In 1936, when Japanese imperialism stepped up its aggression against China and the Chinese nation was at a critical juncture of life and death, the Anti-Japanese Vanguard Army of the Chinese People's Red Army, under the leadership of Chairman Mao, the general political commissar, and Peng Dehuai, the commander-in-chief, set out from northern Shaanxi to break through the natural dangers of the Yellow River and advance into Shanxi.
The time span of the Red Army's crusade was from February 20 to May 5, 1936, and it moved to more than 50 counties in Shanxi, defeated the encirclement and interception of more than 30 regiments of the Jin Army, annihilated more than 13,000 enemy troops, and captured more than 4,000 enemy.
In 1936, Liu Yunbiao, commander of the cavalry regiment of the First Red Army (front row one), led the Red Army cavalry unit to participate in the Eastern Crusade
At the same time, the Crusade expanded the Red Army by more than 8,000 people, raised 500,000 yuan, organized more than 30 local guerrilla units, established county, township, and village Soviet power, and developed local party organizations.
The Crusade sowed the revolutionary seeds of anti-Japanese resistance in Shanxi, laying a historic foundation for the CPC Central Committee and the Central Military Commission to regard Shanxi as a strategic fulcrum for persisting in the War of Resistance Behind Enemy Lines in the early stage of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
Some people may ask why the commander-in-chief of the Red Army in the Eastern Crusades was Peng Dehuai and not Zhu De.
Because Zhu De and Liu Bocheng were still in Zhang Guotao's Red 4 Front, they had not yet reached northern Shaanxi at this time.
The Red Army of the Eastern Crusade sent troops to Shanxi in 3 ways.
On February 20, 1936, the Red 1st Army (also known as the "Middle Road General Headquarters") boarded a ship from the mouth of the suide county ditch in Yulin, northern Shaanxi Province, made a surprise crossing, and crossed the Yellow River at pingshang ferry port in Sanjiao Town, Liulin County, and landed first.
This road was the main force of the Red Army of the Eastern Crusade, and the commanders were Peng Dehuai, Ye Jianying, Lin Biao, Nie Rongzhen, etc., and the headquarters of the Red Army of the Eastern Crusade also moved along with this road.
At the same time as the Red 1st Army, they also crossed the river to the east, including the Red 15th Army (also the "South Road General Headquarters"), who boarded a boat from the Wangjia River in Qingjian County, Yulin, northern Shaanxi, and landed at Hejiawa in Shilou County.
This road was led by Chairman Mao and Xu Haidong, commander of the Red 15th Army.
On April 1, 1936, the Red 28th Army (also known as the "North Road General Headquarters"), under the leadership of Liu Zhidan, commander of the army and political commissar of Song Renqian (later the founding general), rushed across the Yellow River from Shaya Village in Shenmu County, Shaanxi Province, and landed at Luoyukou in Xingxian County.
On April 2, 1936, Liu Zhidan's troops left Luoyukou and went north to attack Heiyukou, defeating them along the way and winning consecutive victories.
When entering the town of Baiwen in Xingxian County, Shanxi, Liu Zhidan received an urgent telegram from the Central Military Commission: "In order to cooperate with the Red Army's advance into Fenyang, threaten Taiyuan, and open up the front's contact with northern Shaanxi, and ensure that the Red Army has its back to the Laosu area, the 28th Army is ordered to attack the area south of the Yellow River south of Lishi." And can also capture the town of Sanjiao in Zhongyang, and contain and mobilize the enemy.
Sanjiao Town (三交镇; present-day Liulin County, Lüliang City, Shanxi Province) was an ancient town along the Yellow River.
Previously, the Red 1st Army (also known as the "Middle Road General Headquarters") occupied the town of Sanjiao, and Zhou Enlai, Mao Zemin and others began their work here to establish the Soviet Revolutionary Committee of Zhongyang County, the first county-level red government in Shanxi Province (before 1971, Sanjiao Town belonged to Zhongyang County, now Liulin County).
After fierce fighting, Liu Zhidan led his troops to reach the vicinity of Sanjiao Town on time.
On April 13, 1936, the Central Military Commission issued an order to eliminate the enemy in Sanjiao Town.
At that time, the town of Sanjiao was garrisoned by a small unit of the 208th Brigade of Yan Xishan's department. The brigade commander of the 208th Brigade was Chen Changjie.
Chen Changjie was later the first officer under Fu Zuoyi in the Battle of Pingjin, serving as commander-in-chief of the Tianjin Garrison Headquarters and commander of the Tianjin City Defense Command, and was captured in the Tianjin Campaign.
When Liu Zhidan's Red 28th Army attacked the town of Sanjiao, Chen Changjie's 208th Brigade resisted very stubbornly.
The 412th Regiment of the 206th Brigade of Yan Xishan Was ordered to follow, and the commander of the 412th Regiment was Zhang Zhengyu, with 3 battalions under its jurisdiction, the 1st Battalion Commander was Xu Sanming, the 2nd Battalion Commander was Shi Zebo, and the 3rd Battalion Commander was Wu Shiquan.
The 412th Regiment of the 206th Brigade was well equipped with machine gun companies and mortar companies.
The Red 28th Army was caught in a pinch.
On April 14, 1936, commander Liu Zhidan braved a rain of bullets and bullets to directly command less than 300 meters away from the enemy position, but unfortunately was hit by enemy bullets and died heroically, at the age of 33.
Yang Yaofang, former commander of the 71st Division of the Jin Army and commander of the Western Jin Garrison, Chen Changjie, former commander of the 208th Brigade of the Jin Army, and Pan Zhenying, who had personally experienced the war, later recalled that Liu Zhidan, commander of the Red 28th Army, was killed by a stray machine gun from the 412th Regiment of the 206th Brigade of Yan Xishan's department.
Commander Liu Zhidan was the highest general of the Red Army who died in the Eastern Crusade.
Liu Zhidan was born on October 4, 1903, in Bao'an County, Shaanxi (present-day Zhidan County, Yan'an City, Shaanxi Province).
He graduated from the 4th phase of the Whampoa Military Academy, and his classmates included Lin Biao, Zeng Zhongsheng and Duan Dechang, who had made great achievements in battle. They all joined the ranks of 36 military experts announced by the Central Military Commission in 1989 and 1994.
Looking back on that era, it is very emotional.
Liu Zhidan's revolutionary course was very bumpy, and he was demoted many times, but he repeatedly rose up, became more and more frustrated, and through all kinds of difficulties and dangers, he always maintained his unswerving devotion to the cause of the party and the people, and was the founder of the revolutionary base area in the northwest and the Red Army in the northwest.
At that time, there were two Red Army forces in the northwest, one was the Shaanxi-Gansu Red Army led by Liu Zhidan, which was later reorganized into the Red 26th Army; the other was the Northern Shaanxi Red Army led by Xie Zichang and Yan Hongyan, which was later reorganized into the Red 27th Army.
The Shaanxi-Gansu Red Army and the Northern Shaanxi Red Army are easily confused by many people when reading this information.
The superior leadership of these two Red Army forces is not the same.
The Shaanxi-Gansu Red Army is under the leadership of the Shaanxi-Gansu Border Special Committee, while the Shaanxi-Gansu-Gansu Border Special Committee is under the leadership of the Shaanxi Provincial Party Committee, which is directly under the leadership of the Party Central Committee.
The Red Army in northern Shaanxi was under the leadership of the Special Committee for Northern Shaanxi, which was under the leadership of the Northern Bureau of the CPC, which in turn was under the direct leadership of the representative of the CPC Central Committee in the north.
Due to the different systems to which they belonged, for a long time, the Red Army in northern Shaanxi and the Red Army in Shaanxi and Gansu were very difficult to deal with, and there was a sharp struggle, and Xie Zichang's men also surrendered the weapons of Liu Zhidan's subordinates.
Shortly before his death, Xie Zichang realized that Liu Zhidan was right, and the relationship between the two became better.
On February 5, 1935, the Shaanxi-Gansu Border Special Committee and the Northern Shaanxi Special Committee held a joint meeting in Zhoujiajie, Chiyuan County, which is known in history as the "Zhoujiajie Conference".
The meeting decided to set up the Northwest Revolutionary Military Committee of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army to unify the leadership of the Red 26th and 27th Armed Forces and other armed forces in the base areas of Shaanxi, Gansu, and Northern Shaanxi.
At this meeting, with regard to the question of the selection of the chairman of the Military Commission, Liu Zhidan did his best to nominate Xie Zichang to be appointed.
However, Xie Zichang insisted on not accepting his resignation, and in the end, as the military commissioner of the northern representative in the northwest, he decided that Liu Zhidan would be the chairman of the Central Military Commission and he himself would serve as the vice chairman.
The important outcome of the Zhou Jiajie meeting was the unification of the leading bodies and military command of the two base areas in Shaanxi,Gansu,Gansu, and northern Shaanxi, marking the formal formation of the Northern Shaanxi Soviet Region.
Half a month later, on February 21, 1935, Xie Zichang died at the age of 38 due to the worsening of his injuries.
After Xie Zichang's death, Gao Gang took over as vice chairman of the Northwest Revolutionary Military Committee, becoming the no. 2 person in the Northwest Revolutionary Base Area after Liu Zhidan.
In order to unify military command, the General Headquarters of the Former Enemy of the Northwest Revolutionary Military Committee of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army was also established, with Liu Zhidan as the commander-in-chief and Gao Gang as the political commissar, with full authority to direct all the combat operations of the Red Army and guerrillas in the northwest region.
After that, under the unified command of Liu Zhidan, the Red 26th Army and the Red 27th Army fought successive battles and won successive victories, lasting nearly 8 months of bloody battles, successively annihilating more than 5,000 enemy regular troops, more than 3,000 militia landlords, and capturing more than 5,000 guns.
It conquered 6 county towns of Yanchang, Yanchuan, Anding, Ansai, Bao'an, and Jingbian, opened up guerrilla areas such as Ganquan, Fuxian, Yijun, Dingbian, and Huanxian, and connected the two base areas of northern Shaanxi and Shaanxi-Gansu-Gansu, with jurisdictions reaching 23 counties and a population of about 1 million.
At the same time, the main force of the Red Army grew to more than 5,000 people, the guerrilla army grew to more than 4,000 people, and the military strength was unprecedentedly strong.
At this point, the revolutionary base areas in the northwest entered their heyday.
Who knows, Liu Zhidan and others did not have time to enjoy the joy of victory, they encountered a rebellion and almost lost their lives.
At this time, Kong Yuan, the representative of the CPC Central Committee in the north, sent Zhu Lizhi, deputy secretary of the Hebei Provincial CPC Committee and director of the organization department, to the Northern Shaanxi Soviet Region, and at the same time, the Shanghai Provisional Central Bureau also sent Nie Hongjun.
Guo Hongtao, then director of the Organization Department of the Northwest Working Committee, always believed that Liu Zhidan and others had problems such as "right-leaning abolitionism" and "right-leaning opportunism", and repeatedly reflected them to his superiors.
As a result, Zhu Lizhi and Nie Hongjun got involved with Guo Hongtao. On the one hand, they sent people to Shaanxi and Gansu to oppose "right-leaning abolitionism," and on the other hand, they had the idea of suppressing the rebellion.
The repression needs to be guaranteed by strength, and they dare not guarantee that the Red 26 Army brought out by Liu Zhidan will support them.
At this moment, a sudden event completely changed the situation: the Red 25th Army, which had set out from the Eyu-Anhui Soviet Region, came to northern Shaanxi.
When the leaders of the Red 25th Army first arrived, they did not know much about the situation in northern Shaanxi, so they listened to the one-sided words of Zhu Lizhi, Nie Hongjun, and Guo Hongtao, and expressed their support for the rebellion.
Dai Jiying, director of the Political Department of the Red 25 Army, was even more enthusiastic about it.
With the support of the strong Red 25th Army, the purge in northern Shaanxi began, and a large number of major leading cadres of the party, government, and army, including Liu Zhidan, Gao Gang, Zhang Xiushan, Liu Jingfan, Ma Wenrui, and Hui Zijun, were arrested in the front and rear organs.
At the same time, all cadres above the Red 26 military camp and at or above the county level in Shaanxi-Gansu-Bian were detained.
Some of these people later recalled: "Chairman Mao arrived 4 days late, there was no Liu Zhidan and us, and they had dug a live burial pit for Liu Zhidan and us." ”
The Party Central Committee and the Central Red Army arrived in northern Shaanxi in October 1935, and Chairman Mao decisively ordered the rescue of Liu Zhidan and others.
On November 30, 1935, Zhang Wentian, the general head of the Party Central Committee, presided over a meeting of Party activists in Wayaobao and made the Decision of the Northwest Central Bureau on Reviewing the Work of Suppressing Rebellion.
On the same day, the Northwest Central Bureau of the CPC made a decision on punishment against Dai Jiying and Nie Hongjun, the leaders of the main organizations in the anti-rebellion work.
At that time, the central government did not hold Zhu Lizhi and other leaders too responsible.
In fact, because of Zhu Lizhi's one-sided report, Zhang Wentian and others also gave a positive evaluation of Zhu Lizhi's leadership in the northern Shaanxi Soviet region, holding that there were indeed rightists in the Soviet area who were sabotaging.
It is precisely under this subjective understanding that the rehabilitation of the victims of the purge is incomplete, and Liu Zhidan and other leading cadres still wear the hat of "right-leaning mistakes" on their heads.
According to this, there were also deviations in the redistribution of cadres from Shaanxi-Gansu-Gansu-Bian and the Red 26th Army, and most of them were demoted and used.
For example, Liu Zhidan was appointed commander of the Guard at Wayaobao fort and commander of the newly established Red 28th Army; Gao Gang was sent to Inner Mongolia to command the Northern Shaanxi Cavalry Regiment, which had only more than 10 people; Zhang Xiushan became a political instructor at the Red Army School and director of the Organization Department of the Shenfu Special Committee; Yang Qi, former commander of the 84th Division of the Red 27th Army, was demoted to the commander of the Trilateral Independent Battalion.
In February 1936, the Red Army's Crusade began, and Liu Zhidan led the Red 28th Army to join the expedition.
Liu Zhidan was also the commander-in-chief of the "North Road General Headquarters" of the Eastern ExpeditionAry Red Army, and his road was the latest to depart from the Three-Way Eastern Expedition Red Army, and he only crossed the river on April 1 to fight.
While passing through the Su district of Shenfu (Shenmu and Fugu), Liu Zhidan met Zhang Xiushan, an old comrade-in-arms who was then the director of the Organization Department of the Shenfu Special Committee, and they had a long conversation that night.
Zhang Xiushan later recalled: "That night, Zhidan and I slept on a kang and talked late at night. When it comes to the erroneous repression in northern Shaanxi, we are still very indignant. Because until this time, Liu Zhidan and those of us still bear the charges of 'rightist' and 'right-leaning opportunism'. ”
Zhi Dan said: Whether we are right-wing counter-revolutionaries (some people who made mistakes in the purge in northern Shaanxi at that time are still spreading such remarks) let them see on the battlefield. Chairman Mao of the Party Central Committee will one day make these things clear. ”
More than 10 days later, Liu Zhidan was sacrificed on the battlefield of the Eastern Crusade.
Zhou Enlai later said with great regret: "Comrade Zhidan was originally a senior commander, there was no need to charge into the front, he was just to wash himself and prove that he was not a secret agent, he would rather charge and sacrifice himself, so he inexplicably rushed up and sacrificed." Without this 'purge' movement, Comrade Liu Zhidan would not have sacrificed. ”
In order to wash himself, he sacrificed his heart and died, not Liu Zhidan alone. This was the case with Jiang Xianyun, a famous general in the early days of our Party, and it was also true of General Zhang Zizhong of the Kuomintang army.