When the Dian army rushed to Xuzhou for a major battle, Li Xianzhou's 92nd Army, Liu Ruming's 68th Army, Feng Zhi'an's 77th Army, Li Yannian's 2nd Army, and Dong Zhao's 22nd Division all rushed over. And that's not all, there are a lot of troops on the way.
Li Zongren was very puzzled, so he called and asked Bai Chongxi: Why did Chairman Jiang send so many troops?
Bai Chongxi's answer was also very crisp: Chairman Jiang wanted you to expand taierzhuang's achievements.
Li Zongren replied: "It's too late!"
What does this sentence mean? According to Li Zongren's memoirs, it is said that around April 20, he judged the new strategy of the Japanese army to encircle Xuzhou, because it could not repeat the mistakes of Shanghai, so in early May he arranged a plan for the retreat of the army.
Is this true? Let's take a look at it from another angle.
After the Battle of Taierzhuang, Liu Fei returned to Wuhan and returned to Chiang Kai-shek. The rare victory made Chiang Kai-shek very happy, after all, it boosted the morale of the people, but at the same time he also maintained vigilance.
For Liu Fei, his biggest concern was how to use xuzhou's various troops.
At the same time that China increased its strength, Japan was also increasing its troops, according to the information obtained: the Japanese army gathered in the north and south of Xuzhou at that time was close to 200,000 people, and the Chinese troops in Xuzhou had reached 500,000 people, which was equivalent to half of China's field troops with combat capabilities at that time.
Liu Fei believed that after the Battle of Taierzhuang, the Japanese army would definitely return to counterattack. For the Chinese troops, it is an internal operation, and if they want to maintain the initiative, they must have a strong mobile unit, and for some unimportant positions, they should take the initiative to give up, only in this way can they maintain their own posture in the movement.
Therefore, Liu Fei believes that the reinforcements of Xuzhou cannot all be put on the front line. Specifically, there was a powerful mobile corps in the Lunan area, placing enough reserves in the west of Xuzhou to guard the Japanese troops coming from the north of Anhui and the Japanese troops who were circumventing in Luxi, and always ready to flank the Japanese troops on the Jinpu Line.
Therefore, soon after Liu Fei returned to Wuhan, he called Li Zongren and asked him to leave only a small number of troops north of the canal, and the main force was all withdrawn south of the canal and west of Xuzhou.
But this suggestion was despised by Li Zongren.
This is not to say that Li Zongren opposes Liu Fei, but can only say that one represents the military headquarters and the other represents the theater, the two are in different positions, and the position of looking at the problem is also different, and Li Zongren has not completely jumped out of the war situation to look back.
So what did Chiang Kai-shek think?
Chiang Kai-shek was not an impulsive man, and he had to take Liu Fei's opinion into account. Finally, Chiang Kai-shek said that although some troops should be drawn from the front line down as a maneuver. However, according to the current stage of the war situation, there is no need to transfer troops to the south of the canal and west of Xuzhou.
In such a situation, a compromise was introduced.
On April 21, although the military command reached the fifth theater of operations under this plan, Liu Fei was still not at ease, afraid of not implementing it thoroughly, and contacted Xu Zuyi every day. He was surprised by the news he received: the Xuzhou front not only did not rush down the reserves and mobile troops, but a new unit that rushed to the aid of Xuzhou was also transferred to the front.
According to Xu Zuyi, many people wanted to attack from the flank of the Japanese army by means of envelopment.
However, the Japanese army also thought this way, so that the flank of the Japanese army began to extend continuously.
Liu Fei easily did not get angry, and this time he was furious, and directly reprimanded: Commander Li is confused, Xu Zuyi, you should know the severity of the war situation, 500,000 troops have reached the front line, from Weishan Lake in the west to Tancheng in the east, the front of the position alone has reached more than 300 kilometers, so the race is boundlessly occupying the position, what is the significance? Once the Japanese army encircled Xuzhou in a roundabout way, how would our hundreds of thousands of troops move?
The result was just like Liu Fei thought.
In mid-May, the Japanese 13th Division abandoned the front of the Jinpu Line and went straight down to Xuzhou. The Japanese 10th Division crossed Weishan Lake and detoured toward the Lunan area. Kenji Toihara's 14th Division marched south from Heze to eastern Henan.
On May 10, the Japanese army in northern Jiangsu and the Japanese army in tancheng south, successfully met the division, that is, the flank of the Chinese army east of Xuzhou, and had been captured by the Japanese army, which was a very dangerous signal.