At the beginning of 1941, the New Fourth Army was raided by the Kuomintang in southern Anhui, and less than a quarter of the 9,000 soldiers succeeded in breaking through.
In 1940, China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression entered its most intense stage. Against this backdrop, the KMT and the Communist Party were supposed to work together to fight the enemy, but in reality, the relationship between the two parties became more and more complicated. Especially in the Jiangnan region, the existence and expansion of the New Fourth Army gradually became a thorny issue in the eyes of the Kuomintang. Chiang Kai-shek and his military advisers were always deeply wary of and distrustful of the Communists.
In the early 1940s, some voices within the Kuomintang began to argue that the power of the Communist Party must be limited or even weakened. Chiang Kai-shek himself expressed concern about the expansion of the Communist Party on several occasions. Privately, he believed that once the pressure on Japan was relieved, it should simultaneously move south to solve the Communist problem in one fell swoop. This "two-pronged" strategy not only demonstrated his military ambitions, but also reflected his deep intolerance for the Communist Party.
On October 19, 1940, the Kuomintang government issued the famous "Hao Telegram", a telegram demanding that the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army withdraw to the north of the Yellow River within a time limit. This order, ostensibly a strategic adjustment, was in fact a move by Chiang Kai-shek to try to control and reduce the Communist sphere of influence. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China made a resolute response to this, rejecting this irrational order, but also offered to move part of the troops north for the sake of the overall situation.
Chiang Kai-shek's plan was already irreversible. By the end of 1940, he and his advisory group had developed a series of military action plans for the New Fourth Army. Gu Zhu and others carefully planned an operation called "Exterminating the New Fourth Army in Southern Anhui". This plan involved not only large-scale military deployment, but also the cutting off of the supply of food and forage to the New Fourth Army, as well as political isolation.
On January 4, 1941, a unit of the New Fourth Army assembled at Yunling to prepare for a northward movement. By this time, the Kuomintang troops had quietly surrounded the area. The soldiers of the New Fourth Army were defenseless and suddenly came under a full-scale attack by the Kuomintang troops. In this raid, the New Fourth Army suffered heavy losses, only 2,000 of the 9,000 soldiers successfully broke through, and most of the soldiers died heroically. This raid not only caused heavy casualties, but also dealt a profound psychological blow to the soldiers of the New Fourth Army.
Behind the incident, there is a crucial role of a key person - the former deputy commander of the New Fourth Army. According to later declassified information, the deputy commander had colluded with the Kuomintang before the incident. Out of his pursuit of personal power and his deviation from the ideas of the Communist Party, he chose to provide the Kuomintang with the detailed military deployment and action plan of the New Fourth Army at a critical moment. This betrayal led directly to the heavy losses of the New Fourth Army, and eventually the deputy commander was executed by the New Fourth Army for his treason.
The Southern Anhui Incident was not only a simple military conflict, but also a microcosm of the tense and complex relations between the KMT and the Communist Party. In the eyes of the Kuomintang, weakening the Communist Party was a necessary means of securing its own dominance. For the New Fourth Army and the broad masses of Communists, this was a severe test of their conviction and determination to resist Japan. This incident profoundly revealed the contradictions within the Kuomintang and the deep distrust of the Communist Party, and also exposed the complexity of the domestic political struggle during the War of Resistance Against Japan.
After this incident, the morale of the New Fourth Army was severely damaged, but this did not destroy their will to resist. On the contrary, this incident stimulated the cohesion and combat effectiveness of the New Fourth Army and the Communist forces to which it belonged. They showed a more determined spirit of resistance and higher organizational efficiency in the ensuing battles, and ultimately made an indelible contribution to China's war of resistance against Japan.
The Southern Anhui Incident also provides us with important food for thought today's historical observers. It reminds us that behind historical events there are often complex human nature and power games hidden. Each historical juncture is the result of the accumulation of the choices and actions of countless individuals, and these choices often have complex motivations and psychology behind them.