Author: Mo Guyan
On the evening of January 10, 1949, Chen Changjie, commander of the Tianjin Garrison, summoned Lin Weili, commander of the 62nd Army, Liu Yunhan, commander of the 86th Army, Qiu Zongding, deputy commander of the Tianjin Garrison, and Du Jianshi, mayor of Tianjin, to his office and showed them a letter signed Lin Biao and Luo Ronghuan. There were only two words on the letter, but they were enough to shock everyone present.
Lin and Luo gave Chen Changjie an ultimatum, persuading him to follow Zheng Dongguo's example and lay down his arms and immediately send someone to negotiate. Otherwise, "you can only inflict the scourge of killing yourself." After reading the letter, everyone was silent, and they all looked at Qiu Zongding, ready to listen to his opinion.
Qiu had long served in Chiang's attendant room, and sending him to Tianjin was actually a supervisor of the army. Qiu Zongding saw the situation very clearly, and there was no doubt that he would lose if he wanted to fight, but the words of surrender could not come out of his mouth, so he did not take a stance.
Chief of Higashino Lin Luo Liu
When Mayor Du Jian saw that everyone was not speaking, he called Chen Changjie to another room alone and asked him what his plans were. Chen Changjie did not come to Tianjin for a long time, he was born in the Jin Sui Army, and Lin Weili, Liu Yunhan, and other generals of the concubine clan were not familiar with each other, and he felt that his words had no weight, and these people might not listen to themselves. Besides, he was Fu Zuoyi's man, and whether he fought or surrendered, he had to listen to Fu, and Fu had long warned him that he must stick to Tianjin. So Chen Changjie had no choice but to say, "I let them fight, they can't fight if they don't fight, but if I let them surrender, there is nothing they can do without surrendering." I heard that Mr. Fu is negotiating in Beiping, so let's wait until the Beiping negotiations are over and then act together. ”
When Du Jianshi saw that Chen Changjie's attitude was unclear, he called Lin Weili and Liu Yunhan to another house and asked them what their plans were. These two were happy, saying that this kind of thing must be agreed to by Chen Changjie's nod, and they could not take the lead. However, what they are worried about is that if the Negotiations in Peiping have not yet reached an eyebrow, the People's Liberation Army has already launched an attack on Tianjin. Lin Weili had just led his troops to participate in the attack on Tashan, and had personally seen the strong combat effectiveness of the Dongye troops, so he was very pessimistic about the prospects of the Battle of Tianjin, believing that he could not withstand even a week.
Group photo of Chen Changjie (right) and Du Jianshi
Du, Lin, and Liu went to see Chen Changjie together and asked him to call Fu Zuoyi. It was Fu's chief of staff, Li Shijie, who answered the phone, and turned it over and over only to repeat what Fu Zuoyi had said to Chen Changjie before: "If you firmly hold on, there is a way." ”
Several people discussed and discussed, and felt that the only way was to delay time. They asked Qiu Zongding to write an ambiguous reply to the effect that laying down weapons is a disgrace to soldiers and cannot be laid down casually; if your army is sincere, it can send people to negotiate.
Dongye's operational command of the attack on Tianjin was handled by Chief of Staff Liu Yalou, who had 340,000 people in 22 infantry divisions and more than 1,000 large-caliber artillery pieces. He ordered his troops to enter the attack position as originally planned, the cannons lined up in a row, and then issued an ultimatum to Chen Changjie.
Former migrant workers in the Battle of Pingjin
Chen Changjie immediately sent a "delegation" out of the city to hold talks with the PLA. The name of the peace talks is actually to spy on military intelligence, especially to find out where the main direction of the offensive is. When the talkers arrived at the Yang Liuqing front command post, a liaison staff officer of the People's Liberation Army said to them: "Commander Liu is on the road. ”
In fact, Liu Yalou was next door to the room at that time. After 25 minutes, Liu Yalou took a jeep out of Yang Liuqing through the back door and took a detour back from the direction of the power plant north of Tianjin. This movement was deliberately made visible to the delegates in order to give them the illusion that the main direction of the PLA's offensive was to the north. When Liu Yalou walked into the house "in the wind and dust", none of the deputies had any doubts about this.
Liu Yalou in the Battle of Pingjin
Chen Changjie was really deceived, and when he learned that Dongye's main attack direction was in the power plant area north of Tianjin, he immediately adjusted his deployment and transferred the 151st Division of the 62nd Army, which had strong combat effectiveness, to the north of the city, which greatly reduced the pressure on Dongye's main attack direction. After the battle began, the 151st Division played little role north of the city.
At 10:00 a.m. on January 14, Liu Yalou gave an order and the general offensive began. The fortifications painstakingly managed by Chiang Kai-shek's army collapsed under the bombardment of a thousand heavy artillery pieces. At night, Chen Changjie, Lin Weili, Liu Yunhan, Du Jianshi and others gathered in the basement of the Security Headquarters for a final meeting. Du Jianshi suggested that Chen Changjie lay down his weapons, but Chen Changjie was silent. Du knew that Chen only listened to Fu Zuoyi's words, so he suggested that he call Peiping again and ask about the situation there.
Higashino launched an attack on the city of Tianjin
It was still Li Shijie who answered the phone, and he still said the words that had been repeated countless times: if you insist on it for two more days, you will have a way. Chen Changjie slammed the phone in anger and scolded: "Let us sacrifice, they do bargaining capital!" ”
Fu Zuoyi of Beiping did not sleep all night, he deliberately did not answer Chen Changjie's phone, the pain in his heart was helpless, and outsiders could not interpret it. Until 9 a.m. the next morning, Fu Zuoyi heard Chen Changjie's exclamation on the radio station- "Come in!" Fu Zuoyi looked up at the sky and sighed: Tianjin is finished!
The factional contradictions within Chiang Kai-shek's army have a long history and are fundamentally doomed to inevitable collapse. The Pingjin battlefield more prominently represents the defeat situation directly caused by this trend.
During the Battle of Tianjin, among chiang kai-shek's 130,000 defenders, from the command system to the battle sequence, it was obvious that there was a pattern of each faction going its own way from beginning to end. Although Chen Changjie was the deputy commander of the Defense of Jingu and the commander of the Tianjin Garrison, he was still classified on the margins of the Jin Army, and did not directly give him the power to command the troops of the Concubines since the day he took office. Lin Weili, Liu Yunhan, and others nominally seem to be under the command of Chen Changjie, who also seems to have all the full authority to command the Tianjin garrison, but in fact belong to various command systems. Even Fu Zuoyi could do nothing about it.
Among the generals of the Chiang Kai-shek Army in North China, Chen Changjie was not an outstanding commander, and his operational thinking was always at the modern level, and he did not have the consciousness of modern warfare. During this period, although he also wanted to emulate Zhukov in defending Stalingrad, he suffered from the lack of good strategy, and the military deployment exposed many shortcomings such as scattered troops, strong north and weak south at the beginning. Coupled with the misjudgment of the direction of the main attack of the East Field, not only caused the central region to be empty of troops, but also the combat effectiveness of the defensive forces of the eastern and western cities was not strong, so after the general offensive began, the city fortifications were broken after only a few hours of fighting.
What he did not expect was that while opening up the central region, Higashino launched an attack on the north and south at an alarming speed, making it impossible for him to mobilize his troops in time and effectively, and could only allow the defenders to be divided and annihilated. Chen Changjie was mentally prepared for the fall of Tianjin, but he did not expect it to be so fast. Underestimating the situation was also the primary reason for his rapid defeat.
After being captured, Chen Changjie hated Fu Zuoyi, who regarded him as an outcast, so much so that when Fu later visited him in Gongdelin Prison, he always refused to talk to Fu. Fu knew that he was ashamed of him, and he was also interceding everywhere, trying to compensate. Chen Changjie was one of the first war criminals to receive amnesty in 1959, and his early release was also the result of Fu Zuoyi's many efforts.
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