We probably all know that Chen Cheng has done a total of "three major things" in Northeast China. The first one killed Chen Mingren. The second was the reorganization of the local security corps into a provisional division. The third piece dismantled the main force and merged it with the provisional division.
Chen Cheng's appointment as the military commander of the Northeast was ordered to be in danger.
We can't even understand why President Jiang chose such a military general to go to the Northeast Battlefield, which is very important in the national battlefield. Chen Cheng has a bad reputation among the many generals of the National Army, but because of his officialdom style, he is still honest and honest, and he belongs to the absolute celebrity around Chiang Kai-shek.
Another reason why President Jiang chose Chen Cheng was because Chen Cheng was more obedient. Probably for him, obedience is far more meaningful than superior military command skills.
In this way, Chen Cheng became the supreme military governor of Northeast China and became the director of the Northeast Xingyuan.
The background of Chen Cheng's appointment in Northeast China was because Du Yuming failed to stop the northern and southern Manchurian armies after the Linjiang Crisis, and the summer offensive in Dongye caused all the peripheral strongholds on the original defense line of the Nationalist Army in Northeast China to be lost, resulting in an extremely dangerous situation in the Northeast.
This is a map of the situation between the enemy and us before the summer offensive.
This is a map of the enemy's situation after Higashino's summer offensive.
Such a situation map is also the basic plate of Chen Cheng as the director of the Northeast Xingyuan.
The Dongye troops retreated from the western Liaoning corridor, to the evacuation of Siping, and then to the Linjiang crisis. This series of defeats has given Higashino enough good opportunities to grow. The strength of the national army on the long front is becoming more and more dispersed, and the strength of the strongholds is becoming thinner.
A fierce counterattack ensued. From the end of the three Jiangnan and Sibao Linjiang, the three major offensives of Dongye in summer, autumn and winter directly swept away the defense line of the national army, which was a miracle of war that could not be replicated on any battlefield in the country.
I sometimes wonder why this is happening. In the three offensives of Dongye, the defense line of the national army in the northeast collapsed, and it was the kind of big collapse that did not have any counterattack ability. Obviously, in the early stage, it was still smashed directly by the Yellow Dragon, which was unimaginable to anyone.
Chen Cheng wants to make a difference in the Northeast.
The most effective way to do this is to immediately expand the army and strengthen the distribution of troops in the various strongholds of the defensive line. To this end, he not only brought Wang Tiehan's 49th Army from the East China Battlefield, but also carried out a comprehensive reorganization of the regular national army and local security regiments in the Northeast Battlefield.
As far as the large-scale reorganization of the Northeast Army, which has been most criticized, is concerned, there is nothing wrong with it in essence. Force integration is present in almost all units and is a basic operation that must be carried out at all times.
We often say that Chen Cheng's large-scale reorganization of the army has dismantled the ace corps, which originally occupied an absolutely dominant role in the northeast battlefield, into pieces. For example, the New 1st Army and the New 6th Army, which are quite combat-effective. But in other words, if you are Chen Cheng, who is in charge of the Northeast and faces a shortage of troops, and there are still security regiments in the local area, will these security regiments be mobilized to the battlefield?
That's naturally up. Moreover, if we want to ensure that it forms a force that is still fighting and can still play a role on the battlefield, we can only supplement the existing units that have combat effectiveness.
It's just that the formation of the combat effectiveness of any unit takes time and time to temper, but because the great offensive of our army on the northeast battlefield is too fierce, Chen Cheng can't buy so much time, and he can't see the moment when the troops he has expanded will become the ace army.
Chen Cheng took over the basic plate of Du Yuming's tenure in the Northeast. In Du Yuming's era, the local security regiments belonged to the barbarian forces that governed the local government, and these security regiment troops basically had a personal relationship with Du Yuming. Therefore, Du Yuming also turned a blind eye to these fish and civilian troops, and strictly ordered these troops to go to the battlefield to a certain extent.
After Chen Cheng took over the northeast, he first reorganized the security regiments in various localities into temporary divisions, and then allocated these temporary divisions to the regular army, which was too normal for the army to be reorganized.
Even if our army expands its troops, it is basically this way. This is equivalent to today's recruits going down to the company, which is basically the same reason.
The root cause of the great reversal in the Northeast Battlefield lies in the fact that Dongye has a super strong source of troops, and the number of troops is almost snowballing, with the number of nearly 300,000 troops per year to achieve the growth of the field army, under this base growth, even if Chen Cheng has the ability to transfer troops from other battlefields, even if Chen Cheng has the thunderous means to achieve a large-scale reorganization of the troops, even if Chiang Kai-shek can change the military commander in vain, all this is in vain.
I think Chen Cheng has a good sentence in his memoirs:
My practice after arriving in the Northeast can be summed up in only 12 words, namely: rectifying the interior, reassuring the people's livelihood, and cultivating combat effectiveness.
As for how to "rectify," how to "be prosperous," how to "cultivate," and "how to be inferior," I only put forward the slogan of "normalization," which is the criterion for all facilities. The so-called "normalization" is because what is seen and heard by the eyes and ears at that time is too abnormal to be corrected. I'm just correcting some phenomena that are too abnormal and normalizing them.