Before the outbreak of the Liberation War, the northeast was one of the key targets of contention between the Kuomintang and the Communists. At that time, in addition to the current three eastern provinces, the northeast also included the Chengde region in eastern Inner Mongolia and Hebei Province, with a total area of more than 1.3 million square kilometers and a population of more than 38 million. At that time, the coal output of the northeast was 5.32 million tons, accounting for 49.5% of the national coal production; the power generation capacity was 1.07 million kilowatts, accounting for 78.2% of the country; the pig iron output was 1.71 million tons, accounting for 87.7% of the country; the steel output was 490,000 tons, accounting for 93% of the country; and the cement output was 1.5 million tons, accounting for 66% of the country. The northeast is also an important grain production base in the country, and railway and road transportation are also extremely developed.
It is precisely because the northeast has such an important strategic position that it has become one of the key targets of contention between the Kuomintang and the Communists. At that time, the main forces of the Nationalist army were all in the great southwest, far from the northeast; while the main force of our army took advantage of the opportunity because it opened up a large number of anti-Japanese base areas behind enemy lines during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and was relatively close to the northeast. At the end of August 1945, Zeng Kelin, then commander of the 16th Military Subdistrict of the Jireliao Military Region, was ordered to lead the troops of two regiments out of the customs and head to the northeast.
At that time, the northeast was full of puppet armies waiting to be reorganized, and the arsenal left by the Japanese Kou was also everywhere, which provided an excellent opportunity for Zeng Kelin to expand his troops. In this way, Zeng Kelin was reorganized as he walked, and the troops spun rapidly like snowballs, and by the time of Shenyang, he already had 9 brigades and 7 independent regiments under his command, and they were all over-organized, and the total number of troops reached an astonishing 100,000. You must know that the total strength of a heavy army group in the Liberation War was only so many people, and some small corps were only tens of thousands of horses.
In this sense, Zeng Kelin, who had more than 100,000 troops at that time, was not much different from the commander of the corps. If this continues, he will at least be a general when he was awarded the title in 1955. Unfortunately, after the Liberation War began, Zeng Kelin went high and low, and was demoted to 6 levels in just three years, and by October 1949, he had become a small brigade commander. The main reasons for this situation are the following two points.
The first reason was that Zenklin was overly optimistic about the situation at that time, resulting in no guns available to the troops who followed the customs. After Zeng Kelin arrived in Shenyang, he wrote a letter to Yan'an, saying that the northeast was full of arms left over from the Japanese army and unattended, and that the troops who followed into the customs only needed to be lightly armed. However, when these lightly armed troops entered the northeast, the Soviet side refused to hand over the arms left by the Japanese army to our army. As a result, the troops who followed the customs were in an embarrassing situation where there were no guns available. For this reason, Lin Biao sent someone to ask Zeng Kelin to borrow a gun, but he was unexpectedly rejected, and he was criticized by Lin as "localism" and was never welcomed.
The second reason is that Zeng Kelin's performance on the battlefield is not satisfactory. In the early days of the Liberation War, Zeng Kelin had the largest number of troops and the most sophisticated weapons and equipment in the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army, and Lin Biao had high hopes for him. As a result, when fighting with Du Yuming, Zeng Kelin fought several defeats in succession, and the situation was extremely passive, and Lin Biao was very dissatisfied with this. Soon after, Zeng Kelin was transferred to the 3rd Column as commander, in March 48 he was transferred to the 7th Column as deputy commander, after the Pingjin Campaign was changed to the commander of the tank division, and in October 1949, he was demoted to the rank of brigade commander of the Mixed Brigade of the Air Force.
When the title was awarded in 1955, Zeng Kelin's situation made Luo Ronghuan, who was in charge of the military rank evaluation, very embarrassed. If judged by his position at the time, Zeng Kelin is likely to have no luck with the general star. But he joined the Red Army at the age of 16, and also made important contributions during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and in the early days of the Liberation War, he was the first person in our army to advance into the northeast, and he once commanded a crowd of 100,000 people. Finally, after a comprehensive measurement, Zeng Kelin was awarded the rank of major general.