In the early stage of the founding of New China, when Chairman Mao was holding a meeting in Zhongnanhai, he suddenly received an urgent secret telegram signed by He Long, commander of the Southwest Military Region, and Deng Xiaoping, political commissar. After reading the entire contents of the secret telegram, Chairman Mao was furious and immediately issued an order to comprehensively carry out the war against bandits, and this three-year-long tug-of-war against bandits began.
01 The Chiang family dynasty is determined not to take advantage of the bandit plague in an attempt to return to the mainland
Although new China was founded, the remnants of the Kuomintang reactionaries were still hidden in the shadows all over the country. The Chiang dynasty attempted to use these remnants of power to rely on the southwest to regain power.
Most of these remnants of the Kuomintang are disguised as bandits, and at the slightest opportunity they will come out to wreak havoc, commit adultery and plunder, kill and set fires, and do all kinds of evil. Especially in southwest China, bandits are very serious.
In order to be able to return to the mainland, Chiang Kai-shek also set up his own guerrilla zones in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan, a total of 15 large and small, and personally drafted a contingency plan, all under the command of his confidant Mao Renfeng.
In September 1949, He Long led the People's Liberation Army into Sichuan territory, captured several important senior Kuomintang officers, and in December of the same year, won the Battle of Chengdu. At that time, all but Tibet and the four southwestern provinces were liberated.
The four provinces in the southwest region add up to nearly 1.12 million square kilometers, the total population of more than 70 million, here the terrain is complex, most of the remnants of the Kuomintang rely on this complex terrain to hide in the deep mountains and old forests, some ethnic minority leaders, will provide convenience for the remnants of the Kuomintang.
In addition, the bandits and the remnants of the Kuomintang were mixed together, flaunting various banners to dominate the southwest, harassing and destroying the common people, and even ambushing our army's troops, which aggravated the chaotic situation in the southwest region.
02 The Longtan Temple massacre shocked the whole country
At the beginning of 1950, Zhu Xiangli, director of the Political Department of the 178th Division of the 60th Army of the People's Liberation Army, received orders from his superiors to prepare to serve as a military attaché stationed abroad in a newly established country of the People's Republic of China. The higher-level leaders were well aware of the serious problem of bandits in the Sichuan region, and for safety reasons, the higher-level leaders specially sent a reinforcement squad to escort Zhu Xiang to Chengdu and then to Beijing by plane.
However, when Zhu Xiangli passed by Longtan Temple, he did not expect that he had accidentally entered the encirclement set up by the bandits. The bandit leader Wu Jie, whose original name was Liu Jinmao, was born among the landlord bullies, and once followed Sun Zhonglian of the Northwest Army to the south and north, and then he retired from the army and returned directly to his hometown Longtan Temple.
During this fierce battle, Zhu Xiangli and the soldiers escorting him ran out of ammunition and were eventually captured because of their injuries. Annoyed and unwilling to give in, Zhu Xiangli left Wu Jie feeling helpless, and finally he had to issue an order to brutally kill Zhu Xiangli and several other living warriors, and destroy the corpses.
For a time, this massacre about Longtan Temple shocked China and also shocked the central government. Chairman Mao said angrily: "We resolutely cannot let these bandits continue to run rampant and rampant, and we must comprehensively wipe out them all." ”
In order to ensure the victory of the suppression of bandits, Deng Xiaoping also mobilized a large number of people's liberation army to participate in this campaign together, and the people's liberation army carried out a comprehensive and focused crackdown on bandits in the southwest region in accordance with the arrangements of the leaders at higher levels.
At that time, wu jie, the leader of the bandits who brutally killed Zhu Xiangli, was also sentenced to death, and it was immediately executed, and the People's Liberation Army finally avenged Zhu Xiangli's martyrdom!
It was not until 1951 that the southwestern bandit campaign came to an end, with about 2.6 million bandits wiped out.