As the saying goes, water and fire are merciless, in the history of ancient wars on the mainland, whether it is water attack or fire attack, it is considered a kind of surprise attack, and the generals who usually use this method will write a brilliant stroke in the history books.
For example, Han Xin during the Chu-Han struggle for hegemony, and Guan Yu in the Three Kingdoms period used this trick, and the reputation of these generals was not bad.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in 1938, in order to resist the japanese army's advance in the hinterland of the mainland, the Kuomintang also used this trick in an attempt to use the water of the Yellow River instead of a million male soldiers to resist the Japanese invasion, but the result was a big surprise. Why?
First, the background of replacing soldiers with water
In fact, as early as the end of the Qing Dynasty, after the Meiji Restoration, Japan began to salivate over the three eastern provinces of the mainland. "Tanaka" early on exposed their ambition to use North Korea as a springboard to control China and dominate Asia.
However, after all, Japan is a small country with a weak population, and in the face of a huge China, it can only take cannibal measures to gradually immigrate to China. After 1937, the Lugou Bridge Incident broke out, and the War of Resistance began in an all-round way. However, Chiang Kai-shek had always pinned his hopes on the mediation of the League of Nations in an attempt to restrain the invaders under external pressure. However, for the international community at that time, it was a jungle society, and such expectations were in vain.
In the end, the Japanese army landed in Shanghai from the open sea in an attempt to destroy China in March, but the Battle of Songhu escaped for more than three months, completely destroying the arrogance of the Japanese military.
However, for Chiang Kai-shek, who was in charge of the Nationalist government at that time, although the myth of Japan's rapid victory in a quick war was broken, our war losses were already unbearable. Chiang Kai-shek directly abandoned the then capital of the country, Nanjing, and began to move west with government officials, but in fact, he was only one step away from the slaves of the country.
From the Battle of Songhu to the Defense of Nanjing, Chiang Kai-shek had basically sent all the elite troops at hand to the front, and the rear line collapsed, and for the time being, it was impossible to stop effective resistance.
However, on the other hand, Japan was still constantly increasing its troops, and Shitu marched along the west of the Yangtze River, chasing Chiang Kai-shek all the way from east to west along the Yangtze River waterway.
In May 1938, the footsteps of the Japanese army had already entered Xuzhou in Zhengzhou from jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang and other coastal areas, and marched to the hinterland of the longhailan new line. Such a rapid advance caused panic in Wuhan, the seat of Chiang Kai-shek's government, but before the army was scattered, warlords from all over the world had already transferred troops from all over the world regardless of their previous suspicions, but they did not wait for a while.
Second, the scene of the garden mouth breach
On June 9, 1938, Chiang Kai-shek ordered the embankment of the Yellow River at the mouth of the garden to be blown up, and he listened to his subordinates' strategy of replacing the army with water, hoping to use the water of the Yellow River to drown the Japanese invading Japanese troops stationed in Zhengzhou.
In fact, at that time, there were defenders stationed in the Yellow River, and the garrison here at that time was the general of the Nationalist army, Shang Zhen, and Chiang Kai-shek had been urging the implementation of orders such as telegrams. At first, the decisive mouth was chosen at Zhaokou, because it was close to the Japanese garrison, but it belonged to the quicksand accumulation place at the bend of the Yellow River, so the amount of work was too large to be carried out.
Chiang Kai-shek's heart to blow up the embankment did not die, so the garrison urgently changed the location of the breach, because the garden entrance was relatively weak, so after a loud noise, the embankment was blown up. The next day in the hinterland of the Central Plains, torrential rains fell, the amount of water in the Yellow River soared, the flow rate rose rapidly, washing the levee into a mess, Zhaokou and Garden Mouth at the same time, the two streams of water suddenly rushed to the villages and railways in the plain area with a large amount of sediment. After years of calm, the Yellow River has once again changed course, but this time it is actually caused by human factors.
After the Yellow River was diverted, it immediately flooded the plains of the vast Central Plains. Because the excavations were carried out secretly, and fearing opposition from the local villagers, no one informed them to evacuate. Therefore, a generation of people in the lower reaches of the Yellow River lost their homes and land without knowing anything, and many people directly drowned in the ocean formed by the Yellow River.
At that time, the Nationalist government was still moving the capital, and it was resigned to all this, and there was no response to the disaster caused.
The people of the vast Yellow Pan areas of northern Jiangsu, Henan, Anhui and other places were forced to leave their homes and flee in all directions, and At that time, China was blind to even fleeing because of the poor information in all aspects, and there was also Japan's invasion of China, which was burning and looting everywhere.
3. Consequences of breaking the embankment
After the Yellow River broke its banks, many newspapers and periodicals, from the "Declaration" to the "Ta Kung Pao", reported on the suffering of the broad masses of the people, and the flood was followed by a plague, because no one carried out disinfection and disaster relief measures, dead bodies rotted in sewage, and various infectious diseases such as typhoid fever, malaria, disaster, and dysentery were rampant.
According to incomplete statistics, after Chiang Kai-shek blew up the Yellow River embankment, more than 40 counties and cities in Henan, Jiangsu and Anhui provinces were all flooded, and the number of people affected by the disaster exceeded 40 million, accounting for more than one-tenth of the total population of the country at that time, and the number of people who died of floods, plagues and hunger caused by this eventually exceeded 890,000. As mentioned in the history books, the tragic situation of "the old and the weak turned to the dead ditch, and the young and strong left their hometowns" reappeared again.
So how much loss did the people of the mainland pay such a big price to the Japanese army?
According to modern Japan's own history books, the number of Japanese casualties after the Yellow River burst was between 5,000 and 20,000. The reason why this figure has such a high elasticity is that on the one hand, it is due to the difference in statistical caliber, which is divided into floods and secondary disasters; on the other hand, the Japanese army also counts the number of people who have lost combat effectiveness in the statistics into the war losses, but it is certain that Chiang Kai-shek's move is absolutely "wounding a thousand enemies and losing millions of self-inflicted wounds." ”
However, it is certain that the impact of the Yellow River's breach of the embankment on the Japanese army is also deserved, because the large area of yellow pan-area caused by the Yellow River has completely dragged down the roads, transportation, economy, and communications of the vast Central Plains, leaving the Japanese with a completely broken inland.
On the one hand, the mechanized troops of the Japanese army could not continue the previous rapid advance mode; on the other hand, the Yellow River broke the embankment completely destroyed the economic materials and homes of the vast number of people, resulting in the Japanese army being unable to obtain supplies in the local area, and the strategy of feeding the war in war could not be implemented.
After the Yellow River broke the embankment, Chiang Kai-shek did not dare to admit that he had ordered the embankment to be blown up, pushing the responsibility on the Japanese. When he gave the order, even his own cronies repeatedly advised him to do his own thing. When the ruler is more ferocious than the invaders, he is not far from extinction.
There is no doubt that Chiang Kai-shek's substitution of water for soldiers must have been foolish, no less than drinking and quenching thirst, making his rule completely corrupt and unpopular in the minds of the broad masses of the people. After the Liberation War, the People's Liberation Army was able to quickly turn the tables and seize the world, and there was no lack of assists from this factor.