Zhao Hongwenguo, an old woman with two guns, had destroyed her family and tried her best to resist Japan, but on the eve of the founding of the People's Republic of China, she was arrested by the People's Liberation Army, and a few months later she was sentenced to be shot, and when the death sentence was sent to Beijing, Premier Zhou personally interceded with Chairman Mao, hoping to save him from death.
After a long pause, the Chairman rejected the Prime Minister's proposal.
Why did the Chair do that? Why is Zhao Hongwenguo worthy of the prime minister's intercession?
In 1881, Zhao Hongwenguo was born in an unknown rural area in the northeast, and when she was more than half a hundred years old, she had already experienced the Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, the September 18 Incident and other wars that caused China to be bullied.
Especially after the September 18 Incident, Zhao Hongwenguo saw that more than 100,000 Northeast Troops withdrew without firing a single shot or a bullet in the face of 20,000 Japanese troops, which completely angered her elderly.
At that time, Zhao Hongwenguo was already the "wife of the landlord's family", but she still adhered to the principle of conscience as a person, and took out the family's money and even rice grain to help the poor, thus winning a good reputation in the surrounding villages.
After she decided to start an anti-Japanese uprising, her son Zhao Tong, who was a police officer at the Mudanjiang Police Branch, and surrounding villagers supported her decision.
In the spring of 1932, Zhao Hongwenguo sold his property as anti-Japanese funds, and together with the surrounding villagers, announced the establishment of the Anti-Japanese Volunteer Army at home. The purpose of the Volunteer Army is: "Unite the common people and resist Japan to the end!" ”
In order to ensure the safety of the anti-Japanese resistance, Zhao Hongwenguo donated his own yard as a transportation station and contact point for the volunteer army. At first, the scale of this volunteer army was very small, consisting only of dozens of surrounding villagers, but their anti-Japanese passion did not diminish, and they constantly played guerrilla warfare around to harass the Japanese army and puppet troops.
But at this time, neither the Japanese nor the Traitors paid attention to this weak unit, and they even thought that this unit was a guerrilla force of the Communist Party.
By 1933, the anti-Japanese Volunteer Army had grown and developed, and talents from all over the world had come to vote, and the Volunteer Army was changed to a "Young Iron-Blooded Army". At this time, in addition to the villagers where Zhao Hongwenguo was located, there were more students in this unit who also joined.
Their knowledge and culture are gradually improving the quality and combat effectiveness of the troops. By 1934, the Young Predators were ready to threaten the small units of the Japanese army, and it was only then that the Japanese began to really pay attention to this team.
In June 1934, after investigation, the Japanese army discovered that Zhao Hongwen was suspected of organizing anti-Japanese armed forces, so they sent someone to arrest everyone in the Zhao family and imprison them.
For Zhao Hongwenguo, he was tortured even more, trying to learn from her the stronghold and activity law of the Young Predator Army. However, Zhao Hongwen Guoguo was unyielding in death, and no matter how the Japanese army threatened, he never let up.
She knew that if she confessed, the whole village would suffer, because the members of the Young Predator Army were ordinary people.
Since Zhao Hongwenguo has decided to resist Japan, he must persist to the end.
Finally, in September 1934, Zhao Hongwenguo contacted the members of the Predator Army outside, and under the combination of inside and outside, the Predator Army broke through the prison and rescued Zhao Hongwenguo who was imprisoned and dozens of farmers who were affected by pond fish.
After Zhao Hongwenguo was freed from difficulties, he immediately went home, sold all the accumulated land, bid farewell to relatives and friends, and went to Beiping with his son Zhao Dong with the troops to continue the anti-Japanese resistance.
In Peiping, they reorganized a guerrilla force, which was even stronger than the Young Predator Army. They had confronted the Japanese head-on.
It was a battle that took place on September 8, 1937 in Peking.
On the same day, Zhao Hongwenguo's newly formed Pingxi Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Group fought fiercely with the Japanese army outside a foreign church in Montenegro that contained a large amount of weapons and ammunition. The guerrillas occupied a favorable geographical position to repulse the Japanese attacks many times, and the Japanese commander became angry after repeated failures to command the troops to charge, called 4 Japanese fighters, and let the pilots hover low and strafe at the guerrilla positions.
The bullets that fell from the sky made the guerrillas unable to lift their heads, and also made the guerrilla platoon leader Su Jiashun very angry. In order to drive away these "flies", he ignored the danger, leaned out of the bunker, picked up the Type 38 light machine gun and strafed at the cockpit of the fighter. The members of the team next to him saw the situation and immediately raised their guns and opened fire on the fighters.
After a burst of intense gunfire, a fighter jet plumed into a field of farmland in black smoke, and the explosion did not hide the cheers of the team members.
At this time, Zhao Hongwenguo, as the spiritual leader of this unit, also felt the joy brought by the success of the anti-Japanese resistance. Subsequently, a letter from the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army deepened this joy.
The letter was written in the names of Zhu De, commander-in-chief of the Eighth Route Army, Peng Dehuai, deputy commander-in-chief, and Ren Bishi, director of the Political Department, to the effect that the guerrillas were invited to join the Eighth Route Army. After reading the letter, Zhao Hongwenguo believed that this was a good opportunity to strengthen the anti-Japanese armed forces.
Therefore, on December 25, 1937, with the approval of the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army, the Pingxi Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Group was officially organized into the Fifth Detachment of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region of the Eighth Route Army, with Zhao Hongwenguo's son Zhao Tong as its commander.
After the reorganization, this unit has undergone a month of reorganization and training, and its combat effectiveness has been greatly improved. They began to attack the county towns and stations occupied by the Japanese army and dealt a fierce blow to the Japanese army.
At the same time, Zhao Hongwenguo, after seeing that his son could act alone, completely surrendered his command and then took on part of the work of the national united front of the War of Resistance.
In 1938, Zhao Hongwenguo went south to Wuhan to request funds and supplies from the Nationalist government for the development of the guerrillas. In Hankou, the story of her and her son spread throughout the Guotong district.
Major newspapers reported on her deeds, and one foreign newspaper described her as "the promoter of the Organization of 20,000 Chinese guerrillas" and "able to hold two pistols at the same time and shoot her enemies." After the newspaper's report spread, Zhao Hongwenguo had a nickname, the two-gun old woman.
As her popularity grew, her son Zhao Dong was also called "contemporary Yue Fei" and "the first Manchu anti-Japanese general" by the Kuomintang government.
The honor did not make the old man flutter unbeknownst to her, so she still wandered around various venues to raise funds for the guerrillas. However, as her son, Zhao Dong was corrupted by the praise that came over her face.
Gradually, in his mind, the support of the Eighth Route Army and the Communist Party to the guerrillas was no longer important, and people's democracy was no longer necessary. He began to think that he should be the sole controller of the troops.
Along with this idea came the plan to get rid of all communists in the guerrillas. Therefore, he began to propose at the military combat meeting within the guerrillas that he should promote his close associate Wu Xinmin to be the commander of the guard company, which immediately aroused the vigilance of our party, because once the guard company was controlled, then the lives of all the middle and senior commanders of the guerrilla group would also be in the hands of Zhao Dong.
What happens to a man who plots to kill the guerrilla commander of the Eighth Route Army? The answer seems uncomplicated, it is nothing more than counter-killing. But for the eighth route army, which has always been democratic, it will take some time to come up with this answer.
At this time, Zhao Tong, the son of the two-gun old woman, completely changed after seeing the Sugar-coated Shells of the Kuomintang, and he stood against everyone. Attempts to purge dissidents from the troops have in any case touched the bottom line.
In August 1938, just as Zhao Dong was preparing to seize power, his mother Zhao Hongwenguo sent a relative as a messenger to ask her son Zhao Dong to hurry back to the rear, because she had already made a name for herself in Chongqing, the capital of the Nationalist government.
If Zhao Dong goes, he will be reused. As a result, Zhao Tong returned to Chongqing and became an idol figure in the Kuomintang's anti-Japanese guerrilla forces.
Chiang Kai-shek gave this guerrilla major general the rank of major general, and after a year of training, Zhao Dong re-selected his men to go north to resist the Japanese.
However, Zhao Dong's march north to the anti-Japanese war was actually a preparation to provoke friction with our party, and then with the support of the regular Kuomintang army, he crushed our party's base areas and occupied them for himself.
Seeing that Zhao Dong had completely fallen to the Kuomintang, the Eighth Route Army also had to prepare thunderous means. On June 29, 1939, when Zhao Tong led more than 100 people to return to North China, he was surrounded and annihilated by the 120th Division of our Eighth Route Army, and Zhao Dong was killed.
After this incident, Zhao Hongwenguo quickly hated our party and completely sided with the Kuomintang.
After the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Chiang Kai-shek attempted to completely eliminate the Communist Party in order to maintain his position as a dictator and exploiter. Zhao Hongwenguo, as a people's hero in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, was also foolishly loyal to Chiang Kai-shek in the war, and led his own team to fight the People's Liberation Army on the battlefield of the Liaoshen Campaign.
The end result was that the troops were wiped out, and the relatives and friends no longer interacted with her. Because what the PEOPLE's Liberation Army wants to fight is a war to liberate the people, and Zhao Hongwenguo, this time, stands against the people.
After the troops were exhausted, Zhao Hongwenguo fled to Chongqing with the remnants, preparing to join the remaining main force of the Kuomintang. At this time, Chiang Kai-shek had fled to Taiwan, and anyone with a discerning eye could see that the General Trend of the Kuomintang was gone.
But Zhao Hongwenguo insisted on following the Kuomintang, because in her view, the Communists killed her son, which was a vendetta against heaven. Therefore, no matter how bad the Kuomintang is, as long as it can provide itself with weapons and ammunition, then it can gain her loyalty.
Therefore, with the support of the remaining main force of the Kuomintang, Zhao Hongwenguo took his son to sichuan to prepare to accumulate strength and cooperate with Chiang Kai-shek's "Metropolis War" by means of guerrilla warfare.
In order to coerce the people for her use, Zhao Hongwenguo will also wipe out her peasant family, brutally kill the commander of the People's Liberation Army who has fallen behind, and kill all the people who refuse to follow her to attack the surrounding counties.
What she did made herself an enemy of the people completely, which doomed her to no longer use guerrilla warfare to break through even a county town.
In February 1950, Zhao Hongwenguo was defeated and captured in the process of leading 4,000 bandits to attack Shifang County. On 16 July, she was sentenced to death by the Public Trial Assembly.
However, when the death sentence was telegraphed to Beijing, Premier Zhou frowned, and he took the telegram to Chairman Mao and said very earnestly: "Chairman, although Zhao Hongwenguo did many wrong things, he also made great merits during the anti-Japanese period. ”
Chairman Mao looked at the telegram, groaned for a while, and then said: "Zhao Hongwenguo really did have great merits during the War of Resistance Against Japan, but the crime she is committing now cannot be forgiven, and she herself should be punished with capital punishment." ”
In the end, Zhao Hongwenguo was executed by shooting. The people's heroes in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression finally stood on the opposite side of the people and ended up with a dead end.