During the War of Liberation, the Northeast has always been the main battlefield for which our army and the national army are in contention.
At the beginning of the war, our army transferred a large number of elite troops of the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army from the Guannei to fight in the Guan.
However, in the initial battlefield, our army was still at an absolute disadvantage, in addition to the reasons for weapons and equipment and the quality of soldiers, but also because the main person in charge of the national army was the famous general sent by Shaozhuang - Du Yuming.
Participating in the expedition to Burma and being good at commanding large corps to fight, he did make our army suffer a lot, and had to abandon Liaoyang, Jinzhou, Changchun and other cities.
However, in 1947, Du Yuming was suddenly transferred away with Xiong Shihui, the director of the Northeast Battalion at the time, on the grounds of ill health, and was replaced by Chen Cheng, the chief of staff of the National Army, who was known as a "small commissar".
After Chen Cheng's arrival, a series of "great smart" reforms also completely buried the Northeast National Army. So what did Chen Cheng do in the Northeast that led to the defeat of the national army in the Northeast step by step?
Impractical reforms
To be honest, personally, Chen Cheng is different from many high-ranking people in the national army. Compared with Gu Zhutong, Qian Dajun and others who like to be greedy for ink, he cares more about reputation, and does not stick to one pattern to reduce talents, such as the four King Kongs and the thirteen Taibao in his civil engineering department, as long as he is loyal to the "party-state", he is a good comrade.
Therefore, he hated corruption and competing with the people for profit, and after he first came to the Northeast, he did a lot of practical things. At the beginning of his arrival in Northeast China, Chen Cheng has always advocated that "it is advisable to go to luxury and thrift in a timely manner, and strive to reverse the decadence; to take up their posts, fulfill their duties, and seek a way of self-reliance in the midst of hardships and hardships."
As told in the TV series "Infiltration", Xu Zhongyi, who penetrated into the enemy, took advantage of the characteristics of the generals of the national army who liked corruption to break them down. At that time, there was no general of the national army in the northeast who was not greedy, from Xiong Shihui to those company commanders and station commanders, Liao Yaoxiang and Li Tao and others even sold military supplies as overthrowers, and the people's lives were not as good as day by day.
In this environment, after Chen Cheng took charge of the Northeast, he did two very happy things: the first thing was to bring to justice those typical people who were greedy for ink, including Lieutenant General Tian Xiangfan, who set up a casino, Feng Kai, who resold military supplies, and Li Xiuye, director of the Japanese Prisoner Management Office, who liked to take back the detainees. These people were all dealt with by Chen Cheng in accordance with the law.
The second thing is to clean up the puppet army that Du Yuming and others incorporated in the early stage. Direct reduction of troops. These people have no loyalty in the war, let alone fighting if they can't fight, and they also like to engage in factions, eat empty salaries, and oppress the townships, which affects the image of the national army. Of course, these reduced soldiers don't do anything, and they have been making noise about "not leaving the master here, the master will go to the eight roads", but in fact, our army is also very troubled by these puppet troops, and the earliest time of incorporation was when they escaped from the battle and shot the chief officer, which led to the defeat of our army in many battles in 1946. Therefore, Chen Cheng is indeed very happy to do this.
But Chen Cheng only did these two things in the Northeast that were okay for the national army, and the next Northeast could be described as a "mess" under Chen Cheng's reform.
First of all, the relationship between the military and political leaders of the Northeast.
Chen Cheng handled it very poorly, basically the generals who had been to the Northeast, everyone was on the opposite side of him, for example, Guan Linzheng, the former commander of the Northeast Security, said, "After the Anti-Japanese War, Chen Cheng reorganized the army, remobilized a large number of troops, and the officers and soldiers could not be settled." Many people ran to the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum to cry about it." Chen Cheng's predecessor Xiong Shihui even said that he was "extremely bored and had bad ideas, and even described Chen Cheng as a ghost". As an honest man, Du Yuming was even more sprayed by Chen Cheng, and often ridiculed Du Yuming in public for his incompetence in command. Fortunately, Du Yuming, who is well versed in the golden mean, didn't say anything, but he probably scolded Chen Cheng in his heart.
With such a low EQ performance, how can you do well in the Northeast?
Second, nepotism and nurturing power.
This is true for his colleagues, and the same is true for Chen Cheng, who is under his subordinates, and Chen Cheng also looks down on the Northeast generals who Du Yuming has pulled up, and the contradictions between the two sides are very large. According to the words of Zheng Dongguo, the commander of the Changchun garrison at the time, "(Chen Cheng) wanted to swallow other people's ranks and exclude dissidents at every opportunity." At the same time, he did everything possible to favor his cronies and cultivate personal forces, which caused deep contradictions within the Kuomintang army, and many people were both afraid of him and hated him. ”
Moreover, in order to cultivate his own power, Chen Cheng expanded the army to the extreme, and installed a large number of cronies, and the new troops such as the new 3rd, 5th and 7th armies were all his own descendants, and most of the 20 new divisions in 1947 were mainly civil engineering generals. As for the old troops, he also changed a lot of chief officers, appointed Pan Yukun as the commander of the new 1st Army, and squeezed Sun Liren away, Chen Mingren led the 71st Army to block the attack of our army, and was sent away from the northeast by Chen Cheng on the grounds of greed for ink.
Therefore, the troops in the entire northeast were also panicked, and they had no intention of fighting at all.
Finally, there is economic reform.
In the context of the greed for ink of the Northeast National Army at that time, Chen Cheng's "clear stream" was destined to be ostracized, and Chen Cheng, who moved a lot of cakes, was met with the address of many generals and military and political dignitaries in Shenyang. These methods of treating the symptoms but not the root cause were not only opposed by his subordinates, but even the people in the Kuomintang area scolded him, saying, "Chen Cheng is really capable, and the south railway station leads to the north station." ”
Repeated defeats
Of course, no matter how Chen Cheng reforms or makes trouble, everything is result-oriented, even if the reform is not done well, as long as he achieves results on the battlefield, then everything is convincing. But as the game says, "Vegetables are original sin". Chen Cheng's performance in the Northeast Battlefield is really worthy of his title of Chief of Staff, although Du Yuming can't stop it, but he also fights back and forth with our army, and Chen Cheng is basically beaten unilaterally.
What is Chen Cheng's record in the Northeast?
Let's put it this way - the army was expanded by 200,000 in one month, and 80% was lost in one winter. The so-called "recovering lost territory within six months" was only beaten by our army in a few large cities such as Shenyang, Jinzhou, and Changchun.
Although Chen Cheng made meritorious contributions during the Anti-Japanese War and commanded several battles, he was basically in the name (Yichang Campaign). There are very few commanders who really go deep into the troops, so there is indeed a gap between him who is far away from the battlefield and Du Yuming and others who have been leading troops. Moreover, in terms of command, unlike Du Yuming, who likes to listen to the opinions of his subordinates and coordinate the relationship between various departments, Chen Cheng is arrogant and self-serving.
How bad is Chen Cheng playing in the Northeast?
To give a typical example, it is the case of our army completely annihilating the new 5th Army at Gongzhuling.
At that time, when the new 5th Army was besieged by our army, Chen Cheng mobilized a large number of soldiers and horses to rescue, but because he had been inserting cronies into the armies before, everyone was already very dissatisfied, and they all wanted to watch Chen Cheng's good show again, and who really supported it. Therefore, the New 5th Army was wiped out by our army when it was again "isolated and helpless". After the war, Chen Cheng still wanted to "shake the pot", saying that he would not save Liao Yaoxiang of the Fourth Corps and Li Tao, the commander of the New Sixth Army. But Liao Yaoxiang and Li Tao, who guessed Chen Cheng's thoughts, stood up and defended that they had never received instructions to rescue the New 5th Army, so the two sides pulled each other in front of Lao Jiang, and finally each played 20 boards.
In this way, he offended the entire military and political circles in the Northeast, and coupled with the "picking of vegetables" in the battle, Chen Cheng could only leave the Northeast in a gloomy manner.
brief summary
I have to say that Chen Cheng is really a big ups and downs in his life in the Northeast. Chen Cheng, who had just arrived in the Northeast, was full of ambition and wanted to make meritorious contributions, but he suffered defeats in the six months of ruling the Northeast, and all the people rebelled and left, so he had to leave Shenyang in embarrassment in a shouting and killing, and abandoned his subordinates before the encirclement of our army. Not only should Chen Cheng be severely punished within the national army, but even our army used the domineering and incompetent "teacher" in the Peking Opera "Fishing and Killing" to describe him who could only lose his temper and not fight.
But it is unreasonable to say that the defeat of the Northeast is all on Chen Cheng's head, because the Northeast National Army at that time was in internal chaos, the phenomenon of greed for ink was serious, and it was also losing and retreating on the battlefield, Chen Cheng's nonsense only accelerated the defeat, even without Chen Cheng, the decline of the national army was still irreversible.