Pingxingguan Dajie is the first victory of the official battle between the CCP army and the Japanese army (if you count the sporadic armed attacks on Japan, the history of the CCP army's anti-Japanese resistance can be traced back to the Northeast Anti-Japanese Federation), which has strong political and propaganda significance.
However, there has always been a great controversy over the number of Japanese troops killed in the Battle of Pingxingguan, and the statistics of Japan, China and the United States on the number of Japanese troops killed in this battle are very different.
Records of China and the United States
Among them, the United States, as a third party, gave a very surprising data.
According to the "Table of Major Battles in Modern Chinese Military History" compiled by the History and Political Office of the US Military Advisory Group, the Chinese army killed and wounded a total of 2,952 Japanese soldiers (the combined results of the CCP army and the Nationalist army).
This number has reached the size of a Japanese wing, more than the official Chinese figures.
Among them, the data given by the CCP is about 1,000 people (the results of the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army), which is mentioned in the memoirs or military works of Nie Rongzhen, Mao Zedong, Zhu De and others.
In the "Memoirs of Nie Rongzhen", the original text about the number of Japanese troops killed in the Battle of Pingxingguan was "Our army annihilated more than 1,000 men of the 21st Brigade of the Banheng Division of the enemy."
In the volume "Victories of the Battle of Pingxingguan" in the "Collected Military Writings of Mao Zedong", it is also recorded in the original text that "82 cars, one cannon, more than 2,000 shells, hundreds of rifles, and more than 1,000 enemies were killed."
Therefore, in the results of the Battle of Pingxingguan, the Eighth Route Army killed more than 1,000 Japanese troops (mainly concentrated in about 1,300).
In addition, at the time of the Battle of Pingxingguan, in the telegram sent by Zhu De and Peng Dehuai to Chiang Kai-shek (telegram of September 26, 1937), it described the results of the Eighth Route Army with about 800 men.
The original text of the telegram was "... (omitted above) captured more than 300 enemy officers and men. Another enemy of about 4 to 500 men and dozens of horses were completely surrounded by our army, and they could not disarm themselves, so they were all killed. ”
It can be seen from this telegram that Peng Dehuai and Zhu De believed that the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army could capture 300 prisoners and kill 400~500 Japanese troops. This data is very different from the results later verified by all parties, because the Eighth Route Army did not capture a single Japanese prisoner of war in the Battle of Pingxingguan.
However, it is not surprising that this telegram was wrong, because the time of the telegram was in the early morning of September 26, and the content of the telegram also recorded the results of the Eighth Route Army from 8 am to 24 am on the 25th. At that time, the Battle of Pingxingguan was still being fought, and the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army was still fighting fiercely in the areas of Dongbanchi, Xinzhuang and Guangou in the north of Pingxingguan.
Perhaps Peng Dehuai and Zhu De believed that if the Japanese army was surrounded by the Eighth Route Army, the Japanese army located in the area of Dongbanchi, Xinzhuang, and Guangou would surrender.
However, as latecomers, we know that neither the Warring Kuomintang nor the Communist Party could capture a single prisoner, and the wounded and sick that the Japanese army could not take away at that time either committed suicide or were killed by their own people, and this brutality and will to fight were beyond the expectations of both the Kuomintang and the Communist Party at that time.
However, it is certain that by about 24 o'clock on September 25, there were about 400~500 Japanese troops who could already be clearly achieved. Among them, Zhu De and Peng Dehuai estimated that they killed 400~500 enemies, indicating that the battlefield had not yet been counted.
Estimates by Japanese and modern scholars
According to the Japanese war report, the Japanese army died and lost 165 people in the Battle of Pingxingguan and 75 wounded, with a total of 240 casualties.
Although pouring water into war reports is a more or less common problem for all countries, the Japanese side obviously uses "pumping machines to write war reports", and the defeat of the Battle of Midway can be described by Japanese officials as a big victory, so Japanese war reports are not credible at all.
In modern times, scholars from various countries estimate the number of Japanese troops killed in the Battle of Pingxingguan (the result of the Eighth Route Army), which is basically between 500~1300. For example, when Jiang Keshi (Chinese), a professor at Okayama University in Japan, studied the Battle of Pingxingguan, he believed that the Japanese army lost more than 500 people killed and wounded more than 900, with a total of more than 1,500 casualties.
In addition, the Chinese military historian Sasu quoted the war history of the Japanese participating troops, the memoirs of the soldiers and the records of journalists accompanying the army in his article "The Number of Japanese Soldiers Annihilated at the Battle of Pingxingguan from Japanese Historical Sources", and estimated that the casualties of the Japanese army at that time were at least 900 or more.
So on the whole, the Eighth Route Army killed about 1,000 people in the Pingxingguan victory is a relatively credible number.
The 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army said that it had 400 and 600 casualties, which was a very brilliant result compared to the gap between Chinese and Japanese forces at that time.
summary
In fact, whether it is about 3,000 people recorded in the United States, about 1,000 people recorded by the CCP, or even 240 people recorded in Japan, it is meaningless to the concept of "Pingxing Guan Dajie".
The Pingxingguan Dajie was a battle of greater political significance than military significance, and the number of casualties of the Japanese army in this battle was not important at all, what was important was the fact that "the Chinese army defeated the Japanese army".
Prior to this, China had repeatedly lost battles against the Japanese army, and the "theory of the death of the country" was very popular everywhere in China at that time. Therefore, when fighting the Battle of Pingxingguan, China needed a victory too much, and this victory stimulated the confidence of the Chinese military and people to resist Japan, and how many Japanese troops were killed was a secondary matter.
In this whole battle, the most unfortunate thing is that the Japanese army was not captured. Before the battle of Pingxingguan, Lin Biao commanded the battle with a task, because before the start of the war, he promised the Central Military Commission that he would capture Japanese prisoners of war, and when the end of the battle, he directly pressed the Japanese army to parade the streets, so that the people could see what the Japanese army looked like.
If the Eighth Route Army could really capture a Japanese prisoner of war at that time, then the political significance of Pingxingguan Dajie would be further enhanced.
However, as we all know later, Pingxingguan Dajie did not capture live prisoners of war, and the first Japanese prisoner of war captured by the Eighth Route Army after the all-out war was named Yukio Kato, captured in the Battle of Guangyang Ambush in November 1937.
It can be seen that in the battle of Pingxingguan, the stubborn resistance of the Japanese army greatly exceeded the imagination of the Eighth Route Army, and the sentence in Zhu De and Peng Dehuai's telegram that "if you die, you can't disarm your weapons, so you kill them all" also has a kind of helplessness.
Resources:
【1】"Party History Expo" (Issue 07, 2013)
[2] "Zhu De Military Anthology" · "The Eighth Route Army's Experience and Lessons in the War of Resistance in the Past Half a Year"
[3] "Mao Zedong's Military Anthology" and "Results of the Battle of Pingxingguan"
[4] "Public Security War in North China" (written by the War History Office of the Defense Training Institute of the Japanese Defense Agency)
[5] "From the Historical Sources of Japan, the Number of Japanese Troops Annihilated in the Battle of Hirajingseki" (by Sasu)