In the 1940s, "lieutenant generals walking everywhere" became a buzzword for evaluating the number of Kuomintang officers at that time, and the number of officers who were awarded lieutenant generals surged in the huge Kuomintang ranks. From its establishment to its formation to its development, the Kuomintang has gone through many stages, and the military rank system has also been upgraded and reformed many times, and in the end the structure and composition of the army are still very complicated. So what exactly did Chiang Kai-shek do to make the Kuomintang generals with two stars on their shoulders look "worthless"?
From the establishment of the Kuomintang army to the development of the process, according to the division of military rank reform, Chiang Kai-shek initiated a total of four reforms. The purpose of the reform is, of course, to hope that the structure of the army can be optimized and the process of the army from management to implementation will be more orderly and perfect, but in fact, Chiang Kai-shek's reform measures have not achieved the expected goals, but have become more and more chaotic.
The distinction between high and low levels
During the period when Sun Yat-sen was in charge of the Kuomintang, Chiang Kai-shek was trusted and promoted by Dr. Sun Yat-sen for his outstanding military ability and personal ability, and Chiang Kai-shek was the first to contact the core strength of the Kuomintang. During the Xinhai Revolution, the military system within the Kuomintang was chaotic, with vague hierarchical distinctions.
Later, when Chiang Kai-shek came to power, all the forces of the Kuomintang were concentrated in the hands of Chiang Kai-shek. Although Chiang Kai-shek took the reform direction of inheriting Sun Yat-sen as his slogan, in fact, after Chiang Kai-shek came to power, what the Kuomintang did went against the aspirations of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, and Chiang Kai-shek disregarded the interests of the country and the people and was bent on taking power into his own hands, completely abandoning the substantive connotation of the Three People's Principles. Although Chiang Kai-shek's ambitions were very obvious, he held the core power in his hands, and the entire Kuomintang contingent had to obey Chiang Kai-shek's orders.
After Chiang Kai-shek took office, he continued to recruit soldiers and strengthen the ranks of the Kuomintang. In order to rearrange the management of the army, he ordered the reorganization of the army's hierarchical system, grading the officers and soldiers of the Kuomintang army at every level, with a very detailed grade from high to low, and the high-ranking officers had absolute leadership over the low-ranking officers, and the low-ranking Kuomintang officers were not allowed to skip the ranks. This was Chiang Kai-shek's first military rank reform action since he took office, and the result of this reform can be said to be a double-edged sword.
On the bright side, this reform reorganized and arranged the personnel within the Kuomintang, and the hierarchy became clear, no longer as chaotic as before. On the bad side, this rigid form of hierarchical differentiation makes the KMT insiders look forward to their own promotion, because the higher the rank, the greater the power, and in the long run, there will be dictatorship and corruption within the KMT.
Reset of the promotion system
The second reform of the rank system was during the War of Resistance Against Japan. At that time, in order to encourage the Kuomintang troops to actively resist Japan, Chiang Kai-shek rewarded him with an upgrade of military rank and called on the Kuomintang generals to charge against the enemy. Therefore, the generals within the Kuomintang went to the front line of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression to receive military merits, and more and more people were promoted to lieutenant generals. However, Chiang Kai-shek found at this time that if we look at this rate, the escalation of the generals is too fast, which is not conducive to the stability of internal management.
Therefore, Chiang Kai-shek launched the second reform of the military rank system, adding seniority restrictions on the basis of military merit as a chip for upgrading. That is to say, if you want to upgrade the knighthood, you can't only rely on military merit, but also depend on seniority, if the time in office is too short, no matter what merits you have, you can't directly promote, you must stay up for several years to be eligible for promotion. However, in the middle of this, there is no restriction on the lieutenant general, as long as there are meritorious deeds that can be taken, everyone has the opportunity to be promoted to lieutenant general, so there is a situation of "lieutenant generals going everywhere".
Army expansion and changes in retirement age
The third and fourth rank reforms still failed to solve the problem of lieutenant generals' redundancy. In addition to the temptation of the hierarchical system, the expansion of the army and the division of the retirement age of Kuomintang generals were also important factors in this phenomenon.
Because Chiang Kai-shek had openly expressed the view that "foreign countries must first be at home," his determination to resist Japan gradually changed to a negative one, and the focus of his work was on the suppression of the Communist Party. This ignorance of current affairs and the lack of a sense of home and state made Chiang Kai-shek more and more arrogant, and he continued to expand the ranks of the Kuomintang.
However, his means of expanding the army were not glorious, and many of the recruits were forcibly plundered by the Kuomintang from among the common people. As the number of recruits increased, so did the number of officers in charge, and the number of lieutenant generals who were already everywhere increased. In addition, Chiang Kai-shek changed the retirement age for Kuomintang members to sixty-five.
In fact, few people over the age of sixty can continue to gallop on the battlefield, and the decision to change the number of retirees is objectively unwise. In this way, the lieutenant generals within the Kuomintang became more redundant. Although they are all called lieutenant generals, their essence is very different. Some are young lieutenant generals who have just achieved military merit, some are elderly officers with empty names and are only waiting to retire, and some are ranks that have been bribed through warlord relations.
To sum up, Chiang Kai-shek's four military rank reforms failed to achieve his original goal, and not only did not improve the internal system of the Kuomintang, but nearly a thousand officers of the rank of lieutenant general appeared. Many people ostensibly carry not low-ranking ranks, but in fact they do not have any hard power, just in vain.
It can be seen from Chiang Kai-shek's military rank reform that the defeat of the Kuomintang is a historical necessity, because although the Kuomintang looks like a huge contingent, it actually has its own appearance, and its combat ability and personnel quality cannot withstand the test. The composition of the Kuomintang contingent was also very chaotic, with serious internal corruption and a disorganized military mentality. How can such a sloppy contingent shoulder the great responsibility of saving the country and the people?