Feng Yuxiang, the leader of the Northwest Army
Feng Yuxiang and Chiang Kai-shek
At the beginning of 1946, as the conflict between the Kuomintang and the Communist Army intensified, a full-scale civil war was inevitable. During the period of the Beiyang warlords, he served as the Northwest Frontier Supervisor and single-handedly built more than 200,000 Northwest Army; after the outbreak of the Northern Expedition in 1926, Feng led his troops to join the revolution, and the department was reorganized into the 2nd Group Army of the Northern Expeditionary Army, and the troops went out of Tongguan.
Northwest Army
The strength of Feng Yuxiang's Northwest Army was once comparable to that of Lao Chiang's Central Army
At the end of the Northern Expedition in 1928, Feng Yuxiang not only controlled the northwestern provinces, but also gained territory in Henan, Shandong and other provinces, and his troops were expanded to nearly 500,000. However, at this time, the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the southeast coast, the richest in the country, were under the control of Chiang Kai-shek, and he still controlled the Nationalist Government in Nanjing, bent on eliminating all local powerful factions and completing the reunification of the whole country; the following year, the first Chiang-Feng War broke out, and Feng Yuxiang was forced to abandon Henan and Shandong, and withdrew to the west of Tongguan.
In 1930, Feng Yuxiang, who was unwilling to fail, joined forces with Yan Xishan, the "King of Shanxi", Li Zongren of the Gui Department and others to form a coalition army, and launched the largest warlord melee in history with Chiang Kai-shek. However, Feng Yuxiang was defeated again, and the troops were also disintegrated, except for a very small number of troops who were lucky enough to cross the Yellow River and flee into Shanxi, the rest were basically absorbed by Chiang Kai-shek, although a lot of losses were lost, but the total strength was still not less than 200,000 people.
The Northwest Army was the main force in the Battle of Taierzhuang
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Feng Yuxiang tried to gather the old ministry
During the Anti-Japanese War, although the various departments of the Northwest Army were divided and used, with their strong combat effectiveness, they still won victories such as the victory in Taierzhuang, made a lot of military achievements, and most of their strength was preserved. However, just after the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in August 1945, the Northwest Army was driven to the front line of the civil war; in November, more than 40,000 people from seven divisions of the 30th Army, the 40th Army and the newly formed 8th Army, which originally belonged to the Northwest Army, set out from Xinxiang and marched along the Pinghan Line and its northeast.
In order to eliminate the civil war and avoid his former subordinates from being cannon fodder, Feng Yuxiang came up with a plan of "the great alliance of the Northwest Army to stop the civil war by force", hoping to integrate the old forces, form a new military group, and force Chiang Kai-shek to give up the civil war plan. He arranged for people to actively run and successively found Feng Zhi'an, commander of the 3rd Pacification Zone, Liu Ruming, commander of the 4th Pacification Zone, Sun Liangcheng, commander of the newly formed 2nd Route Army, Zhang Lanfeng, commander of the 3rd Route Army, and Wu Huawen, commander of the 5th Route Army. In order to increase his strength, Feng Yuxiang even sent someone to contact Hao Pengju, the commander of Wang's puppet 7th Front Army, who had already led his troops to revolt and join the PLA.
Feng Zhi'an stills
The old subordinates have found excuses to shirk
These people were all Feng Yuxiang's old subordinates, and some of them even served as Feng's guards and horses, but they were unwilling to rely on the old master at this time, and they all found various excuses to shirk. Because they all know very well that Feng now wants money or not, and he wants land without land, and he can't bring them high-ranking officials and money and power at all. What's more, Feng Yuxiang asked all the troops of the former northwest department to concentrate in Xuzhou, although it was the territory of Feng Zhi'an's third appeasement area, it was the northern gateway of Nanjing, whether it was Lianyungang in the east, Bengbu in the south, or Qingdao and Jinan in the north, a large number of elite descendants of the central army were stationed, and even if the Northwest Army united, it had no chance of winning.
Despite Feng Yuxiang's constant appeals, his old subordinates responded little, and his anti-civil war plan could only fail. However, this intention was still detected by Chiang Kai-shek, so he gave him the title of "special envoy for water conservancy investigation", and let him go abroad for investigation, in fact, to exile Feng overseas, to prevent him from staying at home and getting in the way of the imminent outbreak of full-scale civil war.
He Jifeng and Zhang Kexia led the Northwest Army to revolt