everyone, which caused a sensation in the National Government.
Seeing that things were making a big fuss, Chiang Kai-shek had no choice but to say that he would allocate 500 million French dollars to relieve Henan, which looked like a lot, but it was apportioned to tens of millions of Henan people, and everyone got very little grain.
The various actions of the National Government have greatly disappointed the people of Henan, and also let the people of the whole country see its corrupt and prevaricating side, which is not difficult to explain why in the subsequent Liberation War, the people everywhere will be the first to welcome and support the People's Liberation Army!
The huayuankou breach was essentially caused by the ineffective resistance of some Kuomintang generals, but if Gui Yongqing or Huang Jie could hold on to it, the whole situation might be very different. It is ridiculous that these two people were only punished temporarily, and were quickly reused, and even later mixed with the Kuomintang generals.
There are difficulties that cannot be saved, and there have been cases of impunity, and it is understandable that such a Kuomintang will eventually be abandoned by the people!