Among the senior generals of the Nationalist army, Bai Chongxi was known for being good at strategizing, and the Gui clan started with only a few thousand people, but later developed into hundreds of thousands of troops, becoming the local warlord that Old Jiang was most afraid of. Among them, Bai Chongxi is indispensable, because he has repeatedly performed brilliantly at key moments, and he has been called Xiao Zhuge Ge. Despite his outstanding military achievements, In terms of political smell, Bai Chongxi's performance did not dare to be flattered.
On December 30, 1949, Li Zongren arrived in Haikou by plane. At this time, the defeat of the Nationalist army had been decided, and hundreds of thousands of elites of the Gui clan had also been completely destroyed, and Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi, as the big men of the Gui clan, had to consider their own retreat. After some discussion, Li Zongren decided to go abroad and advised Bai Chongxi to go with him. But Bai Chongxi refused to go abroad and insisted on going to Taiwan with Old Jiang, and Li Zongren saw that Bai Chongxi was determined, and it was not good to say anything more, so he had to sigh a long time: Jiansheng was called Little Zhuge in vain!
So why did Li Zongren say this? Because he knew too well the enmity and resentment between the Gui clan and lao Jiang, he also knew that Bai Chongxi would not have a good ending when he went to Taiwan this time. Historically, the Gui clan has repeatedly opposed Chiang Kai-shek, and large-scale military conflicts have broken out between the two sides for this purpose. After the End of the Central Plains War, although the Gui clan superficially obeyed Lao Jiang, there was always a small movement behind it. Although Lao Jiang was very dissatisfied with Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi, due to the strength of the Gui clan, Lao Jiang also had no way to take the two.
After the outbreak of the Liberation War, as the head of the Gui military side, Bai Chongxi directly demolished the old Chiang Kai-shek's platform many times, which made the old Chiang very embarrassed. Before the Battle of Huaihai broke out, Old Jiang was well aware of Liu Zhi's incompetence and planned to let Bai Chongxi command this strategic armageddon. At first, Bai Chongxi agreed, but when Lao Jiang urged him to take office, Bai Chongxi suddenly changed his mind, claiming that Liu Zhi could handle it alone, and there was no need to let himself take care of it, and Lao Jiang was thus shabby.
Because Bai Chongxi refused to take office, Lao Jiang could only take urgent remedial measures and transfer Du Yuming from the northeast to "put out the fire." However, before Du Yuming could take office, Huang Baitao and his 7th Corps were surrounded by HuaYe in the area of Nianzhuangwei. As soon as the Battle of Huaihai began, the Nationalist army fell into passivity in the overall situation. If Bai Chongxi had been able to take office, with his military achievements, he would definitely not have let Huang Baitao wait for the 44th Army in Xin'an Town like Liu Zhi.
After the collapse of Huang Baitao's corps, Huang Wei's 12th corps was again surrounded by Nakano in a double pile. Hu Lian flew to Nanjing to ask for reinforcements, but Old Jiang had no reinforcements to send. At this time, there was no war in the Wuhan area, and Lao Jiang planned to draw 3 armies from Bai Chongxi's jurisdiction to the Huaihai Battlefield to relieve Huang Wei. In order to seize the troops in his own hands, Bai Chongxi strictly ordered the Central China "Suppression General" Transport Command, and without his orders, it was absolutely not allowed to load and transport every soldier on a ship. When old Jiang saw that the Gui's troops could not be transferred, he gave an order to his concubine Song Xilian to lead the 14th Corps from Hubei to the Huaihai front to participate in the battle.
However, when Song Xilian concentrated his troops in Hankou, Bai Chongxi sent a guard force to guard all the ships, and forced Song Xilian to return to the garrison on the grounds that the 14th Corps was subordinate to the "Suppression General" sequence in central China. When Lao Jiang learned of this, he personally called Bai Chongxi to ask him to obey the order, but Bai Chongxi said: "Reasonable orders I obey, unreasonable orders I cannot accept!" In the end, old Jiang was so angry that he dropped the phone. Due to Bai Chongxi's vigorous obstruction, Old Jiang was unable to draw a single soldier from Central China.
At that time, Nakano had a hard time fighting Huang Wei, and it was only later with Hua Ye's support that huang Wei's corps was annihilated. If it were not for Bai Chongxi's vigorous obstruction, Song Xilian's 14th Corps would have been able to rush to the battlefield in time to participate in the battle, and the Nationalist army would have increased by more than 100,000 elites at once, and what the outcome of the Huaihai Campaign would have been. However, due to Bai Chongxi's demolition, the Nationalist army was eventually defeated in the Battle of Huaihai, and the elite of lao Jiang's concubines was almost lost.
After the war, someone once asked Bai Chongxi why he refused to go to East China to take up his post and refused to increase his troops to Huaihai, if he could go to East China to command and quickly transfer the main force into the battlefield, the outcome of the Battle of Xu Beng might not be so bad. Bai Chongxi's answer was very frank: "What if it's not bad?" Victory is not yet the world of Old Jiang! Old Chiang's success! Did I win fewer battles during the Northern Expedition? The result? Now let him taste the taste of failure, too. ”
When old Chiang Kai-shek was in a state of rage, Bai Chongxi was gloating while demolishing the taiwan, which eventually led to the defeat of the Nationalist army in this strategic decisive battle. This was not the end of it, and soon after Bai Chongxi sprinkled a handful of salt on Old Jiang's wound. Taking advantage of the new defeat of the Nationalist army, he united several members of the Gui clan to jointly send a telegram to force the old Jiang to go down. The elder Chiang was so outraged by this that he was eventually forced to announce his resignation on January 21, 1949, and retreated to the background, at which point the Battle of Huaihai ended only 11 days later.
After the old Chiang Kai-shek stepped down, Li Zongren became the acting president, and the power of the Gui clan reached its peak. However, this situation did not last long, as the Four Wild Soldiers entered Guangxi, the elite of the Gui clan suffered heavy losses, and Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi had to think about a way back for themselves. In the end, Li Zongren decided to go abroad and persuaded Bai Chongxi to accompany him, but Bai Chongxi refused, and he insisted on going to Taiwan with Lao Jiang. Li Zongren believed that the Gui clan had lost power and that going to Taiwan at this time would certainly not have a good ending, so he urged Bai Chongxi to think carefully.
But Bai Chongxi said that he wanted to "maintain the last integrity of a soldier" and claimed that "life and death are at stake." Soon after, Bai Chongxi was defeated and retreated to Taiwan along with Chiang Kai-shek. After arriving in Taiwan, he not only lost real power, but even his actions were monitored by the secret agents of the military command, and the evening scene was quite bleak. On December 2, 1966, Bai Chongxi died in his bedroom, the cause of death is unknown, and there are rumors that he was poisoned by lao Jiang. After Bai Chongxi's death, Lao Jiang personally awarded him the "Honorary Title" and the "JingZhong" and participated in his public sacrifice. If Bai Chongxi had not gone to Taiwan, his life might have ended in a different way.