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At the end of 1948, a million Northeast Field Troops entered the customs and launched the Pingjin Campaign in conjunction with the North China Field Forces.
The Battle of Pingjin annihilated and reorganized 521,000 Kuomintang troops, liberated Beijing, Tianjin and other places, and was also the last major battle before the liberation of the whole country.
Battle of Pingjin
But who would have thought that when our army advanced into the northeast in 1945, there were only 100,000 men at first.
In just three short years, the Northeast Field Army soared tenfold in number, reaching a total strength of 1.05 million, almost double the number of Nationalist troops recruited in the northeast at the same time.
The East China Field Army, whose combat effectiveness was comparable to that of Dongye, repeatedly won victories in three years of combat, but its strength did not increase much.
Both are also the main forces of the field army, so why is there such a big difference in the growth of troops?
To explore the reasons for this, one needs to look at what has happened to both units in the past three years.
Higashino expands his army
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in 1945, with the fall of the puppet Manchu government, the northeast region with a strong industrial base became a semi-vacuum region.
In order to preemptively control the northeast region, from September 1945 onwards, our party mobilized about 110,000 troops into the northeast region to establish the Northeast Democratic United Army, which is also known as the predecessor of Dongye.
Northeast Democratic Coalition Army
In addition, our party has also dispatched more than 20,000 cadres at all levels to the northeast to be responsible for the expansion of troops and local management in the northeast region, and appointed Luo Ronghuan to be responsible for conscription.
The reason why Luo Ronghuan was chosen to take on this heavy responsibility was not only because he was the only one among the ten marshals of the mainland who had been engaged in a leading position in political work for a long time.
Another more important reason is that as early as the anti-Japanese front of the Shandong battlefield, Luo Ronghuan showed amazing political work ability.
Luo Ronghuan
At the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Japanese army was very strong in the Shandong region.
Although the Nationalist army had three times more troops than the Japanese army, it was still defeated in the battle.
With the successive surrender of some Kuomintang troops to the enemy, the strength of the Japanese puppet army in Shandong reached 200,000.
At that time, the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army in Shandong had only 15,000 troops, and it was at an absolute disadvantage on the anti-Japanese front in Shandong.
Luo Ronghuan
Until 1942, when Luo Ronghuan was ordered to take over the 115th Division, the Shandong battlefield was transformed by earth-shaking changes, and the entire war situation was revitalized by Luo Ronghuan.
From 1942 to 1944, under the leadership of Luo Ronghuan, the 115th Division expanded from 15,000 troops to 520,000 men.
Unlike the Kuomintang's compulsory conscription, Luo Ronghuan's conscription was mainly to make the people consciously join the anti-Japanese ranks by means of probation and education.
Therefore, the troops he assembled were strictly disciplined and brave in battle, and they were all solid combat strength.
Subsequently, due to the frequent defeats in the Pacific Theater, the Japanese army continued to withdraw the troops from the North China Battlefield, and the level of combat strength of the enemy and us began to tilt.
Luo Ronghuan seized the opportunity and commanded the 115th Division to take the initiative to attack, and the Japanese army abandoned most of its strongholds and pillboxes, and retreated in the city to rely on fortifications to resist.
As an old liberated area, the Shandong region has a relatively high ideological consciousness of the masses. Everywhere our party went, the people welcomed it from the sidelines, and a large number of young people spontaneously joined the army.
However, unlike Shandong, Luo Ronghuan, who came to the northeast, found that the northeast region had long been ruled by the puppet Manchukuo and the Japanese puppet regime, and the people had long been miserable, and their enthusiasm for joining the army was very low.
The people's ideas cannot be called wrong, but without a safe and stable national environment, driving away the jackals and coming to the tigers and leopards, how can we talk about living and working in peace and contentment?
Luo Ronghuan, who had just arrived in the northeast, saw this kind of people's sentiment and decided to solve their food and clothing problems first, so as to encourage the masses to join the army.
Luo Ronghuan dispatched more than 10,000 cadres to the localities to carry out land reform, overthrow the landlords, and realize that "the cultivators have their own land."
Luo Ronghuan
As a result, the peasants, who had been oppressed by the landlords and bullies for a long time, were finally able to turn around, have their own land, and the people's livelihood also had a basic guarantee.
Facts have proved that only by truly serving the people can the masses spontaneously join the ranks of the revolution.
After the land reform, some of the masses began to enthusiastically join the army.
But just after the suffering, most of the farmers who have turned over still want to live a few years of stability.
Some local party organizations also have this mentality, which has led to the early recruitment work, although it has been "opened", but it has not been carried out smoothly.
At that time, the number of Dongye troops was only 380,000, while the Kuomintang army in the northeast region far exceeded our army by forced conscription.
The disparity in strength and strength worried Luo Ronghuan, and in order to solve the problem of conscription, he needed to further stimulate these peasants who had turned their own hands and mobilize their enthusiasm.
land reform
Land reform allows the poor people to obtain the fruits of their labor on their own, so the next step is to eliminate the bandits they fear and reassure them.
Peak of the military
Due to the corruption and incompetence of the feudal dynasty, the Northeast region has been invaded by Tsarist Russia and Japan since the end of the Qing Dynasty, and has long been in a disorderly political environment.
A large number of bully bandits have gradually spawned in the local area.
Bandits in the Northeast
After the fall of the puppet Manchu regime, the Japanese army abandoned a large number of weapons and equipment, and the puppet army and secret agents were required to disband themselves.
This made the bandit forces in the northeast even stronger, made the ordinary people miserable, and also caused great trouble for the Communist Party to liberate the northeast.
Faced with this situation, the Northeast Central Bureau quickly made a decision: it was imperative to suppress bandits.
In June 1946, after The Higashino and the Kuomintang army entered the stage of stalemate of combat strength, our army had a buffer opportunity and immediately launched the operation to suppress bandits.
Bandits in the Northeast
Due to the misjudgment of the bandits' strength in the northeast, the local troops suffered a lot of damage before that.
Therefore, Dongye dispatched the main force to suppress bandits, and within a few months, the problem of bandits in the northeast region was greatly alleviated.
At the same time as suppressing the bandits, Luo Ronghuan arranged for the soldiers of the troops to hold a meeting to recall hardships in various villages, and most of the soldiers were from poor backgrounds, which made the feelings between the military and the people quickly close.
The people have deeply realized that the troops under the leadership of our Party are the troops that fight for the people.
Luo Ronghuan struck iron while it was hot and arranged for a large number of cadres to carry out educational work in various localities to help the broad masses of the people understand the necessity of conscription.
Therefore, under the sincere political work of the Communist Party, a large number of poor people enthusiastically signed up to join the army, and the scale of Higashino expanded rapidly.
But at the same time, it also laid hidden dangers for the interior of Higashino.
Quantity is more quality
In July 1947, there were major changes in the Kuomintang forces confronting Higashino.
Kuomintang Army
Du Yuming, commander of the Kuomintang Northeast Security Command, stepped down due to a recurrence of a stomach disease, and chen Cheng, chief of the Kuomintang general staff, took his place.
As soon as Chen Cheng took over, he was eager to prove to Chiang Kai-shek that he was smarter than Du Yuming.
So the first thing he did when he took office was to carry out drastic reforms of the Kuomintang army.
He carried out a large number of troop expansions, and also brought in advanced weapons and equipment.
Temporary
The Kuomintang army in the northeast region not only renewed its firepower, but also reached a scale of 550,000 troops.
In order to cope with this situation of the Kuomintang army, the Dongye People's Liberation Army also began to reorganize and expand the troops.
However, with the deepening of the rectification work, the problems caused by the rapid expansion of troops in the early days have gradually been exposed.
The main sources of conscription in Dongye were captured Kuomintang soldiers and recruited peasants, and although the combat strength expanded rapidly, these two groups of people were not very stable.
The captured Kuomintang soldiers had a military foundation and could be directly thrown into the battlefield.
However, many Kuomintang soldiers were influenced by reactionary ideology and looked down on our soldiers, and even committed the evil acts of turning against each other and killing our army's generals to seize the road and flee.
The turning peasants have not undergone military training, their combat ability and willpower are relatively weak, and the phenomenon of fleeing from the front is also very common.
Higashino
In response to these two problems, Luo Ronghuan put forward a good idea: to form a second-line corps.
The second-line corps is like a substitute soldier, consisting mainly of turned peasants and a small number of workers.
Luo Ronghuan dispatched veterans or cadres with rich combat experience as the backbone of the troops, and they led these corps to form independent regiments for independent training.
Under the leadership of the backbone of the troops, after a series of short-term trainings, these independent regiments will soon be able to acquire combat capabilities.
Then, Luo Ronghuan replenished these troops into the main force according to the establishment.
Such a plan greatly solved the problem of insufficient troops for the main forces, and was able to give these recruits some buffer time to thoroughly receive revolutionary education.
Soon, Luo Ronghuan carried out the construction of the first batch of second-line corps in August 1947, and 48 independent regiments were established in just one month.
By the time the construction of the third phase of the second-line corps was completed, Higashino had formed a total of 189 independent regiments, totaling 420,000 people.
Construction of second-line corps
The construction of the second-line corps enabled the main column of the East Field to remain full during the battle.
These newly recruited soldiers fought bravely under the leadership of the backbone and made great contributions to the liberation of the northeast.
By August 1948, the number of dongye's main force had expanded from 380,000 to 700,000, and with the addition of local troops, the total strength reached 1.05 million, almost twice that of the northeast Nationalist army.
After Chen Cheng learned of this, he also lamented that the mobilization ability of the communist army organization was too strong, and this was a growth rate that his forced conscription could not match.
Temporary
At this point, Higashino had the capital to fight the Kuomintang.
Higashino and Kawano were the two most powerful of the five main forces during the Liberation War.
However, unlike Dongye in the northeast region, the number of Huaye troops fighting in east China at this time was almost zero.
Magnificent HuaYe
Huaye's combat zone is in the densely populated and well-populated shandong and northern Jiangsu regions, and the difficulty of conscription should be much lower than that of Dongye.
East China Field Army
But why was Dongye able to increase his troops by a million in three years, while Huaye's troops almost did not increase?
One of the reasons is that Huaye's strategic position is more dangerous than That of Dongye.
As the key point of north-south transportation, East China has been a place where soldiers and families must fight since ancient times. Therefore, the Kuomintang and the Communists attach great importance to this region and regard it as one of the main battlefields of the civil war.
Therefore, in March 1947, our party merged the Shandong Field Army and the Central China Field Army into the East China Field Army, forming a main force of more than 270,000 people, plus a total of about 580,000 local troops.
Chen Yi
Chen Yi, former commander of the Shandong Field Army, served as commander and commander, and Su Yu, former commander of the Central China Field Army, served as deputy commander.
It can be said that this team is full of good soldiers, and victory is inevitable.
But the Kuomintang also sent the strongest troops against the Huaye Liberation Army.
The reorganized Seventy-fourth Division and the Fifth Army, as well as the Guizhou Seventh Army and the Hu Lian Reorganized 11th Division, were successively sent to East China to fight, with extremely well-equipped and fierce combat effectiveness.
Hu Lian
Therefore, it was destined that Huaye must carry out frequent large-scale operations, which led to serious loss of troops.
In June 1946, Chiang Kai-shek unilaterally tore up the armistice agreement and launched an all-out war against our party. East China also became one of the primary targets of the Kuomintang army's attack, and the war situation became more and more anxious.
A month later, Chiang Kai-shek sent his beloved general Li Mo'an to gather an army of 120,000 to attack central Soviet Union.
At this time, the People's Liberation Army stationed in the central Soviet region was the Central China Field Army incorporated into Huaye, and they only had 30,000 people.
Chiang Kai-shek, who discovered this news, said bluntly:
"I think three weeks can solve the Soviet-Chinese problem."
Chiang Kai-shek's words were not arrogant, and Li Mo'an's troops were absolutely superior in numbers and armed with the latest American equipment.
Chiang Kai-shek
Moreover, Li Mo'an himself is also a graduate of the first phase of Huangpu and has a lot of combat experience.
But what Chiang Kai-shek did not take into account was that Li Mo'an was facing Su Yu, the god of war who "specialized in fighting the immortal war."
In the face of the Kuomintang army, which was four times larger than himself, Su Yu did not think of preserving his strength first, but chose to take the initiative to attack.
Su Yu
Through technical reconnaissance, the Central China Field Army successfully learned the time of Li Mo'an's attack.
Su Yu ordered that the first battle should be to attack the 83rd Division, the strongest of Li Mo'an's troops.
On 15 July, the Central China Field Army launched a fierce attack on Xuantai, where the 83rd Division was stationed.
The People's Liberation Army of the Xuantai Campaign
After three days and three nights of fighting, our army successfully conquered Xuanjiabao, annihilated two regiments and two battalions of the 83rd Division, captured a large amount of American equipment, and won the first battle of the Soviet-Chinese Campaign.
Annoyed and angry, Li Mo'an sent the 83rd Division and the 49th Division to attack Rugao, and Su Yu saw this and decided to take him by surprise and ambush him on the other side's way to Rugao.
He set aside a small part of his troops in Xuantai as a "smoke bomb", but in fact secretly installed the main force in the southeast of Rugao, successfully defeating the 49th Division that was rushing to the road.
When Chiang Kai-shek learned of this, he was furious and ordered Chen Cheng to send reinforcements of 100,000 troops to join forces with Li Mo'an to attack Hai'an.
Su Yu, who had been fighting in successive battles, heard the movements of the Kuomintang troops and resolutely withdrew from Hai'an. He fought along the way, and once again won the battle with a loss ratio of 1:15 in the sports war.
Successive defeats completely made Li Mo'an panic, and the Kuomintang army lost one after another in Li Bao, Shao Bo, Huangqiao and other places.
In the end, the Soviet-Chinese Campaign ended with our army's seven victories in seven battles.
The Battle of Soviet Union
In just 40 days, the Central China Field Army annihilated more than 53,000 enemy troops, almost twice as many as its own troops.
Since the victory in the Battle of Central Soviet Union, the Central China Field Army has had to engage the Kuomintang troops almost every day due to its deep penetration into the hinterland of the Kuomintang-ruled areas.
In order to avoid being heavily surrounded by The Kuomintang army, the Central China Field Army eventually withdrew from the central Soviet region and moved to the Shandong Liberated Area.
But immediately after that, the Kuomintang army focused its attack on the Liberated Areas of Shandong.
Chiang Kai-shek mobilized 450,000 troops to attack Shandong, and sent his beloved general Zhang Lingfu to lead one of the most elite units of the Kuomintang army to reorganize the 74th Division as the vanguard.
The 74th Division was very strong in combat, and won successive victories in the two Battles of Lianshui, causing Huaye heavy losses.
Zhang Lingfu took advantage of the victory to enter Shandong and attempted to capture the Yimeng Mountains.
Zhang Lingfu
The arrogant and arrogant Zhang Lingfu did not listen to the tactics of Tang Enbo, commander of the First Corps, to fight steadily and steadily, but instead marched alone to Tanbu in an attempt to use the 74th Division as bait to "blossom in the center" of the Menglianggu position and annihilate the Shandong People's Liberation Army in one fell swoop.
There was nothing wrong with Zhang Lingfu's tactics, but he clearly overestimated the unity within the Kuomintang army.
Looking at the lonely and deep Kuomintang army, Chen Yi and Su Yu decided to gnaw away at Zhang Lingfu's "hard bone" after careful consideration.
Hua Ye quickly launched a fierce attack on the entire 74th Division, trapping Zhang Lingfu's troops in Menglianggu's position.
Although the 74th Division was surrounded by regiments, the ten reorganized divisions of the Kuomintang also began to march, and they wanted to form a siege with the 74th Division and encircle the entire Huaye.
But in the end, because the Kuomintang generals disagreed, Zhang Lingfu did not get timely rescue.
Our army, on the other hand, was deeply aware that if Hua Ye could not completely annihilate Zhang Lingfu's troops, he would be under heavy siege by the Kuomintang army.
Battle of Menglianggu
So on May 15, Hua Ye launched an onslaught against the 74th Division at all costs.
After a fierce battle of day and night, the two sides finally ended with the total annihilation of the 74th Division, the death of Zhang Lingfu, and the tragic victory of Hua Ye.
In this battle, Huaye lost 60,000 people.
From the Battle of Menglianggu to the end of the Battle of Huaihai, Huaye lost a total of 230,000 troops. This is the main reason why Huaye's military strength has hardly increased in three years.
As a military commander, Chen Yi was also very helpless about this. After so many fierce battles, it was extremely difficult for HuaYe to maintain the total strength of the army before the war.
In particular, there is less construction of the base area in the central Jiangsu region where Huaye is located, and the degree of soil improvement is slow.
Tough staffing
As a tug-of-war area between the enemy and us, Huaye simply could not establish a perfect base here.
After Huaye moved to Shandong, the situation improved.
World War II Ripples
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Shandong Liberated Area established a relatively mature base area, and Huaye should have been replenished here.
But the ensuing Nationalist general Wang Yaowu posed a threat to Huaye's increased troops.
This man's military strength and political ability were very impressive, and once he took office, he focused on opening up the main lines of communication in Shandong Province, so that the districts of Huaye had to fight separately.
Coupled with the continuous attacks of the Kuomintang army on Shandong, Huaye never had the energy to carry out thorough land reform, so the growth rate of troop strength could not be improved.
Wang Yaowu
Of course, this does not mean that the people in the Shandong Liberated Area did not contribute to the revolution.
Although the crowds were uneven, in the Battle of Jinan in September 1948, Huaye gathered 140,000 troops to attack the city, and 500,000 migrant workers were mobilized.
Then, in the Battle of Huaihai, 2.183 million people, 52,000 stretchers, 333,000 large and small vehicles, and 390 million catties of grain were dispatched in the Shandong Liberated Area.
People spontaneously pushed carts in long rows and used small carts to deliver armaments and food to the People's Liberation Army.
The masses of the people deliver materials to the front
This is why Marshal Chen Yi praised when summing up the Huaihai Campaign: "The victory in the Huaihai Campaign was pushed out by the masses of the people with a cart."
The three reasons of important strategic locations, frequent large-scale battles, and low construction of base areas have led to a slow increase in Huaye's troops, and it is impossible to expand millions of troops like Dongye.
But even so, Huaye, as the field army that fought the most hard, vicious, and dangerous battles, annihilated the largest number of enemies, and sacrificed the most, made immeasurable contributions to the victory of the War of Liberation.
On January 15, 1949, the Central Military Commission reorganized The Western, Nakano, Huaye, and Dongye into the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Field Armies, and reorganized the units of the North China Military Region into the North China Field Army.
In the subsequent strategic counteroffensive against the Kuomintang, the five major field armies all made outstanding contributions to the victory of the War of Liberation.
In 1950, in order to regularize the people's army, the names of the five field armies were cancelled one after another. Although the number of troops has changed, what has not changed is the iron spirit of the People's Liberation Army that is brave and good at fighting and not afraid of sacrifice.
"Dignity is only above the blade of the sword, and the truth is only within the range of the cannon", we have such a peaceful and beautiful life today, which is bought by countless Chinese Kuomintang soldiers with blood and sacrifice.
Today, they are still guarding the hard-won peace of their predecessors on the soil of the motherland.
What do you readers think of China's five major field armies? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section.