On the eve of the Southern Anhui Incident in 1941, Ye Ting took a telegram to his friend, and part of the telegram was as follows:
"If the New Fourth Army delays in starting its operation and continues to drag it out, the central government may think that I deliberately disobeyed the orders from above, but in fact, I really want to implement the instructions of the central government, but I really can't do anything about it......
Judging from part of the content of this telegram, two key pieces of information were revealed: First, Ye Ting fully agreed with the instructions of the Central Committee to go north, and second, Ye Ting did not have any real power in the New Fourth Army.
As the dignified commander of the First Army of the New Fourth Army, Ye Ting is obviously the "number one" of the New Fourth Army, but why is he unable to command the specific military combat operations of the entire New Fourth Army?
The reason for all this has to start from that special era at that time.
The Great Revolution of 1927 failed. The essence of the Great Revolution was in fact a violent struggle against imperialism and the Beiyang warlords set off by the Kuomintang and the Kuomintang under the framework of the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, relying entirely on the endorsement of the Soviet Union.
The ultimate goal of the struggle was, of course, to cleanly and thoroughly sweep the Western imperial powers and their proxies out of China and to create a free, democratic, and powerful country.
At the beginning, this great ideal and ambition, under the insistence of Mr. Sun Yat-sen, was able to move forward on the right track.
But after Mr. Sun Yat-sen died of illness, everything suddenly changed for the worse.
Since Mr. Sun Yat-sen did not clearly designate a "successor" on the eve of his death, the Kuomintang was initially ruled by Wang and Chiang. Wang Jingwei was in charge of the party and government, and Chiang Kai-shek was in charge of the army, and the two sides were once close to the outside world.
However, with the white-hot struggle for supreme power, Chiang Kai-shek and Wang parted ways, and in this great drama of power struggle, Chiang Kai-shek not only relied on the Whampoa Military Academy to consolidate his own camp, but also decisively abandoned the Soviet Union and threw himself into the Western imperialist powers led by the United States.
By this time, the stormy Revolution had already terrified the Western Powers and their proxies. They feared that the national revolutionary movement, supported by the Red Soviet Union, would destroy the rich profits they had accumulated in China for many years.
At this time, Chiang Kai-shek's sudden "mountain worship post" was in the hands of the Western powers. Therefore, among their demands, the eradication of all red revolutionary forces and the emergence of a second red Soviet Union at the root became one of the main conditions for the support of Chiang Kai-shek by the Western imperialist powers.
Under these circumstances, Chiang Kai-shek, in order to consolidate his power in the Kuomintang as soon as possible, simply and unequivocally agreed to this condition of the imperialist powers.
Soon, the "April 12" and "July 15" events against the Chinese Red Revolution broke out, and the vast number of Communists paid an extremely painful price under Chiang Kai-shek's crazy white terror.
From then on, the Kuomintang government, represented by Chiang Kai-shek, completely parted ways with the Soviet Union and became the spokesman for the rule of the Western imperialist powers and their agents in China.
Under the background of this special era, the reason why the Communists were unable to effectively counter the arrogance of the Kuomintang was that apart from serious deviations in internal judgment and decision-making, the most important reason was that the Communists at that time did not have an absolute armed force to back them up militarily, let alone a unit that completely "commanded the gun of the party" to support and cheer up the Communists. (Of course, this is purely military.) As for other aspects, there are many factors, which are limited to space here, so I will not mention them).
Therefore, the later Communists formulated one of the most basic and important principles, that is, only "the party is allowed to command the gun, and the gun is never allowed to command the party." The practice of subsequent revolutions proved that this was undoubtedly an extremely correct measure.
Ye Ting later became the commander of the New Fourth Army, but he did not have the right to transfer the New Fourth Army, which also had a certain relationship with him.
Ye Ting was born in a peasant family in Guangdong, although the conditions at the time of birth were not good, but fortunately, Ye Ting excelled in his studies when he was a teenager, and with the support of his family to the best of his ability, he was admitted to the Baoding Army Military Academy and participated in the Guangdong Army led by Mr. Sun Yat-sen.
Ever since Ye Ting became reasonable, he hoped to be able to save the Chinese nation from danger by military force. However, with the growth of experience, Ye Ting gradually realized that it was far from enough to save China by military means, and that if the Chinese revolution was to be victorious, it was necessary for the people of all strata to actively participate in it.
After joining the Kuomintang, when he witnessed all kinds of stubborn diseases and bad habits in the Kuomintang, especially after the beginning of the Great Revolution, with the gradual contact with the Communists, he gradually realized that the Kuomintang could no longer shoulder the historical responsibility of saving the country from peril and leading the nation to rejuvenation.
Therefore, his political orientation gradually fell to communism, and when he joined the Communist Party of China, in the face of the incomprehension of others, Ye Ting said:
After joining the party, the "Ye Ting Independent Regiment" led by him drove all the way into the Northern Expedition, winning all the battles, and repeatedly performed miraculous feats, defeating Wu Peifu and Sun Chuanfang. Ye Ting also won the title of "Famous General of the Northern Expedition" for a generation. Especially in the battles of Tingsi Bridge and Hesheng Bridge, after the "Ye Ting Independent Regiment" defeated Wu Peifu's 30,000 elite leaders in one fell swoop with more than 2,000 troops, the "Ye Ting Independent Regiment" won the well-deserved title of "Iron Army".
Ye Ting was good at winning more with less and defeating the strong with the weak, and he could also combine party building with military and political affairs well, and fully mobilize the broad masses of the people to participate, so during the special period of the White Terror, when the Chinese revolution as a whole turned into a low ebb, Ye Ting insisted on growing one regiment into eight regiments and became the vanguard of the Nanchang Uprising.
But the problem was that the Red Revolution in China at this time was still pursuing the "theory of urban riots", and the forces of reactionary forces were mainly concentrated in the cities, which made the Nanchang Uprising usher in embarrassing results.
Compared with the Nanchang Uprising at this time, the later Guangzhou Uprising is even more incredible. At the time of the Guangzhou Uprising, the Red Revolutionary Force was only a few thousand people, but the Kuomintang army had nearly 100,000 troops.
As a generation of famous generals who have been on the battlefield for a long time, Ye Ting naturally sees this very clearly. He, Ye Jianying and others strongly suggested that they take the initiative to withdraw from the city of Guangzhou, but they were opposed by the Comintern advisers, and the uprising finally failed due to the disparity in strength.
After the failure of the uprising, Ye Ting was treated unfairly by the Comintern, although Ye Ting personally went to Moscow to explain, but could not stand the instigation of Wang Ming's so-called "Documentary of the Guangzhou Uprising" that he had never participated in the Guangzhou Uprising.
But Ye Ting did not give up hope of saving the country and the nation because of this.
In 1937, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party cooperated again, and the red revolutionary forces in the eight southern provinces were reorganized into the newly organized Fourth Army of the National Revolutionary Army, which is known in history as the "New Fourth Army".
Since the New Fourth Army has been active in the eight southern provinces for a long time, and the southern region is the sphere of influence of the Chiang Kai-shek clique's strong dominance, the selection of the commander of the New Fourth Army is the top priority.
Ye Ting was a member of the Kuomintang in his early years, and although he later joined the Communist Party, he had several years of experience of leaving the party, which made him, a "party member", become a "person outside the party", so that Ye Ting, who had intersections with both the Kuomintang and the Communist Party and was politically reliable, undoubtedly became the best candidate.
The candidate for the army commander was finalized, and the candidate for the deputy army commander fell on Xiang Ying's head without any suspense. Xiang Ying was born in the working class in his early years, and presided over and participated in the Jinghan Railway Strike and other labor movements with famous leaders of the labor movement such as Lin Yunan and Shi Yang.
The reason why the Central Committee did not let Ye Ting lead the New Fourth Army as a Communist, but temporarily allowed Ye Ting to serve as the commander of the New Fourth Army as a "person outside the party," was mainly based on the consideration of the overall situation of maintaining and consolidating the cooperation between the KMT and the Communist Party in the long run.
The end of this is that Ye Ting, as a "person outside the party", cannot attend the party meeting, and some of the instructions of the central government were conveyed to Ye Ting by Xiang Ying, so in fact, Ye Ting only has the power to execute.
What's worse is that Ye and Xiang have very different styles of life, which laid the groundwork for future hidden dangers.
Ye Ting once served as a high-ranking official of the Kuomintang and lived abroad for many years, so he was naturally a little particular about life. When inspecting the troops, he likes to travel on horseback, accompanied by adjutants, guards, and many other people.
In terms of eating and drinking, Ye Ting has his own chef, and he basically eats small stoves alone. In his free time, Ye Ting will also ask his chef to cook a few hometown dishes, and invite his old comrades-in-arms who came to the New Fourth Army with him to have a small gathering and talk.
As for Xiang Ying, she is used to hardships. He was originally a child of a poor family, and he entered the factory to work at an early age, and he tasted all the social conditions and the bitterness of the world. Therefore, he was accustomed to living a hard and simple life, and he was not used to this style of life.
As a matter of fact, the biggest difference between the two people's views mainly lies in the future development and survival of the New Fourth Army.
At that time, the New Fourth Army was clearly instructed to go north, and Ye Ting, as a professional soldier, also very much supported this decision, and advocated concentrating forces to fight a bloody road and break out of the encirclement! However, Xiang Ying wanted to stay in southern Anhui and continue to fight guerrillas. Although Ye Ting tried his best to do his work, Xiang Ying finally made a seriously misjudged decision: retreat and advance from the southwest.
Not only that, Xiang Ying proposed "elite soldierism", that is, the so-called reduction of his own army to avoid overstimulating the Kuomintang army, while Ye Ting advocated that the masses should be mobilized to strengthen the red revolutionary forces, so that if the Kuomintang army launched a surprise attack, he would have enough strength to deal with it calmly.
No matter from which point of view, Ye Ting's insight is undoubtedly extremely wise and wise, but it is a pity that all this was not accepted by Xiang Ying.