After the Liberation War entered its second year, more and more Nationalist generals rebelled and surrendered on the battlefield, and among them, only Zheng Dongguo was held hostage by his subordinates. Zheng Dongguo, a native of Shimen, Hunan Province, was born in 1903 by his father, who made a living farming and worked as a tailor to support his family when he was idle. But in that chaotic world, people's lives were very hard, and they couldn't make a few new clothes all year round, so the tailoring business in Zhengdong country was not good.
Fortunately, Zheng Dongguo studied very hard and his grades were also very good, which gave his father a lot of comfort. After graduating from middle school, Zheng Dongguo returned to his hometown to become a primary school teacher. In 1924, after learning the news of the enrollment of the Whampoa Military Academy, Zheng Dongguo abandoned Wen Congwu and was admitted to the Huangpu Phase I, and became alumni of the same period with Du Yuming, Hu Zongnan and others. After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Zheng Dongguo first led his troops in a bloody battle with the Japanese army in the great Wall area, and completely annihilated the elite "skeleton team" of the Japanese army at the South Tianmen Gate, making a name for himself in the first battle.
After that, he led his troops to participate in the Great Wall War of Resistance, the Battle of Taierzhuang, the Battle of Wuhan, the Battle of Western Hubei and the Battle of Changsha, and other battles, with outstanding merits. In 1943, Zheng Dongguo became the commander of the New First Army, and led his troops to defeat the Japanese army on the burmese battlefield, and won a medal of the Blue Sky and White Sun. After the victory of the War of Resistance, Zheng Dongguo led his troops into the northeast to fight with our army, and successively served as Du Yuming and Wei Lihuang's deputies. Before the outbreak of the Liaoshen Campaign, the Nationalist army was left with only three isolated strongholds in the northeast, Shenyang, Changchun, and Jinzhou, as well as a few central cities around it, and was in an extremely passive situation.
In order to avoid the hundreds of thousands of nationalist troops in the northeast from falling into a situation of total annihilation, Zheng Dongguo repeatedly suggested to Lao Jiang that he take the initiative to abandon Changchun and concentrate the main force between Shenyang and Jinzhou, so that he could turn passive into active, and be in a favorable position of being able to fight, defend, and retreat. However, the old Chiang kai-shek rejected Zheng Dongguo's proposal, on the grounds that Changchun had been the capital of the pseudo-"Manchukuo" and that if it was abandoned easily, it would have an unfavorable "international impact", and this brain circuit was also no one.
Old Jiang not only rejected Zheng Dongguo's proposal, but also sent him to Changchun to sit in Changchun, and Zheng Dongguo later recalled: "From then until the eve of the peaceful liberation of Changchun, I spent the most difficult and painful period of my life. On June 5, 1948, the chief of the Northeast Field Army issued the "Measures for The Siege of Changchun", the basic essence of which was: "Cut off Changchun's transportation and all commercial relations, so that grain, firewood, vegetables and other means of subsistence will not flow into Changchun, so that the defenders cannot get supplies from the outskirts of Changshi." At the same time, the airspace is controlled by artillery fire and anti-aircraft weapons, so that the enemy aircraft do not dare to fly low and land, so as to limit their airlift. ”
After that, the 100,000 besieging troops of the Northeast Field Army began a siege of Changchun for more than 150 days. The supplies of the Changchun defenders could only be maintained by air transport, and soon after the large airfield was lost, the air transport was cut off, and a grain shortage began to appear in Changchun City. Six division commanders of the New Seventh Army and the 60th Army jointly wrote a letter to Lao Jiang, requesting that troops be sent to relieve the siege. Old Jiang wrote back to them: "I hope you will work hard and support you to the end." Later, Old Jiang personally sent a secret telegram to Zheng Dongguo, ordering him to stick to it for a long time, telling him to completely collect all the materials and grain of the citizens of Changchun into public ownership, and then count the oral grain and distribute it according to people.
Zheng Dongguo believed that this method of lao Chiang was not advisable, and he himself introduced a "Provisional Measures for the Administration of Grain in Changchun in Wartime," which stipulated that the citizens were allowed to leave behind grain that could be eaten until September, and half of the grain was sold to the troops for military food, and half could be freely traded, but when trading, it must be according to the price set by the government, and those who raised the grain price must be severely punished. Unexpectedly, this move not only failed to solve the grain problem, but also led to speculation and the prevalence of speculation, and the price of grain soared all the way, and by October, the price of a kilogram of sorghum rice had reached an astronomical figure of 250 million yuan (Northeast circulation coupons).
With the onset of winter, the Changchun defenders faced the problem of insufficient fuel while starving. In order to keep warm, the Nationalist defenders began to demolish houses, cut down trees in the city, and even dug up the asphalt on the road as fuel. Zheng Dongguo later recalled: "Since July, there have been starvation in the city, and many ordinary people have to rely on eating leaves and grass roots to survive because they have eaten all their food or have been searched by the army, and as a result, more and more people have died of illness and starvation due to extreme weakness." Some people walked on the street and suddenly fell down and died. ”
Internal and external difficulties, Zheng Dongguo knew that it could only be a dead end if he continued to defend, and he was determined to lead his troops to break through and count one out. However, just one day before the breakthrough, Zeng Zesheng led the 60th Army to revolt, and half of the Changchun defense area was occupied by the People's Liberation Army. Two days later, another unit, the New Seventh Army, also laid down its weapons, and Zheng Dongguo led some of his cronies to besiege the Changchun Central Bank building, and sent a farewell telegram to Old Chiang, preparing to commit suicide. At a critical moment, his subordinates poured in and held Zheng Dongguo hostage. After the founding of New China, Zheng Dongguo successively served in the Ministry of Water Resources and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and died of illness in 1991, receiving joint memorial service from both sides of the strait, and his ashes were buried in the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery.