On July 4, 1950, an old woman named Zhao Hongwenguo was shot in Shifang, Sichuan Province, at the age of 71, and the people cheered after the local inquiry.
Although Zhao Hongwenguo became a ghost under the gun, in fact, she herself was a legendary woman, who was once a popular figure in the north and south of the Great River during the War of Resistance.
Zhao Hongwenguo, formerly known as Hong Wenguo, was born in 1881 in a poor peasant family in Xiuyan, Liaoning Province, and when she was a teenager, she obeyed her parents' orders and married into the Zhao family, and according to local traditions, she was named Zhao Hongwenguo.
Although Zhao Hongwenguo is an old social woman, she is shrewd and capable, and with the joint efforts of her and her husband, the Zhao family soon became a large family on the rich side of the local family, and she also gave birth to several children for her husband's family, realizing the promise of "rejuvenation" for her husband's family.
Moreover, Zhao Hongwenguo was charitable and often gave relief to the local poor people, so she had a good mass foundation and laid the foundation for her to embark on the anti-Japanese road in the future.
In addition, although Zhao Hongwenguo herself was born into poverty and did not receive a new-style education, she was very avant-garde in her thinking, not only supporting her children to go to school and study, but also never doing bad things in front of the great righteousness of the family and the country.
In the course of Zhao Hongwenguo's growth, she experienced the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, and she was well aware of the cruelty of the invaders, so she had long planted the seeds of hatred for the invaders in her heart.
Until the outbreak of the "918" incident, Zhao Hongwenguo's seed of hatred finally took root, and she also opened the second half of her extraordinary life.
The reason why Zhao Hongwenguo embarked on the road of resistance to Japan was because her third son, Zhao Tong, was influenced by his mother's education since childhood, and received new ideological education, in the face of the Japanese invasion, Zhao Dong vowed to fight the invaders to the end.
Zhao Hongwenguo was very supportive of her son's anti-Japanese resistance, and she sold her property to raise military salaries for the anti-Japanese team, and turned her home into a transportation liaison station to serve the anti-Japanese volunteer army.
Zhao Hongwenguo also restored the Zhao Jiabao Primary School, which was forced to be disbanded due to the war, at his own expense, and the entire primary school followed the Chinese teaching model to resist and smash the invasion of Japanese culture.
Zhao Hongwenguo's family's anti-Japanese actions also deeply affected the local people, and the masses who did not want to be slaves to the country joined Zhao Hongwenguo's ranks one after another, and everyone fought with the same enemy and unanimously resisted Japan.
In order to cooperate with the predatory army, Zhao Hongwenguo led the villagers to sneak attack the japanese strongholds, intercept the Japanese transport vehicles, etc., because of the long-term front-line combat, Zhao Hongwenguo, who was more than half a hundred years old, also practiced a good marksmanship.
As the team grew and the destructive power of the Japanese Kou increased, the Zhao family attracted the attention of the Japanese Kou. In February 1934, the Japanese Kou burned down 16 houses of the Zhao family and threatened her personally.
But Zhao Hongwenguo was not frightened, on the contrary, her hatred for the Japanese Kou grew deeper and deeper, and she vowed to fight the Japanese Kou to the end. In order to publicize the anti-Japanese war, Zhao Hongwenguo once again generously donated money, bought a printing press at his own expense, and printed anti-Japanese propaganda materials all night long.
In June 1934, the Japanese Kou, who hated Zhao Hongwenguo to the bone, raided Zhao Jiabao, and this time they directly captured Zhao Hongwenguo and his family, as well as more than 300 villagers.
In the face of the Japanese Kou's coercion and inducement, Zhao Hongwenguo was not humble and denounceed the criminal acts of the Japanese invasion of China, and originally the Japanese Kou planned to execute Zhao Hongwenguo, but later under the rescue of the third son Zhao Dong, Zhao Hongwenguo was released from prison on parole.
After his release from prison, Zhao Hongwenguo came to Beiping with his family and continued to engage in anti-Japanese activities in the Northeast People's Anti-Japanese Salvation Congress, personally leading the members of the Northeast Anti-Japanese Salvation Congress to collect arms for the anti-Japanese contingent.
After the fall of Peiping, Zhao Hongwenguo moved to Wuhan with his family and actively participated in the local anti-Japanese team. At that time, Zhao Hongwenguo appeared to propagate the anti-Japanese ideology and mobilized more than 200 people to go north to join Zhao Dong's North China National Anti-Japanese Army.
Since then, Zhao Hongwenguo has become famous, and many newspapers and periodicals in Hong Kong, Chongqing and other newspapers and periodicals have published her heroic anti-Japanese deeds, if Zhao Hongwenguo can adhere to her original intention as always, she will definitely leave a wonderful mark in history.
Unfortunately, because of a wrong decision, she embarked on the wrong path and buried her life, and this decision was to defect to Chiang Kai-shek.
In 1939, Zhao Hongwenguo came to Chongqing, during which he was received by Chiang Kai-shek, who not only greeted her warmly, but also praised her as a "heroine of the towel", "the mother of guerrillas" and so on.
Chiang Kai-shek also took a group photo with her, the photo of Zhao Hongwenguo with two guns in his waist, although full of white hair but heroic and cool, after the photo was published, Zhao Hongwenguo's name quickly spread throughout the north and south of the great river, coupled with the sacrifice of her eldest son in the War of Resistance, she became a praised woman in the whole country.
For Chiang Kai-shek's reception, Zhao Hongwenguo was grateful to Dai De and was willing to serve Chiang Kai-shek since then, in fact, when Zhao Hongwenguo came to Chongqing, her most proud third son, Zhao Tong, joined the Eighth Route Army.
Although Zhao Dong had meritorious contributions to the Anti-Japanese Resistance, this man was proud of his merits and did not agree with the ideas of the Eighth Route Army, and finally under the persuasion of his mother, Zhao Dong broke away from the Eighth Route Army and came to Chongqing to defect to Chiang Kai-shek.
At this time, the mother and son of the Zhao family were completely confused by Chiang Kai-shek's "sugar-coated shells", especially Zhao Tong, who was in a hurry to ask Chiang Kai-shek for credit, actually fought with the team led by He Long in Shijiazhuang, and finally he himself and his subordinates were completely eliminated by He Long's team.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Chiang Kai-shek launched a civil war, and in order to win over Zhao Hongwenguo, he granted her a high-ranking official, Houlu, and appointed her as "Commander of the Second Road Appeasement of the Anti-Communist Guerrilla Force in the Jireliao Border Region."
This position seems to be loud, but in fact, it is a light rod commander, Chiang Kai-shek only gave her radio, weapons, and the recruitment of troops and horses still needs Zhao Hongwenguo himself.
But Zhao Hongwenguo, who had been completely lost, did not see through Chiang Kai-shek's plot at all, and with guns and ammunition, radio and anti-communist propaganda materials, she began to gather the rebels of the Kuomintang and insurgents, and formed three regiments in Shanxi.
Although Zhao Hongwenguo had good skills, she could not stop the torrent of history, and soon she was defeated in north China.
Therefore, after the liberation of Shanxi, she followed Yan Xishan to flee in a hurry, in fact, until this time the Communist Party did not abandon her, hoping that she would not continue to be obsessed, but Zhao Hongwenguo, who was loyal to Chiang Kai-shek, could not listen to the persuasion at all.
Before Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan, he received Zhao Hongwenguo again and encouraged her to stay on the mainland to organize "anti-communist" activities.
Since then, Zhao Hongwenguo has gone farther and farther down the wrong road and has stubbornly "sold his life" for Chiang Kai-shek, after which Zhao Hongwenguo was stationed in the Shifang and Mianzhu areas, during which she published the "Letter of Old Lady Zhao to The Fathers and Elderly Compatriots in Sichuan", walked rumors, insulted Communist Party members, and so on.
In order to impress her, the organization specially sent representatives to negotiate with her, hoping that she would abandon the dark and turn to the light, but in order to show his loyalty to Chiang Kai-shek, Zhao Hongwenguo not only slaughtered more than 200 progressive people, but also killed more than 10 negotiators.
She also threatened: "The parents of those who gave birth to me, chairman Jiang, who knows me," and slandered the PLA for stirring up dissension, slaughtering the local people, and so on.
In early 1950, with the sound of a gunshot from the Longtan Temple riot in the northeast of Chengdu, a large-scale bandit plague also broke out in the western Sichuan region, and Zhao Hongwenguo thought that his opportunity had come.
Subsequently, using various gimmicks as bait, she gathered more than 4,000 rabble-rousers to continue to resist and planned a large-scale riot.
On the evening of the 11th day of the first month, Zhao Hongwenguo summoned various bandits to plan riot-related matters, but the whereabouts of her and her accomplices were already known to the People's Liberation Army, and what awaited her was not rioting but arrest.
That night, with the sound of a gunshot, our army surrounded the bandits led by "Zhao Hongwenguo", and the bandits, including Zhao Hongwenguo, were finally captured alive by our army, avoiding greater losses.
In fact, even though our army arrested Zhao Hongwenguo, remembering her merits in resisting Japan, he still gave her preferential treatment, not only took care of her in life, but also sent several female fighters to eat and live with her, and her food was still the standard for regiment-level cadres.
But Zhao Hongwen was not grateful to her, and for the newspapers and Chairman Mao's writings sent to her, she directly said: "Take it, I don't read these!" ”
The female fighters tried to give her an ideological education lesson and tell her that the Communist Party was the real one who served the country and the people, but Zhao Hongwenguo could not listen to a word, and it was really resentful that he was stubborn to such an extent.
Since Zhao Hongwenguo was arrested, ordinary people have petitioned to kill her, mainly because throughout the rebellion, Zhao Hongwenguo killed more than 300 members of the People's Liberation Army squad, cadres who went to the countryside to collect grain, and those who did not want to support her.
At the same time, she also burned down more than 200 houses, snatched countless chickens, ducks, geese, etc., and robbed nearly 400 stones of grain, bringing huge losses and injuries to the people.
The people hated Zhao Hongwenguo to the bone, but she made many meritorious contributions during the War of Resistance Against Japan, and the local government was also very embarrassed to face such a complex figure.
As a result, the local government could only report zhao Hongwenguo's situation to Premier Zhou. Premier Zhou thought about the report for a long time and finally decided to ask Chairman Mao.
Premier Zhou's opinion was that Zhao Hongwenguo had made meritorious contributions to resisting Japan and sought leniency, but Chairman Mao said: "We must be executed, but we must treat his family members kindly, and all those who have been arrested will be released as long as they have not made major mistakes!" ”
On July 4, 1950, Zhao Hongwenguo was shot at the age of 71 in Shifang, Sichuan.
Looking back at Zhao Hongwenguo's life, she once stood with the people and did not hesitate to scatter her family wealth to expel the Japanese, but in the end she betrayed the people, stood on the side of opposing the people, and was punished by history.
The reason why Chairman Mao agreed to sentence Zhao Hongwenguo to death was to focus on the overall situation, which could not only make the people indignant, but also clear the way for the work of suppressing bandits in the later stage.
However, Chairman Mao adopted a policy of leniency toward Zhao Hongwenguo's family, which not only affirmed the merits of the Zhao family in resisting Japan, but also reflected the magnanimous side of the Communists, which showed Chairman Mao's wisdom and greatness.
In the torrent of history, Zhao Hongwenguo is a controversial figure, she has a patriotic heart, sacrificed more than 30 people for the anti-Japanese family, she should have been praised.
However, because of the limitations of his thinking and did not resist the temptation of Chiang Kai-shek, he finally embarked on a road of no return and became a female bandit leader hated by the people.....
——The end of this article, thank you for reading——