This was the most deflating battle in China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, as well as the one with the largest strategic defense scale and the largest number of enemy annihilations.
Our army fought hundreds of battles with the Japanese army, annihilated 257,000 invading troops of the Japanese army in 4 months, dealt a heavy blow to the effective forces of the Japanese army, smashed the Japanese army's attempt to quickly resolve the Chinese incident, and made it an important turning point in China's War of Resistance!
After this, the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression entered the stage of strategic stalemate, and The achievements of China's anti-Japanese resistance were gradually revealed!
Today, let Fugui take you to know which battle it was, and why were 250,000 well-equipped Japanese troops hanged by the Chinese army? What price has the Chinese military paid for it?
Battle of Wuhan
In June 1938, nearly a year after Japan launched a full-scale war of aggression against China, Japan successively invaded and occupied the northeast, north China, and east China of the mainland.
When the Japanese army planned further invasion, it turned its attention to Wuhan. At that time, Wuhan was the second largest city in China, with a population of more than 2 million, and it was also one of the few large cities in China that had not yet fallen.
After the fall of Nanjing, Wuhan became the temporary capital and became the political and economic center of China.
Wuhan since ancient times has been known as "Kyushu Tongqu (qú)", the traffic can be developed throughout the world, after the completion of the Guangdong-Han Railway and the Beijing-Han Railway, Wuhan has become an important hub of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the north-south traffic between China, during the War of Resistance, as a transshipment point for Chinese materials, in the military strategy has a pivotal position.
Therefore, in the eyes of the Japanese army, as long as they capture Wuhan, they can rule China!
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Therefore, while organizing the Battle of Xuzhou, the Japanese army also planned how to capture Wuhan, planned to "concentrate Chinese forces to directly solve the Chinese incident and strive to achieve the goal of war within the year", annihilate the main force of our army in Wuhan, force Chiang Kai-shek to surrender, and then support the establishment of a puppet regime to achieve the purpose of controlling and controlling China!
At the beginning of June 1938, the Chinese army began to deploy the defense of Wuhan, gathered a large number of troops in Wuhan, newly established the 9th Theater, and the 5th Theater of Operations, 14 groups with a total of 47 armies, a total strength of 1 million, ready to start the Wuhan defense war.
The battlefield of the Battle of Wuhan was mainly distributed on the south and north banks of the Yangtze River.
On the 11th of the same month, the Japanese army on the south bank of the Yangtze River launched the first battle of the Wuhan Campaign, a mixed brigade attacked the Yang Sen Department of the 27th Group in Anqing on a rainy night, and this Sichuan army unit was directly driven out of the city by the Japanese army because of the unfavorable combat.
At this time, this Japanese advance detachment, the "Botian Detachment", fought all the way to the Jiangfang fortress of Madang, because the waterway was not accessible and adopted roundabout tactics, encircling Li Yunheng's 16th Army.
However, Li Yunheng was running the "Anti-Japanese Military and Political University" and had no idea that the Japanese army had already hit the core position of "Madang."
Li Yunheng
When our reinforcements arrived, Madang had fallen, and the Japanese relied on Madang's fortifications to resist the Counterattack of the Chinese Army. It can be said that the first battle of the Wuhan defense war is very unsatisfactory.
The Japanese commander Okamura Ningji found that the Chinese army was so vulnerable, and immediately sent the elite unit of the 11th Army, the 106th Division, to join the Hakata detachment, and they were like a broken bamboo along the way.
When the Japanese army took advantage of the situation to attack the Hukou Fortress and encountered stubborn resistance from the Chinese army, the Botian detachment disregarded international regulations and released a large amount of poisonous gas to it to break through this formation.
On July 4, the Hukou Fortress was lost, Japanese ships entered Panyang Lake, and the entire Yangtze River defense system was forced to open its doors.
Under the command of Okamura Ninji, the Japanese troops on the south bank of the Yangtze River attacked from the South Xun Railway with high morale, but on the way they encountered Chinese troops blocking, in the glue state, Okamura Ninji found the gap in the Chinese defenders, immediately overjoyed, ordered the 106th Division to dive into the gap, and once again used roundabout tactics!
But Okamura Ninji did not know that this order had pushed them to the road of no return!
The Battle of Dawn in the Battle of Wuhan: The Battle of Wanjialing
This was an unprecedented fierce battle recorded in the annals of the history of China and Japan, and also an unprecedented victory on the battlefield of northern Ganbei, Xue Yue led the Chinese army to besiege the Japanese army with the "eight pockets of war method", and annihilated more than 10,000 Japanese troops in just 12 days.
The early stage of the Battle of Wuhan was dismal, and the domestic anti-Japanese situation was not optimistic.
However, the Losses of the Japanese Army were not small, and the Japanese 6th Division encountered more than 290 counterattacks by the Chinese army in the Taihu Area, although it occupied Taihu Lake, it was seriously injured and could not continue to attack until August.
After the Battle of Jiujiang, the Japanese 106th Division was blocked by Xue Yue's 1st Regiment in the area of Lushan and Nanxun Railway, and the Japanese army could not attack for a long time, and turned to the position of the 70th Army of the Chinese Army, but was beaten back.
Unwilling to give up, Okamura Ningji immediately commanded the 101st Division to assist the 106th Division in attacking De'an and capturing Nanchang, but was still blocked north of De'an by Xue Yue's troops.
The two armies were deadlocked, the Chinese army was slightly superior, the commander of the 101st Division, Masaki Ito, was wounded, and the entire Japanese army was slow.
Xue Yue
At this scene, Okamura Ningji was very anxious, and did not know how to be good.
At this time, the air force came with good news, the reconnaissance team between Nanxun Road and Ruiwu Road, found a gap in the Chinese defenders, as the battle continued to deplete, this gap is gradually expanding.
After Okamura Ninji missed this good news, he immediately decided to send a team through this gap to detour back behind the 200,000 Chinese defenders, unite with three divisions of the Japanese army, and hit them by surprise!
For this perfect plan, Okamura Personally planned this roundabout mission, dividing the 106th Division into five parts and sending it to Wanjialing, west of De'an!
However, after entering Wanjialing, the Japanese troops of the 106th Division found a problem, and the map issued by Okamura Ningji had a serious error, causing the 106th Division to get lost at Wanjialing.
The Japanese 106th Division occupied the village when it encountered it, fought when it saw the Nationalist army, and went all the way to Wanjialing for 50 miles, without encountering too many obstacles.
The news reached Xue Yue's ears, and he understood that Okamura Ningji had believed that the Chinese army was weak.
In order to make the situation more similar, Xue Yue ordered the Chinese army to confront it, presenting a situation of rout and fleeing, allowing the 106th Division to win all the way.
Okamura Ninji heard the news and felt that this method was useful, so he sent the 101st Division to help on the same day. As everyone knows, Xue Yue had already dispatched the troops of Dexing, Nanxun, and Ruiwu, a total of 100,000 troops, and laid a net of heaven and earth in Wanjialing, waiting for them to enter!
"The enemy's wolf rushes forward, the lone army goes deep, and the soldiers are really guilty of committing the great taboo of the soldiers, and at such a favorable opportunity, the corps should take advantage of the time to counterattack and strike a decisive blow."
Xue Yue's strike tactics were the "pocket arrays" he created based on ancient books, which were similar to the one-word long snake arrays.
Just by looking at the name, we can know that this mouth of the pocket array is to cut a gap in the middle of the "one word", show weakness to the enemy, constantly lure the enemy to go deeper, form an inverted "eight" character, and wait until the enemy comes in.
At this time, Ninji Gangcun discovered the "pocket array" of the Chinese army from aerial reconnaissance and urgently ordered the 106th Division to retreat, but it was too late, and the Chinese army had already entered Wanjialing at 106 o'clock and began to shrink the encirclement, tighten the pockets, and wrap the enemy to death.
Okamura Ninji
Under the chaotic fist of the Chinese army, the 106th Division was beaten to the head, but it could not escape the tightly bandaged pocket no matter how it ran.
Ignoring the already precarious precarious situation of the Japanese 37th Army, Okamura asked them to immediately attack Kirin Mountain and rescue the besieged 106th Division.
However, under the fierce counterattack of the 141st Division of the 32nd Army of the Chinese Army, not only failed to relieve the plight of the 106th Division, but also suffered heavy losses.
After that, what kind of offensive will the Chinese army launch? What is the strategic significance of the Battle of Wuhan?
300,000 Japanese troops entered the war and 250,000 were wiped out
This is a battle that makes the Chinese people cry, the defense of Wuhan, China's 400,000 soldiers at the cost of their own lives, in exchange for the Japanese army's 250,000 living forces, dragged down the Japanese army's strategic attack on China's frontal battlefield, so that the Sino-Japanese battlefield into a stalemate stage, for the subsequent counterattack, laid a good foundation.
At this time in Wanjialing, the Japanese 106th Division was besieged, and the reinforcement of the 27th Army was repelled by the Chinese 32nd Army, and its attempt to advance east to reinforce the 106th Division was crushed.
At this time, the commander of the 27th Army's division had already been beaten by Xue Yue's subordinates, and despite Okamura Ningji's orders, in order to find the field, he insisted on attacking the Tianhe Bridge, and as a result, he fell into a heavy siege.
On September 30, the Chinese army launched a fierce attack on the 106th Division, so that the Japanese army was so dizzy that they could not even find the position of their division, so they had to ask for help from Okamura Ningji to send aircraft to support.
In order to save the situation, Okamura airdropped more than 200 officers to the besieged 106th Division, hoping that they would establish effective command and break out of the encirclement of the Chinese army.
However, these officers were all killed by Xue Yue's men on the way to the airborne landing, and none of them could enter the position of the 106th Division alive.
On the 6th, Xue Yue ordered a counterattack, cutting off the Japanese rear road, and on October 9, he surrounded the 106th Division in the three villages of Nanjiapu, Leiminggu, and Liu and Pan.
That night, the death squad formed by Xue Yue rushed into the camp of the 106th Division at night, and in order to prevent the mistaken killing of friendly troops, they were naked, but anyone who touched the clothes they were wearing would give the other side a fatal blow.
At the same time, the Chinese army was also approaching the position of the 106th Division, the nearest distance was only more than 200 meters, annihilating more than 3,000 people of the 106th Division, making it incapacitated, leaving only 200 or 300 people to flee to the northwest under the cover of the Japanese Air Force.
Compared with the Great Victory of Wanjialing on the south bank of the Yangtze River, the battle on the north bank of the Yangtze River was very tragic, and the main force in this area was the Japanese 6th Division, which set out from Huangmei and attacked Guangji, but encountered chinese troops on the way.
Relying on backward weapons and withstanding the attack of the Japanese air force, the Chinese army fought fiercely with the Japanese 6th Division for eight days and nights, causing heavy losses and unable to advance.
However, on September 15, the Japanese army still rushed into Guangji, and the Japanese army, army and air force jointly invaded the fortress of Tianjia town.
The Chinese army swore to resist to the death, the loss of more than two-thirds of the troops, in order not to cause greater losses, the Chinese army had to retreat.
What was unexpected was that the Japanese army actually landed from Guangzhou, because the Cantonese army here was transferred out of Wuhan, Guangzhou was quickly lost, and the situation of our army took a sharp turn.
On October 7, 70,000 Japanese troops landed successfully, Guangzhou completely fell on the afternoon of the 21st, at the same time the Guangzhou-Guangdong-Han Railway was cut off, the Wuhan hub function was invalidated, under the offensive of the Japanese army, Chiang Kai-shek remembered the lessons of the Nanjing defense war, in order to retain the living force, our army can only withdraw from Wuhan.
The Japanese army entered Dongguan, Guangzhou
An inch of mountains and rivers and an inch of blood, after 4 months of wuhan defense war, Wuhan finally fell, China invested more than 1 million troops, the Japanese army is more than 300,000, but our army wounded 257,000 people, greatly depleted the Japanese army.
The Japanese army seems to occupy half of China, but its strength is stretched, and millions of troops are deeply trapped in the Chinese battlefield.
Our army even issued a series of speeches after the war: "The gains or losses of any city must not affect the overall situation of the War of Resistance."
The defeat in the Battle of Wuhan not only did not crush the Nationalist government, but on the contrary encouraged the Chinese people to win the protracted war of resistance and inspired the national belief of the sons and daughters of china to never yield!