Mencius Youyun: "The people are important, the society is secondary, and the king is light." "Since ancient times, no ruler who can accomplish great things can be separated from the support of the people at the bottom. In 1945, the Chongqing negotiations failed, and the Kuomintang and the Communist Party entered a situation of civil war. At that time, the old Chiang Kai-shek relied on the support of the Americans behind him and the confidence of the American-style equipment of the Nationalist army, and was determined to achieve reunification of the whole country.
As a result, the nationalist army was defeated in three years. This left Chiang Kai-shek unable to figure out how he lost to the CCP for many years. In fact, the reason is very simple, leaving aside the strategic and tactical factors, the most important reason for Chiang Kai-shek's failure was that the Kuomintang's policy was unpopular. All this can be seen as early as the early days of the War of Resistance.
At the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Kuomintang encountered an unfavorable situation
In the early days of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the mainland was initially in a strategic defensive stage due to the reason that it was backward in terms of equipment and weapons. After the 918 Incident and the 77 Incident, the Japanese army continued to encroach on the mainland territory, and the northeast and north China fell one after another. After that, the Japanese army forcibly landed in Shanghai, in a vain attempt to attack our army from the north and the south.
After the two battles of Songhu and Xuzhou, although our army made heavy sacrifices and made the enemy pay a heavy price, in the end it failed to stop the enemy's continued aggression, and Shanghai, Nanjing and other major cities fell into the hands of the enemy one after another. In order to preserve the remaining living forces, Chiang Kai-shek had to abandon the millions of ordinary people in Nanjing, where the Nationalist government was located at that time, and moved the capital to Chongqing in a hurry, and the main force of the army was forced to retreat westward.
In order to occupy all of China as soon as possible, the victorious Japanese army continued to transport troops and logistics from the mainland. Successive routs made Chiang Kai-shek panic for the rest of his life, and as he watched the Japanese army continue to march westward, the Kuomintang army had no way to retreat and no way to defend. So in June 1938, Chiang Kai-shek held an emergency military conference in Wuhan to discuss countermeasures.
After the analysis of the participants, the next goal of the Japanese army is Zhengzhou, Henan, if Zhengzhou is occupied by the Japanese army, then the Japanese will use their advantages to drive straight into Wuhan on the endless East Henan Plain, and then in the face of the heavy mechanized troops of the Japanese army, the Kuomintang army will have no way.
The strategic position of Wuhan is no less than that of Chongqing, and if Wuhan falls into the hands of the Japanese again, it will be a disaster for the Kuomintang army. The Defenders must first protect Wuhan, and the First To protect Wuhan must defend Zhengzhou, which is the agreement reached by everyone at the venue.
Prevent the Japanese Nationalist government from implementing the dike-breaking strategy
However, on how to hold Zhengzhou, everyone was in trouble. In the early days of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, under the condition that its equipment was weaker than that of the Japanese army, we had to use our numerical superiority to eliminate the enemy, which led to the fact that our army's battle loss ratio was far greater than that of the Japanese army, and even victory could only be said to be a tragic victory.
However, at this time, after a steady stream of reinforcements from the mainland, the Japanese army not only had an advantage in weapons and equipment, but also surpassed the Kuomintang army in numbers, and if it continued to use the tactics of the sea of people, it would be tantamount to self-destruction. At this time, Yan Xunfu, chief of staff of the First Theater Command, proposed to blow up the yellow river embankment and let the rushing Yellow River water block the pace of the Japanese army, which could effectively resolve the dilemma currently facing the Kuomintang.
Chiang Kai-shek did not say a word about this proposal. In fact, as early as three years ago, Chiang Kai-shek's German military advisers, chen Guofu, Bai Chongxi, and others had similar proposals. However, this matter is very important, the water of the Yellow River does not have long eyes, and once it spreads, it will not only affect the fierce and vicious enemies, but also millions of innocent people living in the plains! It is not a last resort. Now that the Kuomintang was in a critical juncture of life and death, Chiang Kai-shek had to re-examine this plan.
After a long time, Chiang Kai-shek finally made up his mind to carry out the plan, and the task was carried out by Cheng Qian, commander of the First Theater. At the beginning, the location of the embankment was set up in Zhaokou in Zhongmu County, and when it was executed, it was found that there was too much quicksand here to break the embankment. Chiang Kai-shek immediately decided to break the embankment again at the Garden Pass, a ferry on the south bank of the Yellow River north of Zhengzhou. After two days and nights of continuous excavation by thousands of soldiers, the embankment at the mouth of the garden finally failed to block the surging waves.
The pros and cons of breaking the embankment at the mouth of the garden
Regarding the evaluation of the Garden Mouth breach, there is a lot of controversy in later generations. First of all, it did achieve its strategic goals to a certain extent, according to the later confessions of the Japanese side, the flooding of the Japanese army not only caused more than 7200 casualties, but also countless tanks and armored vehicles fell into the mud and swamp formed after the breach of the embankment, making these huge guys into scrap iron.
Thus temporarily delaying the advance of the Japanese army on the iron horse, creating conditions for the remnants of the Kuomintang army to retreat westward, and preserving the few remaining lifelines of the Nationalist government.
Yet more voices are critical of the plan. The reason why Old Jiang did not dare to carry out the plan to break the embankment at the mouth of the Garden was because he was worried about the impact of the spread of the Yellow River on the people along the way. And after the Yellow River burst its banks, it was found that the impact was much more serious than expected! After the Huayuankou embankment broke, it caught up with the rain in the sky, the water level soared, the mouth of the embankment was washed away, and the river ran wildly on the Eastern Henan Plain without control, flooding all the way from Henan and Anhui to Jiangsu.
Along the way, the scene of purgatory on earth directly took away 890,000 ordinary people who were still in the dark, more than three million residents were displaced, and tens of millions of people bore the loss of the Yellow River out of control.
The matter is far from over here, the flooded river is diverted and there is no guidance of the river, forming a wide muddy swamp along the way, these places called the Yellow Pan Area, even if they block the heavy mechanical troops of the Japanese army, the local people are more affected.
The tens of thousands of acres of fertile land that have been submerged in this man-made disaster have forced the lucky people to face the situation of no harvest. And this effect was continuous, and the 1938 Garden Mouth breach was like opening Pandora's box, and the butterfly effect continued until the great famine that starved to death more than three million people in Henan in 1942.
epilogue
At such a painful price, the result in exchange was only to eliminate less than 10,000 enemies, temporarily delaying the Japanese army, which can be called "wounding a hundred enemies and losing 100,000 self-inflicted." It is not known whether Chiang Kai-shek later repented of this. It is true that war is cruel, and some sacrifices have sometimes to be made in order to win. But we must not forget the original intention of this war, the essence of the War of Resistance Against Japan, precisely so that our compatriots can live a better life without being bullied and oppressed by foreign nations.
Once this original intention was violated, thousands of ordinary people became chips to sacrifice for the war, just in exchange for a small victory. The Nationalist government that implemented this tactical decision eventually lost the hearts and minds of the people, and it was inevitable that the Chiang dynasty would inevitably lead to the end of its demise.
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